Dr. Alan Rosen, lecturer in Holocaust Literature at the International School for Holocaust Studies at Yad Vashem in Israel, will discuss “Literary Responses to the Holocaust” during a guest lecture at Seton Hill University on Monday, February 11, 2008 at 7 p.m. The lecture will take place in the Greensburg Room (below Cecilian Hall) on Seton Hill’s Greensburg, Pa. campus. This program is sponsored by the University’s National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education (NCCHE) and is free and open to the public. For more information, contact the NCCHE at 724-830-1033.

In his lecture, Dr. Rosen will explore how literary responses to the Holocaust differ from other approaches, as well as how the different languages of this literature shape the response to the Holocaust. He will examine the works of key authors, including poets Avraham Sutzkever and Paul Celan; writer of stories and novels John Hersey; collector of tales Yaffa Eliach; and storyteller and artist Art Spiegelman.

Dr. Alan Rosen earned his doctoral degree in Literature and Religion at Boston University in 1988 and has taught at universities, colleges, and middle schools in Israel and in the United States. In addition, he has given seminars on the Holocaust in many community settings. Dr. Rosen is the author of “Sounds of Defiance: The Holocaust, Multilingualism and the Problem of English;” the collaborator on a French edition of “I Did Not Interview the Dead,” by David Boder; and the editor of “Approaches to Teaching Wiesel’s ‘Night’.” Dr. Rosen has held fellowships at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum; the International Institute for Holocaust Research, Yad Vashem; and the Center for Advanced Jewish Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Currently he is a research fellow at the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah, working on the book “That Great and Mournful Past: David Boder and the Ethnography of Holocaust Testimony.” Dr. Rosen was born and raised in Los Angeles and now resides in Jerusalem with his wife and four children.

The National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education (NCCHE) was established on the campus of Seton Hill University in 1987. Seton Hill initiated this national Catholic movement toward Holocaust studies in response to the urging of Pope John Paul II to recognize the significance of the Shoah, the Holocaust, and to "promote the necessary historical and religious studies on this event which concerns the whole of humanity today." The NCCHE has as its primary purpose the broad dissemination of scholarship on the root causes of anti-Semitism, its relation to the Holocaust and the implications from the Catholic perspective of both for today's world. Toward this end the Center is committed to equipping scholars, especially those at Catholic institutions, to enter into serious discussion on the causes of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust; shaping appropriate curricular responses at Catholic institutions and other educational sites; sustaining Seton Hill's Catholic Institute for Holocaust Studies in Israel through a cooperative program with Yad Vashem, the Isaac Jacob Institute for Religious Law and Hebrew University; encouraging scholarship and research through conferences, publications, workshops for educators, and similar activities; sponsoring local events on the Holocaust and related topics in the University and the community and enhancing Catholic-Jewish relations.