News and Events
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​Upcoming:

• August
• September

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September 1, 2020
Grief: The Biography of a Holocaust Photograph, Museum of Jewish Heritage and COJECO, 7pm.
For more information and to register for the event, go to http://mjhnyc.info/GriefBookTalk​

2020

September 1, 2020
Grief: The Biography of a Holocaust Photograph​, Museum of Jewish Heritage and COJECO, 7pm.
Join the Museum of Jewish Heritage and COJECO in a online conversation with Russian-Jewish history scholar David Shneer and historian Yigal Kotler about Shneer's new book, Grief: The Biography of a Holocaust Photograph, and the role of Soviet photography during the Holocaust.
For more information and to register for the event, go to http://mjhnyc.info/GriefBookTalk

​May 28, 2020
The Wiener Holocaust Library
Exploring Holocaust Photography with David Shneer: An Online Workshop for Faculty, In partnership with the Holocaust Research Institute, Royal Holloway, University of London. Click here to see more details.
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​February 20, 2020
Through Soviet Jewish Eyes, Davidson College, North Carolina, 7pm.

​January 30, 2020
​Grief: The Biography of a Holocaust Photograph, University of Kansas, 3pm.
The talk was in response to a photojournalistic examination of the Holocaust at the University of Kansas, a lecture called “When the Holocaust Was Human.” See more details.​

Through Soviet Jewish Eyes, Midwest Center for Holocaust Education, Kansas City, MO, 7pm.
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2019

​December 16, 2019, “Photoscapes of Jewish History,” Association for Jewish Studies annual conference, San Diego, CA.

Tuesday, December 3, 2019, “Grieving Women, Dead Men; Grieving Men, Dead Women: Dmitri Baltermants, Yevgeny Khaldei, Images of Holocaust Liberation Sites, and the Tension between the Universal and the Particular,” The Holocaust as Reflected in Public Discourse in the Soviet Union during the Stalinist Period, 1941-1953, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, Israel.

 
​November 26, 2019, “Making the Holocaust Human,” Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies annual conference, San Francisco, CA
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Sunday, September 15, 2019 at 1:30 pm and Friday, October 4, 2019 at 7:30 pm
​​The Space Theater, Speer Blvd & Arapahoe St, Denver, CO 80204

Serving as the Yiddish theater consultant for Indecent, Shneer will be doing talk backs with the cast.
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He "gave a workshop for the cast of the DCPA’s production of Indecent, the Paula Vogel meditation on Sholem Asch’s “God of Vengeance,” that was a hit on Broadway in 2018. Indecent focuses on the challenges of taking a hugely popular Yiddish play about a Jewish family that owns a brothel and bringing that play to Broadway in 1923. Six weeks after playing on Broadway and after significant pressure from Reform rabbis, the New York vice squad arrested the cast and producer and closed down the production."

Armenian Genocide Conversation
Armenian-Turkish Dialogue Group, Sunday, September 15, 10-12pm

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March 27, 2019

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David Shneer delivered his talk as the featured speaker of the Persistent Archive of Grief, An exploratory symposium on images of loss, mourning and dispossession. This symposium was about images of loss, dispossession and violence in photography by the Holocaust Research Institute at Royal Holloway, University of London. Building on his prize winning book, Through Soviet Jewish Eyes: Photography, War, and the Holocaust (Rutgers UP, 2011), his new book, Grief: The Biography of a Holocaust Photograph (Oxford UP, 2020) examines the life history of a single World War II photograph and the photographer who made it to de-parochialize and de-nationalize the Holocaust. 
​Windsor Building, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham campus, Room 1-05. 1.10 pm -2.00 pm
​For more information click here.

March 13, 2019
Jewish Studies performance lecture: Art is my Weapon
Vanderbilt University/ in Sarratt Cinema​
The Program in Jewish Studies presented Art is My Weapon, a performance/lecture from David Shneer and singer Jewlia Eisenberg.
This event was co-sponsored by the Max Kade Center for European and German Studies.

