Jewish Exile as Experience and Metaphor | Prof. Dr. Vivian Liska

For centuries European culture cast the Jew as the archetypal wanderer – rootless, homeless, a stranger among nations. That image contributed to the hatred that ended in the Nazi murder of Europe's Jews. However, after 1945 it was also embraced as a positive ideal, a universal alternative to nationalism and every politics of soil and belonging. This lecture asks what happens when a lived experience of exile and displacement becomes a universal metaphor and what that has to do with some of the most urgent political questions of today.

About the Speaker

Vivian Liska is Professor Emerita of German Literature and Director of the Institute for Jewish Studies at the University of Antwerp. Since 2013, she has also taught as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and since 2024, she has been a member of the German Academy for Language and Literature. Her research focuses on literary theory, German-language modernism, and German-Jewish thought; her books include "When Kafka Says We: Uncommon Communities in German-Jewish Literature" (2009) and "Prekäres Erbe: German-Jewish Thought and Its Legacy" (2021).

Registration is open until November 10, 2026.

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We cordially invite you to a reception following the keynote.