In 2019, the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research conducted deep and wide-ranging outreach, introducing the Visual History Archive to scholars, academic faculty, fellows, librarians, and students through in-depth workshops, demonstrations, consultations, and class introductions.

Anna Lee, the 2019 Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellow at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research, gave a public lecture about her research on survivor activism as a form of healing in the aftermath of mass executions during genocide and contemporary school mass shootings. During her one-month residency at the Center, Lee conducted comparative research on the topic by examining both survivor testimonies housed in the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive and accounts of school shootings survivors found in media and other sources.

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.

Ayşenur Korkmaz, the Center’s 2019-2020 Robert J. Katz Research Fellow in Genocide Studies, gave a public lecture about narratives and conceptions of home among Armenian genocide survivors who fled to the south Caucasus during the Armenian genocide. The lecture is based on Korkmaz’s research with video and audio testimonies of Armenian survivors available in the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, and is part of her larger dissertation project on post-genocide articulations of the Armenian homeland (Yergir) through materiality and rituals.

Badema Pitic joined the Center for Advanced Genocide Research in 2017, where she is involved in the Center's outreach and academic programming directed at fostering and supporting the scholarly use of the Visual History Archive in research and teaching. Badema earned her doctorate in Ethnomusicology from University of California, Los Angeles. Her research focuses on the intersections of music, memory, and politics in the aftermath of war and genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Martha Stroud manages the day-to-day operations of the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research, which advances innovative interdisciplinary research on the Holocaust and other genocides and promotes use of the Visual History Archive in research and teaching. She joined the Center in 2015 after earning her PhD in Medical Anthropology at UC Berkeley.

USC Shoah Foundation —The Institute for Visual History and Education (USC Shoah Foundation) and Fox Searchlight Pictures today announced a partnership to develop classroom curriculum tied to JOJO RABBIT, Taika Waititi’s heartfelt World War II anti-hate satire.