Event

Relative History

Authors Dan Mendelsohn and Lise Funderburg have devoted years to dissecting the minutiae of family stories, framed by the grand sweep of history. Mendelsohns Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million is a gripping account of six of his own family membersHolocaust victimsuncovered through a detective-like search for facts about their lives and deaths. Lise Funderburgs Pig Candy reconstructs the Jim Crow south as she tends to her dying father who is living out his final years in his boyhood home in rural Georgia. Mendelsohn and Funderburg will read from their work and discuss how family stories personalize the abstractions of history.

Lise Funderburg is a journalist, essayist, and critic. She received her undergraduate degree from Reed College in Portland, Oregon, her masters in journalism from Columbia University, and has worked as an writer, editor, and writing instructor since 1986. She is currently an instructor in creative nonfiction writing at The University of Pennsylvania.

Daniel Mendelsohn is an award-winning author and critic. Born in New York City in 1960, he received his B. A. summa cum laude in Classics from the University of Virginia and his M. A. and Ph. D. in Classics from Princeton University, where he was a Mellon Fellow in the Humanities. He is the author of three books and his essays have been widely anthologized. He currently teaches at Bard College. www.danielmendelsohn.com

Sponsored by the National Museum of American Jewish History.