CfA: USHMM Faculty Seminar: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Teaching about Holocaust Violence (due March 15, 2023)

Danny Bean Discussion

The Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum announces the call for applications for the 2023 Curt C. and Else Silberman Seminar on "Interdisciplinary Approaches to Teaching about Holocaust Violence," which will take place from June 5–9, 2023 in person and June 12–15, 2023 online. The Silberman Seminar will focus on the topic of teaching Holocaust violence in the college classroom by utilizing approaches from the fields of social sciences, history, literary analysis, oral history, film, and music studies. The Seminar will consider how to effectively address the magnitude and scope of the mass violence that occurred in the lead-up to and duringthe Holocaust, while simultaneously emphasizing personal experiences of violence and trauma. In discussing the causes and consequences of violence, we will foreground testimonies, diaries, music, literature, and oral histories to shed light on the intimate side of the Holocaust through personal narrative. Particular focus will be placed on the roles of race, ethnicity, and gender, as well as the relationship between teaching antisemitism and the Holocaust. 

The Seminar is designed to help faculty, instructors, and advanced PhD candidates who are currently teaching or preparing to teach courses that focus on or have a curricular component relating to the Holocaust, genocide, violence, antisemitism, and trauma. Applications are welcome from instructors across academic disciplines including but not limited to Anthropology; Archeology; Art; Disability Studies; Film Studies; German Studies; History; Holocaust and Genocide Studies; Jewish Studies; Law and Human Rights; Music; Philosophy and Religious Studies; Political Science and International Relations; Psychology; Sociology; Women’s and Gender Studies; and Trauma and Memory Studies. The Seminar aims to deepen, broaden, and enrich how we approach teaching Holocaust and genocidal violence across these diverse disciplines and fields.

Applications must be received in electronic form no later than March 15, 2023. The full CfA and the application form are available on the USHMM website: https://www.ushmm.org/research/opportunities-for-academics/faculty-seminars/silberman/2023. Questions may be directed to Dr. Katharine White at kwhite@ushmm.org.

Seminar Facilitators

Jeffrey Kopstein, Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Irvine

Anna Shternshis, Al and Malka Green Professor of Yiddish Studies and the Director of the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto

The Curt C. and Else Silberman Foundation endowed the Silberman Seminar for University Faculty in memory of Curt C. and Else Silberman.  The Foundation supports programs in higher education that promote, protect, and strengthen Jewish values in democracy, human rights, ethical leadership, and cultural pluralism.