Registration is open for one of MTSU’s most enlightening events about one of the world’s most devastating tragedies.

The 14th biennial Holocaust Studies Conference is slated for Thursday, Sept. 22, and Friday, Sept. 23, on the MTSU campus with the theme of “Teaching the Holocaust Today.”

To register and for cost details, go to https://tinyurl.com/2nu539y8.

Atina Grossman, a professor of history at The Cooper Union in New York City, will present the keynote address at 10:30 a.m. Thursday, Sept. 22, in the Student Union Ballroom. The event is free and open to all MTSU students, faculty and staff.

In her lecture, titled “Remapping Holocaust Studies: Teaching and Research in Global Context,” Grossman will consider how to help students recognize connections between the Holocaust and racism, antisemitism and colonialism while continuing to acknowledge the Holocaust’s uniqueness in history.

Other issues Grossman will consider include the challenges of achieving a deeper understanding of the Holocaust and the non-Western world and teaching Holocaust studies as the liberal arts come under question in some arenas of the academic community.

Grossman is the 2022-23 Ina Levine Invitational Senior Scholar at the Mandel Center of the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. Her current research focuses on Jewish refugees from Nazism in Iran, India and Central Asia in transnational context.

Another highlight of this year’s conference will be a Friday, Sept. 23, appearance by Sonja Dubois, a resident of Knoxville, Tennessee, who will share her survival story at the conference. Born in 1940 in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, Dubois’ parents were transported to the notorious Auschwitz death camp in 1942.

Dubois will give a talk titled “Finding Schifrah: A Holocaust Child Survivor’s Journey and the Making of a Memoir” and answer questions from 2 to 4 p.m. in the Student Union Ballroom, after which she will have a book signing for her book, “Finding Schifrah,” which explores her journey as an adult to uncover the truth of her identity and understand her Jewish heritage.

Dubois will be joined for the MTSU discussion by the co-editors of her memoir, Alice Catherine Carls and Hanno Weitering. This event is free and open to the public.

A Dutch foster family raised her without telling her initially about what happened to her biological parents. In hundreds of speeches and visits to schools, Dubois has talked about her lifelong search for understanding. 

Though the event was canceled in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, MTSU’s Holocaust Studies Conference has been a biennial opportunity for scholars from around the world to share their research and insights with students.

Their work focuses on the many facets of Nazi Germany’s systematic extermination of some 6 million Jews from 1941 to 1945 on the false premise that people of Aryan heritage represented a “master race” and were the only ones fit to survive. Other victims of Nazi persecution included homosexuals, ethnic Poles, Roma and Afro-Germans.

Full registration for the conference is $100. Graduate student and contingent faculty registration is $50. Registration for MTSU and high school students and teachers with meals is $30. Registration without meals is free for high school students and teachers, international participants and MTSU students, faculty and staff.

The Holocaust Studies Conference is sponsored by the MTSU Holocaust Studies Program and the College of Liberal Arts. For more information, visit www.mtsu.edu/holocaust_studies/conference.php/php.

— Gina K. Logue (gina.logue@mtsu.edu)