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Vanderbilt’s Holocaust Lecture Series marks 30th year;
2007 theme is ‘Broken Silence’
9-20-2007
The longest running Holocaust Lecture Series at an American university
marks its 30th year with lectures and films this October and November
spanning subjects from the life of children in Nazi Germany to
genocide in Iraq and ethnic cleansing in the United States.
`The theme of `Broken Silence’ for this year’s series reaffirms our
long-standing commitment to expand the frontiers of our conversation
about the Holocaust and other genocides by providing a stage for new
perspectives, new questions and for conveying those narratives that
have struggled to find a voice or an audience,’ said the co-chairs of
the planning committee for the series, Shaiya Baer and Irek
Kusmierczyk. `Hence, in these lectures, we will listen to the voices
of victimized Jews as well as Kurds and Armenians, and, in the
process, we find the courage to confront the question of racial
cleansing on American soil.’
The schedule of events, all free and open to the public:
7 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 14, in Sarratt Cinema `The Skeleton in Our Closet:
Misremembering America’s Racial Cleansings’ Journalist Elliot Jaspin,
a Pulitzer Prize winner, speaks about episodes in America after
Reconstruction until the Great Depression where organized groups of
white people terrorized, murdered and forced thousands of black
Americans to flee their homes. Jaspin is the author of Buried in
Bitter Waters: The Hidden History of Racial Cleansing in America.
7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 17, in the Moore Room of Vanderbilt Law School
`The Iraq Genocide: Personal Perspectives and Legal Residue’ Michael
Newton, acting associate professor of clinical law, was in Kurdish
camps as citizens fled to the mountains in 1991 amongst the
destruction of villages by Saddam Hussein. Newton will discuss the
political and legal salience of the subsequent Iraqi High Tribunal,
where he served as an international law adviser to the judges. He will
highlight the perspective of the victims in the context of Iraqi
society.
7 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 28, in The Ben Schulman Center for Jewish Life
`Deep Evil and Deep Good: The Concept of Human Nature Confronts the
Holocaust’ Michael Bess, the Chancellor’s Professor of History, speaks
about the sometimes atrocious and sometimes noble actions of Europeans
touched by the persecution of Jews by Nazi Germany. He will examine
the strategies that have been followed by historians, psychologists,
social scientists and philosophers to explain the chasm between those
who tried to help and those who took part in the persecution.
7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 1, in Flynn Auditorium of Vanderbilt Law School
`Children of Hitler’s War’ Nicholas Stargardt, a fellow at Magdalen
College, Oxford, discusses the role of children under Nazi Germany
rule. He is the author of Witnesses of War: Children’s Lives under the
Nazis.
7 p.m. Monday, Nov. 5, in 103 Wilson Hall `The Years of Extermination:
An Integrated History of the Holocaust’ Saul Friedländer, holder of
the 1939 Club Chair at the University of California, Los Angeles, says
he `will argue for an essential need to integrate the fate of
individuals, both Jews and non-Jews alike, within the general history
of the Holocaust.’ Friedländer is the author of Nazi Germany and
the Jews, 1939-1945: The Years of Extermination.
6 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 15, in 126 Wilson Hall `The Armenian Genocide’
Andrew Goldberg directed and produced this one-hour documentary about
the first genocide of the 20th century, when more than a million
Armenians were killed by Ottoman Turks in 1915. The film will be
followed by a 7 p.m. reception in the lobby of Wilson Hall, and then a
7:35 p.m. lecture by Peter Balakian on `The Transmission of Trauma
Across Generations: Writing a Memoir about Growing Up in the Suburbs
and the Armenian Genocide.’
Selected events will be recorded and posted as podcasts to VUCast, the
Web site of Vanderbilt News Service, at
The Vanderbilt University Holocaust Lecture Series was started in 1977
by Beverly Asbury, the university chaplain.
Media Contact: Jim Patterson, (615) 322-NEWS
[email protected]