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WORK TITLE: Postcards from Auschwitz
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY: Grinnell
STATE: IA
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY:
Phone: (641) 269-3097
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Male.
EDUCATION:Attended Eberhard-Karls Universität Tübingen, 1983-1985; Georgetown University, B.S., 1986; Harvard University, Ph.D., 1996.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Author. Grinnell College, Grinnell, IA, associate professor. Has appeared in articles featured in Washington Post and Fortune.
AVOCATIONS:Fiction, travel, food, pets.
WRITINGS
Contributor to periodicals, including German Studies Review, International Journal of the Humanities, Rocky Mountain Review, German Life and Letters, Other Voices, German Quarterly, and Seminar.
SIDELIGHTS
Daniel P. Reynolds is affiliated with Grinnell College, where he serves as an associate professor under the school’s Modern Languages department. Prior to starting his academic career, he attended Georgetown University and Harvard University, where he earned his bachelor’s and doctorate degrees, respectively. He also attended the Eberhard-Karls Universität Tübingen. Throughout his academic career, he has contributed numerous articles to such publications as German Studies Review, International Journal of the Humanities, and the Rocky Mountain Review.
Postcards from Auschwitz: Holocaust Tourism and the Meaning of Remembrance serves as Reynolds’s first full-fledged book. Postcards from Auschwitz serves as an examination not only of the Holocaust, but the current tourism surrounding it as well as its impact on modern culture. The book serves as a counter to numerous arguments that Holocaust tourism (and similar types of tourism) profit off of suffering and serve no real good. In establishing his argument, Reynolds takes a look at some of the most commonly visited concentration camp sites, such as Dachau and Auschwitz. He also goes over the chronology of these sites and how they became open to the tourism that they experience in the modern era. Reynolds spends much of the book traveling to numerous sites that were either directly involved in or otherwise associated with the Holocaust, all for the sake of learning more about how each of these sites and how its visitors interact with them. He also compares these sites to others that have not been memorialized in the same way, in turn exploring how they also affect the depiction of the Holocaust.
One of the sites included in this part of Reynolds’s study is Berlin, which has erected alternative versions of memorials in order to challenge viewpoints of how the Holocaust should be remembered. In other areas, such as the United States, there floats the worry that how the events of the Holocaust are portrayed have been framed too heavily through the lens of that specific culture. Throughout his analysis, Reynolds looks to the future and how these sites may be viewed by later generations long after those who lived through the Holocaust are gone. He also discusses how current political attitudes shape the way we currently view the Holocaust and its various memorials.
A Publishers Weekly contributor remarked: “While he sometimes belabors his points, he raises important questions about history, tourism, and genocide.” A writer on the Kirkus Reviews website called the book “a diligent, sometimes-laborious study of the necessity and uses of Holocaust tourism.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, February 12, 2018, review of Postcards from Auschwitz: Holocaust Tourism and the Meaning of Remembrance, p. 73.
ONLINE
Grinnell College website, https://www.grinnell.edu/ (June 25, 2018), author profile.
Kirkus Reviews, https://www.kirkusreviews.com/ (February 27, 2018), review of Postcards from Auschwitz.
Daniel P Reynolds
Dan Reynolds
Associate Professor
reynolds@grinnell.edu
Selected Publications:
“Consumers or Witnesses? Holocaust Tourism and the Problem of Authenticity.” Forthcoming 2015.
“Tourism, the Holocaust, and the Humanities.” International Journal of the Humanities 9.3 (November 2011) 157-165.
“The Documentary Critique in Recent German Postcolonial Literature,” German Studies Review 31.2 (May 2008) 241-260.
“Blinded by the Enlightenment. Günter Grass in Calcutta.” Daniel Reynolds. German Life and Letters 56.3 (July 2003) 244-260.
“A Portrait of Misreading. Bernhard Schlink’s Der Vorleser.” Daniel Reynolds. Seminar 39.3 (September 2003) 238-257.
