“I remember lots and lots of light,” Karla Ballard told me about her childhood home just outside of Philadelphia, a community called Friends of the Fairfax. “So much light. And a beautiful, long dining room table. My father was an entrepreneur and my mom was a nurse. I just remember lots of light coming into that house and having grandparents around watching us, and having Susan, Eileen, and Max — my mother’s best friends.”
Creative Storytelling
Listen Deeply
by
“I remember lots and lots of light,” Karla Ballard told me about her childhood home just outside of Philadelphia, a community called Friends of the Fairfax. “So much light. And a beautiful, long dining room table. My father was an entrepreneur and my mom was a nurse. I just remember lots of light coming into that house and having grandparents around watching us, and having Susan, Eileen, and Max — my mother’s best friends.”
Survey Shows Holocaust Education and Survivor Testimony Has Profound Impacts
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.
A USC student was told her Zionism ‘made her complicit in racism’ — Read the OpEd by Stephen Smith
All university campuses are first and foremost places of learning. As such, I believe it is our duty to use this controversy as a teaching moment, for Jewish and non-Jewish students alike.
Sam Gustman has been chief technology officer (CTO) of the Shoah Foundation since 1994. Gustman is also associate dean and CTO at the USC Libraries where he oversees IT for the Libraries and started the USC Digital Repository.
Tribute to Arnold Spielberg
Sam Gustman, USC Shoah Foundation Chief Technology Officer, reflects on his long friendship with Arnold Spielberg, who passed away August 25 at the age of 103.
Testimonies and the Socioeconomic Aspects of the Armenian Genocide: Reflections from 2019-2020 Junior Postdoctoral Research Fellow Mehmet Polatel
As a postdoctoral research fellow at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research in the 2019-2020 academic year, I carried out a research project focusing on the long-term impact of Hamidian Massacres of 1894-97 and the experiences of genocide survivors with regards to extortion, plunder, and robbery during the genocide of 1915. Since 2008, I have been working on socio-economic aspects of the genocide and of the deterioration of relations among different communities.
Mehmet Polatel is the 2019-2020 Junior Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research. He received his Ph.D. degree from Bogazici University in Istanbul with his dissertation focusing on the emergence and transformation of the Armenian land question in the late Ottoman Empire. Prior to receiving his Ph.D., he earned a BA in International Relations from the University of Middle East Technical University in 2007, and an MA in Comparative Studies in History and Society from Koç University, Istanbul in 2009.
Beyond words: Reflections from 2020 Lev Student Research Fellow Rachel Zaretsky
I had the opportunity to research the USC Shoah Foundation's Visual History Archive this past summer thanks to the Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellowship. I was initially introduced to the archive through a course taught by Dr. Maria Zalewska in the School of Cinematic Arts entitled “Meme, Myself and I: How We Remember in the Digital Age.” Prior to the course, I was unaware of this resource at USC despite having a visual art practice deeply engaged with Holocaust remembrance and archives.