Field Notes
Some very quick things:
- My Holocaust & Genocide Studies doctoral dissertation, “Family, Hope, and Survival: The Nativization of Children’s Holocaust Literature in North America, 1940-2020,” is now with my committee members for their review. I hope to defend and graduate in August!
- I’m attending the Association of Writers & Writing Programs conference this week virtually since I’m still in an immunocompromised bubble until my medication infusions start next week. I’m looking for inspiration, especially in poetics and memoir.
- Join award-winning author Dr. Wendy Lower for a discussion of Hitler’s Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields on March 30, 7 pm ET via Zoom. To register, click here.
The Whole Megillah 
Hitler’s Furies is a clever name.
Such a dark and terrible time, the Holocaust. I remember hearing about it when I was growing up in the 1990’s, as well as in high school. I still remember my high school 10th grade English teacher saying that he spent a whole semester studying that in junior high, and that he never wanted to see another Holocaust Documentary ever again.
My other English teacher actually taught a course in Holocaust Studies. I took it as an elective in my senior year. I still remember doing my final project on Neo-Nazism and White Nationalism. Opened me up to a whole new level awareness. Maybe that will be my writing project this week: recount my memories of high school, how it felt to learn about all of these disturbing realities, as well as my personal reactions to all of the anti-Semitic tropes that I saw scattered throughout Medieval Art and Literature, especially in a time when my heart was already vulnerable and hurting.