Anna Lee, a junior at USC from Los Angeles, California majoring in English Literature with minors in Spanish and Teaching English as a Second language (TESOL), has been chosen as the 2019 Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellow at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research.

Brigittine M.

 

Each year, the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research hosts an interdisciplinary team of scholars from different universities and different countries for one week so that they can develop and discuss a collaborative innovative research project in the field of Holocaust and Genocide

 

Survivors and their testimonies have been central to Holocaust research and memorial culture. Even before the end of the Shoah, survivor historians in parts of Eastern Europe liberated from Nazi occupation collected testimonies and conducted interviews with fellow survivors.

In 2020, on Indigenous Peoples' Day (formerly known as Columbus Day) -- October 12, 2020 -- the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research will launch a three-day international conference entitled “Mass Violence and Its Lasting Impact on Indigenous Peoples - The Case of the Americas and Australia/Pacific Region”.

       

Professor Uğur Ümit Üngör (Utrecht University, Department of History, and NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Amsterdam) gave a public lecture about the role of paramilitary militias in cases of mass violence, focusing on the example of pro-state paramilitary violence in the Syrian conflict. The lecture is based on Professor Üngör’s forthcoming monograph of the same title, which builds upon his broader and comparative research on the global phenomenon of paramilitarism.

Anna Lee, the 2019 Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellow at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research, gave a public lecture about her research on survivor activism as a form of healing in the aftermath of mass executions during genocide and contemporary school mass shootings. During her one-month residency at the Center, Lee conducted comparative research on the topic by examining both survivor testimonies housed in the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive and accounts of school shootings survivors found in media and other sources.

Ayşenur Korkmaz, the Center’s 2019-2020 Robert J. Katz Research Fellow in Genocide Studies, gave a public lecture about narratives and conceptions of home among Armenian genocide survivors who fled to the south Caucasus during the Armenian genocide. The lecture is based on Korkmaz’s research with video and audio testimonies of Armenian survivors available in the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, and is part of her larger dissertation project on post-genocide articulations of the Armenian homeland (Yergir) through materiality and rituals.

 

 

 

In 2019, the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research conducted deep and wide-ranging outreach, introducing the Visual History Archive to scholars, academic faculty, fellows, librarians, and students through in-depth workshops, demonstrations, consultations, and class introductions.

During my dissertation research on the history of fear in the Weimar Republic, 1919-1933, a Corrie ten Boom fellowship provided the opportunity for me to visit the USC Shoah Foundation to explore the visual testimonies of the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive. When I arrived, I was not exactly sure how I might make use of these incredibly important digitized collections in my project.

The USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research invites research proposals from USC undergraduate students and USC graduate students for the 2020 Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellowship.

Professor Peter Hayes, world-renowned scholar of the history of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, will serve as the 2019-2020 Sara and Asa Shapiro Scholar in Residence at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research.

The USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research is proud to announce the publication of a new book entitled New Perspectives on Kristallnacht: After 80 Years, the Nazi Pogrom in Global Comparison, edited by Wolf Gruner and Steve Ross.

Ioanida Costache, the Center’s 2019-2020 Breslauer, Rutman, and Anderson Research Fellow, gave a public lecture about the monthlong research she conducted in the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive during her residency at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research. This research is part of her ongoing dissertation project that examines how music helps facilitate the cultivation and transmission of Romani memories of the Holocaust.

From the Annals of Krakow, a sequence of poems by Piotr Florczyk that was inspired by testimonies from the USC Shoah Foundation Visual Archive, will be published in September 2020 by Lynx House Press, a press whose titles are distributed to the trade by University of Washington Press. 

The USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research hosted professors Marianne Hirsch (Columbia University) and Leo Spitzer (Dartmouth College), who gave a lecture based on their recently published book School Photos in Liquid Time: Reframing Difference.

Only a day after the University of Southern California announced that it would conduct a three-day test to move all classes online, which soon turned into a permanent arrangement until the end of Spring semester, my colleague and I gave our last in-person introduction to the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive to a USC class. Perhaps serendipitously, one of the topics discussed in this class was physical health.

I much enjoyed my stay at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research in early March, just before the pandemic turned all of our lives upside down. Meeting the wonderful members of the staff and seeing how much the operations of both the Foundation and the Center have grown since my last visit in 2014 were remarkable experiences.

  “Geographies of Persecution in Occupied Paris: Place and Space in Survivors' Testimonies” Maël Le Noc (PhD Candidate in Geography, Texas State University) 2019-2020 Margee and Douglas Greenberg Research Fellow March 12, 2020  

  “Makeshift Murder: The Holocaust at Its Peak” Peter Hayes (Northwestern University) 2019-2020 Shapiro Scholar in Residence March 5, 2020

  “Continuity, Escalation, and Local Actors: The Hamidian Massacres and the Armenian Genocide” Mehmet Polatel 2019-2020 Center Junior Postdoctoral Research Fellow April 13, 2020

Two promising USC scholars – undergraduate student Lucy Sun and graduate student Rachel Zaretsky -- will share the Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellowship for Summer 2020. The Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellowship provides support for USC students at any academic level and from any discipline to conduct a month of research in residence at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research focusing on testimonies of the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive (VHA) and/or other related USC resources and collections.

Florian Zabranksy, a PhD candidate at the Centre for German-Jewish Studies at the University of Sussex, United Kingdom, has been awarded the 2020-2021 Margee and Douglas Greenberg Research Fellowship at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research. He will be in residence at the Center in Spring 2021 in order to conduct research for his dissertation, which examines male Jewish intimacy during the Holocaust.

Lauren Cantillon, a PhD candidate in the Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries at King’s College, London, has been awarded the 2020-2021 Robert J. Katz Research Fellowship in Genocide Studies at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research. She will be in residence at the Center in Spring 2021 in order to conduct research for her dissertation, entitled “Remembering and Remediating Women’s Stories of Sexual Violence during the Holocaust.”