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The 2012-13 Canisius College Archives Speaker Series will present Chana Revell Kotzin, PhD,  Community Archive Project Director, Jewish Buffalo Archives Project/Bureau of Jewish Education, speaking about “Preserving 170 Years of Jewish Memories in Buffalo,” Wednesday, November 7, 2012 in the Bouwhuis Library, 2nd Floor from 2:30-4 pm. This event is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served.

The Jewish Buffalo Archives Project (JBAP) seeks to create a comprehensive archive of Jewish institutional, organizational and group documentary holdings, as well as family materials in the Buffalo and Niagara area. Since 2007, Kotzin has overseen the project and secured archival donations from the oldest synagogues in Buffalo to the area’s longest running Jewish sleep-away summer camp, as well as a range of family donations and many other Jewish groups or initiatives. She’s recorded a series of oral histories with a wide array of individuals that complements the documentary record. Much of the work of the project has involved working with the University Archives of the University at Buffalo, who are partnering with the project to provide guidance, repository services and access services. To view the online project click here: http://library.buffalo.edu/archives/jbap/

Kotzin was born and educated in Britain, and initially followed a career in geological sciences including stints on various North Sea oilrigs. In 1994, she retrained as an historian and received a PhD in history from the University of Southampton in the UK in 2000. Her doctoral dissertation focused on the ways in which European Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi anti-semitism were received in Britain during the 1930s.

Kotzin has served as guest curator, scholarly advisor, and researcher for an exhibition at the Jewish Museum of Maryland, “Lives Lost, Lives Found: Baltimore’s German Jewish Refugees, 1933-1945.” She has researched and written oral histories for the Jewish Women’s Archive (JWA), an on-line resource for the history of Jewish women, with the aid of fellowships and grants from the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute and the Jewish Women’s Archives. She has also researched and written about aspects of Jewish women’s history in the twentieth century, and has published works in Shofar, The Journal of Holocaust Education, and Jewish History and Culture and has taught courses on Anglo-Jewish History and Modern Jewish History.

The Archives Speaker Series showcases scholars with a special understanding of archival research, based on their own experiences; and who have completed a book or other expression of scholarship reliant on archival research.

For more information contact: Kathleen De Laney, Archivist and Special Collections Librarian at 716-888-8421 or delaneyk@canisius.edu

Submitted by: Kathleen DeLaney, archvist/reference librarian