Dr. Alexis Herr

Professional Background

Dr. Alexis Herr has taught as a professor of holocaust and genocide studies at Keene State College in Keene, New Hampshire, from 2014-2016. She received her PhD from Clark University in 2014. A native speaker of English, Professor Herr also has language proficiency in Italian, German, and Spanish. While in residence at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, Professor Herr will work on her project, “Italian Perpetrators on the Periphery of Genocide”.

Dr. Herr is the author of The Holocaust and Compensated Compliance in Italy: Fossoli di Carpi, 1942-1952 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). She  has written the articles, “False Heroes and The Holocaust: Disputing the ‘Brava Gente,’” published in The Jewish Week, July 2013, as well as “Sasha Chanoff: Genocide and Refugees in Africa,” in Year End Activities and the 2010 Gift Report for the  Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University. She has contributed her research in a number of presentations, including “The History and Memory of the Holocaust in Italy: Fossoli di Carpi, 1942-1952,” at the Conference of Europeanists in April 2016, “Lives in Transit: The Italian Camp of Fossoli,” a keynote address for the commemoration of Italian Holocaust Remembrance Day at Boston University, January 2016, “The History and Memory of Fossoli di Carpi” at the Annual Chiasmi Conference at Harvard University, March 2013, and “Fossoli di Carpi and Holocaust Memory,” at Columbia University Institute for the Study of Human Rights, December 2012. Dr. Herr also contributes many genocide-related articles to ABC Clio, an industry leader in the creation of innovative reference and professional development resources, and Assessing Atrocity, a website for the discussion of atrocity and human rights abuses past and present.

Fellowship Research

For her Pearl Resnick Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Mandel Center, Professor Herr expanded research on deportations in order to analyze the greater network of regional Italian officials’ involvement in enacting a complex system of persecution and deportation of Jews. This study proposed the first history of Italian perpetrators, and in doing so, challenged commonly held assumptions about the so-called brava gente (benevolent Italians) and complicated our understanding of Italian perpetrators on the periphery of genocidal killing.

Professor Alexis Herr was in residence at the Mandel Center until December 31, 2016.