Devin Pendas, Associate Professor and director of graduate studies, Boston College
Wednesday, April 4
4:30p.m.
Room 1210
Heller Hall
Wednesday, April 4
4:30p.m.
Room 1210
Heller Hall
The effort at transitional justice in Germany after World War II was one of the largest and most systematic ever undertaken. Among the least known aspects of that effort were the thousands of prosecutions for Nazi crimes undertaken by the Germans themselves in the immediate aftermath of the war.
Shaped by the context of military occupation and the budding Cold War, these German trials had a complex and often surprising impact on the political culture of the two emerging German states. Prosecuting Nazi atrocities actually played an important role in consolidating East Germany's emerging Stalinist dictatorship. And it was West German hostility to prosecuting Nazi crimes that proved crucial to its eventual democratic success.
Devin Pendas is Associate Professor and director of graduate studies at the Boston College Department of History. Professor Pendas also holds a position as a faculty affiliate and co-chair of the German Study Group at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University. His fields of interest include German history, modern Europe, legal history, and the history of mass violence and war.
His research centers on war crimes trials after World War II, particularly on German Holocaust trials, and he is interested in the comparative and transnational dimensions of genocide. Pendas' 2005 book, The Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial, 1963-1965: Genocide, History and the Limits of the Law, provides a comprehensive history ofthe largest, most public, and most important trial of Holocaust perpetrators conducted in West German courts, addressing both the inadequacy of the trials and the public's divided response.
He has received research fellowships from the German Academic Exchange Service, the MacArthur Foundation, the Center for Contemporary Historical Research in Potsdam, Germany, the U.S. Holocaust Museum, and the American Council of Learned Societies (Burkhardt Fellowship).
Presented by: The Department of History, the Department of Sociology and the Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies.
Friday, March 30, 2012
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
¡Si Hubo Genocidio!: Exhumations, Truth and Justice after the Guatemalan Genocide
Victoria Sanford, Professor of Anthropology at Lehman College, City College of New York
Monday, April 2
4:00p.m.
Room 250
Blegen Hall
When the Guatemalan Peace Accords were signed in 1996 ending more than three decades of internal armed conflict, more than 200,000 people were dead or disappeared, 626 mostly Maya villages had been massacred, 1.5 million people had been internally displaced, and 150,000 had sought refuge in Mexico. In this paper I explore local politics and meanings of exhumations of clandestine cemeteries in Guatemala within the context of transnational human rights practices and transitional justice paradigms. I trace the development of national, regional and international genocide cases against former Guatemalan generals over the past two decades. I analyze the role of forensic and cultural anthropology in the construction of historical memory. Community demands for reparation and societal demands for justice are considered within ongoing impunity in Guatemala which today has one of the highest homicide rates in the world.
Victoria Sanford is Professor of Anthropology at Lehman College, City College of New York. Her research foci include genocide, feminicide, forensic anthropology, post-conflict violence, displacement, child soldiers, humanitarian aid, human rights, theories of violence and terror, and indigenous rights.
She has published five books on violence and human rights in Guatemala and the field of anthropology, and her various articles have been published in Anthropology News, Radcliffe Quarterly, Propaganda Review, and Bulletin on Municipal Foreign Policy among others.
She serves as a Research Associate at Columbia University's Center for International Conflict Resolution as well as an Affiliated Scholar at the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights, Rutgers University. As a human rights activist and scholar, her experience includes extensive research into indigenous communities in Latin America, including Guatemala, Colombia, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Mexico.
Presented by: The Department of Anthropology, the Department of Sociology and the Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies.
Monday, April 2
4:00p.m.
