This past weekend, the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures and the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies, together with numerous cosponsors, hosted the Jonathan M. Hess Moments of Enlightenment Symposium. The conference was held in memory of the late Jonathan M. Hess, former chair of GSLL and founding director of the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies. It brought together many of Hess’s former students and colleagues, including preeminent scholars in German and German Jewish Studies, in order to commemorate Hess’s legacy by discussing German Jewish interactions from the eighteenth century to the present day.
The conference began on April 13th with a keynote by Martha Helfer of Rutgers University entitled “Maurice Sendak’s Dear Milli: A Contrapuntal Elegy.” During the conference, Terry Rhodes, interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, announced the successful completion of a campaign to endow the Jonathan M. Hess Development Term Assistant Professorship. A full program is available here, and video recordings of conference presentations will be made available in the coming days.
