Jonathan Druker
Professor of Italian
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Office
STV Stevenson Hall 240
Office Phone
Email
- About
- Education
- Awards & Honors
- Selected Research
Teaching Interests & Areas
"I teach undergraduate courses on Italian language, literature and film, along with European studies and Holocaust literature. I occasionally teach graduate courses on literature and trauma."
Research Interests & Areas
"•My current book project, titled 'His heart within him burns': On Primo Levi’s Traumatic Fictions, analyzes the function and representation of Holocaust trauma in Levi’s imaginative writing. This volume will move beyond his much-discussed Holocaust testimonies and memoirs to closely consider Levi’s science fiction, historical and autobiographical fiction, poetry and essays.
•Much of my previous research examined Levi's Holocaust testimonies through the lens of Theodor Adorno's 'Dialectic of Enlightenment'.
•With L. Scott Lerner, I co-edited a collection of nineteen essays which address the place of Italian Jewish culture and history in the birth and development of Italy from the 19th century 'Risorgimento' to the present."
PhD Italian
University of California
Berkeley, California
MA Italian
University of California
Berkeley, California
BA English
Williams College
Williamstown, Massachusetts
Schechter Fellow, Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
2014
Nominee, Outstanding University Teaching Award
Nominated by the College of Arts and Sciences, Illinois State University
2012
Winner, College of Arts and Sciences Teaching Initiative Award
Illinois State University
2006
Winner, Instructors’ Teaching Award
Department of Romance Languages, University of Georgia
1996
Grants and Contracts
Summer Faculty Fellowship
Jonathan Druker
Illinois State University. July 2018 - July 2018
Summer Faculty Fellowship
Jonathan Druker
Illinois State University. July 2015 - July 2015
Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies
Jonathan Druker
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. September 1 2014 - November 30 2014
Travel to Collections Grant, Devers Program in Dante Studies and Hesburgh Library
Jonathan Druker
University of Notre Dame. September 19 2012 - September 21 2012
Book, Authored
_Primo Levi and Humanism after Auschwitz: Posthumanist Reflections_
Jonathan Druker.
(2009), 1-173, New York: Palgrave Macmillan
Book, Chapter
“Il trauma della rinascita in Lettera alla madre”
Jonathan Druker.
(2025), Le forme della memoria: Edith Bruck tra letteratura, cinema, teatro, Peter Lang GmbH, Internationaler Verlag
“Monstrous Births and Mad Scientists: Allegories of Holocaust Trauma in Primo Levi’s Natural Histories"
Jonathan Druker.
(2024), 134-150, The Holocaust: Global Perspectives, National Narratives, Local Contexts, Northwestern University Press
“Ethical Grey Zones: On Coercion and Complicity in the Concentration Camp and Beyond”
Jonathan Druker.
(2020), A Companion to the Holocaust, Wiley-Blackwell
“Tadeusz Borowski, Walter Benjamin, and the ‘Real State of Emergency’
Jonathan Druker.
(2018), Lessons and Legacies (Volume 13): The Holocaust in Social History, Representation, and Theory, Northwestern University Press
"'What Would I Have Done?’: Teaching _The Drowned and the Saved_ to Confront Moral Ambiguity"
Jonathan Druker.
(2014), 29-35, _Approaches to Teaching the Writings of Primo Levi_, New York: Modern Language Association
"Victims and Executioners in Wiesel’s _Dawn_: A Levinasian Reading"
Jonathan Druker.
(2013), 160-169, _Elie Wiesel: Jewish, Literary, and Moral Perspectives_, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press
"Levi and the Two Cultures"
Jonathan Druker.
(2011), 103-113, _Answering Auschwitz: Primo Levi’s Science and Humanism_, New York: Fordham University Press
“Trauma and Latency in _The Reawakening_”
Jonathan Druker.
(2011), 63-77, _New Reflections on Primo Levi: Before and After Auschwitz_, Palgrave Macmillan
“La réception de Primo Levi aux États-Unis”
Jonathan Druker.
(2008), Primo Levi à l' oeuvre: La reception de l'oeuvre de Primo Levi dans le monde
“Strategies for Teaching Wiesel’s Night with Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz”
Jonathan Druker.
(2007), Modern Language Association
Book, Edited
The New Italy and the Jews: From Massimo D’Azeglio to Primo Levi, co-edited with L. Scott Lerner
Jonathan Druker, L. Scott Lerner, .
(2018), 36, 416, Annali d’italianistica
Journal Article
“Primo Levi’s ‘Shame of the Just’: On Post-Holocaust Ethics and Collective Responsibility.”
Jonathan Druker.
NeMLA Italian Studies, XLV (2024) (XLV (2024)), (2024)
“Mothers and Daughters in the Holocaust Writing of Edith Bruck, Liana Millu and Giuliana Tedeschi.”
Jonathan Druker.
Italica, 100 (1), 87-97, (2023), https://doi.org/10.5406/23256672.100.1.06
“Primo Levi’s Editions of Se questo è un uomo and the Evolution of Italian Holocaust Memory, 1947-1958.”
