Peter Novick
{{Short description|American historian (1934–2012)}}
{{About|the historian|the scientist|Peter Novick (scientist)}}
Peter Novick (July 26, 1934, Jersey City – February 17, 2012, Chicago){{cite news |first=Dennis |last=Hevesi |title=Peter Novick, Wrote Controversial Book on Holocaust, Dies at 77 |date=March 13, 2012 |newspaper=New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/us/peter-novick-wrote-divisive-holocaust-book-dies-at-77.html }} was an American historian who was Professor of History at the University of Chicago.{{cite web |date=March 2, 2012 |title=Peter Novick, celebrated scholar of history, 1934–2012 |url=https://news.uchicago.edu/article/2012/03/02/peter-novick-celebrated-scholar-history-1934-2012 }}{{cite web |url=http://alumniandfriends.uchicago.edu/site/c.mjJXJ7MLIsE/b.8101525/k.8F57/In_Memoriam.htm |title=In Memoriam | Alumni & Friends | University of Chicago |access-date=2014-05-31 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140531144625/http://alumniandfriends.uchicago.edu/site/c.mjJXJ7MLIsE/b.8101525/k.8F57/In_Memoriam.htm |archive-date=2014-05-31 }} He was best known for writing That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession and The Holocaust in American Life. The latter title has also been published as The Holocaust and Collective Memory, especially for non-US anglophonic markets.
Major works
=''That Noble Dream''=
That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession questions the origins and prevalence of the notion of objectivity in current and 20th century history. It focuses on developments in university history departments within the United States, though it traces the concept of objectivity in history's origins back to 19th century Germany and Leopold von Ranke.Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession, (Cambridge University Press, 2007), 26–28.
=''The Holocaust in American Life''=
Jeffrey C. Alexander has examined Novick's "particularization of the Holocaust" in The Holocaust in American Life, he has contrasted his universalizing view of the Holocaust (that it can be a lesson for all peoples), versus what he perceives as Novick's inextricable connection of the genocide with nationalism and Jewish identity politics.{{cite book|author=Jeffrey C. Alexander|author-link=Jeffrey C. Alexander|quote=Whereas Novick describes a particularization of the Holocaust—its being captured by Jewish identity politics—I describe its universalization. Where Novick describes a nationalization, I trace internationalization.|title=Remembering the Holocaust: A Debate|date=2009|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0195326222|page=86}}
Novick's thesis, that the Holocaust was largely ignored in the years after World War II due to Cold War concerns that encouraged a rapprochement with West Germany and a distaste among American Jews for the claiming of victim status, has been challenged in the years since his book was published, as for example by Hasia Diner in her book We Remember With Reverence and Love: American Jews and the Myth of Silence After the Holocaust, 1945-1962,{{Cite book |last=Diner |first=Hasia |title=We Remember With Reverence and Love: American Jews and the Myth of Silence After the Holocaust, 1945-1962 |publisher=New York University Press |year=2009 |location=New York}} and in the anthology After the Holocaust: Challenging the Myth of Silence.{{Cite book |title=After the Holocaust: Challenging the Myth of Silence |publisher=Routledge |year=2012 |editor-last=Cesarani |editor-first=David |editor-last2=Sundquist |editor-first2=Eric}}
Career
Novick founded the Jewish studies program at the University of Chicago.{{cite news |last1=Kakutani |first1=Michiko |title='The Holocaust in American Life': Taking Aim at the Symbolism of the Holocaust |url=https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/99/08/15/daily/081799novick-book-review.html |work=New York Times |date=August 17, 1999}}
Personal life
Novick earned his bachelor's and doctoral degrees from Columbia University, in 1957 and 1965 respectively.
Though deemed a precursor, Novick was a sharp critic of Norman Finkelstein, but also of Finkelstein's opponent Alan Dershowitz.{{cite web|last=Kurtzman |first=Joey |url=http://www.jewcy.com/post/novick_defends_finkelstein |title=Novick Defends Finkelstein by Michael Weiss |publisher=Jewcy.com |date=2007-05-08 |access-date=2012-05-25}} He died in 2012 in Chicago of lung cancer.
Bibliography
{{Incomplete list|date=May 2020}}
- {{cite book |title=The Resistance versus Vichy: The Purge of Collaborators in Liberated France|location=New York|publisher=Columbia University Press|year=1968 }}
- {{cite book |title=That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession|publisher=Cambridge UP|year=1988 }}
- {{cite book |title=The Holocaust in American life |location=Boston |publisher=Houghton Mifflin |year=1999 }}
- {{cite journal |date=Spring 2007 |title=Comments on Aleida Assmann's lecture : comment delivered at the Twentieth Annual Lecture of the GHI, November 16, 2006 |journal=Bulletin of the German Historical Institute |volume=40 |pages=26–31 |url=https://www.ghi-dc.org/publications/ghi-bulletin.html?L=0 }}
- {{cite journal |author=Assmann, Aleida |author-link=Aleida Assmann |date=Spring 2007 |title=Response to Peter Novick |journal=Bulletin of the German Historical Institute |volume=40 |pages=33–38 |url=https://www.ghi-dc.org/publications/ghi-bulletin.html?L=0 }}
References
{{Reflist}}
External links
- {{C-SPAN|61178}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Novick, Peter}}
Category:20th-century American historians
Category:Jewish American historians
Category:American historians of the Holocaust
Category:University of Chicago faculty