Dr. Brett Kaplan

Biography

Brett Ashley Kaplan received his Ph.D. in Rhetoric from the University of California, Berkeley in 2002. He is a Professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where he leads the Initiative on Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies. Kaplan's work includes books such as 'Unwanted Beauty: Aesthetic Pleasure in Holocaust Representation' (2007) and 'Landscapes of Holocaust Postmemory' (2011), which explore the intersections of the Shoah with art and space. He has also published 'Jewish Anxiety Novels: Philip Roth' (2015) and is currently editing 'Critical Memory Studies: New Approaches' with Bloomsbury. His novel 'Rare Stuff' was published by Spuyten Duyvil in 2022. Kaplan teaches a variety of courses related to Jewish American literature, minority cultures in the United States, literary responses to the Holocaust, and memory studies. His research interests encompass Holocaust and Jewish American literature, race, ethnicity, and contemporary visual performance art.

Research Interests