March 11 application deadline for Trans-Atlantic Summer Institute (TASI) 2016 to be co-taught by Professor Bernt Schnettler and CHGS Director Alejandro Baer

Trans-Atlantic Summer Institute (TASI) 2016
Reframing Mass Violence in Europe and the Americas: The Holocaust & Global Memory Constellations

June 12-19, 2016, Universität Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany
 
Graduate Student Fellowship Program
Application deadline: Friday, March 11, 2016
This Summer Institute’s objective is to explore the particular developments and transnational entanglements of memory discourses in societies revisiting their legacies of large-scale political violence. This entails processes of re-interpretation, renaming and reframing of a) the atrocities themselves and b) the (often questioned) transitional justice mechanisms that were adopted in their aftermaths. We place special emphasis on the analyses of practices, rituals and social events that help creating, supporting and disseminating social memories related to mass violence.

For more information see the CGES website.

Presented by the Center for German & European Studies at the University of Minnesota, which is funded by the University of Minnesota and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), in cooperation with Universität Bayreuth (Germany).

Call for Applications: Deadline February 14

UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM
Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies
 
CALL FOR APPLICATIONS

New Directions in the Use of Oral Testimonies:
Soviet Experiences of the Holocaust
 
August 1-12, 2016
Washington, D.C.

The Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum invites applications for a workshop focused on the use of testimony in the study of the Holocaust in the former Soviet Union, to be held from August 1-12, 2016 at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.
 
This workshop will bring together scholars whose work relies heavily upon oral and written testimonies of perpetrators, bystanders, and victims of the Holocaust on the territory of the former Soviet Union. Participants from North America and the states of the former Soviet Union will discuss research strategies and some of the central issues surrounding the use of testimonies in their work. Discussions will be prompted by pre-circulated synopses of participants’ research agendas, with a focus on their application of testimony to their wider projects. During the workshop, participants also will have the opportunity to engage with the many thousands of oral history testimonies available at the Museum, which include those of the USC Shoah Foundation and Yahad-In Unum. These records are but part of the Museum’s more than 210 million pages of archival material, which includes more than 15 million pages of microfilmed, digitized, and paper documents from the former Soviet Union. The program will culminate in a public presentation by the participants, in which they will discuss current issues and future directions in the use of testimony in research and in the teaching of the topic of the Holocaust in the former Soviet Union.
 
In addition to scholars from North American institutions of higher education, the Museum welcomes applications from Ph.D. students and scholars at universities in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. Please note that we are accepting applications from these areas only. Applicants should articulate clearly how they use testimony in their research.
 
Applications must be submitted in English and include: (1) an online application form; (2) a current curriculum vitae; and (3) a maximum 1000-word summary of the applicant’s current research topic. For details, see the application form available at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1jTKrCoycZir2R1yHhU0Cr9GhtOTtdJEoa-AojuF5-es/viewform.
 
Application materials may be sent by email attachment to Dr. Daniel Newman, Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: danewman@ushmm.org. All application materials must be received by February 14, 2016. We will notify applicants regarding acceptance by March 1.
 
Participants must be in attendance each day of the workshop. Workshop sessions will be conducted in English. Participants will be required to submit a research proposal of 8 to 10 pages in English for pre-circulation by June 30, 2016.
 
Accepted applicants will receive (1) a stipend toward the cost of direct travel to and from each participant’s home institution and Washington, D.C.; (2) shared lodging for the workshop’s duration; and (3) a stipend toward the cost of meals, local transit, luggage surcharges, and other incidental expenses, which will be distributed after the workshop’s conclusion via international wire transfer. It is the sole responsibility of each participant to acquire the appropriate visa to enter the United States and to pay any costs associated with securing that visa.

March 11 Deadline: Bernard and Fern Badzin Graduate Fellowship in Holocaust and Genocide Studies

The University of Minnesota Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the Department of History invite applications from current doctoral students in the UMN College of Liberal Arts for the Bernard and Fern Badzin Graduate Fellowship in Holocaust and Genocide Studies for the academic year 2015-16.

The Badzin Fellowship will pay a stipend of $18,000, the cost of tuition and health insurance, and $1,000 toward the mandatory graduate student fees. All application materials must be received by the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies electronically at chgs@umn.edu, no later than 3:00 pm on Friday, March 11, 2016.


Eligibility:
An applicant must be a full-time student in a Ph.D. program in the College of Liberal Arts, currently enrolled in the first, second, third, or fourth year of study, and have a doctoral dissertation project in Holocaust and/or genocide studies.
The fellowship will be awarded on the basis of the quality and scholarly potential of the dissertation project, the applicant's quality of performance in the graduate program, and the applicant's general scholarly promise.
The Badzin Fellowship is an exclusive award. It may not be held concurrently with another award or teaching responsibilities.
Required application materials:
1) A letter of application (maximum 4 pages single-spaced) describing the applicant's intellectual interests and dissertation research and the research and/or writing which the applicant expects to do during the fellowship year
2) A current curriculum vitae for the applicant
3) An unofficial transcript of all graduate work done at the University of Minnesota
4) TWO confidential letters of recommendation from U of MN faculty, discussing the quality of the applicant's graduate work and dissertation project and the applicant's progress toward completing the degree, sent directly to the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies

HGMV Talk by Maria Hofmann (GSD) "Recent Genocide Documentaries between Return and Respite of Trauma"

Wednesday, December 9, 4:00 PM 710 Social Sciences
MARIA HOFMANN, German, Scandinavian & Dutch (UMN)
"Recent Genocide Documentaries between Return and Respite of Trauma"

Recent Genoc ide Documentar ies between Return and Respite of Trauma Documentary film has undergone a development in the past 15 years that complicates the notions of fact and fiction in this genre. These ostensibly binary opposites have been discussed extensively in the 1970s and 80s. The scholarly work of historian Hayden White and the contributions of Eva Hohenberger and others in regard to documentary film have revealed that any kind of narrativization of events (including in historiography and other non-fictional genres) is a form of mediation that employs similar strategies as fiction. This exposed the claim of an objective or true history as an unattainable ideal and an unmediated representation of reality as impossible. Despite these academic realizations, documentary filmmakers continue to treat their films as purely non-fictional, clearly delineating themselves and their work from fiction. One reason for this continuous adherence to a more traditional definition is the danger of relativization, of ultimately undermining any truth claim when the difference between fact and fiction is completely dismissed. 

