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Guest Scholar — Holocaust Narratives in Musical Theater, with Professor Judah Cohen

Sunday, October 24, 2021 18 Cheshvan 5782

11:00 AM - 12:00 PMZoom

Associate Professor of Jewish Studies and Musicology at Indiana University


An associate professor of Jewish studies and musicology at Indiana University, Cohen applies his expertise in musicology and anthropology, as well the knowledge he gained from professional activities within Jewish studies to exploring aspects of Jewish culture and history. As a child, he spent two years in St. Thomas and returned to this island in his first book, Through the Sands of Time: A History of the Jewish Community of St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands (Brandeis University Press, 2004), which is both a historical narrative and a meditation on writing the history of a small community. 

Since then, Professor Cohen has examined the meaning of becoming a Reform Jewish cantor at the turn of the 21st century, based on three years of ethnographic study with cantorial students. Subsequent projects have led him to investigate the history of Jewish music scholarship in the United States, musical theater works that address Holocaust memory, contemporary forms of Jewish musical expression, and musical representations of such cultural figures and literary characters as Anne Frank and Shakespeare’s Shylock.

In his research, he addresses Jewish cultural expression as a dynamic and ever-changing process, created and recreated over time by artists, religious leaders, philosophers, and activists. Professor Cohen aims to understand this idea largely through the prism of sound and its relationship to ideas of Jewish identity.
 

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