The growing field of Holocaust studies confronts a world wracked by antisemitism, immigration and refugee crises, human rights abuses, mass atrocity crimes, threats of nuclear war, the COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic, and environmental degradation. What does it mean to advance Holocaust studies—what are learning and teaching about the Holocaust for—in such dire straits? Vast resources support study and memorialization of the Holocaust. What assumptions govern that investment? What are its major successes and failures, challenges and prospects? Across thirteen chapters, Advancing Holocaust Studies shows how leading scholars grapple with those tough questions.
Prologue: What’s It For?
Carol Rittner and John K. Roth
Chronology: Events Advancing Holocaust Studies, 1945–2020
Carol Rittner and John K. Roth
Part One: Journeys
1. Places I Have Been
John K. Roth
2. Peripheral Vision
Sara R. Horowitz
3. Living Alongside the Holocaust: A Personal and Professional Journey
Edward T. Linenthal
4. The Memorialist
James E. Young
Part Two: Challenges
5. Holocaust Studies: A Compass
Debórah Dwork
6. Thinking Back and Looking Forward: Holocaust Education in a Troubled World
Alex Alvarez
7. Culture Matters: Warnings and Implications from the Holocaust
Jonathan Petropoulos
8. Catholics, the Holocaust, and the Burden of History
Robert A. Ventresca
9. Intersections: Holocaust Studies, Personal Lives
Wendy Lower
Part Three: Prospects
10. Holocaust Studies: Why, How, and Wherefore
Robert P. Ericksen
11. My Unorthodox Path: Towards Integrative, Interdisciplinary, and Comparative Holocaust Studies
Wolf Gruner
12. A Stone under the Wheel of History
Lisa Moses Leff
13. Words Matter
Carol Rittner
Epilogue: Why?
Carol Rittner and John K. Roth
Biography
Carol Rittner is Distinguished Professor Emerita of Holocaust and Genocide Studies and Dr. Marsha Raticoff Grossman Professor Emerita of Holocaust Studies, Stockton University. Her books include The Holocaust and the Christian World: Reflections on the Past, Challenges for the Future and Women, the Holocaust, and Genocide.
John K. Roth is Edward J. Sexton Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Founding Director, Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights (now the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights), Claremont McKenna College. His books include The Failures of Ethics: Confronting the Holocaust, Genocide, and Other Mass Atrocities and Sources of Holocaust Insight: Learning and Teaching about the Genocide.
"... an illuminating, probing, thrilling, sobering, questing, far-ranging, and ultimately reaffirming series of personal stories and surveys of the current and future state of Holocaust studies."
Richard Middleton-Kaplan, Shalom, US
"Advancing Holocaust Studies is a riveting collection of essays by world-re-nowned scholars in the field, reflecting on both their personal journeys and the professional lenses through which they see their research, teaching, and writing. Through these individual voices, the reader is presented not only with the complex-ity of the field as it has evolved but indications about its future directions."
Joey G. Gratz, Gratz College, Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations