News Blog

 

2012

Professor Robert Gordon (Anthropology) has been appointed to a two-year visiting distinguished professorship at the University of the Free State in South Africa.

Professor Alan E. Steinweis (History) has been appointed as the first holder of the Leonard and Carolyn Miller Miller Distinguished Professorship of Holocaust Studies, and has been appointed to the scientific advisory committee (wissenschaftlicher Beirat) of the Institute for Contemporary History (Institut fuer Zeitgeschichte) in Munich.

Katherine Sacks, an undergraduate Holocaust Studies minor, graduated with honors in December 2011. She was awarded a scholarship by the US Holocaust Museum to participate in the Museum’s summer workshop on the recently acquired collection of the International Tracing Service; has worked as a paid intern at the Museum for Jewish Heritage in New York; and for next year has received a Fulbright scholarship to teach English in Linz, Austria. She plans to pursue doctoral-level work in the Holocaust field.

Michelle Magin completed her MA thesis on the treatment of the Holocaust in West German school textbooks, had a paid internship at the US Holocaust Museum’s publications department and is now in the PhD program in German Studies at the University of Manchester, UK.

Dana Smith, a second-year MA student in History, completed a thesis about the Munich chapter of the Jewish Cultural League in Nazi Germany, and is now in the PhD program in History at Queen Mary College, University of London, UK, where she holds the John Grenville Studentship at the Leo Baeck Institute, London.

Ben Lindsay completed an MA thesis on the inspection visit of liberated concentration camps by a delegation of American congressmen and senators in 1945.

Two MA students are completing their first year: Michelle Sigiel and Forrest Parsons, both of whom received their undergraduate degrees at Keene State College in New Hampshire. Sigiel has been awarded a David Scrase Research Grant to conduct research at the archive US Holocaust Museum in Washington.

Undergraduate Mark Alexander has received a David Scrase Research Grant to conduct research at the National Archives in Washington in connection with his honor's thesis on a prominent Ukrainian war criminal who was admitted into the United States after World War Two.

 

2011

Lutz Kaelber (Sociology) has published an article, "Gedenken an die NS-»Kindereuthanasie« – das Fallbeispiel der Landesheilanstalt Eichberg," which is avaialble on the website of the Gedenkstaetten-Rundbrief at this link.

The Vermont Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers is pleased to announce the following: Friday, September 23, 2011-- at Sugarbush Resort - NASW-VT Conference (www.naswvt.org) Holocaust Speaker. Author of Life in a Jar, Middlebury pediatrician Dr. Jack Mayer will address the 2011 NASW-VT Conference in the first plenary session.  Life in a Jar is the story of Irena Sendler, a Polish Catholic social worker who saved the lives of hundreds of Jewish children during World War II. Dr. Mayer will show slides of the Warsaw ghetto and tell Irena’s story, followed by a reading from his book.  For additional information and the registration form please go to www.naswvt.org/2011ACHalfDayReg.doc. The event is open to the public in the morning only for pre-registered individuals at $45, which includes morning refreshments.  Copies of the book will be available for sale at $17.95 (cash or check only), with 60% of the proceeds going to the Life in a Jar Foundation.  For more information about the book, go to www.longtrailpress.com.

David Scrase's (German) biography of the German nature poet Wilhelm Lehmann (1882-1968) will appear in German (Wallstein Verlag) in the fall of 2011. Lehmann, born in the same year as James Joyce and Virginia Wolf, was a founding member of the Naturmagische Schule. He wrote poems, essays, and thinly veiled autobiographical fiction. Although his life was that of a typical bourgeois intellectual, he lived in tumultuous times. A very reluctant soldier in World War I, he deserted in 1918. When Hitler came to power, he wrote in his diary "Today, they hoisted the horrible Nazi flag in the school yard..." As a civil servant, however (he was a teacher), he joined the party rather than risk losing his job. His membership was to be a continuing source of shame and guilt for him. He was a recipient of many awards and honors, especially in the period of fame that he enjoyed following World War Two. The webpage for the book can be viewed here.

On June 10-11, 2011, the Miller Center co-sponsored an international conference titled "Global Holocaust? Memories of the Destruction of European Jews in Global Context." The conference was held on the campus of the University of Augsburg in Germany, a partner institution of UVM. A report about the conference can be downloaded here.

