Emerging Scholars: From Burial Society to Funeral Home
February 3 @ 5:30 pm - 6:30 pm
Emerging Scholars Talk
Each year, the Center hosts online talks given by current grad students and recent alumni affiliated with the Center to showcase their work.
Monday, February 3, 2025, 5:30pm, Zoom.
Registration is required.
Remote talk with Alison Curry, graduate student in the department of history.
From Burial Society to Funeral Home:
Rupture and Continuity in Communal Care for the Jewish Deceased in the Polish Lands, 1918-1945
In early twentieth-century Poland, care for the Jewish dead was a central part of Jewish communal life. Though the hevrah kadisha, or burial society, traditionally handled all aspects of the burial and funeral, reports of corruption in these organizations during the interwar period led to the establishment of a new form of burial organization, intent on providing free, respectable care for the deceased. This presentation will explore how corruption forever altered burial practices in Polish Jewish communities, resulting the creation of an entirely new Jewish funerary industry by the time of the Second World War.
Alison B. Curry is a PhD Candidate in History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her dissertation examines the ritual, spatial, and functional uses of Jewish cemeteries in Poland during the interwar period and the Holocaust. Curry currently holds the Association for Jewish Studies’ Dissertation Completion Fellowship for the academic year 2024-2025. Her research has been generously supported by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies, the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany, the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, the Association of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, and the American Academy for Jewish Research.
