Catherine Chatterley is a Canadian historian, specializing in the study of modern European history, the Holocaust, and research on antisemitism, and is the Founding Director of the
Canadian Institute for the Study of Antisemitism The Canadian Institute for the Study of Antisemitism (CISA) is one of seven institutes in the world dedicated to the scholarly study of antisemitism. Founded in 2010 by Canadian historian Catherine Chatterley, the Institute is a national organizat ...
(CISA). Chatterley is Founding Editor-in-Chief o ''Antisemitism Studies'' the first scholarly journal devoted to the study of antisemitism. It is published by Indiana University Press. Chatterley appeared in the documentary called "Unmasked: Judeophobia" (2011), where she was one of the scholars interviewed.Featured Commentator: Catherine Chatterley, PhD ''Unmasked: Judeophobia''. Retrieved 25 August 2012. That same year, she was invited as an expert scholar to participate in the Canadian All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Antisemitism, which produced the Ottawa Protocol.
Her undergraduate studies included European history and Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at the University of Manitoba, European Intellectual History at Concordia University (Montreal), followed by a doctorate in Modern European and Jewish History, and German-Jewish Literature, which she completed at
The University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the be ...
under the direction of
Moishe Postone
Moishe Postone (April 17, 1942 – March 19, 2018) was a Canadian historian and social theorist. He was a professor of history at the University of Chicago, where he was part of the Committee on Jewish Studies.
Life and career
Postone was bor ...
Syracuse University Press
Syracuse University Press, founded in 1943, is a university press that is part of Syracuse University. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses.
History
SUP was formed in August 1943 when president William P. Tolley pro ...
published her first book, ''Disenchantment: George Steiner and the Meaning of Western Civilization After Auschwitz'', in their series on Religion, Theology, and the Holocaust, edited by
Steven T. Katz
Steven Theodore Katz (born August 24, 1944) is an American philosopher and scholar. He is the founding director of the Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies at Boston University in Massachusetts, United States, where he holds the Alvin J. and Shir ...
. ''Disenchantment'' was named a 2011
National Jewish Book Award
The Jewish Book Council (Hebrew: ), founded in 1944, is an organization encouraging and contributing to Jewish literature.Juan Asensio in France and Ricardo Gil Soeiro in Portugal, Chatterley is recognized as a leading scholar of
George Steiner
Francis George Steiner, FBA (April 23, 1929 – February 3, 2020) was a Franco-American literary critic, essayist, philosopher, novelist, and educator. He wrote extensively about the relationship between language, literature and society, and the ...
, an internationally renowned cultural critic, and has published two chapters in international collections about his work, both edited by Ricardo Gil Soeiro. Steiner died on February 3, 2020, and Chatterley wrote an obituary for the Times of Israel.
As the Founding Director of CISA, Catherine Chatterley was invited to be a member of the official government delegation to Israel in January 2014. From 2002 to 2008 Chatterley taught history at the University of Winnipeg and from 2007 to 2018 at the University of Manitoba.
Founding of CISA
Chatterley created the Canadian Institute for the Study of Antisemitism (CISA) in the summer of 2010 to "help facilitate the scholarly study of antisemitism and to educate Canadians about the phenomenon in its classical and contemporary forms." CISA is the first national academic institution in Canada dedicated to the scholarly study of a subject that is usually addressed by political advocacy organizations. It is the only such institution in the world founded by a non-Jewish scholar. The Institute sponsors the leading academic periodical on the subject. Antisemitism Studies ' is published by Indiana University Press and Chatterley is Editor-in-Chief.
Involvement in public debates
Chatterley was involved in the public debate over the place of a permanent Holocaust gallery proposed for the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR).Catherine Chatterley leads Opposition to Holocaust Obfuscation campaign in Canada Defending History, 7 April 2011. Retrieved 22 August 2012. In an editorial criticizing the attempt to remove the proposed Holocaust gallery from the museum, she stated, "the problem with the CMHR is it is mired in the politics of Canadian ethnic identity rather than rooted in the scholarly study of genocide, Holocaust, and human rights. Subjective feelings are influencing content and design choices rather than objective historical and legal reality and this does not bode well for the international reputation of this institution." This article also described the offensive UCCLA postcard campaign using Orwellian imagery to target supporters of the Holocaust gallery, depicting them as pigs. Chatterley stated unequivocally, "the fact that this kind of postcard was distributed in Canada in 2011, without shame or conscience, by an organization that claims to protect civil liberties, is astonishing. This alone demonstrates the clear need for this museum, its permanent Holocaust gallery, and for the Canadian Institute for the Study of Antisemitism." In 2013, Chatterley interviewed the former curator of the Holocaust gallery and provided the first concrete published information about the content of the CMHR for the public.
Holocaust and Genocide Studies
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) is the United States' official memorial to the Holocaust. Adjacent to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the USHMM provides for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust his ...
published her study of the conflicts and controversies at the CMHR, entitled "Canada's Struggle with Holocaust Memorialization: The War Museum Controversy, Ethnic Identity Politics, and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights."