Nicole Phelps (History) won the biennial Austrian Cultural Forum Dissertation Prize in 2010 for her dissertation, "Sovereignty, Citizenship, and the New Liberal Order: US-Habsburg Relations and the Transformation of International Politics, 1880-1924." A book based on the dissertation is under contract with Cambridge University Press.

In his capacity as editor of Proverbium: Yearbook of International Proverb Scholarship, Wolfgang Mieder (German) has arranged for the publication of the following volume in the journal’s Supplement Series: Ilana Rosen, Soul of Saul: The Life, Narrative, and Proverbs of a Transylvania-Israeli Grandfather, (Burlington: The University of Vermont, Department of German and Russian, 2011).

Steve Zdatny (History) had an article--"The French Hygiene Offensive of the 1950s: A Critical Moment in the History of Manners"--accepted by the Journal of Modern History and slated to appear in December 2011. He will be on sabbatical leave in the fall 2011 and a visiting research fellow at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences sociales, in Paris.

Ethan Jennings completed his MA in the Department of History under the supervision of Frank Nicosia and Jonathan Huener. His thesis examines the relationship between Germany and Spain from 1939-41, focusing primarily on Spain in German strategy and the German perspective of negotiations.

Benjamin Lindsey, an MA candidate in the Department of History working under the supervision of Nicole Phelps and Jonathan Huener, received a David Scrase grant to conduct research on his thesis, which will examine the US congressional delegation that visited the liberated concentration camps in Germany in the spring of 1945. Lindsey will travel to Salt Lake City and Boston to consul the paper of two key members of the delegation

Katherine Sacks, UVM Class of 2011, majoring in English with a minor in Holocaust Studies, has been selected to participate in the workshop, Introduction to Holocaust Studies through the Records of the International Tracing Service Collection at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.  Designed for advanced undergraduate, M.A., and early Ph.D. students, the seminar is scheduled for August 1-9, 2011 at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. This seminar is the fourth in a series designed to encourage the use of the recently opened archival holdings of the ITS. The objective of this seminar is to acquaint promising advanced undergraduate, M.A., and early Ph.D. students with Holocaust Studies through this rich and diverse collection's records.

Dana Smith, an MA Student in the Department of History, is writing her thesis about the Jüdischer Kulturbund in Bayern, Ortsgruppe München, 1933-1938. The Kulturbund in Bavaria was one of the first Jewish cultural organizations established independently of the Kulturbund deutscher Juden in Berlin.

Professor Alan E. Steinweis has published the chapter "Hitler and Himmler" in the Oxford Handbook of Holocaust Studies, edited by Pater Hayes and John K. Roth.

The UVM Center for Holocaust Studies has been awarded a grant from the German-based Foundation for German-American Academic Relations to hold a workshop devoted to the study of Holocaust memory in non-western settings. The conference will be held in June 2011 on the campus of the University of Augsburg, UVM's partner institution for the project.

Professor Alan E. Steinweis will hold the visiting professorship in Holocaust Studies and German-Jewish History at the Fritz Bauer Institute of the University of Frankfurt during the spring 2011 semester.

A portrait of Professor Raul Hilberg has been published in the Jewish Quarterly Review. Read it here.

Professor Lutz Kaelber has published "Virtual Traumascapes: The Commemoration of Nazi 'Children's Euthanasia' Online and On Site,"  in Digital Icons: Studies in Russian, Eurasian and Central European New Media no. 4, 2010: 13-44. The article is available online here.

 

2010

Dana Smith and Ethan Jennings, two MA students in the Department of History at UVM, have been awarded Scrase grants to enable them to attend the bi-annual "Lessons and Leagcies" conference on the Holocaust.

Richard Sugarman (Religion) presented a paper, "The End of Theodicy: The Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas in the Aftermath of the Holocaust” as the Plenary Speaker at the conference on Levinas and Difficle Liberté, Tolouse, France, July 2010.

The 2005 Hilberg Lecture, delivered by Professor Claudia Koonz, is now available on our website here.

Several members of the UVM faculty will be participating at the biannual "Lessons and Legacies" conference sponsored by the Holocaust Education Foundation, to be held in November 2010 at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. Professor Francis Nicosia has served as the co-chair for the program, together with Professor Susannah Heschel of Dartmouth College. A copy of the program can be found here.

Professor Francis Nicosia has published the anthology "Wer bleibt, opfert seine Jahre, vielleicht sein Leben," co-edited with Susanne Heim and Beate Meyer.

