Mr. Noah Shenker

Professional Background

Mr. Noah Shenker received an M.A. in critical studies and a B.A. in political science from the University of Michigan. During his fellowship at the Museum, he was a Ph.D. candidate in critical studies in the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California. For his Charles H. Revson Foundation Fellowship for Archival Research, Mr. Shenker conducted research for his project, “Embodied Testimony: The Ethical, Political, and Pedagogical Potentiality of Media Archives Documenting Survivors of the Holocaust.”

Mr. Shenker has received various awards for his academic success. The University of Michigan named him a James B. Angell Scholar, and he was inducted into the Phi Kappa Phi honor society at the University of Southern California. He has presented at conferences on topics such as “Restoring Memory: The Interventionist Potential of Genocide Archives” for the 2005 Visible Evidence XII (International Non-Fiction Film and Television Conference) in Montreal, Canada, and “Recycled Images: Thoughts on the Converging Representations of the Intifada and the Gaza Pullout in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict” for the Society for Cinema and Media Studies 2006 Conference in Vancouver, Canada.

Fellowship Research

During his tenure at the Center, Mr. Shenker researched the ways in which audiovisual recordings of survivor testimony are incorporated into Holocaust remembrance and pedagogy at the Museum. More specifically, he examined how particular institutional mandates and practices impact the gathering and preservation of those testimonies and shape the conditions of possibility for disseminating and interpreting traumatic memory. Ultimately, his project explored how caches of corporeal or “embodied” testimonies serve to bridge personal and collective memory for intersecting purposes of commemoration, education, and social action.

Mr. Shenker was in residence at the Mandel Center from November 1, 2006 to February 28, 2007.