Book description
As millions of people around the world who have read her diary
attest, Anne Frank, the most familiar victim of the Holocaust, has a
remarkable place in contemporary memory. Anne Frank Unbound looks
beyond this young girl's words at the numerous ways people have
engaged her life and writing. Apart from officially sanctioned works
and organizations, there exists a prodigious amount of cultural
production, which encompasses literature, art, music, film,
television, blogs, pedagogy, scholarship, religious ritual, and
comedy. Created by both artists and amateurs, these responses to Anne
Frank range from veneration to irreverence. Although at times they
challenge conventional perceptions of her significance, these works
testify to the power of Anne Frank, the writer, and Anne Frank, the
cultural phenomenon, as people worldwide forge their own connections
with the diary and its author.
"This astute collection of essays unpacks the complexity of
Anne Frank as the source of numerous editions, artworks, musical
compositions, plays, films, novels, souvenirs, memorials, museums, and
so on. It is a superb pedagogical tool for examining the particular
impact of Anne Frank's story as well as the larger issue of how
cultural icons are constructed, circulate, and inspire
engagement." -Marita Sturken, New York University
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett is University Professor of
Performance Studies and Affiliated Professor of Hebrew and Judaic
Studies at New York University. Her books include (with Mayer
Kirshenblatt) They Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of a Jewish
Childhood in Poland before the Holocaust and The Art of Being Jewish
in Modern Times. She currently leads the exhibition development team
for the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw.
Jeffrey Shandler is Professor of Jewish Studies at Rutgers
University. He is author of Adventures in Yiddishland: Postvernacular
Language and Culture and While America Watches: Televising the
Holocaust, editor of Awakening Lives: Autobiographies of Jewish Youth
in Poland before the Holocaust, and editor (with Hasia R. Diner and
Beth S. Wenger) of Remembering the Lower East Side (IUP, 2000).