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​February 27, 2019
On February 27th, at Western Washington University, Shneer delivered an AJS Distinguished Lecture, “The Memorial to the Nazi Persecution of Gay Men and Lesbians: Who And What Are We Remembering?” hosted by the Ray Wolpow Institute for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights.
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5- 6:30 pm / Fraser Hall 101
​For more information click here. 

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February 6, 2019
Shneer led a talkback on Thursday, February 6th at the Denver JCC Jewish Film Festival’s Colorado premiere showing of Sobibor, Russia’s entry for the 2019 best foreign feature for the Academy Awards.  
Wolf Theater, 350 S. Dahlia Street, Denver CO
https://www.jewishcolorado.org/event/denver-jewish-film-festival-presents-sobibor/

2018

​December 17, 2018 
Shneer shared his research on the wealthy post-Soviet Jews who are now serving as some of the leading funders of global Jewish life and remaking it in a post-Soviet image.
Association for Jewish Studies, Russian Jewish Diaspora seminar. Open to conference attendees. 
From Saving Soviet Jews to Being Saved by Them
Place: Sheraton Boston, Gardner

November 18, 2018 
Shneer talked at the American Academy of Religion, Colorado Convention Center: A18-228. 
Jewish Anti-Fascist Pilgrimages: Touring Sites of the Holocaust before March of the Living 
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November 8, 2018
Art Is My Weapon: The Radical Musical Life of Lin Jaldati​
​Thursday, November 8, 2018 at 7 PM – 9 PM EST
Public Hosted by College of Charleston Yaschik/Arnold Jewish Studies Program

Performance by ​Jewlia Eisenberg and  David Shneer, open to public
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PERFORMANCES/SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS
May 13, 2018, Archive Transformed, Art is My Weapon, Old Main Theater, CU Boulder, 7:00pm​

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More Past News 

2018
​In April 2018, Shneer performed in New York City at the Center for Jewish History's Laughing at Power workshop.  He also gave a presentation for J Street called the Jerusalem Light Rail: Testing the Limits of the Two State Solution.

In March 2018, Shneer gave two public talks about his next book, Grief, one at Vanderbilt University and the other  at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand.
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In February 2018, Shneer gave three performances of Art is My Weapon: two in Los Angeles and one as the Solotkin Lecture, which served as the keynote for the conference at Indiana University, "Jewish Storytelling."

2017​
On December 4, Shneer and two of his students, Maura Smith and Mark Joseph, presented Elie Wiesel, Nobel Prize Winner, Moral Authority, Political Activist at the Boulder Bookstore. 

On November 6, 2017, at the University of Toronto, Shneer and Jewlia Eisenberg performed Art is My Weapon: The Radical Musical Life of Lin Jaldati to a packed house as part of Holocaust Education Week. See the presentation here.

September 21, 6pm, Warm Cookies of the Revolution, McNicholls Building, "Case Studies: 1939," where Shneer will be teaching the audience to sing  a Yiddish song that in 1939 served a role in fighting fascism.

September 16, 4pm, Canyon Theater, Boulder Public Library,  Jaiphur Literary Festival: Shneer participated in the  Jaiphur Literary Festival  in conversation with Barbara Engel about the Bolshevik Revolution, 100 years later.  

September 15, 8pm, The Dairy, Boulder: Shneer participated in a roundtable  following the regional premiere of Alicia Svigals’ musical project, The Yellow Ticket, a rare 1918 silent film with original music by the Svigals (klezmer violinist, founding member of the Klezmatics). The film is about a young Jewish woman who is forced to lead a double life as a prostitute while studying medicine in St. Petersburg—because of the restrictions on Jews in Tsarist Russia. 

September 14, 2017 at 7pm at the University of Kentucky's Hillary Boone Center,  he served as the lead-off speaker on the theme, “The Future of Jewish Studies” with his talk "From Saving Soviet Jews  to Being Saved By Them."

September 3, Shneer gave the keynote address at the  European Day of Jewish Culture,  at the Oslo Jewish Museum, whose theme for 2017 was diaspora.  It was included in the Oslo Tourism Bureau's  Things to Do  site.

