Frances Tanzer
Assistant Professor, History
Scholarly Interests
Postwar Europe, Holocaust History, Genocide Studies, Refugees, Borders, Art, Popular Culture
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Frances Tanzer is a historian of modern Jewish culture, the Holocaust, and Modern Europe. She is interested in writing histories of modern Europe that focus on the paradoxical but crucial roles of refugees and minorities in shaping the continent's identities and cultures. Her research examines the aftermath of the Holocaust in Central Europe; refugees and migration; Holocaust memory; and the history of antisemitism and Islamophobia. A sustained interest in the visual culture and performance unites her explorations of these themes. At Clark, she offers classes in European history, the Holocaust, and refugee history.
Currently, Frances is working on a book entitled, Vanishing Vienna: Jewish Absence in Postwar Central Europe, which analyzes the fraught attempts to restore the cultural dynamism of pre-Nazi Vienna as Austrians and Jews reimagined themselves and Central European culture after the Holocaust. This book focuses on how Jews and non-Jews experienced, confronted, and represented Jewish absence as they pursued projects of cultural reconstruction from the Anschluss in 1938 to the present-day. Despite ongoing antisemitism, Jewish refugees and remigrants collaborated on cultural reconstruction and also became objects of intense fascination in the postwar period. Her second book project, Klezmer Dynasty: An Intimate History of Modern Jewish Culture, 1880-2019, focuses on her own family, the Brandwein klezmer musicians of Habsburg Galicia. They innovated klezmer music and Jewish culture from 1880 to 2019 as they experienced the changes wrought by modernity, migration, the Holocaust, and its aftermath. This project connects the large-scale transformations that defined modern Jewish history to personal stories of reinvention.
Degrees
- Ph.D. in History, Brown University, 2018
- M.A. in History, Brown University, 2013
- B.A. in History and Visual Arts, University of Toronto, 2010
Affiliated Department(s)
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Scholarly and Creative Works
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Oxford Handbook of Holocaust Memory
Oxford Handbooks
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2025
Oxford University Press
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“Reconsidering Viennese Nostalgia in Exile and in Postwar Austria”
Vienna, 1890 – 1938: Capital of Tradition, Innovation, Promise, and Peril
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Clark University
April
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2023
Sponsored by Clark University; Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies; History; Visual and Performing Arts; Academic Innovation Fund
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Erasures and Eradications in Modern Viennese Art, Architecture and Design
Book launch
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Central European University
February
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2023
Sponsored by Central European University
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The Emigration of Egon Schiele: Jewish Refugees and Austrian Modernism in New York
College Art Association
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New York, NY
February
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2023
Sponsored by HISTORIANS OF GERMAN, SCANDINAVIAN, AND CENTRAL EUROPEAN ART AND ARCHITECTURE
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Habsburg Melodies on the Move: Jewish Popular Performers and Their Repertoires from Pre-Nazi Central Europe to Postwar Austria
American Historical Association
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Philadelphia, PA
January
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2023
Sponsored by Conference on Latin American History; Central European History Society
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Vanishing Vienna: Philosemitism and Modernism in a Post-Nazi City
Jewish Culture and Contexts
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2023
University of Pennsylvania Press
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Review of: Auf die Tour! Jüdinnen und Juden in Singspielhalle, Kabarett und Varieté–Zwischen Habsburgermonarchie und Amerika By Susanne Korbel. Vienna and Cologne: Böhlau, 2020. 623-625
Central European History
December
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2022
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Vol. 55
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Issue #4
Cambridge University Press
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Cambridge
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UK
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GENDER, AGE, AND SPACES OF (JEWISH) ALTERITY IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY GERMANY
Association for Jewish Studies
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Boston, MA
December
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2022
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Habsburg Melodies
Representing Absence: Refugees, Forced Migration, Aftermath
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Clark University
April 2022
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2022
Sponsored by Clark University / Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies
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Erasures and Eradications in Viennese Modernist Art, Architecture and Design
Chapter: The Emigration of Egon Schiele: Jewish Refugees and Austrian Modernism in New YorkPublished by Routledge
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2022
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European Fantasies: Modernism and Jewish Absence at the Venice Biennale of Art, 1948–1956.
Published in Contemporary European History
May
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2022
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Vol. 31
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Issue #2
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Klezmer Dynasty: An Intimate History of Jewish Culture after 1945
Lessons and Legacies
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Ottawa, ON
November
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2022
Sponsored by Holocaust Education Foundation
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Vanishing Vienna: Jewish Absence in Postwar Central Europe
Invited Lecture
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Lehigh University
October, 2021
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2021
Sponsored by Philip and Muriel berman Center for Jewish Studies with the Humanities Center
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GSA Seminar: Performing Exile: Performance and the History of Refugees from Nazi Europe
German Studies Association
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Online
October
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2021
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"Vanishing Vienna: Reflections on Jewish Absence after Genocide"
Center for Austrian Studies Speaker Series
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University of Minnesota
April
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2021
Sponsored by Center for Austrian Studies
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Viennese Cabaret in Bogotá and Caracas: Hugo Wiener and Cissy Kraner’s Project of Cultural Translation, 1938-1955
Association of Jewish Studies
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Washington D.C. (Online)
December
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2020
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"Modernism and Jewish Absence at The Venice Biennale of Art, 1948-1956"
American Historical Association
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Seattle, WA (Online)
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Awards & Grants
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Klezmer Dynasty: An Intimate History of Jewish Culture, 1880-2019
The Remarque Institute at NYU
Jan. 1, 2024 - May. 16, 2024
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Klezmer Dynasty: An Intimate History of Jewish Culture, 1880-2019
United States Holocaust Museum
Jan. 1, 2021 - May. 31, 2021
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