How does a person live through great pain as a child and find a fulfilling life in the aftermath?

What to do when one feels like a monster compared to everyone else? Is there a way to escape

a legacy of suicide in a family? Can a person reshape their destiny? This lecture will address

 the arts of personal transformation in the work of three creative people: a boy who survived

Bergen-Belsen, a woman whose mother and grandmother killed themselves, and a poet

whose childhood left her feeling that she was of little use to anyone in the world. Learn how

they dealt with their mental anguish, and how they used creativity and storytelling to

make a life in its wake.

 

Dawn Skorczewski is Research Professor of English Emerita at Brandeis University and CLUE Fellow

at VU Amsterdam. Her most recent book is Sieg Maandag: Life and Art in the Aftermath of Bergen-Belsen.

Her work in psychoanalysis, trauma, and poetry spans the distance from Happiness Studies to Trauma Studies.

She has published An Accident of Hope: The Therapy Tapes of Anne Sexton, Teaching One Moment at a Time, 

and Pursuing Happiness. She has published numerous articles in Holocaust Studies of Amsterdam’s Diamond Jews.

 

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