Shneer led a series of workshops for Yiddishkayt's  Helix Program in Los Angeles, July 7-9 to prepare the group for its journey to Belarus and Poland.

Shneer was in Prague presenting a paper on Jews in the GDR and their transnational relationships with other Jewish communities at the Institute of Contemporary History's "New Approaches to Jews Under Communism," which took place May 23-25, 2017.
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Shneer organized the Festival of Contemporary Russian Jewish Culture, a joint project between East European Jewish Affairs, the Center for Jewish History, and the American Jewish Historical Society.  The day long event was covered in Haaretz, the Forward, and the Jewish Week.

In the most recent edition of Jewish Renaissance, Shneer published "When Moyshe Met Lenin," about the  photographic encounter between the leader of the Bolshevik Party, Vladimir Lenin,  and portrait photographer, Moyshe (Moisei) Nappelbaum.

In January Shneer began teaching the Global History of Holocaust and Genocide, a 150-student lecture course on global history of mass violence.  ​

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More talks:

• November 9, 2016, Art is My Weapon: The Radical Musical Life of Lin Jaldati with Jewlia Eisenberg
• June 6, 2016, Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona,  Valuing Grief, 5:30pm
• May 3, 2016,  Shneer delivered the bi-annual  Jean and Harold Gossett Lecture in Memory of Holocaust Victims Martha and Paul Feivel Korngold, Rosenwald Hall.
  
• April 14, 2016, 7pm, Shneer moderated an  Evening with Father Patrick Desbois, founder of Yahad in Unum at History Colorado.
• April 7, 2016, 6pm, Shneer and Jewlia Eisenberg, founder of the band  Charming Hostess, presented segments of  Art is My Weapon: The Radical Musical Life of Lin Jaldati  on  Radio 1190    (the University of Colorado Boulder radio station) as part of its inaugural Yiddish radio hour hosted by CU History and Jewish Studies student Alexis Aeang.  Listen live!
• April 4,  2016 Shneer presented his new research on Holocaust photography and the Cold War at  Brandeis University's seminar "New Approaches to Russian Jewish Studies."
• April 1, 2016, 7pm, Shneer introduced and led a conversation after the film Oriented, a movie about gay Palestinians, on behalf of MIT's  Women's and Gender Studies Program  and the Global Studies Program's Women Take the Reel, an annual film festival celebrating Women's History Month.
• January 28, 2016,  Through Soviet Jewish Eyes, Jewish Museum, New York.  In conjunction with the critically acclaimed exhibition, The Power of Pictures, 6:30-8pm, Scheuer Auditorium.
• January 10, 2016,  Jewish Museums in the 21st Century, a symposium at the Center for Jewish History in honor of the publication of East European Jewish Affairs' special edition, Jewish Museums in Post Communist Europe, 2-5:30pm, Center for Jewish History.
• December 2015: David Shneer and Jewlia Eisenberg will be  performing their new project, "Art is My Weapon: The Life and Work of Lin Jaldati," at the Association for Jewish Studies Annual Conference,  Sheraton Boston, Back Bay B, Monday, December 14, 2015 at 8:15pm.  They will be joining Anna Shternshis and Psoy Korolenko on stage as well.
• November 23, 2015, Shneer gave a talk   and sang at  the launch of his book  Lin Jaldati: Trümmerfrau der Seele at the  Akademie der Künste in Berlin.   He was joined on stage by Jalda Rebling and Franka Lamke, who were also launching their new CD, A Brivele fun Vilne, a work of unknown music that Jalda's mother Lin received from YIVO, the Institute for Jewish Research in March 1940, as war raged around them.
• Shneer has just published his newest article on Yiddish music and East German antifascism in the Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook. Read it here.
• He recently served as the scholar-in-residence for Helix, a two-week immersion into eastern European Jewish culture run by  Yiddishkayt LA  that takes students to Belarus, Latvia, and Lithuania from July 9 through July 23, 2015. Learn more about his travels on his Facebook page  or at the  Radical Jewish Traveler.
• In August, the  Radical Jewish Traveler  was on the road again, this time to Japan.  There, he presented his newest research on "Grief: A History of The World's First Holocaust Liberation Photograph" at the 2015 World Congress of the International Council for Central and East European Studies in Makuhari, Japan. In addition, he wrote  about the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki from the perspective of the Japanese.
• Shneer's mini-course The Romance and Tragedy of Soviet Jewish Culture at the Yiddish Book Center was a huge success with more than 70 participants.  Stay tuned for the  online version  to run in Fall 2015.
• Association for Jewish Studies Annual Convention, Baltimore MD, "Singing Between Two Worlds: Lin Jaldati and Yiddish Music in Cold War Europe and Divided Berlin, 1945-1953," December 2014.
• USC Shoah Foundation International Conference, Memory, Media, and Technology, "The Performance of Holocaust Testimony," November 2014.
• Babi Yar Memorial Park, Denver, Keynote Speaker, "A Ukraine Without Jews," September 2014. Read here for the talk he gave at the event.
• Manchester University, UK, September 8-10, 2013, Keynote lecture,  Jews and Modern Visual Culture  conference
  
