Lawrence Langer Early Life and Education
Lawrence L. Langer (born 1929) is an American scholar, Holocaust analyst, and professor of English and Holocaust education. Lawrence L. Langer was born to Irving and Esther Langer in New York City. He received his BA from City College of New York in 1951 and graduated with high distinction, magna cum laude. Langer received his Master of Arts in 1952 and then PhD in 1961, both from Harvard University. Lawrence L. Langer is married to his wife of 64 years, Nancy. Lawrence and Nancy currently reside at their home in Newton, Massachusetts. Beginning of Holocaust interest In 1963, Langer received a Fulbright lectureship to go to University of Graz and teach American literature. While there, a colleague asked him if he wanted to visit Auschwitz and he accepted the offer. Langer received a visa, and in May of 1964, he visited Auschwitz, which was deserted apart from Soviet soldiers. Auschwitz was a life-changing experience for him and he realized that there was no literature written at the time about concentration camp experiences. Upon returning to Simmons College, Lawrence L. Langer approached the administration to see if he could teach a course on The Literature of Atrocity, which would be about the genocide during World War II. This literature course at Simmons College, taught in 1965, was the first Holocaust literature class ever taught. After a few years, he took a sabbatical in Germany from 1968-1969 and when he returned in June, he had completed 90% of his first book on Holocaust literature, titled “Holocaust and Literary Imagination.” Career Lawrence L. Langer holds an extensive teaching background that began at the University of Connecticut in 1957, where he was an English instructor until 1958, when he began teaching at Simmons College as an Instructor to a Professor of English until 1976. Ensuing this, in the Spring of 1977, he began teaching at Yale University where he was an English lecturer and Guest Fellow of Morse College. Between 1976 and 1992, Langer returned to Simmons College and continued there as a Professor of English and Holder of the Alumnae Endowed Chair. Presently, Langer remains the Alumnae Chair Professor of English, emeritus. In Fall 2002, Langer was a Strassler Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University. Current opinions about Holocaust literature and meaning After years of researching the Holocaust, Lawrence L. Langer has become skeptical of world peace. He realistically believes that the world is imperfect and students should be taught how to live in this world rather than solely focus on making the world perfect. Langer believes that when something negative happens, people have the impulse to learn something from it and therefore, if no lesson is learned from the Holocaust, it had no meaning. People knew before the Holocaust to help those being persecuted and that it never should have happened. He believes that the only thing the Holocaust showed us was that the Germans are capable of cruelty to which there is no limit. Langer believes that Anne Frank’s diary should not be considered Holocaust literature, because it reveals nothing about concentration camps, which was an indication of a true experience of the Holocaust. He fears that people will read her diary and believe that they know everything about the Holocaust, when in reality she had no idea what was going on at the time. Lawrence L. Langer believes that Anne’s literature would not have nearly been as optimistic if it were written while she was in a concentration camp. Langer opines that people who lived through the horrors of the Holocaust are able to get on with their lives, but never are able to get over it. He believes that the word survivor should not be used to describe those who endured the Holocaust but that each person should be referred to by their own name since no two are identical. Langer hopes that people will gain from his books the understanding of the reality of the Holocaust: that it was the story of a mass murder. Lawrence L. Langer aims to challenge the belief that the Holocaust shows the perseverance of the human spirit and that it actually displays humans in their most vulnerable state. Awards Between 1963 and 1964, Lawrence L. Langer was recognized as a fulbright Professor of American Literature at the University of Graz in Graz, Austria. Langer received an NEH Fellowship for Independent Studies and Research between 1978 and 1979. Between 1988 and 1989, Langer received the Outstanding Teacher of the Year Award at Simmons College. Between 1989 and 1990, Langer was awarded the NEH Senior Fellowship for College Teachers and Independent Scholars. During Summer 1991 and between 1993 and 1996, Langer was the director of the National Endowment for the Humanities Seminar on “Literature of the Holocaust” at Simmons College. Between September and December of 1996, Langer was the JB & Maurice Senior Scholar-in-Residence at the US Holocaust Research Center of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC. From September to December of 1997, Langer was prestiged as a Koerner Fellow for the Study of the Holocaust, Oxford Center for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, Yarnton Manor, Oxford, England. In May 2003, Langer served as the Resident Scholar at the Rockefeller Foundation Study and Conference Center in Bellagio, Italy. In 1996, Langer was awarded the honorary degree, Doctor of Humane Letters from Simmons College, which he also received in 2000 from Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles and in 2002 from Ohio Wesleyan University. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_L._Langer |