Genocide Resistance, USC Dornsife 2020 Research Cluster, to Host Third Annual Workshop

Scholars from around the world will gather Friday and Saturday to discuss genocide resistance in the past and present at the third annual “Resisting the Path to Genocide” workshop. The workshop is free and open to the public.

The workshop is hosted by Genocide Resistance, a USC Dornsife 2020 research cluster that brings together faculty from across USC to conduct research and organize seminars about why certain individuals, groups or societies do or do not follow the path of mass violence and genocide. The cluster is led by Stephen Smith, executive director of USC Shoah Foundation, and Wolf Gruner, Shapell-Guerin Chair in Jewish Studies and Professor of History. Other faculty members represent the departments of international relations, Judaic studies, psychology, anthropology, law, and more.

The theme of this year’s workshop is “Individual Resistance.” Friday’s session will be held at USC’s Doheny Library and will begin with opening remarks by Stephen Smith. Scholars from Berlin, Oxford, Amsterdam and Nashville will speak about Jewish business owners in Berlin from 1933-1942, prisoners’ resistance against Nazi medical experiments in concentrations camps, identity change in Polish child survivors of the Holocaust, and other topics. Filmmaker Pierre Sauvage of the Chambon Foundation will present excerpts from documentaries We Were There: Christianity and the Holocaust and work-in-progress And Crown Thy Good: Varian Fry in Marseille.

The workshop will relocate on Saturday to Villa Aurora, an artists’ residence in Pacific Palisades. Scholars from Florida, Massachusetts and Australia will speak about topics relating to leadership and genocide. To close the workshop, writer/journalist Sviatlana Kurs, current Feuchtwanger Fellow at Villa Aurora, will perform a public reading of her work The Archivist’s Visit.

For more information, visit http://dornsife.usc.edu/2020-resistance/ To RSVP, email Alida Liberman, aliberma@usc.edu.