Shoah Smut

How have myths and misconceptions about the Holocaust become integrated into Jewish narratives of collective identity? How do exploitative tropes traverse the boundary from fictionalized dramatizations to consecrated national mythology? What can the study of Holocaust literature that transgresses ethical borders and cultural taboos illuminate about representational limits?

Shoah Smut is a comparative translation project centered around the cultural reception, publication history, censorship, and pedagogical uses of erotic Holocaust literature. My research seeks to trace the myths around which sensationalized Holocaust narratives cohere in order to better understand the role of popular literature in introducing historical distortions into post-Shoah discourse. I am particularly interested in the notion of the Holocaust as an ‘unspeakable’ event, and the murky boundary between what cannot be expressed and what may not be expressed in literature. I argue that erotic Holocaust literature is a literary profanation which transgresses both aforementioned realms of unspeakability, thereby breaking down what Imre Kertész termed "defensive walls” that prevent direct engagement with the grotesque realities of the Holocaust.

This site will feature recent publications, upcoming speaking engagements, and overviews of research developments.