TJHTalks
FROM SHTETL
TO
POST-JEWISH TOWN
Monday, October 28, 2024
Please join the Taube Center for Jewish Life & Learning, the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute, and the American Friends of the POLIN Museum for the next TJHTalks webinar inspired by POLIN Museum’s current temporary exhibition: “Post Jewish… Shtetl Opatow through the Eyes of Mayer Kirshenblatt”.
Our moderator, Stuart Schear, and our guest speakers, Dr. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Dr. Natalia Romik, and Dr. Koszarska-Szulc, will discuss the genesis and development of the exhibition and explore questions it raises: What was the reality of Jewish life in the shtetl? How do descendants connect to their ancestral homes?
Monday, October 28, 2024
10:00 am PDT
12:00 pm CDT
1:00 pm EDT
6:00 pm CET
7:00 pm Israel
Professor Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett is the Ronald S. Lauder Chief Curator of the Core Exhibition at POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw and University Professor Emerita of Performance Studies at New York University. Her books include They Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of Jewish Life in Poland Before the Holocaust (with Mayer Kirshenblatt) and Image Before My Eyes: A Photographic History of Jewish Life in Poland, 1864–1939 (with Lucjan Dobroszycki), among others. She has received honorary doctorates from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, the University of Haifa, and Indiana University. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, decorated with the Officer’s Cross of the Order of the Republic of Poland for her contribution to the creation of the POLIN Museum, and received the 2020 Dan David Prize. She has served on Advisory Boards for the Council of American Jewish Museums, Jewish Museum Vienna, and Jewish Museum Berlin, and is Vice-Chair of ICMEMOHRI, the International Committee of Memorial and Human Rights Museums. She advises on museum and exhibition projects in Lithuania, Belarus, Albania, Israel, New Zealand, and the United States.
Dr. Natalia Romik, a graduate in the field of political science, is a lecturer, practitioner of architecture, designer, and artist. She is a member of the Association of Polish Architects. In 2018, she was awarded a Ph.D. from the Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London for her thesis entitled Post-Jewish Architecture of Memory within Former Eastern European Shtetls. Dr. Romik has been awarded numerous grants including one from the London Arts and Humanities Partnership for her doctoral studies and a scholarship from the Minister of Culture and National Heritage of Poland for the project, “Jewish Architecture of (Non)Memory in Silesia”. Between 2007 and 2014, she cooperated with the Nizio Design Studio as, amongst other things, a consultant for the core exhibition design of the 19th-century gallery in the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews and co-authored the restoration of the 18th-century synagogue in Chmielnik. Natalia co-curated POLIN’s contemporary exhibition “Estranged. March ’68 and its Aftermath” in 2018 and its current temporary exhibition “(post)JEWISH… Shtetl Opatów Through the Eyes of Mayer Kirshenblatt.”
Dr. Justyna Koszarska-Szulc, a curator and award-winning scholar, is currently an assistant professor at the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw and a researcher for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Holocaust Justice Project. Justyna was a grantee of The Rothschild Foundation Hanadiv Europe (2020/2021) and Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture (2020/2021). She was a member of the POLIN Museum’s Core Exhibition development team. Together with Natalia Romik, she was the co-curator of POLIN’s previous exhibition, “Estranged. March ’68 and its Aftermath,” in 2018, and the current temporary exhibition “(post)JEWISH… Shtetl Opatów Through the Eyes of Mayer Kirshenblatt (2024).”
Stuart Schear, a writer, is currently at work on Pastry and Politics, a memoir about his New York family, populated by generations of bakers and political activists. Schear worked as a reporter for the PBS NewsHour and on documentary films for public TV, including the series Heritage: Civilization and the Jews and the documentary A Different World: Poland’s Jews 1919-1943, one segment of the series The Struggles for Poland. Schear has long been engaged with the history and culture of the Jews of Poland and Eastern Europe and studied Yiddish language and literature and Jewish history at Columbia University and the YIVO Institute. Currently, Schear serves on the board of the American Friends of POLIN Museum. For decades, Schear served in national and global leadership roles in communications, marketing, and grantmaking for some of the most highly regarded foundations and non-profit organizations, including American Jewish World Service, the Atlantic Philanthropies, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Schear earned a B.A. from Oberlin College and received an M.A. from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, which honored him in 2022 with its annual alumni award.