October 23, 2000 UCSC hosts conference on the work of Latin American Jews On Sunday and Monday, November 12 and 13, UCSC will host a two-day conference entitled, "Thinking About Diaspora: Latin American Jewish Writers and Filmmakers." This conference will look at many aspects of Latin American Jewish culture including music, literature, and film. The program begins on Sunday at 7 p.m. with a screening of the acclaimed 1992 Mexican film, Novia que te Vea about two Jewish women growing up in Mexico in the 1950s and '60s. The screening will be followed by a rare opportunity to talk about the film with its director, Guita Schyfter, who will discuss her work as a Latin American Jewish artist. The conference continues on Monday with panels on Latin American Jewish literature including a presentation on Jevel Katz, an Argentinean Yiddish performer. (Go to conference schedule) The keynote talk on Monday will be delivered by Manuela Fingueret, discussing her recent novel, Hija del Silencio (Child of Silence), which explores themes of exile, the Holocaust, and Argentinean Jewish life in a time of dictatorship. The conference is sponsored by the Helen and Sanford Diller Family Endowment for Jewish Studies, the Neufeld-Levin Chair in Holocaust Studies, the Koret Foundation, the Department of Literature and the Latin American and Latino Studies Program, and the Institute for Humanities Research. The conference will take place in Stevenson College in the Silverman Conference Room. For more information, please contact Warren Hoffman at whoffman@cats.ucsc.edu. Participating scholars include: Zachary Baker, Judaica librarian at Stanford; Jacobo Sefami, chair of Spanish and Latin American literature, UC Irvine; Aminadav Dyckman, assistant professor of comparative literature, Pennsylvania State University; Felicia Fahey, assistant professor of Spanish language and literature, University of San Francisco; Misha Klein, Ph.D. candidate, anthropology, UC Berkeley; David Hirsch, Judaica librarian, UCLA; Elizabeth Hadas of the University of New Mexico Press; and UCSC scholars Norma Klahn, Julianne Burton-Carvajal, Murray Baumgarten, Wlad Godzich, Dascha Inciarte, and Warren Hoffman from the Literature Department. Keynote addresses will be given by the Mexican filmmaker, Guita Schyfter, and the Argentinean novelist, Manuela Fingueret. Return to Front Page