The Hebrew Stones of Basel: Appropriation and Melancholy after the Black Death

PLEASE NOTE THIS SEMINAR HAS BEEN RESCHEDULED FROM 18 OCTOBER.

Abstract

This research in progress takes as its starting point the ultimately Freudian distinction between the work of mourning and melancholia, I am proposing to read ruins and artefacts that come after the anti-Jewish massacres of the Black Death (1348-9) in central Europe as signs of melancholia, as an impossibility of truly mourning the murdered Jewish neighbours. My exploration will weave between recycled Jewish tombstones and Konrad Witz' oil painting of Synagoga, between the late fourteenth, the fifteenth, the sixteenth century and modern/contemporary encounters with this difficult heritage.

All welcome.

To register your interest for this event please fill out the registration form.