Join the Michael and Elaine Serling Institute for Jewish Studies and Modern Israel on February 21 from 5:30-7:00 p.m. for a presentation by Dr. Amy Simon She will she discuss her new book, Emotions in Yiddish Ghetto Diaries: Encountering Persecutors and Questioning Humanity, which uses an empathic reading of Yiddish diarists’ feelings, evaluations, and assessments about persecutors in the Warsaw, Lodz, and Vilna ghettos to present an emotional history of persecution in the Nazi ghettos. It recenters the daily experiences of psychological and physical violence that made up ghetto life and that ultimately led victims to use their diaries as a place of agency to question and attempt to maintain their own beliefs in pre-war Jewish and Enlightenment ethics and morality.

Dr. Simon holds the William and Audrey Farber Family Chair in Holocaust Studies and European Jewish History at MSU. She won the 2022 MSU Teacher-Scholar Award.

Co-Sponsors: Center for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies, College of Arts & Letters, College of Social Science, Department of History, International Studies & Programs, James Madison College, Office for Institutional Diversity and Inclusion, and Residential College in the Arts & Humanities.