Enlightenment: Keynote

Saturday, April 13, 2019

5:00-7:00 pm

Kenan Music Building, Rehearsal Hall

Free and open to the public, no tickets or reservations required.

Keynote Lecture:

Maurice Sendak’s Dear Mili: A Contrapuntal Elegy

Welcome:
Terry Rhodes, UNC Chapel Hill
Eric Downing, UNC Chapel Hill and
Ruth von Bernuth, UNC Chapel Hill

Introduction:
Laura Lieber, Duke University

Keynote Speaker:
Martha Helfer, Rutgers University
Maurice Sendak’s Dear Mili: A Contrapuntal Elegy

In 1983 a “new” fairy tale by Wilhelm Grimm surfaced, and a media blitz ensued. Published in 1988 in English translation the book was an instant bestseller, in large part due to its famous illustrator, Maurice Sendak, author of Where the Wild Things Are. Yet Sendak does not merely provide pretty pictures for Grimm’s tale. In his illustrations for Dear Mili, Sendak invokes images of the Holocaust and sets up a tacit dialogue with the German Romantic tradition.

Martha Helfer is Professor of German and Acting Chair of the Department of German, Russian, and East European Languages and Literatures at Rutgers University. Her publications include The Retreat of Representation and The Word Unheard: Legacies of Anti-Semitism in German Culture. She is co-founder of the German Jewish Studies Workshop and co-editor of Nexus: Essays in German Jewish Culture.