🅉 Staging the “Chorus of Civilization”: American Jewish Performance Activism During the Holocaust - with Maya Gonzales
Monday March 18th, 7p, on Zoom
Staging the “Chorus of Civilization”: American Jewish Performance Activism During the Holocaust - with Maya Gonzales
Monday March 18, 7:00pm
Zoom Only
Suggested Registration Fee: $18
As genocidal violence threatened the lives of millions of European Jews in the 1930s and 1940s, American Jewish organizations staged mass protests urging the intervention of the American government. Two of these demonstrations, "The Case of Civilization Against Hitler" and "We Will Never Die," transformed Madison Square Garden into a symbolic courtroom where "civilization" itself hung in the balance. In her talk, Maya González will critically examine the concept of "civilization" and illustrate how each protest performance employed it to advance their goals. In doing so, she will reveal how the American Jewish appeal for the "defense of civilization" exposed the ideological paradoxes of American liberal democracy.
Maya "Zuni" González is a public historian of modern Jewish history, Yiddish, and global mass atrocities. She is a graduate of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and received her master’s degree in History and Public History from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She currently works as the Harriett and Seymour Shapiro Fellow at the Yiddish Book Center. Find out more about Maya's current projects: maya-gonzalez.com.