Recent documentary films, however, have started to embrace and welcome the similarities to fiction instead of forcefully denying their proximity. These films employ fictionalizations as their core strategy in order to address and reflect upon a media situation in which the medium itself has become precarious, and images have lost their immediate "evidentiary power" (Nichols). 

Eye on Africa: Will we only care about Burundi if it is called a genocide?

by Wahutu Siguru

A few things have been happening in Burundi this year. The president, Pierre Nkuruzinza circumvented the constitution and ran for a third term. The result of this has been on-going conflict from April. Burundi was not a surprise though. Journalists I spoke to earlier this year all stated that regional coverage of Burundi had pointed to something being afoot as early as last year. None-the-less, here we are, with yet another unfolding atrocity, several deaths, an ever growing numbers of displaced and plenty of hand-wringing by the international community.

There are reports of massive numbers of refugees already running to Rwanda in anticipation of violence at a massive scale. A Kenyan journalist I spoke to in March painted a really grim picture of politicians getting ready to cause havoc. These concerns have now been confirmed by reports emanating from Burundi. The police are engaging in a campaign of brutal suppression of protesters. Several dissenting voices have been thrown in jail accused with the ever nefarious charge of "endangering internal and external state security." Protesters have been charged, by the state prosecution, with the offence of "participation in an insurrectionary movement." Not to forget the continual assassinations and assassination attempts by both sides of this unfolding atrocity.

Despite all of this though what is happening in Burundi is not genocide nor is Burundi going to be another Rwanda. Sometimes it feels as though every atrocity in Africa is often seen as the next Rwanda. This does not mean that the government in Burundi is not heinous nor is it in any way excusable. Indeed in May, the International Criminal Court saw it necessary to warn the Burundi’s leaders of possible prosecution should the court deem it necessary. While the word genocide is emotive and seen as necessary whenever world opinion needs to be influenced, it complicates the situation on the ground as well. In Burundi, this complication is been based on how to define the perpetrators and victims; if it’s a genocide, who is the targeted group and who exactly is the perpetrator of said genocide?

Minneapolis Film Society Screens Pretty Village

By Erma Nezirevic

On Saturday, October 17th, 2015, the Minneapolis Film Society screened Pretty Village at St. Anthony Main theater, a documentary depicting the experience of Kemal Pevranic and his village during the war in Bosnia (1992-95). Pevranic, the main subject of the film, is also the producer and a human rights activist who works to raise awareness and to rebuild his community in Bosnia by working on reconciliation efforts, particularly with young people of all three ethnicities in Bosnia. The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies co-sponsored the film screening event, in which I participated as the moderator of the post-screening discussion.

Pretty Village is a powerful documentary centered on Pevranic’s home village of Kevljani located in Northern Bosnia in the municipality of Prijedor. The Muslim village became a target during the war by the surrounding Serb villages. Most of the men in the village were either killed or taken into the nearby Omarska concentration camp. Labeled an “investigation center,” Omarska was only revealed as a concentration camp by the media after serious denial on the part of the Serb forces. In the film, we see Pevranic return to Omarska to face the horrific memories, as well as his torturer, who just so happened to have been his high school teacher. In the scene where Kemal directly asks the teacher about the camp, we see a kind of denial on the part of the perpetrator that just makes us cringe as we watch the hypocrisy in the interaction. It makes us wonder if facing one’s torturer cannot bring closure, what can? As one of the village residents and torture victim states in the film, hating one’s torturers can also become a kind of torture in itself, as it is exhausting to hate someone with such intensity.

Interview with Sam Grey, Fulbright Scholar

Written by Joe Eggers

This year, the University of Minnesota will be hosting Sam Grey, a Fulbright Scholar from Canada. Sam comes to campus to continue her research in the field of reconciliation, specifically in settler-colonial states. While in Minnesota, Sam will be exploring the resistance to reconciliation in Minnesota a century and a half after the Dakota conflict of 1862.

Coming from the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Sam is well suited to exploring Minnesota’s relationship with its indigenous communities. Her doctoral research focuses on political theory and comparative politics, primarily from a non-western political perspective. Sam’s research interests have included, in addition to indigenous rights, gender equality, food politics and solidarity politics.  As a Canadian scholar in Minnesota, Sam is in a unique position to compare Canada’s recently completed Truth and Reconciliation process with the United States’ own attempts to understand its own relationship with its indigenous population.

For context, the CanadianTruth & Reconciliation Commission issued its final findings in June after seven years of examining the legacy of the country’s residential school programs. Unlike other Truth & Reconciliation Commissions, Canada’s held no legal power, which meant that it couldn’t offer amnesty for alleged perpetrators of abuse at the residential schools in exchange for testimony. The result was a commission that primarily focused on recording victim experiences.  Following the conclusion of hearings, the commission published an extensive report of its findings. The report outlined many of the challenges that indigenous people continue to face in Canada as a result of the residential schools and outlined a plan for reconciliation. Most famously, commissioner chair and Canadian Supreme Court Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin labelled the residential schoolsystem cultural genocide .

