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.

Final HGMV Workshop of the Year | Ore Koren (Political Science) on Reparations of Mass Killings

Thursday, May 7, 3:00 pm
710 Social Sciences
Ore Koren (Department of Political Science)
"Exploring the Alternatives: The Role of Customary Justice Mechanisms in Post-Conflict Contexts"

This paper argues that reparations for mass killing are a rare, diffusive event, and that in order to understand it one must first identify where diffusion can actually occur and then account for factors that might govern the diffusive process. I begin by applying extant theories of international policy diffusion and international law to the study of reparations for mass killing. The viability of this approach is then tested on newly available data on reparations for the years 1971-2011 by incorporating a Bayesian/MCMC hierarchical and spatial split-population framework that accounts for the aforementioned issues.



Ore Koren is a PhD candidate at the Department of Political Science and a MSc candidate at the Department of Applied Economics. His fields of research are international relations and research methodology, focusing on political violence, civil conflict, and mass killing.