'Wards of the Community: Tales of the destitute, orphaned and mad in Jewish Eastern Europe' Event
- Time:
- 18:00 - 19:30
- Date:
- 20 December 2011
- Venue:
- Lecture Theatre C, Avenues Campus, School of Humanities, University of Southampton, SO17 1BF
For more information regarding this event, please telephone Mrs Hazel Patel on +44 2380 59 2261 or email parkes@soton.ac.uk .
Event details
A lecture by Dr Natan M Meir of Portland State University, USA
How do we hear the voices of the voiceless? How do we reconstruct the history of those who were unable to write their own stories? This lecture explores the lives and experiences of Jews at the margins of society--including poor orphans and widows and the physically and mentally disabled--in nineteenth and early twentieth-century Eastern Europe. Drawing on a wide range of documents, Meir examines the Jewish community's attitudes towards these individuals, who were often both excluded from the mainstream and dependent on the community for survival. This "history from the margins" attempts to move us towards a richer and fuller portrait of East European Jewish society than ever before.