Room 250
Blegen Hall
When the Guatemalan Peace Accords were signed in 1996 ending more than three decades of internal armed conflict, more than 200,000 people were dead or disappeared, 626 mostly Maya villages had been massacred, 1.5 million people had been internally displaced, and 150,000 had sought refuge in Mexico. In this paper I explore local politics and meanings of exhumations of clandestine cemeteries in Guatemala within the context of transnational human rights practices and transitional justice paradigms. I trace the development of national, regional and international genocide cases against former Guatemalan generals over the past two decades. I analyze the role of forensic and cultural anthropology in the construction of historical memory. Community demands for reparation and societal demands for justice are considered within ongoing impunity in Guatemala which today has one of the highest homicide rates in the world.
Victoria Sanford is Professor of Anthropology at Lehman College, City College of New York. Her research foci include genocide, feminicide, forensic anthropology, post-conflict violence, displacement, child soldiers, humanitarian aid, human rights, theories of violence and terror, and indigenous rights.
She has published five books on violence and human rights in Guatemala and the field of anthropology, and her various articles have been published in Anthropology News, Radcliffe Quarterly, Propaganda Review, and Bulletin on Municipal Foreign Policy among others.
She serves as a Research Associate at Columbia University's Center for International Conflict Resolution as well as an Affiliated Scholar at the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights, Rutgers University. As a human rights activist and scholar, her experience includes extensive research into indigenous communities in Latin America, including Guatemala, Colombia, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Mexico.
Presented by: The Department of Anthropology, the Department of Sociology and the Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies.
Saturday, March 24, 2012
CHGS sponsors two films at Minneapolis Jewish Film Festival
Remembrance (Die verlorene Zeit)
Sunday, March 18 at 7 pm
Sunday, March 25 at 4 pm
Dolly & Edward Fiterman Theatre at the Sabes JCC
As Seen Through These Eyes
Special Guest: Director, Hilary Helstein. Screening dedicated to Stephen Feinstein.
Sunday, March 25 at 12 pm
Dolly & Edward Fiterman Theatre at the Sabes JCC
Remembrance (Die verlorene Zeit)
Inspired by actual events, Remembrance depicts a remarkable love story that blossomed amidst the terror of a German concentration camp in Poland in 1944. In a daring escape, Tomasz a young Polish prisoner rescues his Jewish lover Hannah Silberstein but during the chaos at the end of the war they lose each other. Thirty years later, Hannah believes she has seen Tomasz, in an interview on TV. The now married Hannah begins a new search for the man she thought she lost at the end of WWII.
Directed by Anna Justice (Max Minsky and Me) I Germany, 2011 I 105 Minutes I German, Polish and English with English Subtitles | Recommended for ages 16 and up.
Winner, Audience Award, Berlin and Beyond Film Festival, San Francisco, 2011
Tickets: $10 General Public; $8 JCC Premium & Community members, students
As Seen Through These Eyes
Special Guest: Director, Hilary Helstein. Screening dedicated to Stephen Feinstein.
As Maya Angelou narrates this powerful documentary, she reveals the story of a brave group of people who fought Hitler with the only weapons they had: charcoal, pencil stubs, shreds of paper and memories etched in their minds. These artists took their fate into their own hands to make a compelling statement about the human spirit, while enduring unimaginable odds.
Directed by Hilary Helstein I USA 2010 I 74 Minutes I English | Recommended for ages 12 and up.
Best Documentary: Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival, Miami Jewish Film Festival, Winnipeg International Film Festival and Audience Favorite, Toronto Jewish Film Festival
Tickets: $10 General Public; $8 JCC Premium & Community members, students
For further information and trailers, please visit the Minneapolis Jewish Film Festival website.
Sunday, March 18 at 7 pm
Sunday, March 25 at 4 pm
Dolly & Edward Fiterman Theatre at the Sabes JCC
As Seen Through These Eyes
Special Guest: Director, Hilary Helstein. Screening dedicated to Stephen Feinstein.
