Zero Hour Conference

April 8, 2024 - April 10, 2024

All Day

University of Virginia

Rethinking 1945 From Jewish Transnational Perspectives

17:00: Welcome and Opening Remarks (New Cabell Hall 236)

Asher Biemann (University of Virginia) and Yaniv Feller (University of Florida)

17:30-19:00: Crossing Oceans (New Cabell Hall 236)

Kai Parker, University of Virginia: “Du Bois and Baldwin on the Warsaw Ghetto and the African American Experience.”
Darcy Buerkle, Smith College: “Rethinking Antifascism in the ‘Zero Hour’.”
Michael Weinman, Indiana University: “Augustine and the Liberal Order: Arendt between Interwar Europe and the Civil Rights Era in America.”
Chair: Charles Mathewes (UVA)

19:00: Public Reception (NCH First Floor Foyer)

9:00-10:30: Continuities and Continuation (Wilson Hall 142)

Polly Zavadivker, University of Delaware: “A Seat at the Table: Vasily Grossman as a Holocaust Thinker.”
Martin Kudla, Goethe University, Frankfurt: “Zero Latency. Hermann Levin Goldschmidt’s Epistemic Practice and Continuation of German-Jewish Tradition in the Immediate Wake of the Shoah”
Eugene Sheppard, Brandeis University: “Valeriu Marcu and His Reception.”
Chair: Asher Biemann (UVA)

10:30-11:00: Break

11:00-12:30: The Politics of the New Order (Wilson Hall 142)

Karen Remmler, Mount Holyoke College: “The Vociferous Din of War: The Pontigny Encounters at Mount Holyoke College, 1942-1944.”
Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins, Wesleyan University: “Raymond Aron and the Gaullist Movement: Two Alternatives Visions of France’s Place in a New World Order.”
Benjamin Schvarcz, Bar-Ilan University, “Political Theory in Transnational Context: Leon Roth in British Palestine”
Chair: Jennifer Geddes (UVA)

12:30-13:30: Lunch (Wilson 142, foyer)

13:30-15:00: Urgent Times (New Cabell Hall 236)

Ayala Gidron, Bar Ilan University: “Man in Times of Crisis: Ernst Cassirer on the Role of Philosophy.”
Courtney Hodrick, Stanford University: “The Atomic Bomb and ‘Process Thinking’ in Arendt's Vision of Modernity.”
Elliot Ratzman, Earlham College: “Standing in the Breach: American Jewish Pacifism in the Wake of the Holocaust.”
Chair: Manuela Achilles (UVA)

15:30-16:30: Guided Tour of the University

17:00-18:00: Remaking Jewish Tradition (New Cabell Hall 236)

Itamar Ben Ami, Utrecht University: “The Invention of Yeshivish Orthodoxy as Counter-Culture.”
Or Rose, Hebrew College, Boston: “‘Difficulties in Mental Prayer’: Rabbi Zalman Schachter Shalomi’s Post-Shoah Explorations of Christian Spirituality.”
Chair: Elizabeth Alexander (UVA)

9:30-10:30: Perspectives in Palestine (New Cabell Hall 236)

Caroline Kahlenberg, University of Virginia: “Revolt and Revisionist Voices in Post WWII Palestine.”
Ariel Horowitz, Stanford University: “Jewishness and the 1948 War.”
Chair: Jessica Andruss (UVA)

10:30-11:00: Break

11:00-12:00: Translating Judaism (New Cabell Hall 236)

Gabriel Chazan, University of Wisconsin-Madison: “Leo Steinberg, Yiddish Translator.”
Rachel Gordan, University of Florida: “How the Genre of Introduction to Judaism was Influenced by the Postwar Context.”
Chair: Jeffrey Grossman (UVA)

12:00-13:00: Lunch (New Cabell Hall 236)

13:00-14:30: Rupture and Reconstruction (Gibson Hall 341)

Willi Goetschel, University of Toronto, “Responding with a Challenge: Margarete Susman's The Book of Job and the Destiny of the Jewish People"
Paula Calderon, University of Chile: “Arendt, Jonas and Anders: The Jewish Condition in Times of Emergency.”
Philipp v. Wussow, Goethe University, Frankfurt: “The Reconstruction of ‘Jewish Philosophy’ in Germany After WWII and the Legacy of Walter Benjamin.”
Chair: Yaniv Feller (University of Florida)