Armenian Genocide Centennial | CHGS events in commemoration of the 100th anniversary, April 23-25

As we approach the 100th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, the Human Rights Program and the Institute for Global Studies will be hosting three days of events to commemorate this centennial. The events will include the Arsham and Charlotte Ohanessian Lecture featuring Professor Bedross Der Matossian, which is open to the public (April 23), a student conference, entitled "One Hundred Years of Genocide" (April 24), open to the public, and a K-16 teacher workshop (April 25).

The objectives of these events are to promote public understanding of the genocide and the fates of those who lost their lives and those who escaped. The events will also analyze responses by the international community, and discuss the long-term implications for international policy and actions to prevent and respond to genocide.

Thursday, April 23, 7:00pm
Bedross Der Matossian, University of Nebraska, Lincoln
"The Armenian Genocide Historiography on the Eve of the Centennial: From Continuity to Contingency"
Humphrey School of Public Affairs, Humphrey Forum
open to the public

Friday, April 24, 8:45am - 5:00pm
100 Years of Genocide - Student Conference
Humphrey School of Public Affairs, Room #25
open to the public

Saturday, April 25, 8:45am - 3:00pm
World War I and the Armenian Genocide - Teacher Workshop
1210 Heller Hall

Saturday, April 25, 11:00am - 1:00pm
Guided Tour of Bdote, sacred Dakota site at Ft. Snelling State Park
led by Professor Iyekiyapiwin Darlene St. Clair

Events organized by the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Human Rights Program, Institute for Global Studies, Center for Austrian Studies, and Ohanessian Chair. Made possible by the Ohanessian Endowment Fund for Justice and Peace Studies of the Minneapolis Foundation.

Tour of Bdote, sacred Dakota site at Ft. Snelling State Park

Saturday, April 25
11:00am - 1:00pm
Ft. Snelling State Park


We are living, learning, and working in a particular place with a long, fascinating, troubling, and frequently unknown story. One goal for this tour is that participants begin to experience the place we live in as Mnisota Makoce, the Dakota Homelands. We will be visiting several Dakota sacred sites located in an area that would later be called the Twin Cities. How has colonization impacted Dakota use and access to these places? How have Dakota people asserted a continuing relationship with these places? This tour will provide participants with a more nuanced and complicated understanding of the place we call home.



Iyekiyapiwiƞ Darlene St. Clair is an Associate Professor at Saint Cloud State University where she teaches American Indian Studies and directs the Multicultural Resource Center. Her work focuses on several areas: Dakota Studies, the integration of Native cultures, histories and languages into curricula and educational institutions, and the arts and cultural expressions of Native peoples. She is Bdewakaƞtuƞwaƞ Dakota and an enrolled member of the Lower Sioux Indian Community in Minnesota.

Panel on "Shanghailander" Jewish Refugees

Thursday, April 23
9:30 - 11:30am
Northrop Auditorium

China Day is an annual half-day event that brings together Minnesota high school students who study Chinese at the University of Minnesota. Keynote speakers include a panel of "Shanghailanders," individuals who lived in Shanghai as Jewish refugees during the Holocaust. Panelist will speak about their life in Shanghai and share with students what Shanghai was like during a critical time in history. The theme coincides with an exhibit that the Confucius Institute will be sponsoring, Jewish Refugees in Shanghai.

The panel discussion will be facilitated by Alejandro Baer, Director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and professor in the Department of Sociology.

Director of Programs on Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in D.C. to give talk on the Implications of the Holocaust for Multireligious Conversations, April 22

Luncheon program featuring Victoria Barnett
Director of Programs on Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.
Wednesday, April 22, 11:45am
Mt. Zion Temple, St. Paul
For reservations: bfriend@stpauljcc.org



As the event of the Holocaust recedes further into human history, popular and academic understandings of its implications have grown broader. Today, the history of the Holocaust is often taught comparatively in courses on human rights, ethics, and contemporary genocide. And as we become increasingly aware of the multireligious nature of our world, interfaith conversations focus on the commonalities and tensions between and among people of various religions, not just Judaism and Christianity. How can recent scholarship about the Holocaust inform these newer conversations, and how in turn have these developments shaped the field of Holocaust studies? How can the Holocaust be understood in its historical particularities as well as in terms of more universal questions? Victoria Barnett will discuss these developments and how they are being addressed in the field of Holocaust studies and in interreligious circles.
For more information see the University of St. Thomas and Saint John's University Jay Phillips Center for Interfaith Learning

Minneapolis Premiere: Video Project from acclaimed Barcelona-born American artist Francesc Torres

Francesc Torres: What does History Know of Nail Biting?
Tuesday, April 21
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Lindahl Founders Room, Northrop Auditorium
University of Minnesota



What does History Know of Nail Biting? the latest multi-channel video work from acclaimed Barcelona-born American artist Francesc Torres, examines the extraordinary history of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, a group of American volunteers who went to fight for the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), juxtaposing recently recovered archival footage of these soldiers and their battles with recent documentation of the sites of major military encounters.

Organized by the Iberian Studies Initiative in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese Studies. Co-sponsored by the Institute for Global Studies; the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies; the Institute for Advanced Study; the Departments of Art, Art History, and History; Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, U of M Duluth; and Spanish Discipline, The Division of Humanities, U of M Morris.

Norway and the Holocaust | Special Guest Lecture by Author and Survivor Irene Berman, April 23

Irene Berman
"We are going to Pick Potatoes", Norway and the Holocaust, the Untold Story

Thursday, April 23
11:15 - 12:30pm
350 Anderson Hall
West Bank, University of Minnesota
open to the public



Irene Levin Berman was born and raised in Norway. As a young child in 1942 she escaped to Sweden, a neutral country during World War II, to avoid annihilation. Nazi Germany had invaded Norway and the deportation of two thousand Norwegian Jews had begun. Seven members of her father's immediate family were among the 771 victims who were unable to escape and were murdered in Auschwitz.

In 2005 Irene was forced to begin to examine the label of being a Holocaust survivor. Her strong dual identity as a Norwegian and a Jew led her to explore previously unopened doors in her mind. "We Are Going to Pick Potatoes" Norway and the Holocaust, The Untold Story is not a narrative of the Holocaust alone, but the remembrances of growing up Jewish in Norway during and after WWII.

For more information see www.norwayandtheholocaust.com

This event will meet with Adam Blackler's "History of the Holocaust" course, but is free and open to the public. Please join us.

HGMV Workshop, Thu April 16: Holocaust Commemoration in Turkey and Spain

Thursday, April 16
HGMV Workshop

Yagmur Karakaya and Alejandro Baer:
"Remembering to Forget? Holocaust Commemoration in Turkey and Spain"

3:00pm
710 Social Sciences



As a consequence of diverse but converging transnational efforts many countries around the world have gradually introduced an annual Holocaust Remembrance Day, celebrated with a state-sponsored memorial ceremony. How do these transnational top-down politics of memory translate into the designated national settings? Does promoting public awareness and remembrance of the Holocaust affect societies' understandings, attitudes and responses towards past and current forms of mass violence and human rights violations? Preliminary findings of two case studies - Turkey and Spain- will be presented.



Professor Alejandro Baer is an associate professor at the sociology department and the director of CHGS.

Yagmur Karakaya is a PhD student at the sociology department at the University of Minnesota. She is interested in collective memory, popular culture and narratives of history. Yagmur is currently working on her dissertation project on Ottomania, which focuses on the contemporary interest in the Ottoman past in Turkey. She also works with Alejandro Baer on a comparative study of Holocaust remembrance initiatives.