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The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies offers students the opportunity to do an interdisciplinary undergraduate concentration, including a summer internship, and a Ph.D. program. |
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Concentration In Depth
Clark University is the only college in all of the Americas and Europe to
provide a broad, interdisciplinary education in Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
Dr. Shelly Tenenbaum, Professor of Sociology and a participating faculty member
of the Strassler Family Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, directs the
Undergraduate Concentration in Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Under her
leadership, a thoughtful and intellectually exacting undergraduate program was
organized and developed. With participating faculty from Sociology (Profs. Eric
Gordy and Shelly Tenenbaum), History (Profs. Debórah Dwork, Thomas Keuhne, and
Simon Payaslian), Government and International Relations (Profs. Valerie
Sperling and Kristen Williams), Jewish Studies (Prof. Everett Fox), Psychology
(Prof. Jaan Valsiner), and Foreign Languages and Literature (Prof. Walter
Schatzberg), the undergraduate concentration is an inspiring, interdisciplinary
program.
The Holocaust and Genocide Studies program offers a variety courses taught by
Clark faculty and visiting scholars. Some of the courses taught on regular basis
by Clark faculty include, for example, “Comparative Genocide” (Prof. Tenenbaum),
“Holocaust: Agency and Action” (Prof. Dwork), “Suffering and Evil in Jewish
Tradition” (Prof. Fox), “Europe in the Age of Extremes: the 20th Century” (Prof.
Kuehne), “The Armenian Genocide” (Prof. Payaslian), “Mass Murder and Genocide
under Communism” (Prof. Sperling), “Social and Cultural Psychology of Genocides”
(Prof. Valsiner), “Jews and Christians in the Ancient World” (Prof. Paul Burke),
“The United Nations and International Law” (Prof. Srinivasan Sitaraman) and
"Human Rights and Transitional Justice" (Prof. Eric Gordy).
The Holocaust and Genocide Studies program at Clark has invited prominent
scholars to teach various courses. Professor Yehuda Bauer, preeminent scholar of
the Holocaust and Senior Academic Advisor at Yad Vashem—The Holocaust
Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem—was the Strassler Distinguished Visiting
Professor in the fall term of 2000. Dr. Bauer taught two undergraduate courses,
worked with graduate students, and offered a three-part lecture series during
his semester at Clark. Professor Bauer returned to the Center in the fall 2004
semester as Robert Weil Distinguished Visiting Professor and taught the
undergraduate course “The Holocaust in Historical Perspective: History of the
Holocaust in a Genocide Context” and a graduate seminar on “The Holocaust in
Eastern Europe: New Perspectives.” In the fall term of 2002, Professor Lawrence
Langer, renowned expert on Holocaust literature and art, visited us as our
Strassler Distinguished Visiting Professor and taught a course titled "Voices
from the Holocaust: Testimony, Literature, Art." Professor Barbara Harff,
professor of political science at the US Naval Academy, was the Strassler
Distinguished Visiting Professor in the fall 2003 semester. Professor Harff
taught two courses while at Clark: an undergraduate lecture/discussion course,
“Genocide in the Twentieth Century: Cases, Causes, and Prevention,” and a
graduate seminar, “Genocide in the Twentieth Century: Explanation and
Prevention.” Professor Robert Jan van Pelt of the School of Architecture at the
University of Waterloo and the leading expert on Auschwitz served as the
Center's first Distinguished Visiting Professor in 1997. The Center was pleased
to welcome him back as a Distinguished Visiting Professor in spring 2004.
Professor Van Pelt taught two courses during his semester at Clark: a seminar on
“The Perpetrators,” and a lecture course on “Germany in the Modern Age.” In
spring 2003, Professor Robert Melson, professor of political science and former
acting director of the Jewish Studies Program at Purdue University, spent a week
on campus as Distinguished Visiting Scholar guest lecturing in undergraduate
courses and meeting individually with graduate students. He has returned to the
Center as the Robert Weil Distinguished Visiting Professor to teach an undergraduate/graduate seminar on
"Holocaust and
Genocide in Comparative Perspective" each year until fall 2008.
The Strassler Family Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the
undergraduate program in Holocaust and Genocide Studies are committed to
educational opportunities for our students during the summer break and beyond
the boundaries of Clark University. Professor Tenenbaum and the steering
committee implemented a summer internship program for undergraduate students.
Generously supported by endowed gifts, these internships are awarded to
competitively selected undergraduate students. The interns have worked at the
Museum of Jewish Heritage: A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, in New York City;
the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University; and
Facing History and Ourselves in Brookline, Massachusetts.
Summer Internship Update.
Beginning in the summer of 2000, we have been delighted to offer a special
educational opportunity to study in Terezín, the Czech Republic. Foreign
Languages and Literature Professor Tatyana Macaulay and Jewish Studies Professor
Everett Fox took the lead in creating a course on "Prague and Theresienstadt:
The European Past, the Holocaust, and Today's Research." We are indeed
particularly fortunate that they were willing to do so, for while the
Theresienstadt Memorial has run educational programs for European and Israeli
students for some time, the directorate had repeatedly rejected requests by
other American institutions of higher education. It was due entirely to
Professor Tatyana Macaulay's long and close association with the Memorial that
the directors accepted the proposal for a cooperative program with Clark
University. This course was a unique opportunity to introduce Clark
undergraduate students to the history of the Holocaust through a physical
encounter with a central site of the Nazi web, and to the history of Jewish life
within the extraordinarily constricted confines of the German regime. Studying
at that site, students learned how an ordinary town was transformed into a
transit camp and a prison, and also how the incarcerated Jews created a vibrant
community in the shadow of deportation to a death camp. Theresienstadt was not
an annihilation center. It had a special role in the history of the Holocaust,
and it is precisely because of that role that this site is an appropriate place
for undergraduate education. It is a connecting point of three central strands:
the history of German occupation, the history of the destruction of European
Jewry, and the history of Jewish life during the Holocaust years. Theresienstadt
thus offered our students an extraordinary entry into the history of many groups
of people involved in the Holocaust: the occupied citizens, the German
authorities, the Jewish inmates, and the neutral nations and international
welfare organizations. The success of the Terezin program prompted us to expand
to include trips to Berlin and Buchenwald.
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Academic Catalog & Requirements
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Additional Resources
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Clarkies at Save Darfur in
Washington, D.C. |
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