Judaic Studies Program Presents Lecture on Key Works of Holocaust Literature

March 03, 2010 |

Ruth Franklin, a literary critic and a senior editor at The New Republic, will present a free public lecture titled “A Thousand Darknesses: Truth and Lies in Holocaust Fiction” on Wednesday, March 3, at 7 p.m., in Buchner Hall of Goucher College’s Alumnae/i House.

This event is free and open to the public. For more information, contact Jerome Copulsky, director of the Judaic Studies Program at Goucher College, at jerome.copulsky@goucher.edu. 

Franklin’s lecture is based on her forthcoming book, also titled A Thousand Darknesses: Truth and Lies in Holocaust Literature, which the Oxford University Press will publish this fall. The book will investigate key works of fiction and memoir by writers such as Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi, Imre Kertesz, and W.G. Sebald, with a focus on the shifting lines between testimony and literature.

Franklin started at The New Republic as assistant managing editor in July 1999 and became associate literary editor in February 2001. She now works as a senior editor at the magazine. A Baltimore native, she earned a bachelor of arts in English from Columbia University in 1995 and a master of arts in comparative literature from Harvard University in 1998.

Her writing has also appeared in The New York Times Book Review, the New Yorker, Slate, The Washington Post Book World, The London Review of Books, and other publications.

Franklin’s lecture at Goucher is sponsored by the college’s Judaic Studies Program and the Celeste Bachove Grynberg ’57 and Jack Grynberg Fund, which was established to fund guest lecturers and other initiatives of the Judaic Studies Program.