November 11

“A Mystery Memoir: Uncovering the Secrets of an Internment Camp in Postwar Czechoslovakia”

A typewritten booklet was discovered at an auction in Detroit many years ago. After translating and researching the recorded memoir, the research team of our speakers and John Sullivan discovered that the booklet’s author was the head doctor of a camp for displaced ethnic Germans in Czechoslovakia during the years after WWII.

This presentation is about the joys of ongoing historical discovery while exploring the doctor’s distressing story, and what we can learn from it about our own historical moment.

Anabel Aliaga-Buchenau, Ph.D. is a Professor of German and currently serves as Chair of the Department of Languages, Cultures and Translation. She was awarded the prestigious Bank of America Teaching Award in 2021 and the Board of Governors’ Excellence in Teaching Award in 2022. She was a nominee for the Carnegie/Case Professor of the Year in 2011 and from 2009-2012 she was honored with the Bonnie E. Cone Teaching Professorship at UNC Charlotte. A native of Germany, Aliaga-Buchenau’s training is in comparative literature. She has served as Professor of German at Charlotte since 2002. In her research, Aliaga-Buchenau focuses on 19th century immigrants from Germany and their literary production. In particular, she is interested in women immigrants to the Americas. She also works on the translation of memoirs and novels from Spanish to English or German to English.

Jules Geaney-Moore, M.A. moved to North Carolina from New Hampshire in 2014 where they obtained a B.A. in Psychology and English at Guilford College. Jules now holds a Graduate Certificate in Human-Computer Interaction and another one in Professional and Technical Writing, as well as an M.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies from UNC Charlotte. Jules works as the Business Services Coordinator at the Department of Languages, Cultures and Translation. The research for this project came up independently as a passion project in 2020 and led to Jules enrolling in the Master of Arts in History program at UNC Charlotte with an expected graduation date of December 2026.

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Independent Picture House (4237 Raleigh St, Charlotte, NC 28213), 6 pm