MTSU’s 15th biennial Holocaust Studies Conference focuses on shift in research

MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — Middle Tennessee State University’s 15th biennial Holocaust Studies Conference keynote speaker Daniel H. Magilow recently spoke to this year’s attendees about the focal shift in Holocaust studies from past to present.

The Lindsay Young Professor of German and affiliated faculty member with the Manfred Steinfeld Program in Judaic Studies at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, Magilow spoke on the theme of “Examining Holocaust Studies in Our World Today.”

Ashley Valanzola, assistant professor of the Holocaust in the History Department, speaks to attendees at the Middle Tennessee State University Holocaust Studies Conference on March 6 in the Student Union Ballroom on the MTSU campus in Murfreesboro, Tenn. (MTSU photo by Cat Curtis Murphy)

An attentive crowd listened inside the Student Union Ballroom to Magilow explain what he’s identified as the seven debates within Holocaust Studies and the questions researchers focus on: origins, motivations, victim experiences, resistance, bystander reactions, possibilities for rescue, and representation.

“These seven debates continue to animate research, and as such, they demonstrate continuities in the history of Holocaust Studies as a discipline. It has been crucial to answer questions like these to establish a baseline narrative of the Holocaust and its aftermath,” said Magilow.

Dr. Ashley Valanzola, assistant professor of history, Holocaust Studies — Dr. Ashley Valanzola

Daniel-H.-Magilow — Dr. Daniel H. Magilow

Hosted by the MTSU Holocaust Studies Program, the two-day conference on March 6-7 consisted of lectures and panel discussions centered around Holocaust studies and research, with most presentations held in the Student Union Ballroom. This year’s conference was led by conference chair Ashley Valanzola, an assistant professor of the Holocaust in the History Department.

Started in 1988, MTSU’s Holocaust Studies Conference 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.

“This conference offers the opportunity for students to hear from experts in Holocaust Studies firsthand. Since the conference is fairly small, students also benefit from one-on-one conversations with Holocaust scholars,” said Valanzola.

Keynote speaker Daniel H. Magilow, a professor of German at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, speaks to the audience at the Middle Tennessee State University Holocaust Studies Conference on March 6 in the Student Union Ballroom on the MTSU campus in Murfreesboro, Tenn. (MTSU photo by Cat Curtis Murphy)

Magilow’s MTSU presentation featured three parts: an overview of the key debates in Holocaust Studies; what is changing in the field; and a Q&A session.

He emphasized throughout the talk that as the population that lived through the Holocaust continues to decline, the study of the Holocaust becomes normalized. The subject, which was first studied to document the crimes within it, has broadened as time goes on.

An attendee asks a question during the Q&A portion of the keynote speech at the Middle Tennessee State University Holocaust Studies Conference on March 6 in the Student Union Ballroom on the MTSU campus in Murfreesboro, Tenn. (MTSU photo by Cat Curtis Murphy)

During the second part of the program, Magilow tapped into his work experience as co-editor-in-chief of “Holocaust and Genocide Studies,” an academic journal produced through the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, to explain what is changing within the field of Holocaust studies.

History, literature, film, and music have all undergone changes through the eyes of Holocaust studies experts, he noted. Throughout history, scholars have shifted from comparing Nazis and brutal Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin to Nazis versus colonial crimes. The representation of the Holocaust has also changed in media and the arts.

Daniel H. Magilow, a professor of German at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville and keynote speaker at Middle Tennessee State University’s Holocaust Studies Conference, speaks to attendees about shifts in Holocaust research on March 6 in the Student Union Ballroom on the MTSU campus in Murfreesboro, Tenn. (MTSU photo by Cat Curtis Murphy)

Magilow used recent special issues of “Holocaust and Genocide Studies” to inform attendees about what aspects of the Holocaust have only recently been examined by scholars.

Among the special issues were new sources, transnational dimensions of the Holocaust, and new methodologies. Each topic contained many subtopics such as digital humanities, emotions, men as gendered beings, quantification and the Holocaust, and cumulative radicalization as new methodologies.

“Scholars in Holocaust Studies remain driven by one question that has long catalyzed research, the question of ‘why?’,” Magilow stated. “… At the same time, significant changes are occurring that reflect the interests of a new cohort of researchers and the new sources, methods, and technologies at their disposal.”

Magilow opened the floor for questions at the end of the program.

MTSU offers a minor in Jewish and Holocaust Studies under the direction of English professor Elyce Helford. Learn more at https://jhstudies.mtsu.edu.

—Jordan Reining (Jordan.Reining@mtsu.edu)