(Re)Framing Gender: Representations of Women's Bodies in Holocaust Photographs

A public lecture by Dorota Glowacka (Professor of Humanities, University of King's College, Halifax, Canada)
Center Visiting Scholar, April 2023
(Join us in person for this lecture or attend virtually on Zoom)

Organized by the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research

Depictions of women in Holocaust photographs were shaped by traditional conceptions of gender and sexuality. Whether in perpetrator photography, clandestine photographs from ghettos, or liberation photographs from camps, this visual repertoire has featured female bodies that conform to normative conceptions of gender. Gendered conventions have influenced the way images of women have been appropriated in practices of memorialization, as well as in Holocaust scholarship and pedagogy. In this lecture, Professor Glowacka analyzes several photographs and discusses the ways cultural codes, gendered frameworks of meaning, and  aesthetic conceptions of female beauty contribute to which images circulate in postmemorial landscapes and which ones have been excluded from practices of memorialization. She reflects on whether these accustomed ways of seeing, shaped by gendered power relations, can be interrupted.

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Lecture image: Portion of a photo of survivors in Bergen-Belsen peeling potatoes while behind them lie the corpses of prisoners who died before the liberation of the camp. The original caption reads: "Women peeling potatoes in front of piles of dead bodies." [Photo courtesy of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Hadassah Bimko Rosensaft]

COVID-19 protocols:

• All attendees must conduct a self-health screening prior to attending. If you have any symptoms or are currently in an isolation period due to a recent infection, you may not attend.
• While masks are not required for this event, we strongly recommend that attendees, vaccinated or unvaccinated, consider wearing them for their own protection and the protection of others.
• Attendees with a recent close contact exposure (in the last 10 days) are required to wear a well-fitting mask at all times.
• Please note that protocols are subject to change.
• If you are feeling unwell day-of, please join us online! All attendees will be emailed the Zoom link upon registration.