This workshop will provide an introduction to the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, a repository of over 55,000 video testimonies of survivors and other eyewitnesses of the Holocaust, the Rwandan, Armenian, Cambodian, and Guatemalan genocides, and the Nanjing Massacre in China. The interviews were conducted in 41 languages and in 62 countries.
These interviews are life histories, and as such their subject matter includes the history and culture of the countries of the interviewees’ birth and their lives before, during and after genocide. The archive encompasses the experiences
not only of survivors in these contexts, but also of witnesses, liberators, aid
providers, and war crimes trials participants.
While familiarizing attendees with the archive’s interface and search engine, and providing tips and tricks for achieving powerful research results, the Founding Director of the Center for Advanced Genocide Research will feature several examples of how testimonies can enrich our research and change our perspectives and understand of Holocaust and genocide studies. Attendees will then have the opportunity to conduct their own searches with expert guidance and explore how testimonies can support and enhance their own research and teaching.
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Professor Wolf Gruner holds the Shapell-Guerin Chair in Jewish Studies, is Professor of History at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles since 2008 and is the Founding Director of the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research since 2014.
