Dora Apel

Dora Apel (born January 22, 1952) at Wayne State University in Detroit, where she taught from 1994 to 2019. Her work focuses on issues of trauma, memory, race, gender, national identity, war, and the negative impacts of capitalism. Her book, Calling Memory into Place, includes essays that delineate her family's history during and after the Holocaust. She received her Ph.D. in Art History and Ph.D. Certificate in Cultural Studies from the University of Pittsburgh in 1995. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. (2015) Beautiful Terrible Ruins: Detroit and the Anxiety of Decline. Co-authored with Shawn Michelle Smith. Ed. Anthony Lee. Berkeley: University of California Press. (2004) Imagery of Lynching: Black Men, White Women, and the Mob. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. (2002) Memory Effects: The Holocaust and the Art of Secondary Witnessing. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

Selected articles and essays (2020) Farah Al Qasimi—Between Two Worlds: Arab Americans in Detroit Thirsty Cities: Who Owns the Right to Water? In The Routledge Companion to Urban Imaginaries, 25–40. Ed. Christoph Lindner and Miriam Meissner. New York: Routledge, 2018. (2015) The Ruins of Capitalism ‘Hands Up, Don’t Shoot’: Surrendering to Liberal Illusions, Theory and Event 17:3 (2014). Special Issue on “Ferguson and the Tragic Presence of the Past” Violence and Historical Reenactment: From the American Civil War to the Moore’s Ford Lynching. IN: Violence and Visibility in Modern History, 241–261. Ed. Juergen Martschukat and Silvan Niedermeier. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. The Public Display of Torture Photos. IN: Representations of Pain in Art and Visual Culture (Routledge Advances in Art and Visual Studies), 203–213. Ed. James Elkins and Maria-Pia Di Bella. New York: Routledge, 2012.

Awards and honors (2008) American Library Association: Outstanding Academic Title in Art and Architecture for Lynching Photographs