Beschrijving
Organizer of the seminar "Mixed Couples and their Families in the Holocaust". Co-organizers: Benjamin Frommer (Northwestern University) and Adrian-Nicolae Furtuna (Romanian Academy, National Centre of Roma Culture).No topic consumed more time at the Wannsee Conference than the question of intermarried Jews and so-called Mischlinge. Whereas the Nazis disagreed little about the fate of most Jews, the minority who had non-Jewish spouses, and especially their “mixed” offspring, challenged Hitler’s Manichean worldview. Despite the contemporary preoccupation with the intermarried, for decades scholars treated their fate as marginal. Recent publications have increased our knowledge about intermarried Jews in Central Europe, but there is a need for further scholarship on the rest of the continent. If the experience of intermarried Jews and their offspring is still understudied, intermarried Roma and Sinti are rarely addressed in the literature. Meanwhile, comparative work on intermarriage has generally not included partners whose relationships could not be legally consecrated, including same-sex couples and those whose bonds were banned by decrees against so-called miscegenation.
This seminar is designed to encourage a comparative, integrated, and interdisciplinary discussion to broaden understandings of the diverse experiences of mixed couples and families during the Nazi era. We aim to pay particular attention to: the disconnect between state-imposed categories and self-identification; the language used from above and below to describe mixedness in the various national and social contexts of the time; the experience and fate of the children and relatives of mixed couples, including those who belonged to majority society; marriages that crossed recognized national, not “racial” lines; and the ways in which micro-historical and transnational approaches to the topic challenge traditional nation-based and victim-group narratives of the Holocaust. The seminar’s goal is to expand the current academic discussion of intermarriage to capture the plethora of mixed relationships that confronted genocidal antisemitism, racism, homophobia, and exclusionary nationalism in Nazi Europe.
We invite scholars who work on the themes outlined above to apply by sending a written CV (300 words) and a short (300 words) statement on how their work (past, present and/or future) and perspective could contribute to the seminar. Those accepted to the seminar will be asked to submit work engaging with this topic, which may take the form of a paper, research statement or proposal, observations on the current standing of the historiography, relevant research questions, etc. These will be distributed among the participants before the start of the first seminar meeting.
| Periode | 14 nov. 2024 → 17 nov. 2024 |
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| Evenementstype | Conferentie |
| Locatie | Los Angeles, Verenigde StatenToon op kaart |