HGMV Workshop (September 30): JOE EGGERS "What’s in a Name? Exploring How We Define Genocide from Lemkin to International Law"

WEDNESDAY, September 30
4:00 PM
JOE EGGERS, Graduate Student "What’s in a Name? Exploring How We Define Genocide from Lemkin to International Law"
710 Social Sciences

Joe Eggers

In 1945, Raphael Lemkin published Axis Rule In Occupied Europe: Laws Of Occupation, Analysis Of Government, Proposals For Redress which contained the first published definition of the crime of genocide. Three years later, the newly formed United Nations passed the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide which largely stripped much of Lemkin’s original ideas of genocide. In the 70 years since the release of Axis Rule, scholars, legal experts and advocates have all attempted to remedy the differences between Lemkin’s broad definition of genocide against the narrower legal one.

The aim of this paper is to answer the question: how has our concept of genocide evolved since Lemkin? First, the author analyzes different approaches to defining genocide, starting with Lemkin’s original theory, moving to international law and ending on contemporary scholarly definition. Next he compares the legal definition against Lemkin’s by analyzing the United States policy of forced assimilation of its own indigenous population beginning in the mid-nineteenth century. Specifically, he will examine the Native American boarding school system that existed well into the second half of the twentieth century. This research raises yet another important question: how do our perceptions of these crimes change when viewed through different ways of defining genocide? Finally, the author examines the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission which defined Canada’s boarding schools as genocide in a June 2015 statement and attempt to find approaches for the United States to begin understanding its own troubling relationship with Native American communities.

Joe Eggers is an interdisciplinary Master of Liberal Studies student study human rights and sociology. His research examines how we define genocide by looking at the forced assimilation of Native Americans beginning in the late 19th century. 

Tuesday, September 29: *PUBLIC EVENT* Peace Talk with Nagasaki atomic bomb survivor MICHIKO HARADA

Hibakusha Peace Talk by Ms. Michiko Harada

September 29, 2015

4:00 PM

120 Andersen Library
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, West Bank

In commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the conclusion of WWII, and the 60th anniversary of close local ties to Nagasaki, the University of Minnesota was pleased to welcome Ms. Michiko Harada, a hibakusha (atomic bomb survivor) kataribe (storyteller), who traveled from Nagasaki, Japan and talked about her experience with the atomic bomb and why she speaks for peace. 

Her story was compelling.  Michiko Harada was a six year old girl playing outdoors about 2 ½ miles from the epicenter of the bombing and was injured by flying glass. In the years that followed, she lost many family members to radiation illness and cancer.

We filmed the talk, which is available on our YouTube channel.

Turn out was great, with over 75 students and participants from the university and community in attendance.  The event was covered by the StarTribune.

Next HGMV on Wed, Oct 28: “Memory, Affect, and Retributivism after Genocide” by Sam Grey (Fulbright Visiting Research Scholar in Sociology)

Wednesday, October 28
4:00 PM
710 Social Sciences Building, West Bank
Sam Grey:
“Memory, Affect, and Retributivism after Genocide: Resistance to Forgiveness-Reconciliation in Dakota Homeland”

According to legal philosopher Robert Solomon, “[n]o one, not even a saint, can have a sense of justice without the capacity for anger and outrage” – yet there has been little work on these retributive passions in the transitional justice canon generally, and virtually none in the work on Settler-colonial states in particular. While absent from the academic literature, those who express anger, resentment, and indignation in the context of Indigenous-Settler reconciliation projects are often portrayed in popular media as politically opportunistic, merely intransigent, or actually emotionally unwell. That problematic absence and these troubling portrayals are probed by examining resistance to reconciliation in Minnesota, where both Settler and Indigenous communities still struggle over the actual facts, correct interpretation, and proper response to the 1862 war with, and attempted genocide of, the Dakota Oyate (Dakota Nation) – a struggle that persists despite an unprecedented two formal reconciliation projects (a ‘year of reconciliation’ in 1987, one of the earliest examples of such work globally; and another state-wide undertaking in 2012). This exploration looks at persistent resistance to Indigenous-Settler reconciliation in Minnesota/Mini Sota Macoce from multiple political, moral, affective, and historical perspectives. It finds that expressions of retributivism in the context of an active, recurrent reparations politics are not adequately described by existing theoretical frameworks, nor can they be reduced to individual episodes of withholding, non-overcoming, or lack. They are, instead, assertions of alternative political virtues; and further, emblematic of a new, powerful, emotional, and strategic politics of ‘irreconciliation’ and ‘unforgiveness’ in Settler-colonial states.

Sam Grey is a Fulbright Visiting Research Scholar in the Sociology Department at the University of Minnesota and a PhD candidate in Political Science at the University of Victoria (BC, Canada). Working within the fields of political theory and comparative politics, she has focused her reading on non-Western political thought; Indigenous comparative politics; feminist and gender analyses; and methodological issues. Sam’s primary research interests are political virtue, the politics of emotion, Settler colonialism, and reparations politics; more specifically, her dissertation looks at anger as a political virtue, unforgiveness as a decololonization praxis, and Indigenous-Settler ‘irreconciliation’ in the contemporary Anglosphere. As an author Sam has published on human rights, gender justice, food politics, peacemaking, contractualism/contractarianism, the ontology of health, intellectual property, solidarity politics, polygyny, and applied ethics; and is the co-editor of three books on Indigenous knowledge and rights-based advocacy. As a student and researcher she has lived and worked in Southeast Asia (Northern Thailand), South America (Andean Peru), and North America (the Canadian Great Lakes and West Coast regions, as well as the American Upper Midwest).

