Abstract
From September 16-18, 2003, Brandeis University hosted a special symposium called “Literary Responses to Mass Violence.” The event brought together a dozen writers and scholars from Africa, the Middle East, and the United States to reflect on the writing and testimony that has been published in the wake of the Holocaust, South African apartheid, and the genocide in Rwanda, among other recent tragedies. Evening readings featured the writers of poetry and fiction. Daytime discussions involved the creative writers and scholars in conversations organized around three themes: “Literature and Testimony”; “Nations, Populations, Language”; and “Finding Words in an Age of Violence.”This volume collects many of the presentations made during the symposium, along with additional selections from the work of the poets who attended the event. The symposium enabled scholars and writers from disparate places to engage each other in an intellectually open environment. The authors had an opportunity to revise their papers in light of the event, and some of them have chosen to refer directly to the discussions in the essays published in this volume.