2017

Christopher R. Browning, Ph.D.

Frank Porter Graham Professor Emeritus of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Shapiro Scholar in Residence

Christopher R. Browning is the Frank Porter Graham Professor Emeritus of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research concerns the decision-making and policy-making behind the Nazi Final Solution, analyzed in his books The Final Solution and the German Foreign Office (1978), Fateful Months: Essays on the Emergence of the Final Solution (1985), Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (1992), The Path to Genocide: Essays on Launching the Final Solution (1992) and The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939–March 1942 (2004).

Professor Browning is one of the world’s most renowned Holocaust scholars and a proponent of the “moderate functionalist” school of thought in the origins of the Holocaust debate. During his lecture, “Holocaust History and Survivor Testimony: The Case of the Starachowice Factory Slave Labor Camp” at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research, Browning discussed the changing attitudes about witness testimony and how the process of gathering it has changed since the end of World War II. He also focused on the value – as well as some of the misconceptions – of witness accounts of history.

To watch his lecture click here.

To read more about Christopher R. Browning click here.

News About Christopher Browning

Christopher Browning Talks About the Changing Attitudes of Witness Testimony in Genocide Studies, USC Shoah Foundation News, March 29, 2018 

 

2016

Omer Bartov, Ph.D.

John P. Birkelund Distinguished Professor of European History and Professor of German Studies at Brown University

Sara and Asa Shapiro Scholar in Residence

Professor Bartov is the John P. Birkelund Distinguished Professor of European History and Professor of German Studies at Brown University. His research has ranged from studies of the Wehrmacht (German Army) during World War II to the links between total war and genocide. Bartov’s latest research focuses interethnic relations in Eastern Europe.

At the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research, Professor Bartov gave a lecture on how the East Galician town of Buczacz was transformed from a site of coexistence, where Poles, Ukrainians, and Jews had lived side-by-side for centuries, into a site of genocide. In his lecture, Bartov addresses questions such as: What were the reasons for this instance of communal violence, what were its dynamics, and why has it been erased from the local memory?

As a leading scholar in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Professor Bartov has earned many research awards and honors, including being inducted as a Fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005 and earning a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship (2003-2004). He is also the author of seven books and the editor of three volumes. His books include Hitler's Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich; Mirrors of Destruction: War, Genocide, and Modern Identity; and Erased: Vanishing Traces of Jewish Galicia in Present-Day Ukraine. 

To watch his lecture click here.

To read more about Omer Bartov click here.

News About Omer Bartov

Omer Bartov Discusses Research, Testimony and Future of Holocaust Scholarship in Facebook Live Interview, USC Shoah Foundation News, May 5, 2017

Omer Bartov Gives Shapiro Scholar Lecture on "Anatomy of a Genocide", USC Shoah Foundation News, May 8, 2017

 

2015

David Cesarani

Professor Cesarani was Research Professor of History at Royal Holloway University of London. Earlier in his career he held positions at the University of Leeds, Queen Mary University of London, the Wiener Library in London and the University of Southampton. In 2005, Queen Elizabeth II appointed him to the Order of the British Empire for his work on creating Holocaust Memorial Day in his native Britain. 

Professor Cesarani passed away in October 2015, shortly after he had been chosen as the inaugural Sara and Asa Shapiro Annual Holocaust Testimony Scholar and had accepted this award, but before his selection was made public. The USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research hosted a symposium to honor him. The symposium featured renowned international scholars discussing Cesarani’s work, his impact on Holocaust studies, and the connections between their own work and his contributions to the field.

A prolific researcher and author, Cesarani’s books include Eichmann: His Life and Crimes; Arthur Koestler: The Homeless Mind; Justice Delayed: How Britain Became a Refuge for Nazi War Criminals; Major Farran's Hat: Murder, Scandal and Britain's War Against Jewish Terrorism 1945-1948; Disraeli: The Novel Politician (Jewish Lives); and Final Solution: The Fate of the Jews 1933–1949.

To read about the symposium click here.

To learn more about David Cesarani click here.

