Carli Snyder Awarded 2022-2023 USC Shoah Foundation Katz Research Fellowship in Genocide Studies

Carli Snyder, a PhD candidate in History at the City University of New York (CUNY), has been awarded the 2022-2023 USC Shoah Foundation USC Shoah Foundation Robert J. Katz Research Fellowship in Genocide Studies. She will be in residence at the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research in January 2023 to conduct research for her dissertation “‘The Flesh of the Facts’”: Toward a Feminist Holocaust Consciousness."

The topics of gender, sexuality, and sexual violence during the Holocaust are of great interest to scholars. At the Center, Carli will examine what the Visual History Archive testimonies and related institutional records reveal about the USC Shoah Foundation’s methodology and approach to the inclusion of these topics in interviews conducted with Holocaust survivors. This research will contribute to Snyder’s wider dissertation research on feminist inquiry about the Holocaust that developed between the late 1970s and the early 2000s exemplified by pioneering scholar Joan Ringelheim, who served as Director of the Oral History Department at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum for over 15 years.

Snyder’s research at the Center has the potential to answer questions that emerge again and again when discussing the place of gender, sexuality, sexual violence, and related topics in testimony narratives. Were these topics part of the interview questionnaire developed by the USC Shoah Foundation for its interviews? How were interviewers trained to approach and elicit narratives on these subjects? How do the testimonies in the VHA compare to testimonies gathered by other institutions when it comes to the discussion of these topics, and what may account for the differences? These are only a few of the questions Snyder’s research may answer.

Snyder earned her BA in History and Womens’s and Gender Studies, with a Minor in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, at Pacific Lutheran University and earned her MA in History at the City University of New York.. She has received multiple fellowships, including the Auschwitz Jewish Center Fellowship, awarded by the Auschwitz Jewish Center in Poland, and the Fellowship for the Summer Institute on the Holocaust and Jewish Civilization, awarded by the Holocaust Education Foundation at Northwestern University. She has published one article, “With Their Voices in Mind: Testimonies and Silences at Polish Holocaust Sites in 2019” in Reflections: Auschwitz Jewish Center Annual Alumni Journal and presented her research across the United States and Canada. As part of her commitment to public history, she worked as an intern at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York for two years, serving as a Holocaust Education Intern, Holocaust Testimony Intern, and then as Coordinator Intern for Jewish Schools.

The USC Shoah Foundation Robert J. Katz Research Fellowship in Genocide Studies is awarded annually to an outstanding advanced-standing Ph.D. candidate from any discipline for dissertation research focused on testimony from the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive and other unique USC research resources. The fellowship enables the recipient to spend one month in residence at the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research during the academic year and to deliver a public lecture about his or her research. The fellowship is named after long-time volunteer and former USC Shoah Foundation Board of Councilors Chair Robert J. Katz in recognition of his service to the USC Shoah Foundation.