Elie Wiesel Memorial Lecture Series: Sharon Portnoff on Primo Levi and Dante

The theme of this year’s lecture series is Writing from a Place of Survival. Primo Levi’s Is This a Man was one of the first memoirs of an Auschwitz survivor to reach a global readership. The book remains relevant because of the profound question Levi asks in light of the hell of Auschwitz: what does it means to be a human being? Professor Portnoff’s lecture will explore the echoes of Dante’s Inferno in Primo Levi’s writing. 

About the Speaker: Sharon Portnoff is the Elie Wiesel Associate Professor of Judaic Studies at Connecticut College, where she directs the Jewish Studies program. Professor Portnoff is a specialist in philosophical and literary responses to the Holocaust.