Editors: Alan L. Berger, Lucas Wilson
In the past fifty years, a growing body of literature written by the children of Holocaust survivors has emerged, along with scholarship that explores this second-generation literary oeuvre. In its turn, over the last three decades, the writings of grandchildren of survivors have bourgeoned—e.g., Ivan Jablonka’s A History of the Grandparents I Never Had, Noah Lederman’s A World Erased, Jérémie Dres’ We Won’t See Auschwitz. And from Esther Jilovsky et. al.’s In the Shadows of Memory to Alan L. Berger and Asher Z. Milbauer’s “The Burden of Inheritance,” so too has scholarship on these third-generation writings begun to develop. Beginning with Dan Bar-On’s Fear & Hope and most recently with Victoria Aarons and Berger’s Third-Generation Holocaust Representation, various scholarship has probed the contours of third-generation identity/identities broadly defined.
Despite how, as Jilovsky explains in Remembering the Holocaust (2015), “there is a little consensus on [the third-generation’s] collective experience and attributes,” there is also no denying that the Holocaust has impacted a host of members of the third-generation. And though third-generation identity is in no way homogenous, we seek to put together a volume that explores the various ways in which the Holocaust has indeed impacted the grandchildren of survivors; how the legacy of the Holocaust endures in their lives; and how these individuals have shaped and continue to shape how we honor the memory of the Holocaust.
Our collection, Emerging Trends in Third-Generation Holocaust Literature, aims to explore the range of third-generation literary works and films, particularly those written/produced in the past ten years and texts that have received little to no scholarly attention. For the purposes of this volume, literary works refer to poetry, drama, fiction (for adults and children), life writing, graphic narrative, and creative nonfiction. Though it is certainly not requisite, we encourage consideration of the following questions:
- What are emerging trends in recent third-generation writing/film?
- Are there any specific phenomena that we can define as distinctly part of a third-generation experience as expressed in third-generation literature/film?
- How does literature/film explore third-generation identity and how it differs across national boundaries—say, between Israel and Germany or between the U.S. and France?
- How has the third-generation come to interact with the Holocaust differently than the second-generation?
- How does third-generation literature/film reveal how the third-generation relates nostalgically to their grandparents’ pre-War lives and Holocaust experiences?
- Can we understand the third-generation’s relationship to the Holocaust as a form of postmemory, or might it be qualitatively something different?
- How is the third-generation literature/film carrying forward the legacy of the Holocaust?
Essays should be 6,000–7,000 words. Please submit inquiries to both editors—they will be glad to answer any questions. Please submit essays electronically to both editors by 1 October 2019.
Alan L. Berger: aberger@fau.edu
Lucas Wilson: lucas.fww@gmail.com