Join University Libraries to discuss its December virtual book club selection, The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish.
Set in London of the 1660s and of the early 21st century, The Weight of Ink is the interwoven tale of two women of remarkable intellect: Ester Velasquez, an emigrant from Amsterdam who is permitted to scribe for a blind rabbi; and Helen Watt, an ailing historian with a love of Jewish history.
Book Club will begin with a virtual showcase of rare books from the Shimeon Brisman Collection in Jewish Studies, followed by a discussion of the book.
Stretching from the Baltic to the Adriatic coast, Winston Churchill’s infamous Iron Curtain is often portrayed as a line on the map, dividing Europe and the World into the Democratic, Developed West and Autocratic Developing East. Zooming into the cartographic tissue of the Cold War, this talk by Katja Perat, doctoral candidate in comparative literature (Arts & Sciences) at Washington University, will take a look at the Iron Curtain not as a dividing non-entity, but as a territory in its own right, marked by a history of an external as well as internalized division stretching from the Enlightenment and into the future. From Milan Kundera’s “The Tragedy of Central Europe” in the eighties, to the Central European nationalist tragedy of today, this talk will examine how inhabiting the Iron Curtain has shaped the processes of subject- and nation-building in this invisible borderland.
