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Call for Applications
Theme: Teaching Mass Atrocity
Subtitle: The Holocaust, Genocide, and Justice
Type: 2020 Curt C. and Else Silberman Faculty Seminar
Institution: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM)
Location: Washington, DC (USA)
Date: 1.–12.6.2020
Deadline: 13.3.2020
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The 2020 Curt C. and Else Silberman Seminar for Faculty will bring
the study of the Holocaust into conversation with studies in the
field of genocide and international justice for the purposes of
opening up an informed dialogue among scholars across disciplines,
who utilize a range of approaches and methodologies in their
classrooms. As a starting point, the Seminar will introduce
pedagogical tools for teaching the history of the development of the
concept of genocide with a close look at Raphael Lemkin’s coining of
the term, the proceedings of the Nuremberg Trials, as well as the
approval of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and
Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 1948. Building on this
framework, the Seminar leaders will facilitate discussions across
disciplinary boundaries on how to address common themes relating to
Holocaust and Genocide Studies — such as “othering,” violence,
atrocity, justice, and restitution. In doing so, we will introduce a
range of pedagogical methods, course design approaches, and
assignment development tools intended to help participants think
through how to introduce these complex topics into their classrooms.
At the same time, the seminar leaders will be careful to problematize
the various approaches to teaching this history within the separate —
though interconnected — fields of Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
The 2020 Curt C. and Else Silberman Seminar is designed to help
faculty, instructors, and advanced PhD students who are currently
teaching or preparing to teach courses that focus on or have a
curricular component relating to Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
Applications are welcome from instructors across academic disciplines
including but not limited to: language studies, film studies, war
studies, displaced people and refugee studies, human rights, genocide
studies, anthropology, sociology, psychology, history, literature,
and international law. We also particularly welcome scholars who
teach courses with a global, comparative, or transnational approach.
Over the course of the Seminar, participants will be introduced to
sources in the Museum’s film, oral history, testimony, recorded
sound, archival, and photography collections, as well as the
International Tracing Service Digital Archive. Participants will also
have time to tour the Museum’s permanent exhibit and special
exhibitions. Additionally, participants will meet staff scholars who
work on the Holocaust as well as experts from the Museum’s
Simon-Skjodt Center for Genocide Prevention.
This year’s Silberman Seminar will take place from June 1 to 12, 2020
at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. It will be led by Dr.
Douglas Irvin-Erickson, Assistant Professor and Director of the
Lemkin Genocide Prevention Program at George Mason University, and
Dr. Thomas Pegelow Kaplan, Leon Levine Distinguished Professorship of
Judaic, Holocaust, and Peace Studies and Director of the Center for
Judaic, Holocaust, and Peace Studies, Appalachian State University.
Dr. Douglas Irvin-Erickson is Assistant Professor and Director of the
Lemkin Genocide Prevention Program at George Mason University School
for Conflict Analysis and Resolution. He has worked in the field of
genocide studies and mass atrocity prevention in DR Congo, Burundi,
Cambodia, Myanmar, Ukraine, and Argentina. He is the author of books,
chapters, and articles on genocide, religion, and violence; human
security; international criminal law; and political theory. His first
book is titled Raphaël Lemkin and the Concept of Genocide (University
of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), and he is currently writing a second
book on global successes of prevention. Professor Irvin-Erickson is a
Senior Fellow with the Alliance for Peacebuilding, a Board Member of
the Institute for the Study of Genocide, and a member of the
editorial board of Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International
Journal. He holds a Ph.D. in Global Affairs and an M.A. in English
Literature from Rutgers University in Newark, NJ.
Dr. Thomas Pegelow Kaplan is the Leon Levine Distinguished Professor
and Director of the Center for Judaic, Holocaust, and Peace Studies
as well as Professor of History at Appalachian State University in
North Carolina. A Holocaust scholar and German historian by training,
his larger scholarly agenda aims at a cultural and linguistic history
of genocidal violence in the modern world. He has taught at
UNC-Chapel Hill, Grinnell College, Davidson College, and De La Salle
University in Manila, Philippines. Professor Pegelow Kaplan has held
research fellowships at numerous
