2017 Jack and Anita Hess Seminar for Faculty: Gender and Sexuality in the Holocaust

UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM
Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies

2017 Jack and Anita Hess Seminar for Faculty: 
Gender and Sexuality in the Holocaust

January 9-13, 2017

The Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum announces the 2017 Jack and Anita Hess Seminar for college and university faculty from all disciplines who are teaching or preparing to teach Holocaust or Holocaust-related courses (such as comparative genocide, victims studies, etc.).

This year’s Seminar will focus on gender and sexuality in order to strengthen and expand the participants’ knowledge of how social understandings of gender norms and human sexuality affected the lives of perpetrators, bystanders, and victims during the Holocaust. Using a wide variety of primary and secondary sources, the participants will examine where men’s and women’s Holocaust experiences mirrored one another and where they differed, as well as the ways in which the Nazi system redefined—and in some cases shattered—traditional gender roles. Over the course of this seminar, participants will explore how Nazi gender norms and perceptions of sexuality influenced the persecution experiences of Jews who came under German control. They will also examine how National Socialist thinking shaped the ideologies of sexuality, race, and gender that justified the violent exclusion of other, “non-Aryan” groups from the idealized German national body. The themes covered will include, but are not limited to: prewar persecution and women’s vulnerability; sexual violence; and the emasculation of “non-Aryan, untermenschen; forced sterilization; eugenics; instrumental sex; rape; reproductive experimentation; sex work and sex slavery in the military and concentration camps; the linkages between sexuality and race in Nazi ideology; the legislation of human desire; understandings of homosexuality; representations of masculinity and femininity in Nazi rhetoric; voyeurism and public shaming; the tension between passionate camaraderie, homoeroticism, and homosexuality in the numerous all-male institutions in Nazi Germany.”

This Seminar is designed for faculty of all academic disciplines. While the Seminar will focus on the specific case of the Holocaust, the themes, approaches, and methods that the seminar covers are more broadly applicable for educators who engage the perspectives of victims and survivors in other geographic regions or periods of time, as well as those working in LGBTQ studies, women’s history, gender studies, etc. 

The Seminar will be held at the United States Holocaust Museum from January 9–13, 2015. It will be co-led by Dagmar Herzog, Distinguished Professor of History and the Daniel Rose Faculty scholar at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, and Annette Timm, Associate Professor of History at the University of Calgary. Dr. Herzog’s scholarship has examined the role of sexuality in Europe and America and its relation to politics, especially under fascism and in its wake. She has also published widely on gender, theology, and women’s rights. Dr. Herzog is currently analyzing points where psychoanalysis and the social sciences meet. She has written a number of works, including, Cold War Freud: Psychoanalysis in an Age of Catastrophes (2016); Sexuality in Europe: A Twentieth- Century History (2011); Sex in Crisis: The New Sexual Revolution and the Future of American Politics (2008); and Sex after Fascism: Memory and Morality in Twentieth-Century Germany (2005).  She has also edited the collections, Brutality and Desire: War and Sexuality in Europe’s Twentieth Century (2009); and Sexuality and German Fascism (2004). Dr. Timm has written and lectured widely about sexuality, population policy, gender, marriage counseling, and sexual duty. Her published works include, The Politics of Fertility in Twentieth-Century Berlin (2010) and Gender, Sex, and the Shaping of Modern Europe: A History from the French Revolution to the Present Day, co-authored with Joshua Sanborn (2007 & 2016). Dr. Timm’s chapter, “Mothers, Whores or Sometimes Dupes? Emotion and Race in Historiographical Debates about Women in the Third Reich,” in Beyond the Racial State, is forthcoming. She is also one of the editors of, Holocaust History and the Readings of Ka-Tzetnik, which is under contract with Bloomsbury Press. 

Professors Herzog and Timm will share insight from their own work, lead participants in discussions, and help participants prepare syllabi for their upcoming classes. Museum staff and visiting scholars working on related subjects will also lead sessions in their areas of expertise. Participants will be introduced to the numerous resources available at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum that can easily be used in their classrooms, such as Experiencing History, the Museum’s digital humanities project; the digitized archives; photo and film archives; and the oral history collection. Participants will also have access to Museum staff and visiting fellows with whom they can consult about their classes and Holocaust-related projects. 

Candidates must be faculty members of accredited, baccalaureate-awarding institutions in North America.  Applications must include a curriculum vitae, a short statement of the candidate's specific interest in and need to attend the Seminar, and a supporting letter from a departmental chair or dean detailing the Holocaust-related courses that the candidate is teaching or planning and the support that the university is providing for Holocaust studies at the institution.  If the applicant has already taught an applicable course, a syllabus should be included.
 
Admission will be decided without regard to the age, gender, race, creed, or national origin of the candidate.  A maximum of 20 applicants will be accepted.  For non-local participants, the Mandel Center will defray the cost of (1) direct travel to and from the participant’s home institution and Washington, DC, and (2) lodging for the duration of the Seminar.  Incidentals, meals, and book expenses must be defrayed by the candidates or their respective institutions.  All participants must attend the entire Seminar.
 
Applications must be postmarked or received in electronic form no later than Tuesday, November 1, 2016 and sent to:
 
University Programs
Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
100 Raoul Wallenberg Place, SW
Washington, DC 20024-2150
Fax: (202) 479-9726       Email:  university_programs@ushmm.org
 
For questions, contact Dr. Kierra Crago-Schneider at 202-314-1779 or kcrago-schneider@ushmm.org.  Accepted applicants will be notified of the results of the selection process by Friday, November 18, 2016.
 
This Seminar is endowed by Edward and David Hess in memory of their parents, Jack and Anita Hess, who believed passionately in the power of education to overcome racial and religious prejudice.