2025 Jack and Anita Hess Faculty Seminar

Call for Applications

Seminar Dates: January 6–10, 2025 Applications must be received electronically no later than Friday, October 25, 2024. Please contact Campus Outreach Programs (campusoutreach@ushmm.org) with any questions.

Overview

How does thinking about place help us understand the Holocaust and its aftermath? In what ways did Nazi policy and practice transform urban (and, by contrast, rural) sites? How, in turn, did Nazi policy and practice affect Jews and their experiences at these sites? What can we learn about the Holocaust by studying the impact of persecution and genocide on public and private spaces? Drawing on methods from architecture, visual culture, memory studies, and history, this seminar focuses on approaches and resources for teaching about the Holocaust and post-Holocaust geographies, with an emphasis on primary sources, including photographs, maps, building plans, restitution documentation, diaries, testimonies, and more. Topics we will consider include:

• Urban and rural sites of the Holocaust 

• Public and private spaces 

• Built environments of the Holocaust 

• Spatial scales relating to the Holocaust 

• The postwar recovery, reconstruction, memorialization, and destruction of Jewish spaces

• Postwar urban and rural sites of encounters between Jews and non-Jews

Chosen case studies of specific urban and architectural sites will focus the discussion.

The 2025 Hess Seminar is designed to help faculty, instructors, and advanced PhD candidates currently teaching or preparing to teach courses that focus on or have a curricular component relating to the built and lived environments of the Holocaust, World War II, and the postwar period. Applications are welcome from instructors across academic disciplines, including but not limited to: 

• Anthropology

• Architecture

• Art and Visual Culture

• Disability Studies 

• Gender Studies 

• German Studies

• History

• Holocaust and Genocide Studies

• Jewish Studies

• Philosophy

• Political Science

• Psychology 

• Sociology

• Theology and Religious Studies

• World Languages and Cultures

The seminar aims to deepen, broaden, and enrich methods and approaches for teaching urban histories and built environments of the Holocaust in the college classroom. Applications are due no later than October 25, 2024. Apply for the seminar via our application form.

Seminar Facilitators

Anna Holian, Associate Professor, School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies | Affiliate of Jewish Studies | Affiliate of the Melikian Center: Russian, Eurasian and East European Studies, Arizona State University

Anna Holian is a historian of modern Europe with a special interest in Germany after World War II. Her work focuses on migration and displacement, the interconnections between German and Eastern European histories, and spatial and urban history. She is the author of Between National Socialism and Soviet Communism: Displaced Persons in Postwar Germany (University of Michigan Press, 2011). She is currently completing a book entitled Setting Up Shop in the House of the Hangman: Jewish Economic Life in Postwar Germany. She has also begun work on another book entitled Europe’s War Children: A Cinematic History. Her research has been supported by, among others, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), and the Institute for Contemporary History (Munich). She was, for many years, a member of the Holocaust Geographies Collaborative. 

Paul Jaskot, Professor, Art, Art History, and Visual Studies, Department of Art, Art History & Visual Studies | Professor of German Studies | Affiliate of the Center for Jewish Studies, Duke University 

Paul Jaskot is an art historian of modern art who specializes in the political history of Nazi architecture and its postwar impact. His research focuses specifically on how architectural and urban policies relate to political-economic conditions for antisemitism, forced labor, and genocide. He is the author of The Architecture of Oppression: The SS, Forced Labor, and the Nazi Monumental Building Economy (Routledge, 2000) as well as The Nazi Perpetrator: Postwar German Art and the Politics of the Right (University of Minnesota Press, 2012). His volume, The Tyranny of the Object: An Introduction to the Barbarism of Art History, is currently in press for the Polemics series of The Power Institute (University of Sydney). He was also a founding member of the Holocaust Geography Collaborative and continues to pursue digital spatial methods for analyzing the Holocaust. Jaskot is the director of the Digital Art History & Visual Culture Research Lab at Duke and was the former director of the Holocaust Educational Foundation’s Summer Institute on the Holocaust and Jewish Civilization at Northwestern University. In addition to grant support from various sponsors, he has been the Andrew W. Mellon Professor at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (National Gallery of Art) as well as the Ina Levine Invitational Scholar at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

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 an area relating to the Holocaust, World War II, and postwar urban and lived environments (additional required components are outlined below); 

3. A draft syllabus with content relating to the Hess Seminar topic 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 will your perspective, experiences, and/or disciplinary approach 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 available to participants before 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. 

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 seminar duration. All participants will be provided $250 to defray the cost of meals and incidentals. 

Deadline

Applications must be received electronically no later than Friday, October 25, 2024.

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). View 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.