Sunday, March 25 at 12 pm
Dolly & Edward Fiterman Theatre at the Sabes JCC
Remembrance (Die verlorene Zeit)
Inspired by actual events, Remembrance depicts a remarkable love story that blossomed amidst the terror of a German concentration camp in Poland in 1944. In a daring escape, Tomasz a young Polish prisoner rescues his Jewish lover Hannah Silberstein but during the chaos at the end of the war they lose each other. Thirty years later, Hannah believes she has seen Tomasz, in an interview on TV. The now married Hannah begins a new search for the man she thought she lost at the end of WWII.
Directed by Anna Justice (Max Minsky and Me) I Germany, 2011 I 105 Minutes I German, Polish and English with English Subtitles | Recommended for ages 16 and up.
Winner, Audience Award, Berlin and Beyond Film Festival, San Francisco, 2011
Tickets: $10 General Public; $8 JCC Premium & Community members, students
As Seen Through These Eyes
Special Guest: Director, Hilary Helstein. Screening dedicated to Stephen Feinstein.
As Maya Angelou narrates this powerful documentary, she reveals the story of a brave group of people who fought Hitler with the only weapons they had: charcoal, pencil stubs, shreds of paper and memories etched in their minds. These artists took their fate into their own hands to make a compelling statement about the human spirit, while enduring unimaginable odds.
Directed by Hilary Helstein I USA 2010 I 74 Minutes I English | Recommended for ages 12 and up.
Best Documentary: Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival, Miami Jewish Film Festival, Winnipeg International Film Festival and Audience Favorite, Toronto Jewish Film Festival
Tickets: $10 General Public; $8 JCC Premium & Community members, students
For further information and trailers, please visit the Minneapolis Jewish Film Festival website.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Preventing Mass Violence: The Expansion of R2P and the Challenge of Statebuilding
Jon Western, Associate Professor of International Relations at Mount Holyoke College
Thursday, March 29
3:30 p.m.
1314 Social Sciences
This talk will feature results from a research project that is situated in the literature on emerging norms and examines how and why the United States and the international community moved from failures to protect civilians from genocide and mass atrocities in Rwanda and Bosnia (prior to Srebrenica) to embark on ambitious liberal statebuilding efforts in Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and elsewhere. More broadly, the project examines how the doctrine of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) emerged in concept and expanded in scope to include a focus on capacity building and governance.
Theoretically, it presents an analysis of the various pathways in which new norms emerge and are applied to policy decisions. It also explores how those norms are contested and can regress amid policy setbacks, domestic politics, and changing claims of legitimacy.
Jon Western is Associate Professor of International Relations at Mount Holyoke College. His teaching and research focuses on U.S. foreign policy, military intervention, human rights and humanitarian affairs. His book, Selling Intervention and War: The Presidency, the Media, and the American Public, was published in 2005 by the Johns Hopkins University Press and his articles, book reviews, and essays have been published by journals including International Security, Harvard International Review, Global Dialogue, International Affairs, and Political Science Quarterly.
Western has served as a peace scholar-in-residence and the coordinator of the Dayton Upgrade Project at the United States Institute of Peace. He has also taught at Columbia University and George Washington University and served as a Balkans and East European specialist at the U.S. Department of State.
Presented by: The Department of Political Science, Department of Sociology, Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies.
Thursday, March 29
3:30 p.m.
1314 Social Sciences
This talk will feature results from a research project that is situated in the literature on emerging norms and examines how and why the United States and the international community moved from failures to protect civilians from genocide and mass atrocities in Rwanda and Bosnia (prior to Srebrenica) to embark on ambitious liberal statebuilding efforts in Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and elsewhere. More broadly, the project examines how the doctrine of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) emerged in concept and expanded in scope to include a focus on capacity building and governance.
Theoretically, it presents an analysis of the various pathways in which new norms emerge and are applied to policy decisions. It also explores how those norms are contested and can regress amid policy setbacks, domestic politics, and changing claims of legitimacy.
Jon Western is Associate Professor of International Relations at Mount Holyoke College. His teaching and research focuses on U.S. foreign policy, military intervention, human rights and humanitarian affairs. His book, Selling Intervention and War: The Presidency, the Media, and the American Public, was published in 2005 by the Johns Hopkins University Press and his articles, book reviews, and essays have been published by journals including International Security, Harvard International Review, Global Dialogue, International Affairs, and Political Science Quarterly.
