Chad Gibbs, a PhD candidate in the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, has been awarded the 2020-2021 Breslauer, Rutman, and Anderson Research Fellowship at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research. He will be in residence at the Center during September 2020 in order to conduct research for his dissertation, entitled “Against that Darkness: Perseverance, Resistance, and Revolt at Treblinka.”

From visiting family in China during summer breaks growing up, I became acutely aware of the devastation and suffering that occurred during the Japanese occupation of our hometown of Nanjing. Museums, movies, television programs, and commemorative art kept the Nanjing Massacre alive in public memory. But what I also noticed, from visits to museums, shuffling through television channels, and discussions with family, was the seeming absence of Chinese resistance.

I had the opportunity to research the USC Shoah Foundation's Visual History Archive this past summer thanks to the Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellowship. I was initially introduced to the archive through a course taught by Dr. Maria Zalewska in the School of Cinematic Arts entitled “Meme, Myself and I: How We Remember in the Digital Age.” Prior to the course, I was unaware of this resource at USC despite having a visual art practice deeply engaged with Holocaust remembrance and archives.

As a postdoctoral research fellow at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research in the 2019-2020 academic year, I carried out a research project focusing on the long-term impact of Hamidian Massacres of 1894-97 and the experiences of genocide survivors with regards to extortion, plunder, and robbery during the genocide of 1915. Since 2008, I have been working on socio-economic aspects of the genocide and of the deterioration of relations among different communities.

“Walking a Fine Line: Hungarian-Jewish Survivors and the Discourse Surrounding Sexual Violence in Postwar Testimonies” Allison Somogyi USC-Yale Postdoctoral Research Fellow August 27, 2020

“Locating Women in the Revolt: Gender and Spaces of Resistance at Treblinka” Chad Gibbs (PhD Candidate in History, University of Wisconsin at Madison) 2020-2021 Breslauer, Rutman, and Anderson Research Fellow September 29, 2020

  Call for Applications from PhD Candidates   Greenberg Research Fellowship Katz Research Fellowship in Genocide Studies

My recent stay at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my academic career.  From the remarkable power and content of the Visual History Archive, to the welcoming and helpful nature of the staff and donor community, I leave my term as the Breslauer, Rutman, and Anderson Research Fellow strengthened by new friendships and enriched by new findings for my work. 

I never intended to spend months listening to Holocaust testimonies.  My name is Chaya Nove, I am a sociolinguist working on a doctoral dissertation about language change in Yiddish vowels. In my research, I consider the Yiddish spoken by Hasidic Jews in New York today (Hasidic Yiddish, or HY) as a living, changing language, with the understanding that this language was once spoken by a group of people in another time and place. 

In his testimonial archived with the USC Shoah Foundation, George Weiss spoke to the dread and exile he endured as a child during Nazi Party rule. This chronicle is about the man who sculptured all he lived, imagined and embodied.

The USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research invites research proposals from USC undergraduate students and USC graduate students for the 2021 Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellowship.

Sara R. Horowitz, Professor of Comparative Literature and Jewish Studies at York University and an esteemed scholar of the Holocaust, has been named the 2020-2021 Sara and Asa Shapiro Scholar in Residence at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research. She will deliver a public lecture and spend over a week in residence at the Center in March 2022.

“Challenging the Shame Paradigm: Jewish Women’s Narratives of Sexual(ized) Violence During the Holocaust” Lauren Cantillon (PhD candidate in the Department of Culture, Media & Creative Industries at King’s College London, UK) 2020-2021 Robert J. Katz Research Fellow in Genocide Studies March 25, 2021

“Speaking About Sexuality: Male Jewish Intimacy and Agency in Oral History Interviews” Florian Zabransky (PhD candidate at the Weidenfeld Institute–Centre for German-Jewish Studies at University of Sussex, UK) 2020-2021 Margee and Douglas Greenberg Research Fellow April 6, 2021