• Lund University Yiddish Studies Conference, Lund, Sweden, October 2012
  
• Annual Holocaust and Genocide Conference, Millersville University, April 2012
  
• "The World Elsewhere," German Studies Conference, University of California, Berkeley, March 2012
  
• Australian Association for Jewish Studies, “The Future of Jewish Culture,” Melbourne, Australia, February 2012
  
• Rocky Mountain Interdisciplinary History Conference, University of Colorado, Boulder, September 2011

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Streaming Videos:

2016, Art is My Weapon, University of Toronto

2013, Eulogy for Rabbi Zalman Schachter Shalomi at the  memorial event, A Heart as  Big as the World, Boulder CO.  The link includes the first half of the program.  For Shneer's remarks, go to 1:14:20.
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2012, Babi Yar Commemoration,  Genocide Isn't What You Think It Is: Commemorating World War II in Ukraine and the Baltics, Babi Yar Park. 

2010, Exhibiting Ourselves:  Contested Terrains: Cultural Diversity and the Politics of Representation in Museums and Cultural Centers.  The Case of the American Jewish Museum, 2010.

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He has given talks in:  

The United States:
Boston University
Brandeis University
Colorado State University
College of Charleston
Dickinson College, Pennsylvania
Florida International University
Franklin and Marshall College, Pennsylvania
Georgetown University
Harvard University
Hebrew Union College, Los Angeles
Hendrix College, Arkansas
Jewish Theological Seminary, New York
Limmud New York
New York University
Ohio University
Purdue University
Reed College
Spertus Museum, Chicago
Stanford University
Temple University, Pennsylvania
University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Davis
University of California, Los Angeles
University of California, Riverside
University of California, Santa Barbara
University of Colorado, Boulder
University of Denver
University of Illinois
University of Judaism (American Jewish University), Los Angeles
University of Kentucky
University of Maryland
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
University of Miami
University of North Carolina, Wilmington
University of Northern Colorado
University of Southern California
University of Wisconsin
University of Texas
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
Yiddish Book Center

Australia:
Aleph College, University of New South Wales, Sydney
Sydney Jewish Museum
Monash University, Melbourne
Shira Hadasha, Melbourne

Canada:
Toronto Jewish Community Centre
University of Toronto

France:
School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, Paris
Medem Bibliotheque, Paris

Germany:
Akademie der Künste, Berlin
Humboldt University, Berlin
Goethe University, Frankfurt
University of Tuebingen
University of Munich
Oranienburgerstrasse Synagogue, Berlin

Israel:
Hebrew University, Jerusalem

Italy:
NYU Florence Institute

The Netherlands:
Jewish Historical Museum
University of Amsterdam


Russia:
Academy of Sciences/Moscow State University, Moscow

South Africa:
Limmud South Africa
South African Holocaust Foundation

Sweden:
Lund University
Limmud Sweden, Stockholm

United Kingdom:
Cambridge University
​Manchester Metropolitan University
Oxford University
University College London
Wiener Library, London
Limmud U.K.