2015-16 Colloquia
Wednesday, March 30 - Dr. Chris Patti
In Fall 2015, the Center for Judaic, Holocaust and Peace Studies launched a new colloquium series to feature and discuss the research of scholars working on Judaism, the Holocaust, and modern genocides. These events are open to the ASU faculty, students, and staff. The colloquia are based on a couple of pre-circulated recent articles and/orchapters by a visiting scholar. At the same time, these meetings also offer the opportunity to participating members of the ASU community working on related topics to address questions about their own work and get expert feedback. The colloquia are two hours in duration and include a free lunch. Participants can attend the entire meeting or only part of these sessions.
Having started with Prof. Confino (Ben Gurion University of the Negev/UVA) and his work on early conflicts between Jewish settlers and Palestinians in late 1940s Palestine/Israel, the Center is pleased to invite the ASU community to the next colloquium with Dr. Chris Patti. It will take place in Plemmons Student Union on Wednesday, March 30, from 11:00 am until 1:00 pm. The lunch—free of charge to participants—will be served at 12:00 noon. The session will focus on his extensive work with Holocaust survivors and insightful practices of compassionate listening. It is based on two published articles that resulted from Dr. Patti's important dissertation research.
Dr. Chris Patti (Department of Communication) came to ASU in 2013 immediately after earning his Ph.D. in Communications at the University of South Florida. His dissertation entitled Compassionate Storytelling With Holocaust Survivors: Cultivating Dialogue at the End of an Era was nominated for several awards. It responds to the extensive scholarly efforts to record interviews with Holocaust survivors—now in their 80s and 90s—at the end of the era in which we will be able to talk with them. Patti proposes a slowing down, listening, speaking repeatedly and intimately, forming interpersonal relationships, and storytelling with survivors. In his work, he engages in these practices with three Holocaust survivors in the Tampa Bay area: Salomon Wainberg, Manuel Goldberg, and Sonia Wasserberger to address the classic and post-modern issues of human meaning, connection, and value in the post-Holocaust world. In so doing, Patti's study cultivates and exemplifies a unique understanding of humane and humanistic approaches to ethnographic methods in the fields of communication and oral history, compassion, identification, and affinity as important lenses and motives to consider in research with individual survivors of mass atrocities. It also demonstrates the historical value and need to continue developing diverse approaches to scholarship that centralize personal stories, dialogue, peace, wisdom, and work that represents marginalized experiences and experiences of marginalization in a violent, oppressive world.
Since space at the colloquium is limited, we require interested ASU faculty, students, and staff members to RSVP by sending an email to thomaspegelowkaplan@appstate.edu or calling 828.262.2311. They will then also receive more information and copies of Dr. Patti's articles.
Thursday, October 22 - Profs. Alon Confino and Thomas Pegelow Kaplan
The Center for Judaic, Holocaust, and Peace Studies invites ASU students, faculty, and staff to a 2-hour seminar on the early conflicts between Jewish settlers and Palestinians, especially issues of forced migration in late 1940s Palestine/Israel. The seminar will be led by Prof. Alon Confino (Ben Gurion University of the Negev/UVA) and Prof. T. Pegelow Kaplan (ASU). It will take place on Thursday, October 22, in the student union. The meeting will start at 10:30 am and last until 12:30 pm. A free lunch will be served at 11:30 am.
Since the seminar might overlap with participants' class time, it would be perfectly acceptable to only stay for part of the event, arrive late or leave early.
Please RSVP by emailing the Center director at thomaspegelowkaplan@appstate.edu. Participants will then receive more information and the shorter texts that are the basis for our discussions.
Professor Confino is one of the most innovative and vibrant scholars in the fields of Modern German History, Holocaust and Memory Studies. He grew up in Jerusalem and attended Tel Aviv University. Having completed his undergraduate studies in Israel, he moved to the U.S., where he entered the graduate program in history at the University of California at Berkeley, earning a Ph.D. Alon Confino currently holds full professorships at Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Israel and the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.
Broadly interested in the theory and practice of writing history and a wide array of topics, ranging from memory and culture to nationhood and forced migration, Professor Confino has been at the forefront of historical research for more than two decades. Time and again, his innovative works have helped to redirect the field. He is the author of several key books and edited collections, including of The Nation As a Local Metaphor: Württemberg, Imperial Germany, and National Memory, 1871-1918(University of North Carolina Press 1997) and Germany As a Culture of Remembrance: Promises and Limits of Writing History(University of North Carolina Press 2006). More recently, he has moved into the field of Holocaust Studies, providing fresh insights as evidenced in his study Foundational Pasts: The Holocaust As Historical Understanding (Cambridge University Press 2012).