THURSDAY, October 21: Author LOU URENECK, Archival Research at the University's Libraries, and "The Great Fire" at Smyrna

Wednesday, October 21
Author LOU URENECK, Boston University
The Great Fire at Smyrna and the genocide of the Ottoman Greek and Armenian population
120 Andersen Library

3:30 PM - Light reception and exhibition of YMCA Archives
4:00 PM - Talk and Q&A with the author
5:00 PM - Book signing

CHGS, with the University of Minnesota Libraries, was pleased to present a talk by Boston University professor and journalist Lou Ureneck on his recently published book, The Great Fire: One American's Mission to Rescue Victims of the 20th Century's First Genocide, the harrowing story of a Methodist Minister and a principled American naval officer who helped rescue more than 250,000 refugees during the persecution of Armenian and Greek Christians, published to coincide with the Armenian genocide’s centennial in 2015.

HGMV Meeting | Wednesday, November 4 | Wahutu Siguru: "What African Media? Rethinking Research on Representations of Africa in Africa's Press"

Wednesday, November 4, 2015
4:00PM
710 Social Sciences
Wahutu Siguru: "What African Media? Rethinking Research on Representations of Africa in Africa's Press"

Wahutu Siguru is a PhD candidate in sociology.  In his dissertation Siguru looks at the creation of knowledge about genocide and mass atrocities in African by the media. His research leverages multiple research methodologies and theories to tease out how the press creates our knowledge of genocide and mass atrocities. He specifically looks at how Darfur has been reported on in print media from Africa and the global north. He is currently conducting a content analysis of newspapers from Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, Egypt and just came back from a 6-month long fieldtrip where he interviewed journalists from Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda and South Sudan that had reported on Darfur and other atrocities around the continent; these interviews were in addition to previous interviews conducted in Kenya and South Africa in the summer of 2012. During the fieldtrip Siguru also conducted an ethnography of a journalism school in Nairobi in an attempt to understand how a highly ranked international journalism school in Nairobi taught students how to ‘become’ journalists. This specific paper uses a subsection of his content analysis and interview data. It was made possible by funding received through the Bernard and Fern Badzin and the Anna Welsch research fellowships in the Spring and summer of 2015 respectively.

November 7 Educator Workshop: Lessons, Resources, Experiences

Saturday, November 7

9:00 AM - 3:00 PM

1210 Heller Hall

West Bank, University of Minnesota

Six licensed educators attended the Institute for Global Studies summer institute, Holocaust Education in a Global Context on June 15-18, 2015. The following two weeks, these six educators worked to accumulate and create lesson plans, resources, and information which will aid in teaching about the Armenian Genocide, the Rwandan Genocide, the Cambodian Genocide, the Dakota War, and the Holocaust. These teachers will be talking about their experience and presenting their materials in the daylong workshop.

Free workshop, open to educators, worth 6 CEUs. The session is full and registration is closed.

Canadian scholar, Adam Muller, will speak about the creation of an immersive virtual education tool representing an Indian Residential School in an attempt to bring survivors of genocide closer to secondary witnesses

Embodying Empathy: Canadian Settler-Colonial Genocide and the Making of a Virtual Indian Residential School

Adam Muller, University of Manitoba  

Wednesday, November 18

4:00 PM

710 Social Sciences

West Bank, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

This presentation introduces and reflects on some of the key challenges facing researchers involved with the multidisciplinary critical and creative Embodying Empathy project now underway at the University of Manitoba. Embodying Empathy seeks to construct a digital representation of a Canadian Indian Residential School (IRS) using virtual and augmented reality technologies. The project’s digital “storyworld” is being designed as a museum-quality educational tool that will instruct those immersed in it about Canadian settler-colonial genocide. It also seeks to ascertain whether immersive representations can bridge the empathetic distance separating victims from secondary witnesses to atrocity.

Adam Muller is Associate Professor of English at the University of Manitoba (Canada). He specializes in the representations of war, genocide and mass violence, human rights, memory studies, critical theory, cultural studies, and analytic philosophy.

Organized by the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, cosponsored by the Human Rights Program, the Institute for Advanced Study collaborative "Reframing Mass Violence," and the Minnesota Humanities Center.

December 1: Discussion on the implications of comparing the experiences of Jews and Native Americans

Reflections on the Comparison of

Jews and Native Americans as Victims
by LEO REIGERT, Kenyon College

Tuesday, December 1

1:00-2:30 PM

Folwell 113

Jews and Native Americans are often rhetorically connected as victims of genocide by members of both groups. In this talk, Associate Professor of German at Kenyan College, Leo Reigert, will reflect from both a personal and scholarly perspective on what is gained and lost in such representations. Compared to the Holocaust, public acknowledgement of the genocide committed against the Native Americans remains limited, not to speak of restitution or the payment of reparations. This, it will be argued, has important ramifications for writing and thinking about the two groups.

Leo Reigert is Associate Professor of German, Kenyan Collge. This talk is part of his new project investigating the encounter with Native Americans in the lives and works of German Jewish authors from the nineteenth century to the present day.
 
Organized by The Department of German, Scandinavian & Dutch, cosponsored by the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Center for Jewish Studies, and the Department of American Indian Studies.

November 30 APPLICATION DEADLINE: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Fellowship for 2016-2017

The Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies awards fellowships on a competitive basis to support significant research and writing about the Holocaust. We welcome proposals from scholars in all academic disciplines, including but not limited to history, political science, literature, Jewish studies, philosophy, religion, sociology, anthropology, comparative genocide studies, and law.

Stipends range up to $3,500 per month for the purpose of defraying local housing and other miscellaneous living expenses and are subject to US tax law. Residents of the Washington, DC, metropolitan area receive a reduced stipend of $1,750 per month. Awards include a stipend to offset the cost of direct travel to and from Washington, DC. Residents of the Washington, DC, metropolitan area do not receive a travel stipend. The funds provided through this award may be subject to US federal and/or state tax. Please be advised the Mandel Center cannot provide individual tax advice.

Accepting applications for the 2016–2017 fellowship competition: September 1, 2015–November 30, 2015.

