Michael Rothberg

Michael Rothberg is a scholar of Holocaust studies, comparative literature, and memory studies whose work examines how historical trauma, representation, and ethics intersect across national and cultural boundaries. He has held professorships at leading institutions and contributed influential theories about the interactions among memories of the Holocaust, colonialism, and other mass violences. His scholarship engages debates in genocide studies, postcolonial studies, and Jewish studies while addressing cultural production in film, literature, and museums.

Early life and education

Rothberg was born and raised in the United States and completed undergraduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley before pursuing graduate work at the New School for Social Research. He obtained a Ph.D. in comparative literature with a focus on Holocaust representation, trauma, and the intersections with postcolonial theory. During his training he studied alongside scholars engaged with debates at institutions such as Columbia University, Yale University, and the University of Chicago and drew on theoretical currents associated with figures from Theodor Adorno to Edward Said.

Academic career

Rothberg began his academic career teaching in departments that bridged comparative literature and cultural studies, holding faculty positions at universities including the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign before joining the faculty at Stanford University. At Stanford he has served in roles connected to the Department of English, the Program in Comparative Literature, and interdisciplinary initiatives addressing Holocaust memory and transnational studies. He has supervised doctoral research on topics related to trauma theory, postcolonial memory, and representations of mass violence, and participated in collaborative projects with scholars from institutions like the University of Oxford, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the Free University of Berlin.

Major works and themes

Rothberg's influential monographs include Traumatic Realism and Multidirectional Memory. Traumatic Realism examines representations of the Holocaust in postwar literature and film, engaging with debates around writers such as Primo Levi, Art Spiegelman, and filmmakers like Claude Lanzmann and Roman Polanski. Multidirectional Memory advances a theory that memories of different historical traumas—such as the Holocaust, slavery in the United States, colonialism in Algeria, and genocide in Rwanda—interact rather than compete, drawing on case studies from France, Germany, Israel, and the United States. His edited volumes and articles engage with themes including ethical obligations of representation, comparative approaches to genocide remembrance, and the role of museums and public culture in shaping collective memory, dialoguing with scholars like Avery Gordon, Dominic LaCapra, Homi K. Bhabha, and Saskia Sassen.

Awards and honors

Rothberg has received fellowships and prizes from major funding bodies including the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the American Council of Learned Societies. His work has been recognized with honors from scholarly associations in comparative literature and Holocaust studies and he has served on prize juries and editorial boards connected to journals such as Representations and New Literary History. He has been invited to deliver keynote lectures at conferences held by organizations like the Modern Language Association, the German Studies Association, and the Association for Jewish Studies.

Public engagement and influence

Beyond academia, Rothberg has engaged in public debates about memory politics, museum exhibitions, and curricular controversies in venues tied to institutions such as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Museum of Jewish Heritage, and national cultural forums in France and Germany. His interventions have informed discussions about comparative remembrance in media outlets and public symposia alongside commentators from the New York Times, The Guardian, and public radio forums, and he has consulted on exhibitions and educational projects that address transnational memory. His concepts, notably multidirectional memory, have been cited across disciplines in work on trauma, memory studies, postcolonialism, and the study of visual culture.

Category:Living people Category:Scholars of the Holocaust Category:Comparative literature scholars Category:Stanford University faculty