Western has served as a peace scholar-in-residence and the coordinator of the Dayton Upgrade Project at the United States Institute of Peace. He has also taught at Columbia University and George Washington University and served as a Balkans and East European specialist at the U.S. Department of State.
Presented by: The Department of Political Science, Department of Sociology, Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies.
Global Memory of the Holocaust and the Politics of Never Again
Alejandro Baer, Visiting Chair of Qualitative Methods of Social Research, Ludwig Maximilians-Universität-München
Tuesday, March 27
4:00 p.m.
1114 Social Sciences
Recent research on social or collective memory points to the universalization of Holocaust consciousness. According to this research the Holocaust is now also remembered beyond the ethnic boundaries of the Jewish communities or the nations that were responsible for perpetrating it, due in part to the shift in focus from national to cosmopolitan memory cultures. However, such theses pose many open questions in terms of the interpretation of the genocide of the Jews, its actualization as well as contextualization in the history of oppression and crimes against human rights in different countries.
This lecture will present material from a study on Holocaust commemoration ceremonies in Spain, a country still facing the ghosts of its own past. The Spanish case study will lead to a more general reflection on the ongoing tension between particular and universal readings of past violence, the cross-fertilization of memory cultures and the important challenges faced by any individual or institution intending to implement prevention oriented Holocaust and genocide education.
Alejandro Baer is on the sociology faculty of the Ludwig Maximilians-Universität-München, where he holds the position of Visiting Chair of Qualitative Methods of Social Research. His areas of research expertise include Social Memory Studies, Sociology of Culture and Religion, Sociology of Modern Judaism, Empirical Research on Anti-Semitism, Qualitative Research Methodologies, and Sociology of Media and Communication.
His publications include, in addition to numerous articles and chapters in English and German, the books Holocausto. Recuerdo y Representación., Madrid: Editorial Losada, 2006, and El testimonio audiovisual. Imagen y memoria del Holocausto, Madrid: Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS), 2005.
He directed the Spanish part of the Shoah Visual Archives project. His recent research includes the uses and abuses of Holocaust history and memory in the Spanish-speaking world as well as the transnationalization of memory. He organizes an annual international scholar's conference on Anti-Semitism, fostering international academic collaborations.
Presented by: The Department of Sociology and the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
Tuesday, March 27
4:00 p.m.
1114 Social Sciences
Recent research on social or collective memory points to the universalization of Holocaust consciousness. According to this research the Holocaust is now also remembered beyond the ethnic boundaries of the Jewish communities or the nations that were responsible for perpetrating it, due in part to the shift in focus from national to cosmopolitan memory cultures. However, such theses pose many open questions in terms of the interpretation of the genocide of the Jews, its actualization as well as contextualization in the history of oppression and crimes against human rights in different countries.
This lecture will present material from a study on Holocaust commemoration ceremonies in Spain, a country still facing the ghosts of its own past. The Spanish case study will lead to a more general reflection on the ongoing tension between particular and universal readings of past violence, the cross-fertilization of memory cultures and the important challenges faced by any individual or institution intending to implement prevention oriented Holocaust and genocide education.
Alejandro Baer is on the sociology faculty of the Ludwig Maximilians-Universität-München, where he holds the position of Visiting Chair of Qualitative Methods of Social Research. His areas of research expertise include Social Memory Studies, Sociology of Culture and Religion, Sociology of Modern Judaism, Empirical Research on Anti-Semitism, Qualitative Research Methodologies, and Sociology of Media and Communication.
His publications include, in addition to numerous articles and chapters in English and German, the books Holocausto. Recuerdo y Representación., Madrid: Editorial Losada, 2006, and El testimonio audiovisual. Imagen y memoria del Holocausto, Madrid: Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS), 2005.