 

2015

Wendy Lower

John K. Roth Professor of History and George R. Roberts Fellow at Claremont McKenna College

Yom Hashoah Scholar in Residence

"Hitler's Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields"

Wendy Lower gained her PhD in 1999 at the American University in Washington, D.C. In 1999-2000 she was on the adjunct faculty at both the American University and Georgetown University. She has served as Director of the Visiting Scholars Program (2000-2004) and Project Director of the oral history project "German Witnesses to War and its Aftermath" (2010-2012) at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. From 2004-2009, she was Assistant Professor of History at Towson University, and in 2011 she became part of the Affiliated Faculty in the Department of History at Clark University. She currently holds the John K. Roth chair in History and is the George R. Roberts Fellow at Claremont McKenna College, as well as a Research Associate at the Ludwig Maximillians Universitat in Munich.

Dr. Lower's research looks at the Holocaust in the context of comparative genocide studies, with a special view on modern Germany and Ukraine. Her work looks at oral and public histories, as well as photographs and memorialization. She has published four books in English, and one in Ukrainian, and is currently working on a new English book project. Her 2013 book Hitler's Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields was a finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction for that year.

In November 2014, Wendy Lower participated in the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research International Conference "Memory, Media, and Technology." She was on the steering committee for the conference, as well as chairing the roundtable discussion "Digital Archives in Research and Public Engagement."

To read about her lecture click here.

To watch her lecture click here.

News About Wendy Lower

Wendy Lower, 2015 Yom Hashoah Scholar, Exposes German Women's Role in Holocaust, USC Shoah Foundation News, May 6, 2015

 

2014

Mohammed Dajani, Ph.D.

Professor of Political Science at al-Quds University in Jerusalem

Yom Hashoah Scholar in Residence

“Teaching Palestinians about the Holocaust”

A Jerusalem-born scholar and peace activist, Dr. Dajani holds doctorate degrees from the University of Texas and University of South Carolina. He is the founding director of the Jerusalem Studies and Research Institute, chair of the board of directors of the House of Water and Environment in Ramallah and a member of the board of directors of the YMCA, Jerusalem. He has written extensively on Arab culture and politics, including an International Herald Tribune op-ed he co-authored with Washington Institute executive director Robert Satloff titled “Why Palestinians Should Learn About the Holocaust.”

In 2014, Dajani made headlines when Palestinian and Israeli media reported on the trip to Poland he took with 30 Palestinian students, in which he brought the students to Auschwitz and other concentration camps to learn about the Holocaust. Dajani visited the Institute to discuss his experience teaching the Holocaust to Palestinian students.

News About Mohammed Dajani:

Mohammed Dajani Speaks on Refusing to be a Bystander, USC Shoah Foundation News, May 12, 2014

Lecture by Mohammed Dajani, 2014 Yom Hashoah Scholar-in-Residence, USC Shoah Foundation News, May 9, 2014

You Cannot Teach the Holocaust to Palestinians!, USC Shoah Foundation News, November 21, 2013

 

2013

Marianne Hirsch, Ph.D.

William Peterfield Trent Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Professor in the Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality, Columbia University

Yom Hashoah Scholar in Residence

“Small Acts of Repair: The Unclaimed Legacy of the Romanian Holocaust”

Marianne Hirsch discussed the idea of “postmemory,” a term that describes the relationship that the ‘generation after’ bears to the personal, collective, and cultural trauma of those who came before -- to experiences they ‘remember’ only by means of the stories, images and behaviors among which they grew up. She also discussed her work on the relationship that children of Holocaust survivors have with the personal, collective and cultural trauma of their parents.

Marianne Hirsch is William Peterfield Trent Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and Professor in the Institute for Research on Women, Gender and Sexuality. She is President of the Modern Language Association of America. She was born in Romania, and educated at Brown University where she received her BA/MA and Ph.D. degrees. Before moving to Columbia, she taught at Dartmouth College.

