Apply for 2017 Conference at Center for Advanced Genocide Research: “Digital Approaches to Genocide Research”

USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research will follow its groundbreaking 2016 international conference on the Guatemalan Genocide with a conference next year on digital approaches to genocide studies. Scholars may submit proposals until January 15, 2017.

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.

The Center encourages 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 


The Center welcomes 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, 2016 to cagr@usc.edu. 
Travel support will be available. Please include your travel request with your abstract.