Selected Conference Presentations:
"“Holocaust Tourists: Consumers or Producers”. TC2013 - Touring Consumption conference, Karlshochschule, Karlsruhe, Germany, October 24-25, 2013. http://www.tc2013.org.
“Warehousing Memory?: Jens Sparschuh’s Im Kasten and the Geography of Memory in Berlin.” RMMLA, Vancouver, Washington, October 10-12, 2013.
“Tourism and the Holocaust: A New Agenda for the Humanities.” New Directions in the Humanities Conference, Granada, Spain, June 8-11, 2011.
"Holocaust Tourism in Berlin." Presented at the RMMLA in Scottsdale, October 6, 2011.
"Seeing Auschwitz: The Tourist as Witness." Presented at the 9th Annual Conference on New Directions in the Humanities, Granada, Spain, June 2011.
"Visualizing the Holocaust: Tourism to Auschwitz."Presented at the RMMLA in Reno, October 2008.
"Germany's Colonial Past in Recent Fiction." Presented at the RMMLA in Tucson, October 2006.
"The Author Strikes Back. Bodo Kirchhof's Schundroman and Martin Walser's Tod eines Kritikers." Presented at the RMMLA in Missoula, October 2003.
"Dislocated Text: Günter Grass's Encounter with German Literature in India." Presented at German Studies Association Convention in Washington, D.C., October 2001.
"Sleeping with the Enemy." Presented at the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association Convention in Vancouver, October 2001.
"The Literary Wall." Presented at the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association Convention in Boise, October 2000.
"Having it Both Ways? The Essay as Metafiction in Post-Reunification German." Presented at the International Association of Philosophy and Literature Convention in Stony Brook, May 2000.
"German Nationhood and the Literary Wall." Presented at the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association Convention in Santa Fe, October 1999.
Book Reviews:
Uerlings, Herbert, and Iulia-Karin Patrut, eds. Postkolonialismus und Kanon. The German Quarterly, 85:4 (2012) 499-500.
“The Semblance of Materiality: Review of Brigitte Peucker, The Material Image: Art and the Real in Film (Cultural Memory of the Present)" Other Voices 4.1 (March 2010). (http://www.othervoices.org/4.1/dreynolds/index.php)
Benseler, David et al., eds. Teaching German in Twentieth Century America.; Monatshefte Occasional Volume 15. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2001. 294 p. The Rocky Mountain Review, vol. 56.1 (Spring 2002) 123-124.
Albrecht, Terence. Rezeption und Zeitlichkeit des Werkes Christoph Heins. Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, 2000. German Studies Review. May 2001.
Neaman, Elliot Y. A Dubious Past. Ernst Jnger and the Politics of Literature after Nazism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. The Rocky Mountain Review. Spring 2001.
Neuhaus, Volker. Schreiben gegen die verstreichende Zeit. Zu Leben und Werk von Günter Grass. München: Deutsche Taschenbuch Verlag, 1997. German Studies Review 23:1 (2000) 198-199.
Campus Phone:
(641) 269-3097
Fax:
(641) 269-4985
High School:
Fort Hunt HS (Alexandria, VA); Brussels American HS (Brussels, Belgium)
College:
Georgetown University
College Graduation Year:
1986
Off-Campus Study:
Eberhard-Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany
Personal Interests:
Travel, pets, food, fiction
On-Campus Address:
231B Alumni Recitation Hall
Grinnell, IA 50112
United States
Office Hours:
Mondays and Tuesdays 9-11, and by appointment.
Education / Degrees:
Ph.D., Harvard University 1996 B.S., Georgetown University 1986 Eberhard-Karls Universität Tübingen, 1983-1985
Academic Interests:
Holocaust and Genocide Studies Intersections of History and Fiction Modernist and Postmodernist Literature and Culture German Colonialism German Cinema
Media Mentions:
Commentary: Should We Really Be Surprised to Hear About Sexual Harassment on Capitol Hill?
