An International Conference and Workshop
25-27 March 2014, Akko, Israel
Call for Papers
The Holocaust Studies Program of Western Galilee College, Yad Vashem and the Ghetto Fighters House announce a third international interdisciplinary conference and workshop on The Future of Holocaust Testimonies to be held on 25-27 March 2013 in Akko.
Holocaust survivors and their testimonies have been, for many years, prominent in Holocaust memorial culture. As survivors pass away, critical focus inevitably moves to the legacy they leave behind: especially in the forms of written, audio and video testimonies. Scholarly work on survivor testimony is done today in many academic disciplines including history, literary analysis, linguistics, cultural criticism, psychology, neuroscience, sociology, etc. The rich and varied and corpus of testimonies requires the collaborative effort of researchers across disciplines to enable us to hear the voices of survivors articulated through their testimonies.
We aim for the conference to contribute both to Holocaust research and to public discourse. Therefore, one day of the conference will be open to the public, while two days will be for researchers only. The conference will be conducted in English. The open public day will be conducted in English and Hebrew with simultaneous translation.
Speakers will be accorded full hospitality.
We welcome proposals for papers that address the conference theme, including, but not limited to, the following topics:
• Methodological issues
• Testimony collection projects
• Archival collections and archives
• Early and late testimonies
• Different approaches to testimony analysis
• Testimonies as history or as commentary
• culture and identity issues in testimony
• Age and gender issues
• Professional status and viewpoints of witnesses
• Authenticity, verification and false memories
Please send a one page proposal and a short CV to: TestimonyConf@wgalil.ac.il
(Doctoral candidates please add a letter of recommendation from your advisor)
Deadline: 20 October 2013