Translating History Through Poetry: The Mexican Inquisition & Crypto-Jewish Memory

Rachel Kaufman’s first poetry collection, Many to Remember (Dos Madres Press, 2021), enters the archive’s unconscious to reveal the melodies hidden within the language of the past. The collection unravels Kaufman’s historical research on New Mexican crypto-Judaism and the Mexican Inquisition alongside the poet’s own family histories. This presentation will explore questions of history, memory, mythology, and translation. How can poetry translate history and the rhythms and form of the archive? What are the possibilities and limitations of the poetic line in holding overlapping but distinct histories at once?

About the Speaker:

Rachel Kaufman is currently pursuing a PhD in Latin American and Jewish History at UCLA. Her poetry has appeared on poets.org and in the Harvard Review, Southwestern American Literature, Western Humanities Review, JuxtaProse, and elsewhere, and her prose has appeared in The Yale Historical Review and Rethinking History. Her poetry chapbook, And After the Fire, received the 2020 JuxtaProse Chapbook Prize. She received a BA in English and History from Yale University.

Ticket Info: Free; register at ajhs-org.zoom.us for a Zoom link