For more information: http://www.ushmm.org/research/competitive-academic-programs/fellowship-competition  

Film screening and Q&A with producer Kemal Pervanic: 'Pretty Villiage' (Sat, Oct 17, 4:30pm, St. Anthony Main #3)

Saturday, October 17
4:30 PM
St. Anthony Main Theatre #3

'Pretty Village' is an acclaimed documentary about Bosnia about what happens to ordinary people when their lives are torn apart by war.  The film was produced by UK-based Bosnian arts activist, Kemal Pervanic, a survivor of the Omarska Death camp. It documents his return to his former village to collect survivor stories and bear witness the atrocities that occurred there during the Bosnian war. Kemal will be passing through Minnesota (he now resides in the UK) and the MN Film society will present this screening with him in attendance, available for audience Q&A.

TUESDAY and THURSDAY, October 13 and 15: International artist DANIEL BLAUFUKS events to include Artist Talk and Film Screening

The Twin Cities, the University of Minnesota, and CHGS and its many co-sponsors welcome a visit by Lisbon-based German-Jewish media artist DANIEL BLAUFUKS

Film clips, artist talk and scholarly roundtable discussion
Tuesday, October 13
5:30 - 6:00 PM -- Film clips from Als Ob / As If
6:15 - 7:30 PM -- Roundtable discussion with panel of scholars and artists
Panel to include University of Minnesota faculty Gary Cohen (History), Paula Rabinowitz (English), Alice Lovejoy (Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature), and Leslie Morris (German, Scandinavian and Dutch); and David Harris (RIMON: The Minnesota Jewish Arts Council, an initiative of the Minneapolis Jewish Federation)
Weisman Art Museum

Meet the artist and film screening
Thursday, October 15
10:00 - 11:30 AM Coffee with the artist
10:00 AM - 5:00 PM Als Ob / As If Film installation on the Czech city of Terezín / WWII Jewish camp-ghetto of Theresienstadt
Weisman Art Museum

Daniel Blaufuks is an acclaimed artist working in Lisbon and exhibiting internationally. His exhibition, "All the Memory of the World, Part One," has as its theme the creation of memory through media. In other words: the use of film and photography to create memories, even memories that are actually fictional. Please read more about this exhibition here.

At the center of the exhibition is "Als Ob / As If," a monumental 4-hour film installation. In Als Ob, Blaufuks combines footage he shot in 2014 in the Czech city of Terezín, which was formerly the Jewish ghetto of Theresienstadt, with footage from Nazi propaganda films.

The contemporary clips are of everything that makes up the life of a normal city. They are reflected in clips from the fake documentary "Theresienstadt" made by the Germans in 1944, which pretended to show how normal the city/ghetto/concentration camp was. In the propaganda film, we see the elderly passing by, children playing, and chess-playing men. Combining clips from these two films is powerful, especially as Blaufuks purposely filmed some scenes in the same locations that the Nazi video depicts.

Blaufuks was born in Lisbon in 1963 to a family of Jewish German refugees. He studied at Ar.Co (Centro de Arte e Comunicação Visual), Lisbon, at the Royal College of Art, London and at the Watermill Foundation, New York. He exhibits widely and works mainly in photography and video, presenting his work through books, installations and films.

The documentary "Under Strange Skies" was shown at the Lincoln Center in New York. His exhibitions include: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, Palazzo delle Papesse, Siena, LisboaPhoto, Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon, Elga Wimmer Gallery, New York, Photoespaña, Madrid, where his book Under Strange Skies received the award for Best Photography Book of the Year in the International Category in 2007, the year he received the BES Photo Award as well. He published Terezín with Steidl, Götingen. In 2011 he had a solo show at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro and in 2014 at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Lisbon. For more information see http://www.danielblaufuks.com

Event organized by the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, co-sponsored by the Center for Austrian Studies, Center for Jewish Studies, Center for German and European Studies, College of Liberal Arts, Department of Art, Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature, Department of English, Department of German, Scandinavian & Dutch, Department of History, Department of Spanish & Portuguese, Institute for Advanced Study, Weisman Art Museum, and Macalester College. Additional support from RIMON: The Minnesota Jewish Arts Council, an initiative of the Minneapolis Jewish Federation.

How to understand and decode humor in the Terezin ghetto: A Sunday afternoon talk by Dr. Lisa Peschel following matinee stage performance of WHY WE LAUGH

Dr. Lisa Peschel, University of York
"Translating Terezín"
A talk to follow Sunday matinee performance of Why We Laugh
(to conclude long before sundown)

WHY WE LAUGH 

Sunday Matinee Performance

September 13

2:00 PM

Open Eye Figure Theatre

506 East 24th Street, Minneapolis MN 55404

Admission is $20general; $15 for students, seniors, and MN Fringe button holders.

Tickets are available through Open Eye Figure Theatre or through Brown Paper Tickets.

WHY WE LAUGH is a new adaptation of Laugh with Us!, an original cabaret by Felix Porges, Vítězslav Horpatzky, Pavel Weisskopf and Pavel Stránský, written and performed in 1944 in the World War II Jewish Ghetto at Terezín, just 40 miles northwest of Prague (English translation & dramaturgy by Lisa Peschel).

Dr. Lisa Peschel, the scholar who discovered the cabaret texts and translated them into English (they are collected in the book Performing Captivity, Performing Escape) will deliver a brief talk after the performance on Sunday, September 13. Entitled Translating Terezin, it will be the story of Peschel’s search for the meaning of the text—how, with the aid of survivors she cracked the code of the slang and inside jokes to capture the prisoners’ unique, resilient sense of humor. A question and answer period will follow.