Hirsch's recent books include The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust (Columbia University Press, 2012), Ghosts of Home: The Afterlife of Czernowitz in Jewish Memory, co-authored with Leo Spitzer (University of California Press, 2010), Rites of Return: Diaspora, Poetics and the Politics of Memory, co-edited with Nancy K. Miller (Columbia University Press, 2011). With Diana Taylor she co-edited the Summer 2012 issue of é-misferica on “The Subject of Archives.” Other recent publications include Family Frames: Photography, Narrative, and Postmemory (1997), The Familial Gaze (ed.1999), Time and the Literary (co-ed.2002), a special issue of Signs on "Gender and Cultural Memory" (co-ed. 2002), Teaching the Representation of the Holocaust (co-ed. 2004), and Grace Paley Writing the World (co-ed. 2009).

Marianne Hirsch is the former editor of PMLA and the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the ACLS, the Mary Ingraham Bunting Institute, the National Humanities Center and the Bellagio and Bogliasco Foundations. She has served on the MLA Executive Council, the ACLA Advisory Board, the Board of Supervisors of The English Institute and the Executive Board of the Society for the Study of Narrative Literature. She is also on the advisory boards of Memory Studies and Contemporary Women's Writing. She is a founder of Columbia’s Center for the Study of Social Difference, and Co-Director with Jean Howard of its new global initiative: “Women Creating Change.”

News About Marianne Hirsch:

Small Acts of Repair: Yom Hashoah scholar-in-residence discusses "postmemory" of the Holocaust, USC Shoah Foundation News, May 2, 2013

Gallery of event

2012

Yehuda Bauer

Professor Emeritus of History and Holocaust Studies at Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Yom Hashoah Scholar in Residence

 In an exclusive trip from Jerusalem to Los Angeles, Yehuda Bauer came to Los Angeles to discuss topics of the Holocaust and other genocides.

Professor Yehuda Bauer is one of the world’s leading scholars on the study of the Holocaust.  Currently working as Academic Advisor at Yad Vashem in Israel, Professor Bauer has held many professorships during his illustrious career, including posts at the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, University of Honolulu at Manoa, Yale University and Clark University.  At Richard Stock College in New Jersey, Professor Bauer served as the Ida E. King Distinguished Visiting Scholar of Holocaust Studies.  Presently, he holds membership on a number of professional committees, including the Yad Vashem Executive Committee, the Editorial Committee of Yalkut Moreshet (main Hebrew Holocaust Studies Journal) and the Editorial Committee of Yad Vashem Studies. 

In 2006, Professor Bauer addressed the UN General Assembly on the January 27th Holocaust Remembrance Day.  His awards and distinctions include the Israel Prize for “History of the Jewish People” in 1998, election as Member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities in 2001 and the Yakir Yerushalayim (Worthy Citizen of Jerusalem) award from the city of Jerusalem in 2008.  Professor Bauer also holds the position of Honorary Chairman of the International Holocaust Remembrance Association (Formerly: Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance, and Research) as well as senior advisor to the Swedish Government on the International Forum on Genocide Prevention.

His publications include From Diplomacy to Resistance (1970), My Brother’s Keeper (1974), Flight and Rescue (1975), The Holocaust in Historical Perspective (1978), The Jewish Emergence from Powerlessness (1979), ed. The Holocaust as Historical Experience (1981), American Jewry and the Holocaust (1982), Out of the Ashes (1989), Jews for Sale? (1995), Rethinking the Holocaust (2001), The Death of the Shtetl (2010), as well as about 90 articles in scholarly journals and yearbooks. 

To watch Yehuda Bauer's talk, click here.

News About Yehuda Bauer:

Much Work to be done in Holocaust Studies, Say Yehuda Bauer and Xu Xin, USC Shoah Foundation News, November 11, 2013

Leading Chinese and Israeli Holocaust Scholars Meet for the First Time, USC Shoah Foundation News, November 6, 2013

Yehuda Bauer to Visit USC Shoah Foundation in November, USC Shoah Foundation News, August 13, 2013

Yehuda Bauer and Father Patrick Desbois visit the Institute, USC Shoah Foundation News, April 23, 2012

Publications Involving the Archive:

• Bauer, Yehuda. Nowogródek—The Story of a Shtetl. Yad Vashem Studies 35 (2007) 35-70.
• Bauer, Yehuda. The Death of the Shtetl. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009.