SEARCHING FOR PATERSON ROOTS REMEMBERED AND FORGOTTEN IN HERITAGE TOURISM ABROAD

The extended Walkowitz family arrived in Paterson from Lodz, Poland as early as 1910. It was a Jewish World of Yiddishkeit in which Daniel Walkowitz was raised. As a radical student activist in the late 1950s and 1960s, he imagined himself walking in the footsteps of his Paterson grandparents who fought to improve the living and working conditions in the Lodz and Paterson mills. Professor Walkowitz will recount the genealogical and archival research that allowed him to uncover the stories of this past in the US and in Eastern and Central Europe where he seeks to see and hear what of these roots appear in walking tours, Jewish museums and memorial sites. Illustrated with slides, the lecture will illustrate the disappointments and surprises that frame the robust and changing terrain of Jewish heritage tourism today.

Daniel Walkowitz, Emeritus Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis and Professor of History at NYU, has specialized in labor history, urban history and public history. In nearly a dozen books, many articles and four films for public television, he has worked to bring America’s past to both academic and broad public audiences.In 2010 he published Rethinking U.S. Labor History, co-edited with Donna Haverty-Stacke, a collection of new work on work and labor published to mark the 25th anniversary of his 1984 collection (edited with Michael Frisch), Working-Class-America. His most recent work includes a monograph, The Remembered and Forgotten Jewish World: Jewish Heritage in Europe and the United States (Rutgers, 2018).

Ticket Info: $5 at the door; free for JGS members