Hattiesburg Arts Council Fall Lecture | Arts & Culture

The following is a press release from the Hattiesburg Art Council:

The Hattiesburg Arts Council presents Dr. Edward Hafer, Assistant Professor of Music History at the University of Southern Mississippi.

 Dr. Ed Hafer who teaches Music History at USM, will be the Hattiesburg Arts Council’s fall lecture speaker. The lecture will be held at 7 p.m. on Nov. 8 at Oddfellows Gallery located at 119 East Front Street in Hattiesburg.  This event is free and open to the public.

 Dr. Hafer’s research interests lie in the music of the nineteenth century, music & painting, and music of the Holocaust.  His latest area of research deals with cabarets in the Dutch refugee camp Westerbork, where his former teacher performed as a prisoner. In 1942, the German government assumed control of the camp and turned it into a way station through which Jews captured in the Netherlands would pass before being deported to the eastern death camps. Dr. Hafer’s talk will consider the oddly symbiotic relationship between the performers and the camp commandant and document the prisoners’ concerted effort to use the productions to curry favor with camp leadership as an act of survival.  Those productions included short skits, music, comedy, and dancing.  Dr. Hafer will supplement his discussion with images, music, and video from actual Westerbork productions.        

 For more information contact: Patty Hall at 601-553-6005