Listening for the Romani Holocaust

If listening is a form of acknowledgment, can we hear the Roma? In this talk, Ioanida Costache (PhD candidate, Stanford University) problematizes the staggering silence and forgetting surrounding Romani persecution during the Holocaust, a history that has been muted or distorted for decades. Drawing on ethnographic work and archives of oral testimony, Costache considers the power of orality and musical testimony as sites of memory, in which a counterhistory of Romani suffering can be traced. In attending to song-stories and oral histories, listeners gain intimate understanding of how survivors position themselves vis-a-vis the atrocious trauma inflicted upon them.

Cosponsored by USC Thornton School of Music.

Refreshments will be served.

Please RSVP to cagr@usc.edu.