2024 Curt C. and Else Silberman Faculty Seminar

Refugees and the Holocaust

June 5-13, 2024

What can we learn by examining the experiences of refugees who traveled in and beyond Europe during the Holocaust? How did one become a refugee? And what were some of their routes, places of transit, failed exits, as well as locations of temporary and permanent refuge? The 2024 Silberman Faculty Seminar focuses on teaching topics relating to refugees and the Holocaust from a range of interdisciplinary approaches—including but not limited to perspectives from literature, art, history, migration, human rights, and memory studies. We will make connections between local and global histories of the Holocaust, as well as reflect on ideas of displacement within the broader frameworks of the nation-state and empire. Together, we will also discuss how to teach themes, such as:

• Space, place, emplacement, and mapping

• Global routes of escape and flight (via Latin America, Africa, Asia, and beyond)

• Objects left behind and objects brought along

• Those who helped refugees and those who slowed or impeded them

• Postwar legal definitions of refugees (especially the 1951 Refugee Convention)

• Emotions, trauma, and memory

• Afterlives

The 2024 Silberman Seminar helps faculty, instructors, and advanced PhD students who are currently teaching or preparing to teach courses that focus on or have a curricular component related to the Holocaust and/or refugee and migration studies. Applications are welcome from instructors across academic disciplines, including but not limited to Anthropology, Archeology, Art, Disability Studies, Gender Studies, German Studies, History, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Jewish Studies, Law and Human Rights, Migration Studies, Philosophy and Religious Studies, Political Science and International Relations, Psychology, Refugee Studies, Sociology, and Trauma and Memory Studies. The Seminar aims to deepen, broaden, and enrich how we teach about refugee experiences before, during, and after the Holocaust across a range of disciplines and fields.

Seminar Co-Facilitators:

Marion Kaplan

Skirball Professor of Modern Jewish History Emerita, New York University

Marion Kaplan is a three-time National Jewish Book Award winner for The Making of the Jewish Middle Class: Women, Family, and Identity in Imperial Germany (1991), Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany (1998), and Gender and Jewish History (with Deborah Dash Moore, 2011). She was also a finalist for Dominican Haven: The Jewish Refugee Settlement in Sosúa (2008).Her other monographs include: The Jewish Feminist Movement in Germany; Jewish Daily Life in Germany, 1618–1945 (ed.); and Hitler’s Jewish Refugees: Hope and Anxiety in Portugal, 1940–45 (2020). She was also the J. B. and Maurice Shapiro Senior Fellow at the Museum’s Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies in 2014.

Tabea Alexa Linhard

Director and Professor of Global Studies, Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature, Washington University in St. Louis

Tabea Alexa Linhard is the author of Unexpected Routes: Refugee Writers in Mexico (2023), Jewish Spain: A Mediterranean Memory (2014), and Fearless Women in the Mexican Revolution and the Spanish Civil War (2005). She also co-authored Mapping Migration, Identity, and Space (2018) and Revisiting Jewish Spain (2013), as well as articles on migration, Jewish life in twentieth-century Spain, and Spanish cinema. Her new book, Agents’ Secrets, involves gender and espionage in the first half of the twentieth century. At Washington University she teaches courses in Hispanic Studies, Global Migration, Human Rights, and the Holocaust, focusing specifically on the Sephardim. She chaired WU’s Holocaust Memorial Lecture Committee for many years and was a co-organizer of the global exhibit Hostile Terrain 94.

Application Details

Seminar applicants can be at any career stage but must be teaching or anticipate teaching relevant courses at accredited institutions in North America, including colleges, universities, and community colleges. Applications must include: (1) a curriculum vitae; (2) a one- to two-page statement outlining how the Seminar will strengthen the candidate’s teaching relating to the Holocaust and/or refugee studies; (3) a draft syllabus with content relating to the Silberman Seminar topic that the candidate has taught or anticipates teaching.

In your statement of interest, please specifically address:

• How the Seminar would augment or impact the course(s) you anticipate teaching.

• How the Seminar would help to meet your institution's needs and/or expand your institution’s curricular offerings.

• How your perspective, experiences, and/or disciplinary approach will enhance the Seminar discussions.

This Seminar aims to convene scholars from various career levels, disciplines, regional locations, academic institutions, and backgrounds. Participants must commit to attending the entire Seminar at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum from June 5 to June 13, 2024. All assigned readings and course materials will be made available to participants in advance of the program. After the Seminar, participants are expected to submit a preliminary version of a revised syllabus. The Seminar will include working sessions for participants to revise and expand their syllabi content using Museum resources.

Travel and Lodging

For non-local participants, the Mandel Center will cover the cost of (1) direct economy travel between the participant’s home institution and Washington, DC, and (2) lodging for the duration of the Seminar. All participants will receive $500 to defray the cost of meals and incidentals.

Deadline

Applications must be received electronically by March 15, 2024 via the online application form. Please contact Dr. Katharine White (kwhite@ushmm.org) with any questions.

Applications from all qualified individuals will be considered without regard to race, color, religion, sex (including sexual orientation and gender identity), national origin, age, disability, genetic information, or any other protected status.

The Museum is committed to cultivating and maintaining a culture of diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion (DEAI). Please click here to view the Museum Statement on Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Inclusion.

The Curt C. and Else Silberman Foundation endowed the Silberman Seminar for University Faculty in memory of Curt C. and Else Silberman. The Foundation supports programs in higher education that promote, protect, and strengthen Jewish values in democracy, human rights, ethical leadership, and cultural pluralism.