Introducing the Spring 2019 HBI Scholars-in-Residence

Golan Moskowitz

Golan Moskowitz works at the intersection of queer and Jewish studies, with specific interests in childhood, the Jewish family, comics and graphic novels, and post-Holocaust literature, art, and culture. He has designed and taught courses on “Queer Jews” and “Jews and American Popular Culture” at Smith College in Northampton, MA. Originally trained as a visual artist, Golan also holds a Ph.D. in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies and a joint MA in Near Eastern & Judaic Studies and Women’s & Gender Studies.

While at HBI, he will be working on a book manuscript about the late Maurice Sendak that analyzes lesser known queer and Jewish elements of Sendak’s subjectivity as they played out in his life and in his contributions to notions of modern childhood.

Moskowitz is on campus now and will remain until May 15th. You can reach him at golan.moskowitz@gmail.com.

Defne Çizakça

Defne Çizakça is a writer, editor and lecturer. She has a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from the University of Glasgow and has taught at the universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh in Scotland, Koç University and Gebze Women’s Prison in Turkey, and Walrus Bookshop in Argentina. She has been a Research Excellence Fellow at the Central European University, a writer in residence at the Hunterian Museums and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, and edited the fairy tale journal Unsettling Wonder alongside three books: Tip Tap Flat: A View of Glasgow (Freight), New Fairy Tales: Essays and Stories (Unlocking Press), and Miscellaneous: Writing Inspired by the Hunterian (The Hunterian).

As a Helen Gartner Hammer Scholar-in-Residence at the HBI, she will be working on a historical novel about Jewish women who were trafficked from the Pale of Settlement to the port cities of Buenos Aires, Thessaloniki and her native Istanbul.

Çizakça is on campus now and will remain until May 15th. You can reach her at defnecizakca@gmail.com. She will speak Monday, March 25th from 12:30-2:00pm at the HBI. Her topic is Sex Trafficking from the Pale of Settlement to Buenos Aires: Notes on a Novel in Progress. Free lunch will be served. RSVP recommended.

Lara Silberklang

Lara Silberklang creates experiences that deepen social and cultural engagement. She is interested in understanding the forces that shape (and often constrain) agency and finding new ways of relating and being in the world. Her work spans a variety of industries and organizations – including history, public art, higher education, the United Nations, and community nonprofits – and is united by an approach rooted in empathy. Lara holds a BA in Philosophy from Columbia University, a Ph.D. in European History from University College London, and an MFA in Visual Art from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She teaches interaction and web design at Lesley University, consults on content strategy for Mad*Pow, created and manages a digital archive of Holocaust survivor testimony, and is a Gallery Instructor at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Lara is currently a Helen Gartner Hammer Scholar-in-Residence at the HBI where she is exploring intergenerational narratives of displacement in the context of constructing new family portraits.