Habitus

by Habitus · 06/16/10

Is New York City the Diaspora?
A Conversation with Joshua Ellison and André Aciman

July 14, 7pm
Museum of Jewish Heritage
36 Battery Place
New York, NY

Join Habitus editor Joshua Ellison for a conversation with celebrated author André Aciman.

Together we will explore a provocative question: Is New York the Diaspora? With its enormous Jewish population, its creativity and culture, and its unparalleled array of options for Jewish living, should we really think of New York City as part of the Jewish Diaspora; or is it just another kind of homeland?

André Aciman has chronicled a life’s journey across continents and has also emerged as one of contemporary New York’s most astute literary observers. He writes: “New York is my home precisely because it is a place from which I can begin to be elsewhere…a shadow city.” We will talk to André about being a stranger at home in New York, about the place of the city in his recent work, and what it means to be a Jew here.

André Aciman is the author of Out of Egypt and, more recently, Call Me By Your Name and Eight White Nights. He is a Distinguished Professor in Comparative Literature at the Graduate Center of New York.

Joshua Ellison is the editor and founder of Habitus: A Diaspora Journal.