Holocaust Narratives

Holocaust Narratives: Trauma, Memory and Identity Across Generations analyzes individual multi-generational frameworks of Holocaust trauma to answer one essential question: How do these narratives change to not only transmit the trauma of the Holocaust – and in the process add meaning to what is inherently an event that annihilates meaning – but also construct the trauma as a connector to a past that needs to be continued in the present? Meaningless or not, unspeakable or not, unknowable or not, the trauma, in all its impossibilities and intractabilities, spawns literary and scholarly engagement on a large scale. Narrative is the key connector that structures trauma for both individual and collective.

"A major achievement, bringing subtle analysis of Holocaust trauma to bear on the narratives that construct the collective discourse of its meanings. Wilhelm's fine analysis helps us understand the continuing impact of the Shoah on ‘the memories of the future’ generated by second and third generation witnesses." Professor Emeritus Murray Baumgarten, University of California, Santa Cruz and Founding Director, The Dickens Project"In his penetrating analysis Thorsten Wilhelm binds the remembrance of the past to a remembrance for the future. With every day that separates us from the Holocaust his work becomes more pressing. Wilhelm has summoned each of us to a testimony in which our very humanity is at stake." Professor David Patterson, Hillel Feinberg Distinguished Chair in Holocaust Studies, Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies, University of Texas at Dallas"The often invoked ‘Never again!’ relies on the continuous, while also impossible, re-presentation of the horrors and the on-going trauma of the Holocaust. This study is an acute and highly intelligent exploration into the trajectory of literary efforts to conceptualize, record, and narrate the memory of the experience of trauma beyond the generation of direct survivors." Dr. Margit Peterfy, Senior Lecturer in American Studies, University of Heidelberg

Thorsten Wilhelm studied History and English Literature and Linguistics at the University of Heidelberg and the University of Durham. He received his Staatsexamen (M.A.) in 2014. In 2019, Thorsten was awarded his Ph.D. summa cum laude by the English Department at Heidelberg University for his dissertation on "Traumatic Memories—Memories of Trauma: Post-1945 Jewish American Fiction and the Cultural Work of Trauma Narratives." Thorsten’s work comprises trauma theory and cultural productions at the interstices of trauma, memory, and narrative. Apart from his work on contemporary literature and its diverse traumata, Thorsten is fascinated by the 19th century. He lives his euphoria for Charles Dickens by working on a digitization project of rare and unique archival materials at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. He has been a Curatorial Fellow at the Beinecke in 2018.Thorsten has been a Baden-Württemberg Lector at Yale University since 2016. He teaches German language, culture, and writing, and is interested in pedagogy with a focus on cultural learning and the production of cultural perceptions. He is a peer-reviewer for Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German and book-reviewer for CALICO.