A University of California linguist has been awarded a $470,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to analyze Yiddish-language testimonies contained in USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive.

USC Shoah Foundation has partnered with a group of scholars from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem to provide them with 1,000 transcripts from the Visual History Archive for a study that will analyze Holocaust survivor testimonies.

Annabel Carballo-Mesa is a PhD candidate at the University of Barcelona. Since January 17 she has been in Los Angeles conducting research with Visual History Archive (VHA) testimonies for a dissertation provisionally entitled “Na Bister! (Don’t Forget!) An Oral History of the Roma and Sinti Genocide”.

The inaugural 2020-2021 Scholar Lab program focuses on the topic of antisemitism. A cohort of academics was invited to explore antisemitism from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives and to use the collaborative meetings to guide and hone their work. The results of their research, presented in both traditional and non-traditional formats, will be accessible to the public later this year.

Longtime USC Shoah Foundation Executive Committee and Board of Councilors member Mickey Shapiro has provided a major endowed gift to create an inaugural academic chair at the Institute that will be dedicated to deepening the study of the impact of Holocaust education.

USC Shoah Foundation is pleased to welcome its postdoctoral research fellow, Dr. Justin Elliot, who will be in residence at the Institute for a couple of years. In addition to his residency at the Institute, Dr. Elliot is affiliated with USC Dornsife Department of History. Dr.

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.

A new national survey administered by Lucid Collaborative LLC and YouGov shows that Holocaust education in high school reflects gains not only in historical knowledge but also manifests in cultivating more empathetic, tolerant, and engaged students.

Aria Razfar, a fellow in residence this summer at USC Shoah Foundation’s Center for Advanced Genocide Research, sees parallels between the status of Yiddish in pre-war Germany and the status of Black English in the U.S. public school system.

The study will examine IWitness’s effectiveness in developing students’ capacity to become more responsible participants in civil society through the educational use of genocide survivor and witness testimony.