About
On August 7, 2021, the former director of the Center for Judaic, Holocaust, and Peace Studies, Dr. Rosemary Horowitz z’’l, passed away after a short, severe illness. Within a week, the Center faculty and staff decided to mark our dear friend's, colleague's, mentor's, and teacher's passing by holding a memorial conference around her first yahrzeit. A member of Appalachian State’s faculty for more than a quarter century, Dr. Horowitz was highly-committed Holocaust educator and English professor – greatly admired by her students and colleagues alike – a patron of the arts, and a fierce opponent of antisemitism and any form of hostility against Israel. As this conference will further demonstrate, her scholarly contributions and publications in the fields of Yiddish, Jewish and Holocaust Studies have long resonated and inspired many others and will continue to do so for years and decades to come. As one prominent colleague up north emphasized, Rosemary’s research truly “was ahead of her times.”
In cooperation with Appalachian State's Department of English and College of Arts and Sciences, the Center for Judaic, Holocaust, and Peace Studies hosts the Memorial Conference on Monday, August 1, 2022. The all-day hybrid conference at Belk Library and Information Commons at Appalachian’s Boone campus will bring together collaborators, friends, and students of Dr. Horowitz z’’l from ASU, the country and around the world to present work in areas of studies and academic fields to which she has made so many invaluable contributions.
The conference comprises panels on Yizker books, Yiddish women writers and the Shoah, children’s Holocaust literature, and teaching Holocaust studies, English literature, and technical writing. Prof. Eliyana R. Adler (Pennsylvania State University), an internationally-acclaimed historian of the modern Jewish experience in Eastern Europe, will be delivering the keynote lecture on Yizker books.
Prof. Rosemary Horowitz z''l, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, began her remarkable academic career with a much-noted dissertation on Yizker books. She dedicated it "To the Six Million," a dedication that powerfully captured one of the central commitments of her life and career.
The Center has also launched an initiative to raise funds for an endowed Annual Rosemary Horowitz Memorial Lecture in Israel, Yiddish, Jewish and Holocaust Studies to take place on the ASU campus as a further means to honor and preserve her work and legacy. A joint committee of ASU faculty and members of the Temple of the High Country, in which she was active from the start, will select the speakers. For more information, please contact the Center. To make a donations, please see here.