Courses of interest for the Fall 2015 semester

GER 1905 -- Freshman Seminar: Remediating the Holocaust (Leslie Morris, Th 4:40-7:10pm, Kolthoff Hall 139)
HIST 3727 -- History of the Holocaust (Adam Blackler, M/W 9:45-11:00am, Nicholson 110)
Study of 1933-1945 extermination of six million Jews and others by Nazi Germany on basis of race. European anti-Semitism. Implications of social Darwinism and race theory. Perpetrators, victims, onlookers, resistance. Theological responses of Jews and Christians. 
GCC 3002 -- Grand Challenges: Beyond War and Atrocity (Alejandro Baer, Catherine Guisan, Tu/Th 11:15-12:30pm, Anderson Hall 330)
SOC 4104 -- Crime and Human Rights (Joachim Savelsberg, Tu/Th 2:30-3:45pm, Blegen 225)
AMIN 1001 -- American Indian Peoples in the United States (Tu/Th 1:00-2:15, Elliott N647)
Introduction to how voices/visions of indigenous peoples have contributed to history of cultural expression in North America. Historic contexts/varieties of this expression by region, tribal cultures. Emphasizes contributions in literature, philosophy, politics, fine arts.
AMIN 1003 -- American Indians in Minnesota (multiple listings)
History, culture, and lived experience of American Indian people in Minnesota. Self-representation and histories of Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) and Dakota peoples through film, music, oral traditions, and written texts. Work by non-Indian scholars focuses on cultural, philosophical, and linguistic perspectives of Anishinaabe and Dakota peoples.
HIST 3872 -- American Indian History since 1830 (W 6:20-8:30, Blegen 110)
Focus on the impact of federal Indian policy on American Indian cultures and societies, and on American Indian culture change.
HIST 5940 -- Topics in Asian History: Cultures of Modernity and Memories of the Past in East Asia (Liping Wang, W 3:35-5:30, Carlson 1-122)
PubH 6801 / 3802 -- Health and Human Rights (Kirk Allison, W 5:40-8:30pm)
POL 8260 -- Topics in Political Theory: Colonialism (Th 3:35-5:20pm, Soc Sci 1383)
POL 8660 -- Topics in Comparative Politics: Authoritarian Regimes (David Samuels, Tu 1:25-3:20pm, Blegen 330)
SPAN 3221 -- Interpreting Colonial Latin America: Empire and Early Modernity (Raul Marrero-Fente, Tu/Thu 1:00-2:15pm, Nicholson 120)
Conquest, colonization, and forms of resistance in Latin America.

2015 IAGS Conference Review by JOE EGGERS

In July, I had the privilege of presenting at the International Association of Genocide Scholars' twelfth meeting in Yerevan, Armenia. The conference’s theme of comparative analysis of twentieth century genocides brought experts from around the world to Armenia’s capital city for five days of presentations, learning, and networking. More than 180 attendees, representing more than two dozen countries, shared their research and insight into many of the twentieth century’s most infamous atrocities.

The conference began on Wednesday, July 8^th with a welcome from Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan to attendees. In his address, President Sargsyan discussed the legacy of the Armenian Genocide, not only for the Armenian people, but all of humanity. He also spoke about moving forward, highlighted by his announcement of the creation of a new biannual conference sponsored by the Armenian Republic that will discuss the lasting effects of genocide and how the global community can overcome episodes of violence. A full transcript of President Sargsyan’s address can be found on the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute’s website.

The conference kicked off Thursday morning with more than 20 breakout sessions exploring themes like prevention, intergenerational trauma, perpetrator justice, and gender and sexuality. I presented research I did this past spring, comparing themes of nationalism in pre-genocide late Ottoman and early American politics. University of Minnesota alumna and current Ohio State sociology professor Dr. Hollie Brehm presented her research analyzing rates of violence at a community level during the Rwandan Genocide.

My favorite session was the cultural genocide breakout. The presentations primarily focused on the continuing destruction and appropriation of Khachkars, ornate stone crosses, and Armenian churches that are scattered across modern Turkey. The presenters brought different and insightful perspectives to the session; an art historian talked about the effect the destruction from an artistic perspective and an Armenian PhD student shared her research from the viewpoint of the Armenian people. There was a great conversation that followed, discussing the limits of the legal definition of genocide versus Raphael Lemkin’s original ideas. The session was moderated by Dr. Adam Muller of the University of Manitoba. Dr. Muller will be visiting the University this fall to discuss his virtual museum project which sheds light on the residential schools for Canada’s First Nations people.

Srebrenica: What Remains 20 Years Later, by ERMA NEZIREVIC

Recently I laid over at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, at which the Delta Airlines security agent checked my U.S. passport prior to boarding the plane to Minneapolis. Upon seeing my name and place of birth (Bosnia and Herzegovina), he asked in Serbian if I spoke "our language." I responded with a "yes, of course," and he completed the rest of the security procedure in ‘our language,’ revealing that he is a Serb who escaped to the Netherlands in 1991 because he did not want to have to fight the Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) or the Croats, as they are all "my people, our people."

Coincidentally, this random interaction occurred only two days after the 20th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide, which took place on July 11, 1995. It made me ponder the use of the word ‘our’ in this brief conversation. We all clearly still have a lot in common: the primary, and perhaps strongest, connection being the language. ‘Our’ language, as the security agent used it, refers to Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian. However, in ‘our’ language, there is still a contention over what happened in Srebrenica. Recently, Russia, Serbia’s ally, had vetoed the UN Security Council measure that labeled Srebrenica a genocide. Killing people based on their identity is a very basic definition of genocide, and denying that is to politicize it once again, and take away from the core of what this event should represent 20 years later, which is healing and hope for the future. 

Interview with Professor JOACHIM SAVELSBERG, Professor of Sociology, on his recent book, "Representing Mass Violence" by WAHUTU SIGURU

Wahutu: What was the main motivation behind this current book, Representing Mass Violence: Conflicting Responses to Human Rights Violations in Darfur?

