Holocaust Testimonies and Their Afterlives

About

This 8-day, intensive summer course will investigate the genealogy of the era of the witness, focusing on the emergence of Holocaust testimony as the model for eyewitness documentation of 20th and 21st century atrocities, and its impact on efforts to record and represent subsequent human rights abuses and acts of mass violence.

The course will feature a series of workshops, seminars, public lectures, and film screenings. The goal of the course is to bring together leading scholars of testimony and oral history, who engage in highly interdisciplinary approaches to documenting, studying, and interpreting the Holocaust and other genocides and mass atrocities through the lens of first-person accounts.

Participants will explore the vast genre of Holocaust testimony through readings, lectures, and hands-on work with a variety of primary sources. The course interrogates testimonies from historical, legal and moral perspectives, raising theoretical and methodological questions about the "afterlife" of these sources, which are highly relevant for a wide variety of scholarly fields, including History, Jewish Studies, Nationalism Studies, Genocide Studies, Sociology, Anthropology, Cultural and Literary Studies, Memory Studies and Legal Studies.

Financial aid is available, in limited numbers.

Course leader

Éva Kovács (Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, Vienna, Austria) & Michael L. Miller (Nationalism Program, Central European University, Vienna, Austria) & Stephen Naron (Fortunoff Video Archive, Yale, University, New Haven, CT, USA)

Target group

The program encourages applications from students in multiple disciplines at the doctoral and postdoctoral levels, as well as early career oral history and digital humanities scholars and practitioners interested in learning more about the genealogy and impact of Holocaust testimony as a genre. We also invite applications from advanced undergraduate students who have adequate prior study or engagement experience on the subject and make a compelling case in their application/statement of interest.

Fee info