Schedule
9:00-10:00
am - Late Registration: LeFrak Concert Hall
Foyer
10:00-10:15 am - Welcome: Professor Evangelos Gizis, Provost,
Queens College
Professor Benny Kraut, Director, Center for Jewish Studies
10:15-11:45am - Session I: Jews Enter the Entertainment Industry:
An Historical Overview: ModeratorProfessor Evan Zimroth, Professor
Jenna Weissman Joselit, Making Whoopee: American Jews and the Pursuit
of Pleasure Professor Lester D. Friedman, "You Aint Heard
Nothing Yet": Silent Jews and Silver Images
11:45-1:00 pm Buffet Lunch: Patio Room, Dining Halls Building
(Adjacent to the LeFrak Concert Hall)
1:00-3:00 pm Session II: The American Jewish Experience through
Film: Part I
Moderator: Professor Eleanor Hamerow
Professor David Desser, NewYork, New York: Creating the Myth of the
New
Old Country in The Jazz Singer
Professor Steven Alan Carr, Anti-Semitism, World War II, and the Hollywood
Social-Problem Film
Professor Donald Weber, A Comedians Nostalgia: Mr. Saturday Night
and the Psychic Landscape of the Jewish American 1950s
3:00-3:30 pm Break: Refreshments in the Atrium
3:30-5:30 pm Session III: The American Jewish Experience through
Film: Part II
Moderator: Professor Rachel Lyon
Professor Leonard Quart, Hollywoods Holocaust: Sidney Lumets
The Pawnbroker
Professor Eric Goldman, The Role of Memory in Barry Levinsons
Avalon
Stuart Klawans, "What Kind of Jew Are You?": Illusions of
Identity in David Mamets Homicide
5:30-7:00pm Supper.
7:00 pm-9:30 pm Session IV: Feature Film Screening: Focus--Arthur
Millers Novel, Neal Slavins Film. Discussion follows screening
with Mr. Slavin, Professor Goldman, and audience participation
Brief
Bios of Participants
Steven
Alan Carr is Associate Professor of Communication
at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, and a 2002-2003
Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies Postdoctoral Fellow at the United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. He is the author
of Hollywood and Anti-Semitism: A Cultural History up to World War II.
His present project, which explores the response of the American Film
Industry to the growing public awareness of the Holocaust, received
an award from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2002.
David Desser is the Director of the Unit for Cinema
Studies at the University of Illinois and is Professor of Cinema Studies,
Comparative Literature, and East Asian Languages and Cultures. He has
authored and edited a number of books on Japanese cinema and Hong Kong
cinema, and recently provided the commentary on the Criterion Collection
Edition of Tokyo Story. Along with Lester
Friedman, he is co-author of American Jewish Filmmakers, now in its
second edition
from the University of Illinois Press.
Lester D. Friedman teaches film and medical humanities
at Northwestern University. He is the author of Hollywoods Image
of the Jew and The Jewish Image in American Film (which won the National
Jewish Book Award), as well as the co-author (with David Desser) of
American Jewish Filmmakers.. He has served as a consultant on topics
of Jewish cinema and culture for the Anti-Defamation League of the B'nai
B'rith, the National Jewish Archives of Broadcasting, the Jewish Heritage
Video Collection, the National Center for Jewish Film and the Jewish
Museum.
Eric A. Goldman is Adjunct Assistant Professor of
Media Studies at Queens College. He is founder and president of Ergo
Media, a New Jersey-based video publishing company specializing in Jewish
and Israeli video and a contributing film reviewer for New Jerseys
The Jewish Standard. Author of Visions, Images and Dreams: Yiddish Film
Past and Present, he is film program curator for the YIVO Institute
for Jewish Research at the Center for Jewish History and artistic director
of the Jack Wolgin Jewish Film Festival in Philadelphia.
Eleanor Hamerow is a film editor and former professor
in the graduate film
program at New York University, where she was department chair. At present,
she
is both teaching in the film department at Columbia University and producing
a personal film about growing up Jewish and radical in the Bronx.
Jenna Weissman Joselit received her Ph.D. from Columbia
University. She is the author most recently of the critically praised
book, A Perfect Fit: Clothes, Character and the Promise of America and
of the prize-winning The Wonders of America: Reinventing Jewish Culture,
1880-1950, which won the National Jewish Book Award in History. A frequent
contributor to The New Republic as well as a columnist for the The Forward,
Joselit currently teaches American studies and modern Jewish studies
at Princeton University
Stuart Klawans has been the film critic of The Nation since 1988 and
writes frequently about film for The New York Times. He is the author
of "Film Follies: The Cinema Out of Order" and "Left
in the Dark: Film Reviews and Essays, 1988-2001."
Rachel V. Lyon is Assistant Professor in the
Department of Media Studies, Queens College. An Emmy Award-winning producer
and director of the documentary, Men Who Molest Children: Children Who
Survive, Ms. Lyon has produced four feature films, sixty documentaries,
and two series. Her most recent project, Mr. Dreyfuss Goes to Washington,
is a behind-the-scenes historical tour of Washington, DC, hosted by
Academy Award-winning actor, Richard Dreyfuss. This documentary special
premiered on The History Channel and won three Telly awards in 2002.
Leonard Quart is Professor Emeritus of Cinema Studies
at the College of Staten Island and at the CUNY Graduate Center. A longtime
Contributing Editor of Cineaste, he has written essays and reviews for
Dissent, Film Quarterly, The Forward, London Magazine, and New York
Newsday. His major publications include the co-authored works (with
Albert Auster) American Film and Society Since 1945 and How the War
was Remembered: Hollywood and Vietnam and The Films of Mike Leigh, co-authored
with Ray Carney.
Neal Slavin is an award-winning photographer, acclaimed
author and film director. Honored in 1986 as the American Society of
Magazine Photographers "Corporate Photographer of the Year,"
he has had numerous one-person and group exhibitions at some of the
finest galleries in the world. Mr. Slavins work is included in
many prestigious museums, such as New Yorks Metropolitan Museum
of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, Jerusalems Israel Museum,
and Paris Bibliothèque Nationale. Focus is his feature
film directorial debut. Mr. Slavin is currently in development on a
new feature film entitled, I Was a Military Industrial Complex.
Donald Weber is Professor of English and American
Studies at Mount Holyoke College and Chair of the English Department.
He has written widely on Jewish American literature and popular culture.
He is the author of the forthcoming book, Haunted in the New World:
Mapping Modern JewishAmerican Culture (Indiana University Press, 2005).
Evan Zimroth is Professor of English and Associate
Director of the Center for Jewish Studies at Queens College. She is
the author of several books, including Gangsters, which won the National
Jewish Book Award for Fiction in 1996. A consultant for YIVO and contributor
to The Forward, she recently returned from the University of Cambridge,
England, where she was a Visiting Fellow.
ADMISSION
AND REGISTRATION INFORMATION
Admission fee: $25; $15 for matriculating Queens College
students
Charge includes admission to all sessions, buffet lunch, and mid-afternoon
refreshments.
To register and obtain a reserved seat, call the Colden Box Office, 718-793-8080,
after March 1, 2004.
Supper on the campus may be purchased for an additional fee of $20.
Supper reservations must be made only through the Center for Jewish Studies,
718-997-5730, and MUST be prepaid by May 7, 2004.
All food and meals are kosher.
For further information, please call the Center for Jewish Studies office,
718-997-5730, or check the Center website at www.qc.edu/Jewish_Studies
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