Prof. Savelsberg: You know that I have a longstanding interest in the way in which institutions of justice, and currently transitional justice, affect collective representations or collective memories of events, especially mass atrocities. And so, the motivation for this book on Darfur was to understand how interventions by the UN Security Council and the International Criminal Court (ICC) affect how global civil society thinks about such events, the way people imagine such events. And, part of the original design was to do a comparative study of eight countries. Even though the ICC is a global institution, the kinds of messages that it sends out, the kinds of representation of events that it offers are filtered by national institutions, they are reinforced by carrier groups in one country, but less so in another country. They find more receptive audiences in a country that has maybe dealt with mass atrocities in the past than in another country that hasn’t. So that was the main motivation, to understand how interventions, in this case by the UN Security Council and the ICC, affect the representation of Darfur in the public sphere. Initially I only thought of news media, that’s why we did a comparative analysis of newspapers in eight countries. And then, in the course of the research, I became aware that representations do not just differ by country but also by social fields. I was interested from the beginning in how human rights activists, and I selected Amnesty International as an example, talk about Darfur. How they reflect on the interventions by the ICC and the UN Security Council. But in my interviews I also ended up targeting a humanitarian aid NGO , for which I picked Doctors without Borders. I additionally interviewed diplomats from foreign ministries, or state departments if you want, and I saw that different fields talk in quite different terms about the violence in Darfur. Just as I was interested in the country-specific conditions that lead to a selective communication of ICC representations, so I became interested in the field-specific conditions that affect communication about Darfur.

Wahutu: Previous work has not done this much data collection or analysis.  From what you have said, the data collection and analysis seems like a really important part of how you wanted to do this project.  Why was it important for you to do the interviews, to do the content analysis of news reports and travel to all of these countries?

Prof. Savelsberg: It was important for a number of reasons. The first reason is that we know that global institutions of justice like the ICC are extremely modern. Human history hasn’t really known them. We’ve known ad hoc courts in the twentieth century, but not a permanent international criminal court. We have very little systematic knowledge about the effects of these institutions. It would be desirable of course to measure the effect of ICC interventions on the future likelihood of genocide and crimes against humanity and war crimes. That would be a very tall order, and we will have to tackle this at some point. I wasn’t able to go that far, but one interim step is to think about how these interventions affect the way the world thinks about mass atrocities. It is not at all for granted that people in different countries take note of what is going on. Even if institutions like the ICC intervene, there is a long history of denial, of closing one’s eyes, especially if atrocities occur in a far-away place in the world. So it was very important to me to begin to systematically measure the effects of these sorts of interventions in a cautious way, by first looking at the impact they have on the degree to which and the way in which mass atrocities are represented and perceived.

Wahutu: What would you say was one of the most surprising findings that jumped out at you?

Impressions after a semester of HISTORY OF THE HOLOCAUST and a visit by Holocaust survivor IRENE BERMAN

My name is Joshkin Sezer. I am a history major who is starting his third year at the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities. In the Spring Semester of 2015, I enrolled in History of the Holocaust, instructed by Adam Blackler. Near the end of the semester, we got the chance to hear a talk from a Holocaust survivor, Irene Berman. She had just published a book detailing her experience as a child in Norway during the Holocaust and how her family managed to survive. 

After taking some time to think about Irene Berman’s talk to my class, I continue to be intrigued by what I learned about the Norwegian Jewish population and their struggles during the Holocaust. It is not a topic that comes up very often (if ever) in the United States. It was not until I enrolled in the History of the Holocaust at the University of Minnesota that I developed a better sense of what life was like for Jews who lived outside of Eastern and Central Europe.

Though the crimes of the Third Reich cast a long shadow, Irene’s story made that a reality for those of us who listened to her presentation. She gave a face to the victims of Holocaust. It is far too easy to become overcome by numbers and statistics when we think of the crimes committed by the Nazis. Is it possible to know the entire story? Certainly not, but learning a few of them will no doubt help to prevent a future Holocaust. 

And it was not just Irene’s talk that provided a face to those that were lost. Adam also did a great job in offering a human element to the story. He was helped in part by his refusal to create black-and-white narrative. Indeed, saying, “all Germans were Nazis” and that “all Jews helpless sheep” does a tremendous disservice to the complexity and tragedy of the events that comprise the Holocaust. Nothing was inevitable. Conscious actors made decisions to participate. “How” and “why” are more difficult questions to answer, and as such were the central focus of Adam’s course.

But what form might this take outside of the classroom? In my opinion, museums are among the best examples that can provide a human element to history. Unfortunately, however, the most important audience -- children and young adults -- often avoid them out of fear of boredom, or only go as part of a class fieldtrip or family vacation. In June 2015, I traveled to Washington, D.C. to visit a friend. While there, we went to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which Adam often referenced in class. When I got to the Museum, I saw the trouble with taking kids in 7th or 8th grade to the Museum. While there, I found out is that a lot of these kids do not actually care about the subject of the Museum. They are more interested taking selfies, talking loudly and laughing. 

I took this class hoping to answer a basic question: “What exactly is the point of studying history?” As a history major, I get asked this question all the time, and I do not always have an adequate answer to it. After this class, though, I can honestly say that the point of studying history is to better understand the human condition. History is not a mere collection of events and social movements that inevitably occurred, but a collection of actions and consequence made by individuals. People who had hopes, dreams, and desires all of their own. 

One day I hope to be a teacher, and everything I have learned in this class will be useful for teaching kids not only about the Holocaust, but also about how to consider history in a more nuanced way.