Israel Apartheid Week (IAW) was another cultural controversy she addressed in the media. In Canada's ''
National Post
The ''National Post'' is a Canadian English-language broadsheet newspaper available in several cities in central and western Canada. The paper is the flagship publication of Postmedia Network and is published Mondays through Saturdays, with ...
'', she said that IAW is a Canadian invention, established at the
University of Toronto
The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public university, public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 ...
in 2005, and "while the event is new, the ideology at the heart of IAW is not. The accusation that Zionism is racist and imperialist by nature is as old as Israel. The Soviet Union was a leading proponent of this conception of Zionism; and it drew on the long history of leftist antisemitism, identifying Jewish nationalism and capitalist imperialism with Judaism and the Jewish bourgeoisie." After Chatterley expressed her concerns about IAW in the national daily, the president of the
University of Winnipeg
The University of Winnipeg (UWinnipeg, UW) is a public research university in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, that offers undergraduate faculties of art, business and economics, education, science and kinesiology and applied health as well as gra ...
addressed the issue and said both sides of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and of wider Middle East issues should be presented and debated. Chatterley expressed her hope that an "intelligent and responsible scholarly approach" would be followed by all university administrations in Canada and worldwide.
Lloyd Axworthy
Lloyd Norman Axworthy (born December 21, 1939) is a Canadian politician, elder statesman and academic. He served as Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. Following his retirement from parliament ...
, the president of the University of Winnipeg, invited Catherine Chatterley to lecture on the subject of antisemitism during Middle East Week in March 2013.
As a scholar of German history and the Holocaust, Chatterley was consulted in 2014 about the problem of stolen art in Canadian museum collections.
Heritage Canada
The National Trust for Canada (french: La Fiducie nationale du Canada; formerly known as the Heritage Canada Foundation) is a national registered charity in Canada with the mandate to inspire and lead action to save historic places, and promot ...
sponsored the Holocaust-era Provenance Research and Best-Practice Guidelines Project, through which they investigated six art galleries in Canada including the
Winnipeg Art Gallery
The Winnipeg Art Gallery (WAG) is an art museum in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Its permanent collection includes over 24,000 works from Canadian, Indigenous Canadian, and international artists. The museum also holds the world's largest collect ...
.
Chatterley has also critiqued comments made by religion writer
Karen Armstrong
Karen Armstrong (born 14 November 1944) is a British author and commentator of Irish Catholic descent known for her books on comparative religion. A former Roman Catholic religious sister, she went from a conservative to a more liberal and ...
in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo and Kosher Grocery murders in Paris. In a Dutch interview, Armstrong claimed that the murders of French Jews by the Hebdo terrorists had nothing to do with antisemitism: "The supermarket attack in Paris was about Palestine, about ISIS. It had nothing to do with antisemitism; many of them are Semites themselves. But they attempt to conquer Palestine and we're not talking about that. We're too implicated and we don't know what to do with it." In response, Chatterley wrote a critical op-ed for The Huffington Post correcting her historical and conceptual errors and arguing that the murders of Jews in Paris had everything to do with antisemitism.
Publications
*"Canada's Struggle with Holocaust Memorialization: The War Museum Controversy, Ethnic Identity Politics, and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights," ''Holocaust and Genocide Studies'' (2015) 29 (2): 189-211.
*''Disenchantment: The Meaning of Western Civilization After Auschwitz'' (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2011)
*"The Antisemitic Imagination," in ''Global Antisemitism: A Crisis of Modernity'', edited by Charles Asher Small (Leiden: Brill, 2013)
*"Language, Humanity, and the Holocaust: The Steinerian Triad," in ''The Wounds of Possibility: Essays on George Steiner'', edited by Ricardo Gil Soeiro (UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012)
*"We Come After: The Holocaust in Steinerian Thought, 1952-1971," in ''O Pensamento Tornado Danca. Estudos em Torno do Pensamento de George Steiner'', edited by Ricardo Gil Soeiro (Lisbon: Roma Editora, 2009): 96-113.
*Review of Derek Penslar, "Jews and the Military: A History," ''American Historical Review'' (2014) 119 (4): 1207-1209.
*Review of Alvin Rosenfeld, editor, "Resurgent Antisemitism: Global Perspectives," Jewish Political Studies Review (Spring 5773/2013), Volume 25, Numbers 1 & 2.
*Review of Ruth Klein, editor, "Nazi Germany, Canadian Responses: Confronting Antisemitism in the Shadow of War," Journal for the Study of Antisemitism (December 2012): 747-751.
*Review of Alon Confino, "Germany as a Culture of Remembrance: Promises and Limits of Writing History," The Hedgehog Review (Summer 2007): 75-78.
Her book, ''Disenchantment: George Steiner and the Meaning of Western Civilization After Auschwitz'', is an intellectual biography of the literary critic. It focuses on his neglected writings on the Holocaust and antisemitism, and explains how and when the Holocaust enters Western consciousness in the decades after World War II.