The Visual History Archive is in the process of transcribing all of their collection, presenting new challenges and opportunities for engaging the 54,000 testimonies contained in the collection. This roundtable, organized by the George and Irina Schaeffer Center for the Study of Genocide, Human Rights and Conflict Prevention will bring together experts on the study of Holocaust survivors and qualitative researchers in the social sciences to think through the challenges of building knowledge of survivors’ experiences and the Holocaust. How can we effectively study the enormous amount of data collected on the oral histories of Holocaust survivors?
With the following guests, giving presentations on the following:
Tim Cole; Professor of Social History and Director of the Brigstow Institute, University of Bristol.
Reading one testimony, distant reading 54,000.
This talk discusses some of the opportunities and challenges of distant reading oral history transcripts using corpus linguistics methods. From experimental work that Tim and the wider team (http://holocaustgeographies.geo.txstate.edu) this talk addresses both potential and problems in working with digital humanities approaches to read this massive archive en masse.
Sharon Kangisser; Director of the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People and Director of the Eli and Diana Zborowski Centre for the Study of the Holocaust and its Aftermath, Yad Vashem.
Finding the individual in multiple collections.
Over the past 70 years many survivors of the Holocaust have given their testimony to various collections and institutions - beginning in the immediate post war period and continuing until today. This presentation will examine the archival challenges involved in mapping out the stories of individuals over time and finding testimonies in various collections. It will also discuss how various retellings expand scholars' understanding of the traumatic event and it's meaning for survivors.
Ruthellen Josselson; Ph.D. Professor of clinical psychology at The Fielding Graduate University.
Amalgamating understanding in narrative analysis.
Narrative researchers, situated differently, study different people - even from the same data set. We are then met with the challenge of building a knowledge base that can amalgamate the insight and understandings across researchers. This form of qualitative meta-analysis entails the engaged complication of data as more nuanced discussion of findings ensues from the analytic process. This can serve a more thorough understanding of the experiences represented in the narratives.
Co-organized by:
- The George and Irina Schaeffer Center for the Study of Genocide, Human Rights and Conflict Prevention, The American University of Paris
- Le Centre de Recherches Historiques, EHESS-CNRS
- L'Institut de Sciences sociales du Politique, Université Paris Nanterre-ENS Paris Saclay-CNRS
Dates:
- 11th Jan in C-104, 6 rue colonel combes
- 12th Jan at Memorial de la Shoah: 17 rue Geoffroy l’Asnier, Paris
Home as a Place for Anti-Jewish Persecution in European Cities, 1933-1945: Crossing Urban Social History and History of the Holocaust
The History of the Holocaust has taken a spatial turn, borrowing concepts and tools from geography. Two recent edited collections are representative: Geographies of the Holocaust (Knowles et al. 2014) and Hitler’s Geographies (Giaccaria and Minca 2016). However, these recent local and spatial studies deal almost exclusively with the killing areas, camps, and ghettos. They pay less attention to the “ordinary” western and southeastern European cities where persecution proceeded in a looser space. Anti-Jewish persecution did not only happen in specifically designed or transformed spaces such as camps and ghettos. It invaded spaces of everyday life in European cities: public spaces, work places and private spaces such as homes. In this landscape not only Jews and agents of persecution appear but also their immediate residential environment: concierges, neighbors, nannies, landlords, property managers, sub-tenants, local administrations, etc. These figures have an essential place in the memories of Jewish survivors. Though, so far, scholars have hardly addressed their role. The spatial turn that occurred during the last fifteen years in Anglophone Holocaust studies focused on the symbolic places of genocide. Much work has been done on the looting and the seizure and reallocation of the apartments occupied by Jews, mainly in Reich's cities, but apartment blocks and ordinary cities as spaces of persecution, occupied territories and other Axis countries, the interactions with non-Jewish neighbors as well as spatial aspects are still in need of study. Recent work opened this new field of investigation. It inspired the conference to come.
This conference intends to bridge various perspectives and methods and focus on urban housing as a place for anti-Jewish persecution. We hope to gather social scientists from various fields to confront various methods investigation and cases, in Reich cities but also in Western and Eastern European occupied cities.
Inspired by the organizers’ current research on the Parisian case, the conference will deal with policies of seizure and reallocation of the apartments of the Jews in Paris, but will not be restricted to those questions.
One page proposals for papers are invited that examine:
- the interlinkage between persecution and policies of housing / urban developments;
- the beneficiaries of the spoliation of urban housing;
- the interactions between Jews and non-Jews concerning the seizure of housing, its re-allocation and restitution after the liberation;
- the place of homes in the experiences of individuals (use of testimonies as such as the Visual History Archive collection welcome)
To be sent to cparisdebollardiere [at] aup.edu (cparisdebollardiere[at]aup[dot]edu) and ericlebourhis [at] hotmail.com (ericlebourhis[at]hotmail[dot]com) before July 3, 2017.
Answers will be given to the applicants by July 20.
Applications for grants for speakers from outside the Parisian region will be considered.
Organizing committee
Isabelle Backouche (EHESS-CRH), Eric Le Bourhis (FMS-ISP), Shannon Fogg (Missouri S&T), Sarah Gensburger (CNRS-ISP), Constance Pâris de Bollardière (AUP), Brian Schiff (AUP).
