"The Future of Holocaust Memory"
Professional Background
Dr. Judith Gerson is currently associate professor in the Departments of Sociology and Women's and Gender Studies at Rutgers University, where she is also an affiliate faculty member in the Department of Jewish Studies. She holds a PhD in sociology from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and a MA in sociology from Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York. As the Ina Levine Invitational Scholar, at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, Dr. Gerson will be conducting research for her archival and ethnographic study “The Future of Holocaust Memory.”
Dr. Gerson is the co-editor of Sociology Confronts the Holocaust: Memories and Identities in Jewish Diasporas (Duke University Press, 2007). She currently has several manuscripts under review including, By Thanksgiving We Were Americans: German Jewish Refugees Remember the Holocaust (forthcoming). Dr. Gerson is also the author of several articles and book chapters in Jewish studies and gender studies.
Dr. Gerson will deliver the 2017 Ina Levine Annual Lecture on March 15, 2018 entitled, "By Thanksgiving We Were Americans: German Jewish Refugees Remember the Holocaust." Based on the book manuscript by the same title, this work focuses on collective memory of displacement and resettlement.
In 2016, Dr. Gerson presented papers at the Association for Jewish Studies and the American Sociological Association, and was invited to give several lectures including one at an international conference, Bearing Witness More than Once held in Berlin. She has also been the recipient of several fellowships and awards throughout her career.
Fellowship Research
While in residence at the Mandel Center, Dr. Gerson initiated research on the ethnographic and archival study which focused on three memory projects in Germany—the Frankfurt am Main Visitors’ Program, the Stolpersteine endeavor, and reunions held at Dachau. Drawing on the Museum's resources, she sought to understand how the Germans who staff these initiatives, and the multinational groups of survivors and their descendants who return to participate in them, recall the past.
Dr. Gerson was in residence at the Mandel Center until May 31, 2018.