seminar: Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior

Facing History and Ourselves offers an online seminar for educators from all over the world. The seminar, "Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior," starts on 19 March, 2009 and ends on 13 May, 2009 and will explore Facing History's content, methodology, and unique approach to teaching history. This eight-week seminar requires a commitment of approximately 4 hours of work per week. There are no "live" events, so seminar participants find the time to do the weekly assignments and participate in the online discussions at their convenience.

This seminar is free to educators who are committed to using Facing History content and methods.

For more information and to apply online, go to:
http://www.facinghistory.org/InternationalSeminar

For more information, please contact Tanya Lubicz-Nawrocka by email or skype (skype id: TanyaFacingHistory).

If you cannot attend this seminar online, but are interested in it, please check the list of this seminar taking place „offline” in different states of USA (click here).

Cfp: Genocide: A Public Health Disaster

Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies of University of Minnesota invites for a workshop Genocide: A Public Health Disaster.
Interesting topic, workshop is open for non-university audience.
Participating demands registration (to register click here). However there are two different information on the costs. According to International Association of Genocide Scholars this is a free-entry event. However on the website of organizers we can read: "To complete your registration you must send a security deposit of $25".

Also, I'd encourage organizers to be more language sensitive. At the moment we can read at their website: "Register for Genocide: A Public Health Disaster".

Anyway, I hope someone would find this event interested.

"World is Witness" - USHMM and Google program

"World is Witness" is a "geoblog" initiative by USHMM's Genocide Prevention Mapping Initiatives, maintained in partnership with Google Earth. The project documents and maps genocide and related crimes against humanity.

To visit the project's website, click the picture.

Project's facebook group

related initiatives (also by USHMM's Mapping Initiatives):

• Mapping the Holocaust
• Crisis in Darfur
  

Women and Holocaust

Today I've received a link to the website on Women and Holocaust (click here to visit the website).
It's author: Judy Cohen, declares the website's dedication:
"To all those women, who were murdered while pregnant. Holding little hands of children or carrying infants in their arms on the way to be gassed. In hiding. To the mothers who gave their children to be hidden, many never to find them again. To the righteous gentile mothers and the nuns in convents, who were hiding and protecting the children in their care. Or as fighters in the resistance: in ghettos, forests, partisan units.
And to the lives of those few who survived and bravely carried on"

At this website you can find testimonies, info on projects, film/bibliography, essays, poetry, review, texts on mothers/partisans/nuns and many more information, texts, resources...

USA, Pennsylvania: 29th Annual Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide

29th ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON THE HOLOCAUST AND GENOCIDE

"Resisting Genocide: History, Culture and the Arts in the Holocaust and Beyond"

Millersville University of Pennsylvania
April 1‐3, 2009

Millersville University of Pennsylvania announces the 29th Annual Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide. Over the years, Millersville's Annual Conference has examined a number of important issues ranging from the role of Pius XII and the Vatican during the Holocaust to consideration of economic issues during World War II. While the Holocaust remains its frame of reference, the Annual Conference has recently expanded inquiry to include a comparative perspective and consideration of other venues of mass murder and genocide including the Soviet Union, Armenia, the Balkans, Rwanda and Darfur. The 29th Annual Conference will emphasize cultural and social themes of resistance to genocide as well as the archival and artistic documentation of mass atrocities and persecution as recorded by the victims.

For information concerning the venue and program please contact:
Ms. Maggie Eichler,
Department of History,
Millersville University,
P. O. Box 1002,
Millersville, PA 17551‐0302.,
meichler@millersville.edu,
phone: 717‐872‐3555.

Those wishing to participate or present may contact:
Prof. Saulius Suziedelis,
Director,
Annual Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide,
Department of History,
Millersville University,
P. O. Box 1002,
Millersville, PA 17551‐0302,
ssuziedelis@millersville.edu, phone: 717‐872‐3581.

Recent programs, and other information may be found on the
Conference home page.

27th January: International Day of commemoration in the memory of the victims of the Holocaust

64 years ago, on 27th of January Nazi German Auschwitz camp was liberated by Red Army. This date was chosen by UN to celebrate International Day of Commemoration in the Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust.

• Official celebration in Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum
• Holocaust Remembrance events in 2009 by UN
  

Call for Papers/Books on Genocide, Political Violence and Human Rights

The Center for The Study of Genocide and Human Rights & Rutgers University Press is seeking outstanding manuscripts for the new book series Genocide, Political Violence, Human Rights "as entering the 21st century, genocide, war, crimes against humanity, and forms of mass atrocity constitute one of the greatest challenges that confront us". The Rutgers University Press Series, "*Genocide, Political Violence, Human Rights*," publishes cutting-edge scholarship from across the disciplines that enhance our understanding of such large-scale human rights violations and the principles and mechanisms that seek to prevent them, protect the vulnerable, and help victims recover. This series, a partnership with the Rutgers Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights, seeks to break new ground not just by publishing outstanding new titles related to its topical focus but also in developing a unique arrangement that will offer many of the authors the opportunity to have their books translated into Spanish and, possibly, other
languages.

The manuscripts should be composed of 100,000 words or less that enhance understanding of large-scale human rights violations and the principles and mechanisms that prevent them, protect the vulnerable, and help victims recover. The series will include academic books as well as books aimed at a broader audience of practitioners and non-specialist readers.

