Call For Papers: The Future of Holocaust Testimonies 6 Conference: The Past, Present, and Future of Holocaust Testimonies

By Christy Bailey-Tomecek - November 8, 2021

The Holocaust Studies Program of Western Galilee College, the Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Connecticut, and the Fortunoff Video Archives for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University announce the sixth international interdisciplinary conference and workshop on The Future of Holocaust Testimonies to be held on 21–23 March 2022 in Akko, Israel.
Survivors and their testimonies have been central to Holocaust research and memorial culture, and vast repositories of testimony, audio, video and textual, comprise millions of pages and thousands of hours of recorded testimonies have been collected around the world. Collection projects have been influenced by such factors as political and national context, institutional background, educational goals, language, the surrounding environment, and more. While testimony has been incorporated into scholarship, teaching, and public history, critical analysis of testimony collection projects has lagged behind. As we enter a critical turning point in the future of Holocaust memory, we must consider the past, present, and future use of such repositories.

This year’s conference hopes to convene international scholars, archivists and practitioners that can look to the past and examine testimony collections in context, including those that until recently been relatively inaccessible; to critically reexamine the use of collections to meet the needs of scholars and educators in the present; and to suggest what might be the challenges that face testimony collections in terms of accessibility, discoverability, interconnection, and use in the future.

With these concerns in mind, FHT6 seeks papers that examine the following topics:

  • Historical or comparative examinations of testimony collection projects in Israel
  • Critical analysis of testimony projects in Israel, US, Europe, and other national contexts
  • Use of trial testimonies (Eichmann, Dachau, Auschwitz etc.) for research and teaching
  • Critical examinations of the use of testimony in curriculum, digital media and digital humanities projects
  • The use of testimony in new literary, artistic and cinematic production
  • Integration of testimony into new museum exhibitions
  • New testimony collection projects with child survivors and children of survivors
  • Current uses/misuses of testimony in the politicization of Holocaust memory

Please send a one-page proposal and a short CV to: testimonyconf@wgalil.ac.il

Doctoral candidates please add a letter of recommendation from your advisor.

Speakers will be provided full hospitality – hotel and meals; travel will not be covered.

Travel subventions will be made available on a case-by-case basis.

Deadline: 18 December 2021

Call for papers as PDF:
https://english.wgalil.ac.il/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/CFP-FHT6-March-2022.pdf