“Tombs. Writing one’s family history.” Annette Wieviorka

Is it possible to be the historian of one’s own family, when one already serves as its archive? What resources exist to enable this undertaking? How might one craft a story from it all? In her talk, Annette Wieviorka will discuss these and related questions, which she grappled with herself upon deciding to tell the intersecting (hi)stories of her maternal and paternal forebears, Jewish immigrants to France in the aftermath of the Great War.  

Annette Wieviorka is a major French historian, specialist of the Holocaust. She opened a new field about collective memory and the importance of testimony over history. Her work includes, in English, The Era of the Witness (Cornell University Press, 2006). Her last book, Tombeaux. Autobiographie de ma famille (Seuil, 2022) was awarded the Femina Prize for non-fiction.

Tuesday, April 11
5:00 p.m. in Royce Hall 236