“Research With Testimonies: Featuring the Center's 2020 Lev Student Research Fellows” Lucy Sun (USC undergraduate student, History major) and Rachel Zaretsky (MFA candidate in Art, USC Roski School of Art and Design) 2020 Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellows April 14, 2021

“How the Holocaust’s Jewish Calendars Bear Witness” Alan Rosen (Recipient of the 2020 Yad Vashem International Book Prize for Holocaust Research) April 21, 2021

  Call for Applications from PhD Candidates   Greenberg Research Fellowship Katz Research Fellowship in Genocide Studies

In 2018, under the initiative of the Yale Library’s Fortunoff Video Archive, three leading institutions holding large collections of Holocaust testimonies agreed to make a portion of their materials available as transcripts, along with a subset of video recordings, in Let Them Speak / In Search of the Drowned: Testimonies and Testimonial Fragments of the Holocaust (LTS). LTS is a searchable digital anthology of testimonies which examines survivor experiences and uses them to understand the experiences of those who did not survive. It is also a dynamic monograph with essays by Dr.

Two USC scholars – graduate student Nicholas Bredie and undergraduate student Atharva Tewari – will share the Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellowship for Summer 2021.

Dr. Johanna Braun, a researcher with the Institute of Culture Studies and Theatre History at the Austrian Academy of Sciences and lecturer in the Department of Art and Education at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, will be conducting research as a visiting scholar at the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research for three months beginning in December 2021. 

In the month of July, Julia Calderón, PhD candidate in Hispanic Languages and Literatures at the University of California, Los Angeles, will work with the Center as a visiting scholar and summer professional intern. Julia Calderón earned a Summer Internship Professionalization grant from the Spanish and Portuguese Department at UCLA that enables her to work at an organization of her choosing over the summer.

  Call for Applications   Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellowship Summer 2022  

Lilia Tomchuk, a PhD candidate at the Fritz Bauer Institute at Goethe University Frankfurt, has been awarded the 2021-2022 Margee and Douglas Greenberg Research Fellowship at the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research. She will be in residence at the Center in Spring 2022 in order to conduct research for her dissertation, which is entitled “Dimensions of Jewish Women's Experiences During the Holocaust in Occupied Ukraine.”

Charlotte Kiechel, a Ph.D. candidate in Global History at Yale University, has been awarded the 2021-2022 USC Shoah Foundation Robert J. Katz Research Fellowship in Genocide Studies. She will be in residence at the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research in Spring 2022 to conduct research related to her dissertation, which is entitled “The Politics of Comparison: Holocaust Memory and Visions of ‘Third World’ Suffering, 1950-1995.”

Barnabas Balint, a PhD candidate at Magdalen College at the University of Oxford, UK, has been awarded the 2021-2022 Breslauer, Rutman, and Anderson Research Fellowship at the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research. He will be in residence at the Center during Spring 2022 in order to conduct research for his dissertation, which is entitled “Accelerated Development into Adulthood: The Changing Roles of Young Hungarians During the Holocaust.”

“Redress for Linguistic Genocide in Canada” Lorena Sekwan Fontaine (University of Winnipeg/San Diego State University) February 17, 2022

The USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research is proud to announce its cooperation with a German government funded multi-institutional Holocaust research project entitled #LastSeen - Pictures of Nazi Deportations.

"Shades of Agency: Choice, Survival & Resistance of Jewish Women During the Holocaust in Transnistria” Lilia Tomchuk (PhD candidate in History, Fritz Bauer Institute, Frankfurt, Germany)  2021-2022 Margee and Douglas Greenberg Research Fellow  March 2, 2022

"Reclaiming the 'Ruins of Memory': Gender, Agency, and Imagination in Stories of the Shoah” Sara R. Horowitz  (York University, Canada)  2020-2021 Sara and Asa Shapiro Scholar in Residence  March 23, 2022

"Growing Up Jewish During the Holocaust in Hungary” Barnabas Balint (PhD candidate in History, Magdalen College, University of Oxford, UK)  2021-2022 Breslauer, Rutman, and Anderson Research Fellow  March 29, 2022