He directed the Spanish part of the Shoah Visual Archives project. His recent research includes the uses and abuses of Holocaust history and memory in the Spanish-speaking world as well as the transnationalization of memory. He organizes an annual international scholar's conference on Anti-Semitism, fostering international academic collaborations.
Presented by: The Department of Sociology and the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Berlin Summer Academy: The Holocaust and Present-day Jewish Life in Germany
July 15-22, 2012
A summer study program in Berlin, Germany, for U.S. public secondary school teachers in cooperation with the Education Division of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C.
This one-week study tour in July of each year is designed for U.S. secondary school teachers and other multipliers in the field of education to gain insight into many of the historical, social, religious, political, and economic factors that cumulatively resulted in the Holocaust. A program brochure can be downloaded here.
For more information visit their website here.
A summer study program in Berlin, Germany, for U.S. public secondary school teachers in cooperation with the Education Division of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C.
This one-week study tour in July of each year is designed for U.S. secondary school teachers and other multipliers in the field of education to gain insight into many of the historical, social, religious, political, and economic factors that cumulatively resulted in the Holocaust. A program brochure can be downloaded here.
For more information visit their website here.
Thursday, March 1, 2012
No Generation of Silence: American Jews and the Holocaust in the Post-War Era
Hasia Diner, New York University
Jewish Studies Community Lecture Series
March 21, 2012 7:30 p.m.
Temple Israel
2324 Emerson Ave S, Minneapolis
American Jews in the two decades after the end of World War II found many ways to make the tragedy that had engulfed their people in Europe at the hands of the German Nazis a part of their communal culture. The Holocaust loomed large for them. How did postwar American Jews experiment with language and ideas to keep alive the memories of those who had perished in Europe-- and use their memories to effect changes in the world of the late 1940s through the early 1960s?
Hasia Diner is Paul S. and Sylvia Steinberg Professor of American Jewish History at New York University and director of the Goldstein Goren Center for American Jewish History. Her many books include We Remember with Reverence and Love: American Jews and the Myth of Silence After the Holocaust, 1945-1962, winner of the 2010 National Jewish Book Award in American Jewish Studies. She was the recipient of a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship.
This Event is Free & Open to the Public
For more information please contact the Center for Jewish Studies at e-mail: jwst@umn.edu, phone: 612-624-4914.
This series is made possible by a generous gift in memory of Julia K. & Harold Segall.
Sponsoring Partners: U of M Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, U of M Immigration History Research Center, U of M Depart. of History, Mount Zion Congregation, National Council of Jewish Women- St Paul Section, Jewish Historical Society of the Upper Midwest, and Temple Israel.
Jewish Studies Community Lecture Series
March 21, 2012 7:30 p.m.
Temple Israel
2324 Emerson Ave S, Minneapolis
American Jews in the two decades after the end of World War II found many ways to make the tragedy that had engulfed their people in Europe at the hands of the German Nazis a part of their communal culture. The Holocaust loomed large for them. How did postwar American Jews experiment with language and ideas to keep alive the memories of those who had perished in Europe-- and use their memories to effect changes in the world of the late 1940s through the early 1960s?
Hasia Diner is Paul S. and Sylvia Steinberg Professor of American Jewish History at New York University and director of the Goldstein Goren Center for American Jewish History. Her many books include We Remember with Reverence and Love: American Jews and the Myth of Silence After the Holocaust, 1945-1962, winner of the 2010 National Jewish Book Award in American Jewish Studies. She was the recipient of a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship.
This Event is Free & Open to the Public
For more information please contact the Center for Jewish Studies at e-mail: jwst@umn.edu, phone: 612-624-4914.
This series is made possible by a generous gift in memory of Julia K. & Harold Segall.
Sponsoring Partners: U of M Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, U of M Immigration History Research Center, U of M Depart. of History, Mount Zion Congregation, National Council of Jewish Women- St Paul Section, Jewish Historical Society of the Upper Midwest, and Temple Israel.
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