Maria Roca Lizarazu, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Department of Modern Languages, has published a number of outputs on contemporary German Jewish literature and culture.
Her monograph Renegotiation Postmemory. The Holocaust in Contemporary German-Language Jewish Literature has been published with Camden House and analyses transgenerational, transnational and transmedial approaches to Holocaust memory in a range of important present-day German Jewish authors. The book also explores how these authors’ works allow us to revaluate and enhance the hugely popular concept of postmemory in a manner that takes into account the shifting memoryscapes of the 21st century.
Maria also showcases new approaches to German Jewish studies in a recent co-edited special collection on Rethinking ‘Minor Literatures’ – Contemporary Jewish Women’s Writing in Germany and Austria, published via the open access journal Modern Languages Open. The collection investigates whether minority is a useful lens for reading contemporary German Jewish women’s writing and what fresh perspectives this lens may generate, particularly in relation to questions of identity, belonging, language, memory and futurity. Maria’s article for the collection explores the themes of postmigrant (non-)belonging in the writing of contemporary German Jewish author Sasha Salzmann.
On the basis of this research, Maria has been commissioned by the Institute of Modern Languages Research (IMLR) to work with two highly prominent contemporary German Jewish artists, Sasha Salzmann and Max Czollek. The result of this collaboration is a post to be published on the IMLR research blog, which offers critical perspectives on the hotly contested themes of home and belonging in the German-language context. These themes will also feature in an international conference which Maria will organise jointly with the IMLR. The conference entitled ‘From “Where are you from?” to “Where shall we go together?” Re-imagining Home and Belonging in 21st-Century Women's Writing’ will take place as an online event in September 2020.