Examines the place of Paris in French Jewish literary memory, a memory that, of necessity, grapples with the aftermath of the Holocaust.The essays in Shadows in the City of Light explore the significance of Paris in the writing of five influential French writers-Sarah Kofman, Patrick Modiano, George Perec, Henri Raczymow, and Irene Nemirovsky-whose novels and memoirs capture and probe the absences of deported Paris Jews. These writers move their readers th...

Since the early 2000s, genealogy has become a lucrative business, an accelerating online industry, a massive data mining project, and fodder for reality television. But the fact remains that our contemporary fascination with family history cannot be understood independently of the powerful technological tools that aid and abet in the search for traces of blood, belonging, and difference.In The Genealogical Sublime, Julia Creet traces the histories of the largest, longest-r...

Memory plays an integral part in how individuals and societies construct their identity. While memory is usually considered in the context of a stable, unchanging environment, this collection of essays explores the effects of immigration, forced expulsions, exile, banishment, and war on individual and collective memory. The ways in which memory affects cultural representation and historical understanding across generations is examined through case studies and theoretical approaches that un...