Originating from a 2024 symposium in Vienna, the anthology Denialism – Antisemitismus und sexualisierte Gewalt aus feministischer Perspektive (Denialism – Antisemitism and Sexualized Violence from a Feminist Perspective) offers in-depth analyses at the intersection of feminism, conflict research, and critiques of antisemitism. In this context, “denialism” refers to the systematic and ideologically motivated rejection of established academic and historical knowledge, a term that originated in Holocaust research but is now also used to describe similar patterns of denial in other fields. Denialism is often accompanied by misinformation campaigns and the circulation of conspiracy narratives.

The anthology Denialism responds to the troubling absence of feminist voices and public debate addressing the denial and trivialization of sexualized and antisemitic violence – prompted not exclusively, but particularly, by the terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. The book also traces the historical and institutional discourses – especially within teaching and academic structures of knowledge production – that have created conditions in which such denial can persist.

The essays in this book underscore that the violence of war, the deaths and destruction in Gaza, and criticism of Israeli policy cannot and should not be denied. The editors aim to foster a discourse that engages with the violence and politics of the Middle East without negating or minimizing the brutality of October 7.

Editors Nora Sternfeld and Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic* will discuss topics such as migration, identification, and queerness, as well as the question of how feminism can be positioned in universal terms. In clear opposition to right-wing populist narratives that instrumentalize antisemitism to fuel racism and hostility toward gender equality and diversity, the book opens space for discursive complexity and the possibility of forging new alliances of solidarity.

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Participants

Nora Sternfeld is an art educator and curator and currently serves as Professor of Art Education at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg. From 2018 to 2020 she was documenta professor at the Kunsthochschule Kassel, and from 2012 to 2018, was Professor of Curating and Mediating Art at Aalto University, Helsinki. She co-directs the /ecm – Master’s Program in Exhibition Theory and Practice at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, is a core member of schnittpunkt. ausstellungstheorie & praxis, and a co-founder of trafo.K – Office for Education, Art, and Critical Knowledge Production (Vienna). Since 2022, she has been part of INGLAM – Inglourious Art Mediators, a band for lecture performances (Hamburg), and since 2011 part of freethought, a platform for research, education, and production (London). Her publications focus on art, education theory, museums and exhibitions, the politics of history, and anti-racism.

Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic* is an artist, researcher, and author. From 2020 to 2025, she was Professor of Artistic Research at the University Mozarteum Salzburg, where she co-developed the PhD in the Arts, a transdisciplinary doctoral program for artists. Her monograph Antisemitism, Homophobia and Contemporary Art will be published by Routledge in 2025. Her book Contemporary Unconscious, a catalogue of selected art-based research projects, was published by Sternberg Press in 2023, and The Queerness of Memory was published by b_books (Berlin) in 2018.