Brigitte Sion

Dr. Brigitte Sion is Director of Learning and Engagement at Central Synagogue in New York City.

A writer, editor, translator, and teacher, she earned her Ph.D. in Performance Studies from New York University in May 2008. Her dissertation examined the performance of memory at the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin and the Memorial to the Disappeared in Buenos Aires. She also holds Master’s degrees in French (Penn), Journalism (Columbia) and Judaic Studies (Hebrew Union College).

She was assistant professor/faculty at NYU’s Religious Studies Program and Department of Journalism from 2008 to 2011.

A professional journalist, she is the author of four published books on social and cultural topics, a dozen academic articles, and three scholarly books about post-genocide memory to be published in 2012. She has written over 2,000 newspaper articles about arts and culture, international politics, Jewish affairs, and current events. She was the director of projects for photographer Frédéric Brenner and the executive director of CICAD, an organization combating anti-Semitism in Geneva, Switzerland, where she was born and raised.

Brigitte Sion’s expertise ranges from Jewish arts to the history of Jews in Switzerland to ritual practices and to Sephardic culture.

- “From Purimspiel to Polish Masquerade: Performing Jews in Tykocin,” in: Jews and Theater in an Intercultural Context, ed. by Edna Nahshon, Leiden/Boston: Brill, forthcoming (2011).

- Various entries in The Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World , ed. Norman Stillman, Leiden/Boston: Brill, 5 vol., 2010.

- L’Aventure du Judaïsme Libéral à Genève, Geneva, FJL, 2007 (A history of Reform Judaism in Geneva).

- Report on Switzerland for the American Jewish Yearbook (2008).

- «Switzerland» in: Cultural Guide to Jewish Europe, Seuil/Chronicle, 2002.

- ABC du Judaïsme, Geneva, CICAD, 2002 (An introduction to Judaism).

Courses taught: The Saga of Spanish Jews; The Jews from the Ottoman Empire; Jews and Food.

Her articles have appeared in Tenou’a , Hayom, myjewishlearning.com among others.

Brigitte Sion is a renowned expert on memorials, monuments, commemorative practices and memory tourism associated with genocide or mass violence (Germany, Argentina, Cambodia, Netherlands, France, September 11, 2011).

- Absent Bodies, Uncertain Memorials: Performing Memory in Berlin and Buenos Aires, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, an academic imprint of Rowman Littlefield, forthcoming.

- Editor, Staging Violent Death: The Dark Performances of Thanatourism. London: Seagull Books, “Enactment” series ed. by Richard Schechner / distr. U. Chicago Press, forthcoming.

- “Conflicting Sites of Memory in post-Genocide Cambodia,” Humanity, vol. 1, No. 2, Spring 2011 (ed. Samuel Moyn).

- “Performing Memory: Berlin’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe,” in: Memory and Memorialization: From Absence to Representation, ed. Denis Peschanski. Paris: Hermann, forthcoming.

- “Missing Bodies, Conflicted Rituals: Performing Memory in Germany, Argentina, and Cambodia,” in After Violence: The Dynamics of Religion, Trauma, and Reconciliation, ed. Andrea Bieler and Hans-Martin Gutmann. Frankfurt: Otto Lembeck, 2011.

- “Affective Memory, Ineffective Functionality: Experiencing Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial,” in: Memorialization in Germany since 1945, ed. by William Niven and Chloe Paver. London: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2009.

She wrote some of the panels to the exhibition Reflecting on September 11, 2001 at the New York State Museum in Albany (opening September 2011).

- Interview with Cliff Chanin, from the 9/11 Memorial Museum

Brigitte Sion has published extensively about Holocaust memory, Holocaust denial, the history of anti-Semitism and contemporary media of Judeophobia.

- “Anne Frank, Icon of Redemption,” in: Mediating Anne Frank, ed. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and Jeffrey Shandler. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, forthcoming (2011).

- “From Hagiography to Iconoclasm: The Nazi Magazine Signal and its Mediations,” in Monsters in the Mirror: Representations of Nazism in Post-War Popular Culture, ed. by Maartje Abbenhuis and Sara Buttsworth. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2010.

- Max Ehrlich: Le Théâtre contre la Barbarie, Geneva, Metropolis, 2004 (A biography of a famous German-Jewish theater actor who performed in Nazi camps).

- Anti-Semitism: Knowing it Better, Fighting it Better, Geneva, CICAD, 1998.

- “Anti-Semitic Letters to the Editor in Swiss Media and the Crisis over Holocaust-Era Dormant Accounts (1995-2002),” in: Jewish Images in the Media, ed. Josef Seethaler. Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, 2007.

Brigitte Sion’s interest spans from the arts to material culture. Most notably:

- The Geneva International Auto Show 1905-2005, Geneva, Slatkine, 2004. (A visual history of the largest automobile show in the world for its centennial)

- Circulez, Genevois! Y'a tout à voir! Geneva, Slatkine, 2002. (An iconography book about the impact of early automobiles on social, urban, and economic life)

- «Mater l’oubli: le jeu d’échecs dans la Vie mode d’emploi de Georges Perec», in: Echiquiers d’encre. Geneva: Droz, 1998.