USC Shoah Foundation Accepting Proposals for 2014 International Conference

USC Shoah Foundation is issuing its first-ever call for proposals for an international conference to be held next November, inspired by the 20th anniversary of Schindler’s List.

The conference will be held Nov. 16-18, 2014, at the University of Southern California.

The conference is titled “Memory, Media and Technology: Exploring the Trajectories of Schindler’s List.” Since the release of Steven Spielberg’s award-winning film and the founding of the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, innovations in digital media technologies have transformed how people communicate, publish, research and remember the past. Public work on memory has also proliferated. The conference will examine the trajectories of memory, media and technology throughout a range of disciplines and from a variety of vantage points and venues.

Scholars and educators will participate in roundtable discussions about the role of media archives in research and education, the role of mediated memories in facilitating public action and the future of these new practices for mediating memory.

Presentations may cover many issues, including but not limited to: creating and preserving media archives of mass violence, representing genocide in film and literature, landmarks of public memory using new media, case studies in research or teaching with media archives, and trauma and mediated memory.

The conference’s steering committee includes the following members: Wolf Gruner, University of Southern California; Sofia Gruskin, University of Southern California; Marianne Hirsch, Columbia University; Karen Jungblut, USC Shoah Foundation; Ed Linenthal, Indiana University, Bloomington; Wendy Lower, Claremont McKenna College; Todd Presner, University of California Los Angeles; and Jeffrey Shandler, Rutgers University.

Those who wish to present at the conference may submit proposals; more information here. The deadline is Jan. 31, 2014.