Books, Antisemitism, and a Viral Tweet: A Conversation with Library Director Susan Kusel

The Academic Life

Need help curating a list of Holocaust books for your students or library patrons? What’s on your shelf? What should be there? This podcast episode explores:

• The most commonly assigned Holocaust books.
• Why some of them are books you should never assign.
• Recommendations for books to assign, read, and share.
• Gaps in the literature.
• Gatekeepers of higher education.
• Susan’s wish-list.

Our guest is: Susan Kusel, who is the Library Director at Temple Rodef Shalom in Falls Church, Virginia. She is also an author, a children’s book consultant and a former independent bookstore buyer. She has served on multiple book award committees including the Caldecott Medal and as the chair of the Sydney Taylor Book Award. She is a former board member of the Association of Jewish Libraries. Her debut picture book, The Passover Guest won the Sydney Taylor Book Award.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, a historian of women and gender.

Listeners to this episode may also be interested in:

• Deborah Hopkinson, We Must Not Forget
• Dita Kraus, A Delayed Life: The True Story of the Librarian of Auschwitz
• Susan Kusel, The Passover Guest
• Primo Levi, The Periodic Table
• Doreen Rappaport, Beyond Courage: The Untold Story of Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust
• David Safier, 28 Days: A Novel of Resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto
• Hana Volavkova et al, I Never Saw Another Butterfly: Children’s Drawings and Poems from the Terezin Concentration Camp, 1942-1944
• Liza Wiemer, The Assignment
• Elie Wiesel, Night
• Susan’s wish list
• The Blog: The Sydney Taylor Schooze
• The Association of Jewish Libraries
• Sydney Taylor Book Award

Welcome to The Academic Life! We reach across our mentor network to bring you podcasts on everything from how to finish a project to how to take care of your beautiful mind. On the Academic Life channel we embrace a broad definition of what it means to lead an academic life. We view education as a transformative human endeavor and are inspired by today’s knowledge-producers working inside and outside the academy. DMs us on Twitter: @AcademicLifeNBN.

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