On October 13-15, 2010, UVM hosted a Holocaust Education Summit, organized and funded by the Education Department of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The event was attended by three dozen educators based at universities, high schools, and community Holocaust resource centers. The program for the meeting can be seen here.

Jewish Life in Nazi Germany, edited by Francis Nicosia and David Scrase, has been published by Berghahn Books. The volume grows out of the 2006 Miller Symposium held at UVM. For more information and to order a copy, click here.

The 2010 edition of the Center's newsletter, The Bulletin, has been posted here.

A report on Anna Hájková's lecture about the Terezin performance of the Verdi Requiem has been posted here.

The text of of the lecture by Henry Lea about Jonathan Littell's novel The Kindly Ones has been posted on our website here.

Michelle Magin, a second year graduate student in the History Department, will begin a potentially year long internship at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. in May 2010.  As the Academic Publications intern, she will provide research assistance for scholars in the department, and aid with the editing of materials for publication. 

The Nation magazine has published a compelling portrait of Raul Hilberg. Read it here.

A report on the 2009 Raul Hilberg Memorial Lecture, delivered by Mark Roseman, has been posted here.

Professor Susanna Schrafstetter has published an article in the journal German History, "A Nazi Diplomat Turned Apologist for Apartheid: Gustav Sonnenhol, Vergangenheitsbewältigung and West German Foreign Policy towards South Africa."

Kirstin Tiffany, a senior History major, has received a David Scrase Research Grant to support research at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. She is writing an honors thesis on relations between French and non-French Jews in Occupied France.

Read the report by graduate student Paul Blomerth on his experience as an intern at the US Holocaust Museum in the summer of 2009.

A report on Steven Aschheim's October 2009 guest lecture has been posted here.

Michelle Magin, an MA student in the Department of History, has been awarded a David Scrase Research Grant to carry out research at the Georg Eckert Institute for School Book Research in Braunschweig, Germany. Magin's MA thesis deals with how the Holocaust has been represented in German school textbooks.

Sara Krumminga, a 2009 UVM  graduate with major in history and minor in geography, and who wrote a  senior honors thesis on "Collective Memory in a Divided Nation:  Memorials to Victims of National Socialism in East and West  Germany,"  has been  accepted for an internship at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in its digital collections department, which will allow her to apply both her history and geography training. 

 

2009

The 2008 Hilberg Lecture, delivered by Professor John K. Roth, is now available on our website here.

The 2007 Hilberg Lecture, delivered by Professor Michael H. Kater, is now available on our website here.

The 2006 Hilberg Lecture, delivered by Professor Susan Rubin Suleiman, is now available on our website here.

Professor Wolfgang Mieder delivered the keynote lecture at the annual meeting of the American Folklore Society.

Professor Alan E. Steinweis has published a new book, Kristallnacht 1938, with Harvard University Press. Read a review of it in The New Republic here. Read a review of it by Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel here.

Professor Frank Nicosia is serving as co-chair of the 2010 Lessons and Legacies conference, one of the most important international conferences on the Holocaust, sponsored by the Holocaust Education Foundation. It will be held in November 2010 at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. The other co-chair is Professor Susannah Heschel of Dartmouth College. UVM Professor Alan E. Steinweis served as the co-chair for the 2008 meeting of the same conference.

M.A. student Paul Blomerth was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in the summer of 2009.

Professor Jonathan Huener published articles on the memorialization of Auschwitz in the journals Hefte von Auschwitz and Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, as well as in Juifs et Polonais 1939-2008, an edited collection. (By following this link you will be leaving our website.)

Professor Robert Gordon published an article on "The 'Forgotten' Bushman Genocides of Namibia" in Genocide Studies and Prevention.

 

2008

Andrew Buchanan, lecturer in History, has published an article on perceptions of Italian-ness during the American occupation of Italy, 1943-1945 in the Journal of Contemporary History.

Professor Susanna Schrafstetter published an article on Karl Hettlage, a German economic expert who was involved in anti-Jewish measures, in the Vierteljahrshefte fuer Zeitgeschichte.

Professor Nicole Phelps published an article, "State Sovereignty in a Transnational World: US Consular Expansion and the Problem of Naturalized Migrants in the Habsburg Empire, 1880-1914," in the German Historical Institute Bulletin.

Professor Meaghan Emery published an article, "Jean Giono: The Personal Ethics of an Author Writing Under the Occupation," in the Journal of European Studies.

Professor Frank Nicosia published a new book, Zionism and Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany, with Cambridge University Press.

 

Last modified April 25 2012 12:46 PM