UNCA to Host Talk on the Poetry of Nelly Sachs and Else Lasker-Schuler;
Lecture Given as Part of UNCA's Holocaust Education Week

Dr. Elizabeth Snyder

UNC Asheville will host a lecture by Elizabeth Snyder titled "Haunted by Heimat, In Search of the Holy Land: Identity in Exile in the Poetry of Nelly Sachs and Else Lasker-Schüler." The lecture will be held at 12:15 p.m. Tuesday, April 22, in UNCA's Laurel Forum, located on the main floor of Karpen Hall. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Snyder's presentation will focus on the conflict between national and religious/cultural identities as represented in the poetry of German-speaking Jewish writers and émigrés Nelly Sachs and Else Lasker-Schüler. Snyder will examine how Hitler's rise to power confronted both women with essential paradoxes: the tension between being both German and Jewish, Jewish and survivors, and survivors and poets. She will investigate the ways Sachs and Lasker-Schüler appropriate Israel as the central metaphor for revisioning their personal suffering as refugees and for envisioning their people's redemption in the wake of the Holocaust. 

The talk is part of UNCA's annual Holocaust Education Week. For more information about other Holocaust Education Week Events, call UNCA's Center for Jewish Studies at 828/251-6576. 

Media Contacts:

• Dr. Rick Chess, Jewish Studies Program Director, 828/251-6576
• Jill Yarnall, UNCA Public Information Assistant Director, 828/251-6526