Call for Papers:

International Conference: "Digital Approaches to Genocide Studies"

Co-sponsored by the USC Mellon Digital Humanities Program

October 23-24, 2017 at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles

The USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research invites proposals for its 2017 International Conference “Digital Approaches to Genocide Studies” that will be co-sponsored by the USC Mellon Digital Humanities Program.

The USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research (http://sfi.usc.edu/cagr) is dedicated to advancing new areas of interdisciplinary research on the Holocaust and other genocides. One of the Center’s primary research themes is Digital Genocide Studies. 

Digital technologies have begun to significantly influence contemporary scholarship, theories, and methods in the social sciences and humanities. The USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research invites scholars from all disciplines to examine the relationships between digital methodologies, practices, ethics and contemporary Holocaust and genocide studies. How can digital humanities shape, challenge, or complement contemporary genocide studies and vice versa?

The two-day international conference “Digital Approaches to Genocide Studies” will be held on October 23-24, 2017 at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California. The conference will investigate the ways in which digital tools and methods, new media, and information technologies can help us to challenge conventional wisdom regarding Holocaust and Genocide Studies by raising new questions, improving our understanding, deepening our analysis, widening our field of view, or pioneering new approaches. Especially of interest would be how digital humanists from a range of disciplines and methodologies can broaden our methodological approaches to the study of the causes, consequences, and prevention of genocide. 

We encourage diverse approaches to the conference theme that draw from a wide variety of critical lenses and approaches, as well as focus on any time period, case study, or medium.

Submissions on the following themes are particularly encouraged:

• Digital methodologies and their applicability to genocide studies
• Quantitative genocide research
• Big data methodologies and comparative genocide studies
• Digital technologies (such as wearable devices, 3D printing, and others) and their applicability to genocide studies
• Creation, curation, promotion and analysis of digital genocide resources and collections
• Audio and visual genocide testimonies and their digitization, preservation, and accessibility
• Social, institutional, global/regional, multicultural, and multilingual aspects of digital genocide research
• Ethics of digital genocide studies
• Tools and methods of genocide studies that could fruitfully contribute to or influence the digital sphere and the field of digital humanities

Founded in 2014, the Center for Advanced Genocide Research is the research and scholarship unit of the USC Shoah Foundation. The USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research is dedicated to advancing new areas of interdisciplinary research on the Holocaust and other genocides, focusing on the origins of genocide and how to intervene in the cycle that leads to mass violence. The Center organizes annual international workshops and conferences, hosts a speaker series on genocide and mass violence, and offers a competitive international research fellowship program. For further information please consult: http://cagr.usc.edu.

The USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive holds over 54,000 digitized and fully searchable video testimonies of survivors and other eyewitnesses of the Holocaust, the Rwandan, Guatemalan and Armenian genocides, and the Nanjing Massacre in China. The interviews were conducted in 41 languages and in 62 countries. They encompass the experiences not only of survivors in these contexts, but also of witnesses, liberators, aid providers, and war crimes trials participants. 

The USC Mellon Digital Humanities Program enables postdoctoral and graduate student fellows to gain training in emerging digital technologies while advancing research in the humanities. A partnership between the Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences, the USC School of Cinematic Arts, and the USC Libraries, the USC Mellon Digital Humanities Program possesses a unique set of attributes that positions our fellows to emerge from USC with extensive understanding of compelling problems, deep connections to scholars working in their areas of expertise, and enhanced digital skills developed through multi-disciplinary training in state-of-the-art techniques and technologies.

We welcome proposals for single paper presentations and for theme-specific panels comprising no more than three presenters. 

Please send a CV and a one-page abstract of the proposed paper or an abstract of the proposed panel plus an abstract of each paper of the proposed panel before January 15, 2017 to cagr@usc.edu.

Travel support will be available. Please include your travel request with your abstract.

Click here to download the CFP.