University of Delaware
Office of Public Relations
UpDate - Vol. 16, No. 26, April 10


             Talk to examine Holocaust themes in 1960s TV
     
     Jeffrey Shandler, a fellow at the University of
Pennsylvania's Center for Judaic Studies, will discuss
"Aliens in the Wasteland: American Encounters with the
Holocaust in '60s Science Fiction Television Series" at 7
p.m., Tuesday, April 15, in Kirkbride Lecture Hall. The free
public program is part the Center for Jewish Studies'
Tuesday Evening Lecture Series.
     The media has provided most Americans with their
primary encounters with the Holocaust. Films and television
programs, in particular, have played a strategic role in
defining the Holocaust as an important moral paradigm in
American public culture.
     This lecture will consider the distinctive ways that
television has shaped American understandings of the
Holocaust by examining episodes of two science fiction
series of the 1960s-The Twilight Zone and the original Star
Trek-which both offer highly imaginative retellings of the
Holocaust in other-worldly settings.
     According to Shandler, these programs demonstrate how
television has facilitated an American conceptualization of
the Holocaust as a morally galvanizing event of universal
significance.
     They also provide compelling examples of how the medium
makes use of key images and themes associated with the
Holocaust to create fictional retellings of this chapter of
history in ways that link its significance to the ethical
concerns of contemporary American life.
     Shandler is a scholar of modern Jewish culture. He
holds a Ph.D. in Yiddish studies from Columbia University
and has been a staff member of the Institute for Jewish
Research in New York. He has published articles and lectured
on such topics as modern Yiddish literature, Jewish memory
culture and Jewish self-portraiture in the American media.
     He has worked as a curator at the National Jewish
Archive of Broadcasting at the Jewish Museum in New York and
the National Museum of American Jewish History in
Philadelphia.
     His forthcoming book on presentations of the Holocaust
on American television will be published by the Oxford
University Press next year. For additional information,
contact the Frank and Yetta Chaiken Center for Jewish
Studies, telephone 831-3324.
     Other talks scheduled in the series include Tressa
Grauer on "Inventing Identity in Post-War Jewish-American
Literature," May 6, and Jay Halio on "Jewish American
Literature," May 13. Both will be held in Kirkbride Lecture
Hall.