Jonathan Druker.
Annali d’italianistica, 36, (2018)
“Il percorso e la fossa: La storia e la memoria traumatica in Se non ora, quando? di Primo Levi.”
Jonathan Druker.
DEP: Deportate, esuli, profughe—Rivista telematica sulla memoria storica femminile, 29, (2016)
“The Path and the Pit: History and Traumatic Memory in Primo Levi’s _If Not Now, When?_,”
Jonathan Druker.
Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, 33 (3), 46-62, (2015)
“A Secular Alternative: Primo Levi’s Place in American Holocaust Discourse”
Jonathan Druker, Michael and Rothberg.
Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, 28 (1), 104-126, (2009)
Other
Review of Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization
Jonathan Druker.
Témoigner Entre Histoire et Mémoire, 106 (2010), 218-225, (2010)
Presentations
“Primo Levi’s ‘Shame of the Just’ as Resistance to Crimes against Humanity”
Jonathan Druker
Lessons and Legacies of the Holocaust, 16th Biannual Conference, Ottawa, Canada, November, 2022
“Il trauma della rinascita in Lettera alla madre, di Edith Bruck”
Jonathan Druker
“Le forme della memoria: Edith Bruck tra giornalismo, letteratura e cinema”, Online/University of Macerata, October 7, 2022
“Ashes and the Excavation of Holocaust Memory in Primo Levi’s 'Vesuvian' Poems”
Jonathan Druker
L’antichità gentile: La ricezione dell’antico nella cultura dell’ebraismo italiano moderno, Paris, France (my presentation was online as were 3 of 14 presentations), March 19, 2022
“Traumatic Repetition in Primo Levi’s Poetry of Survival”
Jonathan Druker
Workshop for New Research in Holocaust Studies, Evanston, Illinois, October 30, 2021
“Mothers and Daughters in the Holocaust Writing of Edith Bruck, Liana Millu and Giuliana Tedeschi”
Jonathan Druker
International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Washington. D.C., January 27, 2020
Primo Levi’s Editions of Se questo è un uomo and the Evolution of Italian Holocaust Memory
Jonathan Druker
A Symposium on The New Italy and the Jews: From Massimo D’Azeglio to Primo Levi,, Champaign, March 1, 2019
Primo Levi's Jewish Question
Jonathan Druker
Invited lecture sponsored by the Italian Studies and Jewish Studies programs at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR, November 12, 2018
“Allegories of Holocaust Trauma in Primo Levi’s Science Fiction.”
Jonathan Druker
Lessons and Legacies of the Holocaust, 15th Biannual Conference, St Louis, MO, November 1, 2018
“Holocaust Trauma in Primo Levi’s Dystopian Science Fiction.”
Jonathan Druker
American Association of Italian Studies Annual Conference, Sorrento, Italy, June 16, 2018
“Levi’s ‘Shame of the Just’: On Ethical and Political Resistance after State Violence”
Jonathan Druker,
“Primo Levi for the Public”, Champaign, May, 2018
“Community and Trauma in Bassani’s ‘Una lapide in via Mazzini.’”
Jonathan Druker
American Association of Italian Studies Annual Conference, Columbus, OH, April 20, 2017
“Forgiveness after Auschwitz? On Trauma and Community in Jean Améry’s Jenseits von Schuld und Sühne,”
Jonathan Druker
Mini-symposium: Forgiveness after Auschwitz?, Amsterdam, Netherlands, March 15, 2017
“Traumatic Memory and Irreversible History in Primo Levi’s _If Not Now, When?_”
Jonathan Druker
Invited lecture sponsored by the Jewish Studies program at Franklin & Marshall College, Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster PA, November 20, 2014
“Complicity and Insight in Borowski’s _This Way for the Gas_"
Jonathan Druker
Lessons and Legacies of the Holocaust, 13th Biannual Conference, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, October 30, 2014
“Tadeusz Borowski, Walter Benjamin, and the Philosophy of History”
Jonathan Druker
Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington D.C., October 10, 2014
Trauma and Community in Jean Améry’s At the Mind’s Limits
Jonathan Druker
The Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, April 14, 2014
“Trauma and Post-Holocaust Subjectivity in Agamben’s Quel che resta di Auschwitz”
Jonathan Druker
Modern Language Association Convention, Chicago, Modern Language Association Convention, Chicago, January 10, 2014
“Primo Levi, Jean Améry and the Uses of Trauma”
Jonathan Druker
American Association of Italian Studies Annual Conference, American Association of Italian Studies Annual Conference, University of Oregon, Eugene, April 14, 2013
"On Levi’s Alterations to the Second Edition of Se questo è un uomo: Recouping the Victims’ Names and Faces"
Jonathan Druker
Lessons and Legacies of the Holocaust, Twelfth Biannual Conference, Northwestern University, Evanston, November 3, 2012
"Reading Primo Levi"
Jonathan Druker
The Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies, and the Italian Studies Program, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, September 11, 2012