On 12/2/20, Hunter hosted this program as part of the Robert Seltzer Lunch Lecture Series.
Co-Sponsored by Russian and Slavic Studies at Hunter College
Professor Emerita Leona Toker discussed the history of concentration camps and the literature written about them, which was then followed by a discussion and comparison of Shalamov’s "An Individual Assignment" and an extract from Primo Levi’s If This Is A Man.
Leona Toker is Professor Emerita in the English Department of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is the author of numerous books including Nabokov: The Mystery of Literary Structures (1989), Eloquent Reticence: Withholding Information in Fictional Narrative (1993), and Return from the Archipelago: Narratives of Gulag Survivors (2000). Her most recent book is Gulag Literature and the Literature of Nazi Camps: An Intercontextual Reading (2019). Since 2003 she has been the Editor of Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas.
Watch the program below.
