"Holocaust Horror: A Cultural History"

A Faculty Scholar Resident talk by Kobi Kabalek, assistant professor of Holocaust studies and visual studies, Germanic and Slavic languages and literatures, and Jewish studies.

My project explores Holocaust victims’ horror depictions in order to unravel their authors’ contemplations of the very definition of humanity and the borders of rationality and civilized sociality. Whereas the study of the Holocaust has used such concepts as “civilizational rupture” (Dan Diner) to describe the change that this genocide has caused to people’s perceptions, expectations, and anxieties in modern societies, it has rarely sketched the meanings and origins of such conceptualization. My study pursues these issues by tracing the cultural roots, functions, and implications of civilization and barbarism since WWII through a close analysis of the Holocaust as horror.