Fortune / November 20, 2017
Will gun violence lead to a growing 'dark tourism' industry?
Washington Post / March 27, 2018
Postcards from Auschwitz
Publishers Weekly. 265.7 (Feb. 12, 2018): p73+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Postcards from Auschwitz
Daniel P. Reynolds. New York Univ., $35
(336p) ISBN 978-1-4798-6043-2
Reynolds, professor of modern languages at Grinnell College, incisively scrutinizes the intersection of tourism and Holocaust remembrance in this revealing book. He first questions how sites associated with the Holocaust interact with the tourism industry, defending that industry against claims that all disaster tourism is superficial or voyeuristic. He then discusses how representations of the Holocaust at heavily visited locations (such as Auschwitz and Dachau) have evolved over time as knowledge and political agendas have changed, addressing specifically the "memory boom" of the 1990s that helped spur the refashioning of many sites into museums. At lesser-known sites, such as Chelmno and Sobibor, he explores the different approaches to preservation and discusses whether commemoration alters history. Cities central to the Holocaust enter his view, too, as Reynolds outlines the dilemmas in Warsaw posed by the desire to commemorate both Polish Catholic and Jewish victims of Nazi aggression while acknowledging Polish complicity. In Berlin, "counter-memorials" (purposefully inconspicuous memorials that aim to question the idea of memorialization) invite alternative interpretations of history, while Israel's Yad Vashem offers a redemptive narrative for those lost during the Holocaust and Washington, D.C.'s Holocaust Museum reveals, in Reynolds's view, an anxiety about Holocaust memory in a period when eyewitnesses are dying. Reynolds covers a wide range of issues, handling his subject carefully and thoroughly. While he sometimes belabors his points, he raises important questions about history, tourism, and genocide. (Apr.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Postcards from Auschwitz." Publishers Weekly, 12 Feb. 2018, p. 73+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A528615549/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=d69c3033. Accessed 4 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A528615549
POSTCARDS FROM AUSCHWITZ
Holocaust Tourism and the Meaning of Remembrance
by Daniel P. Reynolds
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KIRKUS REVIEW
An academic study of the nascent discipline of “Holocaust tourism.”
To conduct his research, Reynolds (Modern Languages/Grinnell Coll.) visited the sites once devoted to the destruction of all European Jews and others who were offensive to the Nazi regime, traveling to the museums, monuments, and attractions dedicated to the millions murdered by the Third Reich. He joined the crowds that arrive at the archetypal death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, which “saw records attendance in 2016, receiving more than two million visitors from all over the world”—and where visitors can purchase postcards that showcase evidence of the atrocities that occurred so many decades ago. “What remains to be seen,” writes the author, “is whether these visitors take any lessons with them after they leave.” Reynolds also journeyed to Majdanek, Sobibór, and Treblinka and toured the monuments in Warsaw, Poland, where law now forbids any hint of Polish culpability in Nazi crimes. In Berlin, the author went to the House of the Wannsee Conference and explores the latest “countermonuments.” His tour continued at the prodigious Yad Vashem complex in Jerusalem, and the last stop was the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., where some observers have found cause for concern about the Americanization of the Holocaust. The author’s astute text does not invite a cursory reading; his penchant for academic prose and prolixity will appeal primarily to scholars. Throughout, the author depicts a graphic journey of discovery that reveals bits of kitsch and many troubling questions: Do Holocaust tourists come as casual sightseers or as pilgrims? Where is evidence, in those dedicated places, of redemption? Soon there will be no survivors of the Holocaust; what will the places, monuments, and museums tell future generations? Unlike Tim Cole in his 1999 book Selling the Holocaust, Reynolds remains sanguine about the efficacy of Holocaust tourism.
A diligent, sometimes-laborious study of the necessity and uses of Holocaust tourism.
Pub Date: April 17th, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4798-6043-2
Page count: 336pp
Publisher: New York Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 27th, 2018