2024 Jack and Anita Hess Faculty Seminar

Overview

Seminar Dates: January 8–12, 2024

The 2024 Jack and Anita Hess Faculty Seminar will explore the Holocaust through the lens of Jewish experiences of dispossession and looting during World War II, as well as processes of restitution, reparations, and rebuilding of private lives in the postwar period. Drawing on the Museum’s extensive collections, the Seminar will examine the concept of “home” as represented through stolen property, sites of memory, places to return to, and conceptual spaces to be reconstructed anew by diaspora communities. Speakers will discuss the complexities of making restitution claims across different postwar European contexts, including in France, Austria, and Poland. The Seminar will also shed light on how Jewish claims to restitution fit in a global context of transitional justice and reparations claims that have emerged since World War II.

The Seminar is designed to help faculty, instructors, and advanced PhD candidates who are currently teaching or preparing to teach courses that focus on or have a curricular component relating to restitution, reparations, conceptions of home, and the Holocaust. Applications are welcome from instructors across academic disciplines, including but not limited to: Archeology; Anthropology; History; Philosophy; Art; Conservation Studies; Disability Studies; Gender Studies, Women’s Studies; German Studies; History of Material Culture; Holocaust and Genocide Studies; Jewish Studies; Law and Human Rights; Museum Studies; Political Science; Psychology; Sociology; and Theology and Religious Studies. The Seminar aims to deepen, broaden, and enrich how we teach Jewish responses to the Holocaust through a closer examination of restitution claims and the reconstruction of the home in the postwar period.

Seminar Facilitator

Shannon Fogg, Professor, Department of History and Political Science, Missouri University of Science and Technology

Shannon Fogg is a social historian whose work focuses on a range of topics from looting and restitution processes to the exclusion and inclusion of "outsiders" in France during and after the Second World War. Her publications include The Politics of Everyday Life in Vichy France: Foreigners, Undesirables, and Strangers (Cambridge University Press, 2009) and Stealing Home: Looting, Restitution, and Reconstructing Jewish Lives in France, 1942–1947 (Oxford University Press, 2017). Her research has been supported by grants from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, and the American Philosophical Society. She was a visiting scholar at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris and a fellow at the Paris Institute for Advanced Studies. Her current research follows two different lines of inquiry: one focuses on the geography of the Holocaust in Paris and the other focuses on the American Friends Service Committee’s humanitarian aid to France.

Guest Speakers

Elizabeth Anthony, Director, Visiting Scholar Programs, Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Elizabeth Anthony is a historian and the director of the Mandel Center’s Visiting Scholar Programs. She previously served as a staff scholar for the Mandel Center's International Tracing Service and worked in the Museum’s Office of Survivor Affairs. Dr. Anthony’s research focuses on the postwar Jewish community of Vienna and the records of the International Tracing Service (ITS) archive. Her book, The Compromise of Return: Viennese Jews after the Holocaust, was co-published in 2021 by Wayne State University Press and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Her research has been supported by a Barbara and Richard Rosenberg Fellowship at the Mandel Center and a Fulbright Research Fellowship in Austria.

Anna Cichopek-Gajraj, Associate Professor of History, School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies, Arizona State University

Anna Cichopek-Gajraj is a historian whose research focuses on Polish-Jewish relations, antisemitism, and ethnic violence in Poland and the Polish-Jewish diaspora after the Holocaust. She is the author of two books on postwar Polish-Jewish history: Beyond Violence: Jewish Survivors in Poland and Slovakia in 1944–1948 (Cambridge University Press, 2014) and Pogrom Żydów w Krakowie 11 sierpnia 1945 r (Jewish Historical Institute, Polish, 2000). Beyond Violence was a finalist for the 2016 Jordan Schnitzer Book Award and received the 2015 Barbara Heldt Prize Honorable Mention. Dr. Cichopek-Gajraj is also a recipient of the 2016 Shofar Zakhor Award from the Phoenix Holocaust Association for “exhibiting and carrying the work of Holocaust education, Holocaust remembrance, and community interaction.” She has received grants and fellowships from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the YIVO Institute, and the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture in New York, among others.

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 in the areas of the Holocaust, restitution, and postwar conceptions of home (required components are outlined below); (3) a draft syllabus with content relating to the Hess 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. All assigned readings and course materials will be made available to participants in advance of the program. After the conclusion of the Seminar, participants are expected to submit a preliminary version of a revised syllabus. The Seminar will include designated working sessions for participants to revise and expand their syllabi content using Museum resources.

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Travel and Lodging

For non-local participants, the Mandel Center will cover the cost of (1) direct economy travel to and from the participant’s home institution and Washington, DC, and (2) lodging for the duration of the Seminar. All participants will be provided $250 to defray the cost of meals and incidentals.

Deadline

Applications must be received electronically no later than October 20, 2023. The application form is available online. 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 see the Museum Statement on Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Inclusion.

This Seminar is endowed by Edward and David Hess in memory of their parents, Jack and Anita Hess, who believed passionately in the power of education to overcome racial and religious prejudice.