College of Charleston

2023 Events

Sunday, 1/22, 10am: Private Lives/Public Archives: The Papers of Frances Mazo Butwin

Hybrid with both in-person and online options. Click here to register.

What exactly happens when private papers—letters, diaries, snapshots, unpublished fiction—enter an archive of a public university? Their relevance, their meaning, their status all shift from whatever they may have meant in the hands of their author or the family. Suddenly they become history. Dr. Joseph Butwin examines that transfer of meaning with particular attention to his mother, Frances Mazo Butwin.

Her documentary history begins as Frania Mazo in Warsaw with diaries written shortly after the First World War when her family emigrated to Charleston to live above a delicatessen on King Street. At the College of Charleston she edited the literary magazine and began a lengthy correspondence with Julius Butwin whom she would marry and join in Minneapolis-St. Paul. They were active on the political left in the 1930s, owned a bookstore and together translated the Yiddish fiction of Sholom Aleichem in the early ‘40s.

Join us at Arnold Hall located at 96 Wentworth Street. Brunch will be available beginning at 9am provided to in-person attendees. Sponsored by the Pearlstine/Lipov Center for Southern Jewish Culture.

Tuesday, 1/31, 7pm: Charleston Jewish Filmfest Presents: "Reckonings"

Virtual event. Click here to register.

Your registration will provide a link to watch the film at home, which will be active from January 24-31, and a zoom discussion with film producer Karen Heilig on January 31 at 7pm. You will receive the streaming link to view the film on January 24.

"Reckonings" recounts the tense negotiations between Jewish and German leaders, as they forged ahead under the constant threat of violence. They met in secret to negotiate the unthinkable – compensation for the survivors of the largest mass genocide in history. Could reparations address the unprecedented destruction of a people?

Cosponsored by the Charleston Jewish Federation REMEMBER Program, The SC Council on the Holocaust, Charleston Jewish Filmfest, H.E.A.R. at the College of Charleston, the Stanley Farbstein Endowment, and the Charleston JCC Foundation.

Monday, 2/06, 4pm: MZG New Books Series: German Imperial Projects with authors Adam Blackler and Matthew Unangst

Online Only. Click here to register.

In the book An Imperial Homeland author Adam Blackler (University of Wyoming) explores the creation of German identity in what is today Namibia while Matthew Unangst’s (SUNY-Oneonta) book Colonial Geography takes on the issues of race and territory in today’s Tanzania. This MZG New Books Series discussion broadens our considerations of recent German history to cover imperialist projects before the Third Reich and beyond Europe.
Sponsored by The Zucker/Goldberg Center for Holocaust Studies, the George L. Mosse Program in History and the University of Wisconsin-Madison

Saturday, 2/11, 7pm: Charleston Jewish Filmfest Presents: "Haute Couture"

In-person showing in Room 118 at the College of Charleston Education Center. Click here to register.

"Haute Couture" follows Esther, the head of the Christian Dior dressmaking studio, as she develops an unlikely mentor relationship with streetwise Jade after her purse is stolen. Starring French icon Nathalie Baye.
Join us at College of Charleston Education Center at 25 St. Phillip St. Cosponsored by Alliance Française Ciné-Club.

Wednesday, 2/22, 7:30pm: Three Rabbi Panel: Universalism and Particularism in Judaism

Hybrid with both in-person and online options. Click here to register.

Rabbi Sholom Mimran from Congregation Dor Tikvah, Rabbi Evan Ravski from Synagogue Emanu-El, and Rabbi Stephanie Alexander from Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim will reflect on their denomination's take on universalism and particularim. Moderated by the Norman and Gerry Sue Arnold Center for Israel Studies director Joshua Shanes.
Join us at Arnold Hall located at 96 Wentworth Street. Sponsored by the Stanley and Charlot Karesh Family Fund

Tuesday, 2/28, 4pm: Russia’s Army and the Commission of Atrocities: A Conversation with Professor David Frey, United States Military Academy

Online only. Click here to register.

Today’s news is awash in reports of atrocities committed by Russia’s Army in Ukraine. Since February 2021, coverage of targeted killings, rape, and the deliberate destruction of civilian homes has come to dominate our front pages. West Point Professor David Frey will discuss why Putin’s armed forces are prone to the commission of such crimes and how atrocity became the Russian way of war. This event is a first co-sponsorship of the Zucker/Goldberg Center for Holocaust Studies and the Citadel History Department.
Sponsored by the Zucker/Goldberg Center for Holocaust Studies and the Citadel History Department

Tuesday, 3/14, 7pm: The Oldest Guard: Landowners, Local Memory, and the Making of the Zionist Settler Past

Hybrid with both in-person and online options. Click here to register.

Liora R. Halperin discusses the practice and politics of Zionist memory in and around the private Jewish agricultural colonies (moshavot) that were established in late 19th-century Ottoman Palestine. These colonies emerged prior to the founding of the Zionist movement but was later integrated, albeit ambivalently, into the Zionist narrative of settlement as the First Aliyah. Treating the “First Aliyah as a symbol created and deployed only in retrospect, and drawing connections to memory practices in other settler societies, she considers how private agriculturalists and their advocates forged the First Aliyah past as a model of private ownership, political moderature, and harmonius relations with hired rural Palestinian labor. In so doing, she sheds light on the politics and erasures of Zionist celebrations of "firstness.”
Join us at Arnold Hall located at 96 Wentworth Street. Sponsored by the Norman and Gerry Sue Arnold Center for Israel Studies.