September 24: "If that's true then I'm a murderer!" film screening and discussion with director on Nazi perpetrator guilt, repression, and denial

Thursday, September 24, 2015
4:00 - 6:00 PM
Film screening and talk
1210 Heller Hall

WALTER MANOSCHEK (political science, University of Vienna)
"If that's True, then I'm a Murderer!" Adolf Storms and the Massacre of Hungarian Jews in Deutsch Schuetzen (2012, 70 mins, German with English subtitles)
Film screening and discussion on Nazi perpetrator guilt, repression, and denial

September 16 talk by Benjamin Frommer -- The Last Jews: Intermarried Families in the Nazi Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia

Wednesday, September 16
4:00 PM
Benjamin Frommer, Northwestern University

The Last Jews: Intermarried Families in the Nazi Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia

710 Social Sciences Building

This talk will address the fate of intermarried Jewish-Gentile families in the Germany occupied Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia during the Second World War. 

Holocaust Education in a Global Context Teacher Workshop, June 15-18

The genocide of the Jews during World War II has become a global reference point to raise awareness about state violence and human rights abuses. This summer institute will explore the opportunities and challenges of Holocaust education and memorialization in diverse cultural contexts, particularly in heterogeneous classrooms in which students have no connection with the history of the Jewish people and Nazi crimes.

Adam Blackler delivers a brief history of the Holocaust to our engaged group of workshop participants

The institute addresses the historical and sociological significance of the Holocaust in a comparative genocide framework (Native American, Armenian, Cambodian and Rwandan genocides) and provides hands on activities - with survivor testimony, literature, art and film - designed to help educators create activities and lessons accessible to all learners that they can incorporate into their classrooms.

Community Event | Deportation in the Armenian Genocide: TMORA special exhibition, June 20-22

The Museum of Russian Art (TMORA) in Minneapolis, MN, in collaboration with the St. Sahag Armenian Church of St. Paul, Minnesota, will host a three-day exhibition dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, open from June 20 to June 22, 2015. The materials for the exhibition were provided by the Armenian National Institute, an organization focusing on “the study, research and affirmation of the Armenian genocide.” This exhibition, THE FIRST DEPORTATION: THE GERMAN RAILWAY, THE AMERICAN HOSPITAL, AND THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE is a project of the Armenian National Institute, Armenian Genocide Museum of America, and
Armenian Assembly of America.

The exhibit reveals various facets of the genocide, including the deportations, executions, massacres, murders, starvation, extermination and destruction. It also documents the immediate aftermath of the atrocities, attesting to the catastrophic destruction of the Armenian society in the Ottoman Turkish Empire. The scale and depth of the uprooting of the Armenian people are revealed through twenty-four panels filled with photographs, documents and explanatory texts.

The deportation of 1915. The entire Armenian population of eight

towns—about 170,000 in total—had been put on the road.

Daniel Levy "The Past: Between History and Memory" | Keynote as part of International Symposium on the 70th Anniversary of the Conclusion of WWII in Europe

International Symposium:
War, what is it good for? Uses and Abuses of Second World War History
Keynote:
The Past: Between History and Memory
Daniel Levy 

Friday, May 8, 2015
1210 Heller Hall
University of Minnesota

In 1969 Edwin Starr famously asked "war, what is it good for?" and answered "absolutely nothing." Regardless of whether organized violence is ever a good way to achieve various political goals, war history is often usable past in the present. Second World War as the "good war" or the "great patriotic war" can be put to many uses by contemporary political actors. This event explored the actual and potential uses of second world war history 70 years after war's end in Europe.

The one-day symposium addressed the usage of war history in both, international and domestic politics. For the international sphere the main focus was on the use of the war in contemporary European politics, especially in Russia, Central and Eastern Europe, the West, and in relations between them. Is history politics just continuation of war by other means or can war history be used to build peaceful relations between former enemies? In the domestic sphere WWII history is mostly used to construct unified nations, but in the symposium participants analyzed how war history has been or could be used in emancipatory ways to empower marginalized groups within societies.

Professor Daniel Levy (Sociology, Stony Brook University and author of Memory Unbound: The Holocaust and the Formation of Cosmopolitan Memory

In his keynote, "The Past: Between History and Memory", Levy addressed the contested relationship between history and memory, changing time conceptions, the role of nation-state formation, and the human rights regime. Levy drew from his work on cosmopolitanization, noting that global norms and narratives intersect with local practices in generative ways, shaping new realities. He highlighted the example of the Holocaust as having made the transition from European to global cypher, thus becoming legible in differing contexts around the world.  

A review of "Can One Laugh at Everything? Satire and Free Speech After Charlie"

On January 29 the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, the Center for Jewish Studies and the Department of French & Italian as well as several other centers and departments at the University of Minnesota hosted a discussion "Can One Laugh at Everything? Satire and Free Speech After Charlie." Speakers included Anthony Winer (William Mitchell College of Law); William Beeman (Anthropology); Jane Kirtley (Journalism); Bruno Chaouat (French & Italian); and Steven Sack (Editorial Cartoonist, Minneapolis Star Tribune).









The conversation addressed the topic of free speech after the attacks on the French magazine Charlie Hebdo in early January from a variety of perspectives: comparing U.S. and European legislative contexts, addressing figurative representation in the Islamic tradition, and the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe. Free speech, issues of power, inequality, racism, and hate speech were also brought up. Steven Sack made a case for the simultaneous potency and vulnerability of cartoons as a medium. The organizers noted that this event was intended as a starting point to a larger conversation and hoped that the discussion continues both in classrooms and beyond.
Initially covered by MPR, press coverage after the event has continued to be strong, particularly regarding controversy over the image used in the flyer to promote the talk in the days and weeks leading up to it. Read about the controversy in Inside Higher Ed, the Washington Post, and the local Star and Tribune.
Click here for an audio recording of the talks.
Here for the visuals accompanying Bill Beeman's talk.
Here for the visuals accompanying Bruno Chaouat's talk.
photos below courtesy of Steve Foldes (left to right, top to bottom): Anthony Winer, William Beeman, Jane Kirtley, Bruno Chaouat, and Steven Sack.