DAYS AND MEMORY
A blog of the Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies

Days and Memory is a public forum created by The Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies (HGMS), an interdisciplinary program based at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Founded in 2009 and located within the Program in Jewish Culture and Society, HGMS provides a platform for cutting-edge, comparative research, teaching, and public engagement related to genocide, trauma, and collective memory. HGMS offers a graduate certificate in Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies to students registered in a degree-granting program at the University of Illinois, and it organizes conferences, workshops, and lectures that are open to the University of Illinois community and the broader public. You can also join our HGMS Facebook group page to stay informed about our upcoming events.

This blog is named in homage to Charlotte Delbo, the writer, resistance fighter, and Auschwitz survivor whose last book La mémoire et les jours was published in English as Days and Memory in Rosette Lamont’s translation. Delbo’s work combines powerful testimony, reflection on the nature of memory and trauma, and a transnational vision of solidarity. Our understanding of trauma, memory, and genocide studies is inspired by her example.

Days and Memory  will serve as an opportunity to publicize and report on our local activities and to provide space for wide-ranging, open discussion of issues pertinent to trauma and memory studies. We envision the blog as a site for book reviews, conference reports, manifestos, and provocations as well as reflections on urgent political matters and untimely theoretical problems. We welcome the submission of short blog posts on relevant matters from any interested parties. 

From 2013-2016, the blog was edited by Michael Rothberg and Jessica Young. We are excited to announce that starting in Winter 2016 the editor of Days and Memory will be Brett Kaplan, the new director of the Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies.

For more information, or to submit a blog post, contact the editor. 

Editor
Brett Kaplan, University of Illinois (bakaplan[at]illinois.edu)