Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: March of the Living (MOL) is an educational program that brings Jewish high school students from around the world to the Holocaust sites of Poland and then to the tourist sites of Israel. By addressing the complexities of diasporic identity, I explore how those involved in the organization of MOL – a variety of overlapping political and social institutions in the Jewish diaspora as well as in Israel – use memory-centred strategies in order to shape a particular version of Jewish diasporic identity in the present time. My research asks /when/ and /how /do social actors reiterate the past, highlighting the contentious relationship between memory-use and identity-production.
Based on analysis of MOL’s website content, participant observation of chaperone training and interviews with program organizers, I show how the program articulates a series of often competing narratives that reinforce the tensions of multiple belonging and the distinct group boundaries of diasporic identity.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: One of the stories recounted in ALL THE KING'S MEN by Robert Penn Warren is that of Willie Stark, a rural politician who rises from obscurity to become governor of his state, and is assassinated in the prime of his political career. This paper traces the career of Stark, and argues against seeking the "political teaching" of this novel. Rather, we should be concerned with the meaning of the novel, which would involve complicating the story of Willie by resituating it with the other stories (that of Jack Burden and that of Cass Mastern) that Warren presents.