In this webinar, the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research team will provide a deep dive into the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, including its history; methodologies of testimony collection, preservation, and indexing; current state of the archive and its collections; and how to use its search engines and interface for research and teaching. The participants will learn how to unlock the research potential of the archive and be able to ask questions and get assistance with effectively searching the archive.

This is an introduction to the Visual History Archive and an indepth demonstration of how to conduct searches.

Three different video clips from Roman Kent's tesitmony including life before, during and after the Holocaust.

In this October 11, 2023, lecture, Dr. Robert J. Williams, Mark Weitzman, and Dr. James Wald present on their edited volume, the Routledge History of Antisemitism. Antisemitism is a topic on which there is a wide gap between scholarly and popular understanding, and as concern over antisemitism has grown, so too have the debates over how to understand and combat it. This book explores its history and manifestations, ranging from its origins to the internet.

Daisy Miller speaks on the importance of the Visual History Archive and how the collection of audiovisual testimonies to the Holocaust will be a valuable resource in education for generations to come.

Following remarks by USC President Carol Folt and Finci-Viterbi Executive Director Dr. Robert Williams, this discussion and live demo event feature a panel discussion moderated by USC Shoah Foundation's Dr. Kori Street, demonstration of the new features, and opportunities to ask questions and learn from testimony. The VHA redesign, part of the Lee Liberman Visual History Archive Program was made possible thanks to the generous support of the Lee Liberman Foundation, Koret Foundation, Crown Family Philanthropies and others.

Professor Hovannisian presented on the history of his Armenian Genocide Oral History collection, which is today part of the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive. Considering that this collection was created as part of two courses that Professor Hovannisian taught at UCLA over five decades, three of his former students – Salpi Ghazarian, Tamar Mashigian, and Lorna Tourian Miller – also spoke about their experiences of conducting interviews with Armenian genocide survivors.

In this clip from the Visual History Archive, Elise Taft describes a moment of hope and joy in her family’s darkest times. It’s with those sentiments that we wish all of our Armenian friends and colleagues a Merry Christmas. May the holiday be as bright as the stars described by Elise in her poignant testimony.

Dr. Anna Hájková, a scholar of Jewish Holocaust history and pioneer of queer Holocaust history, discusses why including queer perspectives helps us develop a more inclusive history of the Holocaust.

The research of these panelists sheds light on various challenges in mediating oral histories. Is it possible to mediate oral histories in an archive and respect the authenticity and nuance of individual narratives that fall into a larger narrative, for instance in an archive? Questions of translation, distortion, and interview methodology are explored to varying degrees by the work of these presenters. Is it possible to convey specific emotions across cultures, language, and identity?Chair: Karen JungblutPeg LeVine, Ph.D., Ed.D.Mark Zaurov, Ph.D.

In this lecture, Professor Geoffrey Robinson (UCLA) discusses his newest book, The Killing Season. The Killing Season examines one of the largest and swiftest instances of mass killing and incarceration in the twentieth century—the shocking anti-leftist purge that gripped Indonesia in 1965–66, leaving some five hundred thousand people dead and more than a million others in detention.

Florian Zabransky seeks to excavate the particular intimate experience of male Jews, including how are queer relations narrated in the interviews.

Watch and learn more about the relaunch of the Visual History Archive.

This lecture offered an examination of pro-state paramilitary violence in the Syrian conflict. It analyzed the emergence and transformation of pro-state paramilitarism in Syria in the context of the uprising and civil war. 

Dr. Jared McBride, 2014-2015 recipient of the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research's Douglas and Margee Greenberg Research Fellowship discusses how oral history and testimony can be integrated with existing archival documents to recreate a micro-level history of the Holocaust in western Ukraine.

Dr. Richard Hovannisian was one of the world’s foremost scholars of Armenian history and the Armenian Genocide. A child of survivors, he founded the Armenian Genocide Oral History Project at UCLA in 1969, recording interviews with more than 1,000 genocide survivors. He donated the collection to the USC Shoah Foundation in 2018.

Once events are recorded in media it becomes a challenge to control or anticipate how that media will be used. Some voices become dominant while others fade out of memory. How is a contextualized narrative produced or reconciled? How do academics make sense of media that was created with differing methodologies or research practices? The research of this panel focuses on cases that elucidate these challenges. Chair: Geoffrey Robinson, Ph.D.Stef Scagliola, Ph.D.Amy Rothschild, J.D.Viola Lasmana