Brett Ashley Kaplan is a Professor of Comparative and World Literature and Director of the Initiative in the Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She is also an affiliate faculty of the European Union Center.
What is the focus of your current work and/or subject of your current research?
I am currently working on a novel about mourning and planetary precarity entitled Rare Stuff. I've also written about Holocaust art and literature, monuments, and memorials, Philip Roth, JM Coetzee, Nicole Krauss, and convergences and tensions between Blacks and Jews (and/or Black Jews). I'm editing a Handbook on Memory Studies for Bloomsbury and co-editing an anthology of Black Jewish Voices entitled Blewish.
What classes do you teach? What are some of the topics of those classes?
I teach a new US Minority class entitled Jewish American and US Minority Literatures in Dialogue as well as graduate seminars on Theory, Global Literatures, and Holocaust, Genocide, Memory Studies.
Do you have any recent awards, honors, or publications that you would like to highlight?
Here are some recent publications:
"Too Painful to Forget, Too Painful to Remember"
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1750698020988773
Infinite Mirrors, on Nicole Krauss, To Be A Man
https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/fiction/9736/infinite-mirrors/?login=1615312641
To Be A Writer
http://www.ninthletter.com/kaplan
"Too Painful to Forget, Too Painful to Remember"
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1750698020988773
Infinite Mirrors, on Nicole Krauss, To Be A Man
What is a book (academic or non-academic, in or outside your field) that you think should be more widely read?
History of Love, by Nicole Krauss.
Is there any additional information or advice you'd like to share?
Here's a link to a video about Rare Stuff (website designed by Melia Kaplan-Hartnett)
https://www.brettashleykaplan.com/