The George and Irina Schaeffer Center for the Study of Genocide, Human Rights and Conflict Prevention, Yahad In Unum, the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research, and the AGBU Nubar Library are organizing an international interdisciplinary conference on the scholarly uses of video testimonies for understanding genocide and mass violence.The conference will be held in Paris onJune 6thand 7th2019.
Victim testimony as a source for the study of genocide and mass violence has been the subject of longstanding debate in the social sciences and humanities, especially among historians. This conference aims to deepen the discussion by inviting participants to present on three areas of focus:
What are the challenges of collecting testimonies on genocide and mass violence? To what extent have technological advances altered the recording and subsequent exploitation of video testimonies? How has collecting video testimonies on genocide and mass violence changed the categorization and scope of the witnesses and their narratives about genocide and mass violence? Do we need a new lexicon to convey the scope of all the perspectives and points of view on genocide and mass violence?
What are the characteristics of the collections of existing video testimonies of genocide and mass violence? What is their scholarly, technical, and memorial potential? The Visual History Archive, due to its wide accessibility and enormous scope, is prominent among the corpus of Holocaust testimonies, but to what extent is it also a relevant source for the study of the other crimes that it documents?
What insights do video testimonies of victims and eyewitnesses contribute to documenting and understanding the Holocaust and other crimes? What are the possibilities and what are the limitations of video as a medium compared to other media used to record testimony? What do we gain by analyzing video testimony through the lens of different theoretical approaches, such as comparative history,histoire crois矇e,or multidirectional memory?
Organizing committee: Patrice Bensimon (YIU), Caitlin Bertin-Mahieux (AUP), Constance P璽ris de Bollardi癡re (AUP), Brian Schiff (AUP)
Scientific committee: Boris Adjemian (AGBU Nubar Library),Patrice Bensimon (YIU), Michal Chojak (YIU), Alexandra Garbarini (Williams College), Wolf Gruner (USC), Constance P璽ris de Bollardi癡re (AUP), Brian Schiff (AUP)