Erica Lehrer

American anthropologist

Erica Lehrer (born 1969) is an anthropologist, curator, and academic specializing in post-Holocaust Jewish culture, museum studies, ethnography, and public scholarship. She is Associate Professor of History and Sociology/Anthropology at Concordia University, where she holds a Canada Research Chair in Museum and Heritage Studies and serves as director of the Curating and Public Scholarship Lab at Concordia University.^[1]^[2]

Education

She has received a B.A. from Grinnell College and M.A. and PhD degrees from the University of Michigan.^[1]

Career

In 2013, Lehrer curated "Souvenir, Talisman, Toy," an ethnographic exhibition of historical and contemporary Polish-made figurines depicting Jews (including the modern antisemitic Jew with a coin figurines), at the Ethnographic Museum of Kraków. A smaller selection of objects and media from the exhibit was on display from July 28 – August 30, 2013, at the Galicia Jewish Museum.^[3]^[4]^[5] In 2016, she curated a new exhibition at the Galicia Jewish Museum titled "A Single Point Perspective/Punkt Zbiezny."

Personal life and family

Lehrer's uncle was physicist Frederick Reif, who was married to Mildred Dresselhaus.^[6] Her mother, Liane Reif-Lehrer, was a Holocaust survivor and professor at Harvard Medical School.^[7]^[8] Her brother, Damon Lehrer, is a children's book author.^[9]

Awards

Canada Research Chair in Museum and Heritage Studies^[2]
Canada Research Chair in Post-Conflict Memory, Ethnography and Museology
Hazel D. Cole Fellowship in Jewish Studies, University of Washington^[10]
Illinois Humanities Post-Doctoral Fellowship, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign^[11]

Publications

"Curatorial Dreams: Critics Imagine Exhibitions", McGill-Queen's University Press, 2016, ISBN 978-0-77354683-7
"Jewish Space in Contemporary Poland", Indiana University Press, 2015, ISBN 978-0-253-01503-7
Na szczęście to Żyd / Lucky Jews: Poland's Jewish Figurines, Ha!art Press, 2014, ISBN 978-83-64057-42-7
Jewish Poland Revisited: Heritage Tourism in Unquiet Places, Indiana University Press, 2013, ISBN 978-0-253-00886-2
co-editor, Curating Difficult Knowledge: Violent Pasts in Public Places, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, ISBN 978-0-230-29672-5

References

^ ^a ^b "Faculty Page, Department of History, Concordia University".
^ ^a ^b "Canada Research Chairs - Erica Lehrer".
^ Why Are the Poles Amassing Jewish Figurines?, Haaretz, Benny Mer, 20 November 2014
^ Poland's mantelpiece Jews, The JC, 4 December 2014
^ Cała, Alina. "„Pamiątka, Zabawka, Talizman/Souvenir, Talisman, Toy”(wystawa w Muzeum Etnograficznym w Krakowie, 2013 rok, kuratorka: Erica Lehrer)." Studia Litteraria et Historica 3-4 (2015): 265-271.
^ "Frederick Reif - Obituary". www.aapt.org. Retrieved 2022-06-18.
^ "Liane Reif". encyclopedia.ushmm.org. Retrieved 2022-06-18.
^ "In Memoriam - 2019 | College of Chemistry". chemistry.berkeley.edu. Retrieved 2022-06-18.
^ "Damon Lehrer – Janna Co". jannaco.co. Retrieved 2022-06-18.
^ "Faculty Page, Faculty of Arts and Science, Concordia University".
^ "Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign". Archived from the original on 2013-02-14.