Prof. Wolf Gruner presents his lecture, "Defiance and Protest: Forgotten Individual Jewish Reactions to the Persecution in Nazi Germany"
On Monday, March 19, the Appalachian State University and broader communities are invited to a public lecture by Professor Wolf Gruner, the Shapell-Guerin Chair in Jewish Studies at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, and Founding Director of the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research. His lecture is entitled “Defiance and Protest: Forgotten Individual Jewish Reactions to the Persecution in Nazi Germany” and will start at 7:00 pm in Belk Library and Information Commons, Room 114. The event is free of charge and no tickets are required.
Prof. Wolf Gruner is a specialist in the history of the Holocaust and in comparative genocide studies. Born in East Germany, he received his PhD in History in 1994 from the Technical University Berlin as well as his Habilitation in 2006. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University, Yad Vashem Jerusalem, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and Women’s Christian University Tokyo and the Desmond E. Lee Visiting Professor for Global Awareness at Webster University in St. Louis. Gruner is the author of eight books on the Holocaust, among them “Jewish Forced Labor under the Nazis. Economic Needs and Nazi Racial Aims”, with Cambridge University Press (paperback 2008), as well as over 60 academic articles and book chapters. He also coedited two books, one of them, the translated updated book “The Greater German Reich and the Jews. Nazi Persecution Policies in the Annexed Territories 1935-1945” was published in 2015 with Berghahn Books. Its original German edition received the award for most outstanding German studies in humanities and social sciences in 2012. Gruner’s most recent study „Los Parias de la Patria“. El mito de la liberación de los indígenas en la República de Bolivia 1825-1890”, was published in Spanish with Plural Editores, Bolivia, in 2015 and contains a sub-chapter that is analyzing petitions of indigenous actors.
There will also be a mid-day workshop on March 20 with Prof. Gruner on Genocide testimonies and how to utilize the USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive to enhance teaching, learning, and research (with the Center for Academic Excellence). To register, go to https://workshops.appstate.edu/detail.aspx?key=1662.
For more information on these events, contact the Center for Judaic, Holocaust and Peace Studies at holocaust@appstate.edu or call 828.262.2311.
Organized by ASU's Center for Judaic, Holocaust and Peace Studies and the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research and co-sponsored by ASU’s Departments of Anthropology, Cultural, Gender and Global Studies, English, and History, the German Studies Program, ASU’s Honors College, ASU's Office of Multicultural Student Development, the Temple of the High Country, the local chapter of Hillel, and the Peace and Genocide Education Club.
About the Center for Judaic, Holocaust and Peace Studies
Appalachian State University's Center for Judaic, Holocaust, and Peace Studies was founded in 2002 to develop new educational opportunities for students, teachers, and the community. Located administratively within the College of Arts and Sciences, the Center seeks to strengthen tolerance, understanding, and remembrance by increasing the knowledge of Jewish culture and history, teaching the history and meaning of the Holocaust, and utilizing these experiences to explore peaceful avenues for human improvement and the prevention of further genocides.
The Center for Judaic, Holocaust, and Peace Studies is an associate institutional member of the Association of Jewish Studies, a member of the Association of Holocaust Organizations and of the North Carolina Consortium of Jewish Studies.
About the College of Arts and Sciences
The College of Arts and Sciences is home to 16 academic departments, two stand-alone academic programs, two centers and one residential college. These units span the humanities, social sciences, and the mathematical and natural sciences. The College of Arts and Sciences aims to develop a distinctive identity built upon our university's strengths, traditions and unique location. Our values lie not only in service to the university and local community, but through inspiring, training, educating and sustaining the development of our students as global citizens. There are approximately 5,850 student majors in the college. As the college is also largely responsible for implementing Appalachian's general education curriculum, it is heavily involved in the education of all students at the university, including those pursuing majors in other colleges. Learn more at cas.appstate.edu.