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.
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Florian Zabranksy, a PhD candidate at the Centre for German-Jewish Studies at the University of Sussex, United Kingdom, has been awarded the 2020-2021 Margee and Douglas Greenberg Research Fellowship at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research. He will be in residence at the Center in Spring 2021 in order to conduct research for his dissertation, which examines male Jewish intimacy during the Holocaust.
During my dissertation research on the history of fear in the Weimar Republic, 1919-1933, a Corrie ten Boom fellowship provided the opportunity for me to visit the USC Shoah Foundation to explore the visual testimonies of the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive. When I arrived, I was not exactly sure how I might make use of these incredibly important digitized collections in my project.
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.
As local communities assess and adjust to the needs of the world community—and as many schools shift from in-person to virtual classrooms—IWitness and its standards-aligned resources are ready to help educators and parents support students learning.
My recent stay at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my academic career. From the remarkable power and content of the Visual History Archive, to the welcoming and helpful nature of the staff and donor community, I leave my term as the Breslauer, Rutman, and Anderson Research Fellow strengthened by new friendships and enriched by new findings for my work.
Russell A. Spinney is an independent historian and instructor at the Thacher School in Ojai, California.
75 years after the end of WWII, please join Finci-Viterbi Executive Director Stephen D. Smith as he discusses concepts of home with Holocaust survivor Pinchas Gutter.
On Yom Hashoah, as the world gathers virtually to remember the loss of 6 million lives during the Holocaust, our conversation will explore the values of family, community and home in our world today and the ways that testimony contributes to these.
“Continuity, Escalation, and Local Actors: The Hamidian Massacres and the Armenian Genocide”
Mehmet Polatel
2019-2020 Center Junior Postdoctoral Research Fellow
April 13, 2020
Only a day after the University of Southern California announced that it would conduct a three-day test to move all classes online, which soon turned into a permanent arrangement until the end of Spring semester, my colleague and I gave our last in-person introduction to the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive to a USC class. Perhaps serendipitously, one of the topics discussed in this class was physical health.