Thursday, 3/16, 7pm: Charleston Jewish Filmfest Presents: "Shared Legacies"

In-person showing at Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim.

"Shared Legacies" details the often forgotten story of the coalition and friendship between the Jewish and African-American communities during the Civil Rights Movement. A discussion with Rabbi Stephanie M. Alexander and Rev. Nelson B. Rivers, III follows the film.
Join us at Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim located at 90 Hasell Street. Sponsored by the Charleston Jewish Filmfest, KKBE, Charity Missionary Baptist Church, the International African American Museum, the Stanley Farbstein Endowment, and the Charleston JCC Foundation.

Wednesday, 3/22, 6pm: The Arnold Nemirow Lecture Series Presents: The Holocaust by Bullets and its Contemporary Implications with Father Patrick Desbois

In-person only in Room 101 at the College of Charleston Rita Liddy Hollings Science Center.

Father Patrick Desbois is one of the premier voices for human rights, Holocaust remembrance, and genocide prevention in our times. For years, he and his group Yahad-In Unum have crisscrossed Eastern Europe mapping more than 2,000 sites of Nazi mass shootings and more recently documented ISIS crimes against the Yazidi people in Iraq. The Zucker/Goldberg Center for Holocaust Studies is honored to host his visit to the College of Charleston.
Join us at the Rita Liddy Hollings Science Center at 58 Coming Street. Sponsored by the Zucker/Goldberg Center for Holocaust Studies, the Stanley Farbstein Endowment Fund, and the Charleston JCC Foundation.

Charleston Jewish Filmfest Spring Festival: 03/30-04/02

In-person showings at the Terrace Theater.

Save the date: Our annual film festival at the Terrace Theater returns. Don't miss screenings of the best current Jewish-themed movies.
Join us at the Terrace Theater located at 1956 Maybank Highway. Sponsored by the Stanley Farbstein Endowment Fund and the Charleston JCC Foundation.

Sunday, 4/02, 10am: The Wandering Womb: Essays in Search of Home A Conversation with Author S.L. Wisenberg

Hybrid with both in-person and online options. Click here to register.

Even as a fourth-generation Jewish Texan, S.L. Wisenberg always felt the ghost of Europe dogging her steps, making her feel uneasy in her body and in the world. In the The Wandering Womb, winner of the 2022 Juniper Prize in nonfiction, Wisenberg combs through history books and family records in her search for home and meaning. Her travels take her from Selma, Alabama, where her Eastern European Jewish ancestors once settled, to Vienna, where she tours Freud's home and figures out what women really want, and she visits Auschwitz, which—disappointingly— leaves no emotional mark. Join Pearlstein/Lipov Center for Southern Jewish Culture director Ashley Walters for her conversation with S.L. Wisenberg.
Join us at Arnold Hall located at 96 Wentworth Street. Brunch will be available beginning at 9am provided to in-person attendees. Sponsored by the Pearlstine/Lipov Center for Southern Jewish Culture.

A World of Jewish Culture: 6/03-6/04

These events are in-person only.

Save the date for A World of Jewish Culture. More details coming soon.

1/23 Jewish Comedy: It's Serious
2/1 Charleston Jewish FilmFest Presents: "Final Account"
2/10 A Time to Gather: Archives and the Control of Jewish Culture
2/17 A Conversation with Abby Stein
2/22 A Conversation with Ilan Yona
2/24 Book Launch: The Virtuous Wehrmacht, Crafting the Myth of the German Soldier on the Eastern Front, 1941-1944
2/27 What's New in Israel: A Conversation with Journalist Linda Gradstein
3/21 Hate Across Borders: German and American Neo-Nazis from the 1970s to Charlottesville
3/24 Aspirations and Anxieties: The Design and Outcomes of the 2020 Pew Study of American Jewry
3/30 Three Rabbi Panel on Jewish Spirituality: What Does Judaism Believe about the Big Questions?
4/10 What Makes a Great Jewish Leader? Theodor Herzl and the Zionist Movement
4/19 The Kronsberg Lecture: A Conversation with Ilana Kaufman
4/24 The Nemirow Lecture: Music in the Shoah: Savagery and Survival, a conversation with Teryl Dobbs

The Jewish Studies Program prepares its line of events one semester in advance, in January-February for Fall, and in September-October for Spring. Ideas for speakers and performers are discussed at a Programming Committee meeting that is composed of Jewish Studies faculty and staff, and members of the Charleston Jewish Community. The Programming Committee welcomes proposals and ideas for events, as well as feedback from the community about upcoming and past events. Feel free to submit your ideas here, or contact Associate Director for Community Relations Kim Browdy.

Here's our Spring 22 Newsletter:

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Past newsletters:

Fall 2021 newsletter

Spring 2021 newsletter

Fall 2020 newsletter

Access Full List of CofC Events here.