Susan Derwin

Professor

Office Location

Phelps 6325

Specialization

Professor of Germanic, Slavic & Semitic Studies

Bio

Susan Derwin earned her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from The Johns Hopkins University.  She is Chair of the Comparative Literature Program and a faculty member of Germanic, Slavic and Semitic Studies. Her fields of teaching and her research areas include Holocaust Studies, humanities and human rights, contemporary literature, memoir, and psychoanalytic theory.  She is the author of The Ambivalence of Form: Lukács, Freud, and the Novel (JHU Press), and essays on topics such as torture, Holocaust denial, the Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance, Huckleberry Finn, Blue Velvet and the writings of M.F.K. Fisher. Her recently completed book, Rage in the Aftermath of the Holocaust (forthcoming Ohio State UP), treats the relationship between testimonial narrative and healing in texts by Jean Améry, Primo Levi, Saul Friedlaender, Imre Kertész, Binjamin Wilkomirski and in Liliana Cavani's film The Night Porter