Eight-year-old Helene Chajet made this doll in 1943 while living in hiding with a foster family in Arleuf, France. She is among those pictured (front row, far right) in 1944. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, gifts of Elen Chajet Murad
This year’s Seminar explores the debates surrounding the collection, conservation, preservation, and display of Holocaust material objects. Such artifacts have afterlives that raise a range of ethical, moral, and practical questions. Whose items should be preserved? Who decides what should be preserved? Does that impact how this history is remembered? Where should they be preserved? Drawing on the vast resources of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, this seminar will offer participants the opportunity to examine material objects, learn about their provenance, and gain insights into some of the current research that is being conducted to reproduce them using 3-D scanners, printers, and other cutting-edge technologies. Seminar leaders will also introduce pedagogical approaches and creative methods for bringing this important aspect of the Holocaust into the undergraduate college classroom.
Seminar Leaders
Leora Auslander, Arthur and Joann Rasmussen Professor in Western Civilization and Professor in the Departments of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity and History, University of Chicago, and Associate Chair of RDI
Caroline Sturdy Colls, Professor of Conflict Archaeology and Genocide Investigation and Director of the Centre of Archaeology, Staffordshire University
This in-person Seminar will take place January 3–6, 2023, at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, and the David and Fela Shapell Family Collections, Conservation, and Research Center in Bowie, Maryland. Additional digital components will be required after the program. Seminar applicants can be at any career stage but must be teaching or anticipate teaching relevant courses at accredited institutions in North America.
Applications must be received electronically no later than October 28, 2022.
For questions regarding the application process, please contact kwhite@ushmm.org.
This Seminar is endowed by Edward and David Hess in memory of their parents, Jack and Anita Hess, who believed passionately in the power of education to overcome racial and religious prejudice.