Series Editors:

Alex Hinton
Director, Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights
Department of Anthropology and Global Affairs
Rutgers University, Newark

Stephen Eric Bronner
Director of Global Affairs, Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights
Distinguished Professor of Political Science
Rutgers University, New Brunswick

Nela Navarro
Associate Director, Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights
Department of Classical and Modern Languages and Literatures
Rutgers University, Newark

To submit a manuscript proposal, please contact the series editors or Marlie Wasserman, Director, Rutgers University Press, 100 Joyce Kilmer Avenue, Piscataway, NJ 08854-8099.
Phone: 732-445-7762 x 624. Fax: 732-445-7039.
Email: marlie@rutgers.edu

2009: Geneva Summit for Democracy, Tolerance and Human Rights

In April 2009, international organizations' leaders will meet at the UN Durban Review Conference (DRC).
In parallel to this encounter, civil society organizations are organizing several conferences. They will be presented in separates posts. Here is the information on one of them: Geneva Summit for Democracy, Tolerance and Human Rights.

[information from the official website of the summit]

Invited Speakers include:

• Vaclav Havel
• The Dalai Lama
• Elie Wiesel
• Bo Kyi, Burmese dissident, winner of 2008 Human Rights Defender Award of Human Rights Watch
• Tony Blair, former UK Prime Minister and President of the Faith Foundation
• Koffi Annan, former United Nations General Secretary
• Saad Eddin Ibrahim, Egyptian dissident
• Yoani Sanchez, Cuban blogger
• Natan Sharansky, former Soviet dissident
• Mia Farrow, film star and Darfur activist
• MP Irwin Cotler, counsel for the oppressed & former Canadian Justice Minister
• Raphael Glucksmann, Etudes Sans Frontieres, Activist for Chechnya
• Dissidents and human rights activists from many other countries of concern.

Themes will include:

• 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights;
• racism and genocide;
• democracy and authoritarianism;
• women’s rights;
• the state of freedom in the world;
• the universality of human rights and its opponents;
• terrorism and human rights;

Because of pressures for the DRC Outcome Document to add provisions on “defamation of religion,” discussion on the protection of freedom of speech will also be timely.

Call for Papers on cultural genocide

Journal of Genocide Research (JGR)'s new thematic issue: "Cultural Genocide".

When Raphael Lemkin coined the term genocide during World War II, he initially had a
broader idea of the concept, namely that a group could be effectively destroyed by an attack on its social institutions and cultural heritage, even without the physical obliteration of its members. Since Lemkin, scholars have defined cultural genocide as a form of persecution involving the deliberate destruction of the culture of a people, ranging from violence against material and immaterial culture to assaults on identities of groups. Such destruction is wrought in a variety of ways, typically including restrictions upon of a group’s language and traditions, the use of boarding schools to forcibly assimilate children, the ruination of objects and institutions, and the persecution of political, cultural, intellectual, and religious elites.
History abounds with examples of cultural genocide. The expansion of Europe from 1492 on, for example, can be read as a long process of (un)intended destruction of indigenous cultures on the American and Australian continents. Other examples include the Russian colonization of the Caucasus, Chinese rule in Tibet, the Japanese occupation of Korea, Nazi policies in occupied Poland, Young Turk cultural policies in Eastern Turkey, and the destruction of Islamic architecture in Bosnia. How can cultural genocide be conceptualized?
Why do political elites launch policies to eradicate cultures? How effective are these policies? To what degree are processes of nation formation tantamount to cultural genocide?

This thematic issue of the Journal of Genocide Research aims to contribute to our
understanding of cultural genocide. The editors welcome original and innovative articles dealing with all possible aspects of cultural genocide. After initial editor screening, all submissions will undergo peer review.

Proposals for papers should be submitted together with a short curriculum vitae by 1 March 2009 both to the editors of the JGR:
Dominik J. Schaller and Jürgen Zimmerer and to the guest editor Uğur Ümit Üngör.
The articles, which should be a maximum of 8500 words (1,5 pages) including documentation, will be due on 1 July 2009.

Call for Papers on Darfur

Genocide Studies and Prevention: international journal opened call for papers to the special issue on Darfur.
Proposals shall be composed of max. 2 pages for research-based articles and cover any and all topics/issues related to the Darfur crisis.
more>>

PRISM: new journal for Holocaust Educators

new publication sponsored by the Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Studies and Administration of Yeshiva University. PRISM: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Holocaust Educators is conceived as a bi-annual, peer-reviewed journal that will serve as a practical yet scholarly resource for high school, college, and graduate school educators and their students. Each issue will feature a specific subject or theme and will examine that topic through a variety of lenses, including education, history, literature, psychology, sociology, and art.

- from IAGS website.

Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence

"This Encyclopaedia Project aims to create a regularly updated electronic database focusing on massacres and genocides of the 20th century. Currently, there is no tool available that documents and classifies our knowledge by continent, country and historical period. The Encyclopaedias first objective is to fill this gap by offering reliable historical description and interdisciplinary analysis of both well-documented and less well-known 20th century massacres.
Such a unique database will not only be valuable to scholars, but also the NGO community, international legal experts, policy makers and journalists. Anyone seeking a reliable account regarding a specific case of massacre, in a particular country or on an exact date will now be able to locate the information on the Encyclopedia.
The Online Encyclopedia provides chronological indexes, case studies, analytical contributions on socio-political violence in a given country, a glossary of the terms most often used in genocide studies as well as theoretical papers written by the most representative authors in the field.

This global project has been initiated by Professor Jacques Semelin, Research director at the Center for International Studies and Research (CERI) with the support of Sciences-Po Paris and the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS France).

Along with the associate editors in charge of the development of the website’s geographical and thematic content, an International Academic Advisory Board of the pre-eminent scholars in the field, will insure the quality and relevance of the posted data and will work vigilantly against any attempt to manipulate this website or exploit it for communitarian, political or ideological purposes." - by INOGS

The project (still in progress) is available at MassViolence.org