David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies: Welcome

August 01, 2010

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Prof. David S. Wyman
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Wyman Institute Update: September 24, 2003

Welcome to the two newest members of the Wyman Institute's Arts & Letters Council:

Thane Rosenbaum is a novelist, essayist and law professor. His novels include The Golems of Gotham, Second Hand Smoke, and Elijah Visible, which received the Edward Lewis Wallant Award in 1996. His articles, reviews and essays appear frequently in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal, among other national publications. He teaches human rights, legal humanities, and law and literature at Fordham Law School. His forthcoming nonfiction book is entitled, Immoral Justice: Why Our Legal System Fails to Do What's Right.

Will Eisner has been a pioneering force in comic art for more than six decades. His experiences in New York as the son of Jewish immigrants provided the inspiration for much of his work. From 1939-1952, he wrote and illustrated the weekly newspaper comic "The Spirit," widely considered the most innovative work in the field. In the 1970s, Eisner created an extraordinary new comics form, the graphic novel. The first of five such novels, published in 1978, was his award-winning 'A Contract With God', with its 1930s Bronx tenements and slice-of-life moral tales. In addition, he has taught Sequential Art at the School of Visual Arts in New York, authored two definitive books examining the creative process, and had his work showcased in the Whitney Museum's "NYNY: City of Ambition" show. It is testimony to his stature in his field that the most prestigious annual award in the comics industry is named the Eisner Award. Today Will Eisner is not only the elder statesman of his field, but remains one of the most active, vital, and prolific forces in the world of sequential art.

David S. Wyman will speak on "A Race Against Death: Peter Bergson, America, and the Holocaust," on November 23, 2003, at 3:00 p.m., at the Jewish Center for Community Services, 4200 Park Ave., Bridgeport, CT. For more information, call: 203-372-6567.

Academic Council member Prof. Zev Garber delivered an invited paper before the Sixteenth Annual Klutznick-Harris Symposium held at Creighton University on September 14-15, 2003. His paper discussed the semantics of cultural bias found in the language exchange between Jews, Poles, and Roman Catholic hierarchy stemming from the Auschwitz Convent controversy. Also, on September 13, he gave the Shabbat sermon at the Omaha Beth Israel Synagogue (Orthodox) on the perceived connection between the dire admonition of parshat 'Ki Tavo' and the Holocaust.

An article by Institute director Dr. Rafael Medoff, concerning the recent fly-over of Auschwitz by Israeli Air Force planes, appeared in a number of newspapers. The text can be viewed at: http://www.jewishsf.com/bk020822/comm1.shtml

Dr. Medoff's article on The New Republic's efforts to raise public consciousness about the Holocaust in 1943 was published in the Jewish Community Chronicle (California) and the Jewish Ledger (Connecticut) on September 10.