Interdisciplinary conference
Founded by the film director Steven Spielberg in 1994, the Visual History Archive is a collection of testimonies recorded in order to preserve the words, faces, gestures and histories of genocide survivors. Holocaust survivors’ testimonies, recorded around the world in 28 languages, represent the bulk of the collection (51 333 to this day). This core documentation is complemented by accounts from other victims of the Nazis (Sinti and Roma survivors, eugenic policies survivors, homosexuals), from witnesses of crimes perpetrated during World War II (liberators, war crimes trial participants) as well as from other genocides: The Genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda (1994), the Armenian Genocide (1915-1923), the Nanjing Massacre (1937), the Guatemalan Genocide (1978-1996) and the Cambodian Genocide (1975-1979).
Since 2006, the Visual History Archive is administered by the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles and, since 2014, supported by the Center for Advanced Genocide Research of USC Shoah Foundation. Digitized and indexed to the minute (with more than 62 000 keywords), the Visual History Archive is now reachable in full access in 66 universities and libraries in 14 countries. In France, it is fully accessible at the George and Irina Schaeffer Center for the Study of Genocide, Human Rights and Conflict Prevention of the American University of Paris and at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Lyon. In addition to these two sites, the French speaking testimonies are also available at the Mémorial de la Shoah.
Now more than ever, scholars can search the Visual History Archive for research on the Second World War or on the other crimes of mass violence which have been more recently appended to the collection. More than 54 000 video testimonies are now regularly used by researchers from many disciplines: historians, sociologists, anthropologists, geographers, psychologists, literary critics and scholars of the law.
Although the Visual History Archive was initiated for memorial, educational and civic purposes, scholars gradually recognized the relevance of this source for academic work. However, this unique collection of testimonies has produced various reactions, from the recognition of its value to skepticism.
The aim of this journée d’étude is to gather scholars from different disciplines who have carried out research on or with the Visual History Archive. We welcome researchers who have analyzed the Visual History Archive as a collection or memorial event per se as well as those who have used it as a source, major or secondary, on violence and genocide or the social, political, cultural, psychological or legal implications of mass violence.
Participants will have the opportunity to share their research results and experiences. We are particularly interested in contributions which put the Visual History Archive in perspective with other testimonies (written, audio or video), reflect on the value of the archives in comparison to other types of sources, open a discussion on the methodological difficulties encountered by users or consider new uses of the collection. The discussion will bring insights on the scholarly contributions and limits of this collection of testimonies.
The journée d’étude will be introduced and concluded by keynotes from Stephen D. Smith, Executive Director of USC Shoah Foundation, who will present the origins of the Visual History Archive and the innovative uses of the archive; Christopher Browning, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of North Carolina, Jeffrey Shandler, Professor of Jewish Studies at Rutgers University, Annette Wieviorka, Emeritus Research Director at the CNRS and Noah Shenker, Senior Lecturer in Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Monash University, who will describe their own research with the Visual History Archive.
Although we expect the majority of papers to be given in French, a limited number of contributions in English will also be considered. Abstracts of 500 words maximum are to be sent along with a short CV to the organizers before May 9, 2017. Selection of results will be announced in early June.
Applications for grants for presenters from outside the Parisian region will be considered.
- Scientific Committee: Brian Schiff (AUP), Philip Golub (AUP), Susan Perry (AUP), Annette Wieviorka (CNRS-IRICE), Claire Zalc (CNRS-IHMC)
- Organizing Committee: Emmanuel Debono (ENS), Constance Pâris de Bollardière (AUP)
- Organization: George and Irina Schaeffer Center for the Study of Genocide, Human Rights and Conflict Prevention, American University of Paris; USC Shoah Foundation (France)
Contact:
Brian Schiff: bschiff [at] aup.edu (bschiff[at]aup[dot]edu)
Emmanuel Debono: emmanuel.debono [at] ens-lyon.fr (emmanuel[dot]debono[at]ens-lyon[dot]fr)
Constance Pâris de Bollardière: cparisdebollardiere [at] aup.edu (cparisdebollardiere[at]aup[dot]edu)
On June 15th, the George and Irina Schaeffer Center for the Study of Genocide, Human Rights and Conflict Prevention will host a session of the seminar "Histoire et historiographie de la Shoah" (HHS, Centre de recherches historiques, EHESS-CNRS).
We will hear Professor Mark Roseman (Indiana University Bloomington), who will present his book: Rescued lives: The “Bund”, resistance, and rescue in Nazi Germany, Oxford University Press, 2017.
The discussion will be led by Professor Laura Hobson Faure (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3).
Please note that for security reasons, all external guests must register online at least 24 hours in advance and come to AUP with a valid ID.
On June 2nd, the Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3 will be organizing an international symposium entitled "Holocaust Survivors and their Networks: Comparative and Transnational Perspectives," with the participation of the George and Irina Schaeffer Center for the Study of Genocide, Human Rights and Conflict Prevention.
The workshop will take place from 9.30am to 6pm at La Maison de la Recherche de la Sorbonne Nouvelle.