Start of Main Content

Symposium: Material Culture and the Holocaust

Public Program
Scissors confiscated from prisoners upon their arrival at the Auschwitz concentration camp. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau

Scissors confiscated from prisoners upon their arrival at the Auschwitz concentration camp. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau

10 a.m.–5 p.m.

How do the things we leave behind tell the story of a life? Material culture—the study of ordinary objects—is another way to study complex traumatic histories such as the Holocaust. Experts in the diverse fields of material culture and Holocaust studies will address the major developments in their research over the past 20 years; the ethical issues arising from the study, storage, and exhibition of traumatic material culture; and the application of material culture research and collecting methodologies to Holocaust studies.

Keynote Address

Caroline Sturdy Colls, Professor of Conflict Archaeology and Genocide Investigation, Staffordshire University, Stoke-on-Trent, United Kingdom

Panel One: Opportunities and Challenges to the Study of Traumatic Material Culture

Panel Two: Conserving and Exhibiting Traumatic Material Culture

Panel Three: Digital Technologies and Material Culture

 

This program is made possible through support from the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Foundation.