The Women in the Holocaust is an inaugural conference of WHISC – Women in the Holocaust International Study Center of the The Moreshet Mordechai Anielevich Memorial Holocaust Study and Research Center – Givat Haviva, Israel, organized in partnership with the ShoahLab: Holocaust Studies Laboratory IFDT and NGO Haver Serbia in Belgrade, Serbia 10–12 October, 2023. The conference seeks to foster scholarly discussion and debate on the various divides, connections, and intersections that can be found in Holocaust and gender studies about women in the Holocaust.
By holding the conference in Belgrade, organizers want to draw attention of scholars to East-Central Europe region in which German Nazi occupation and racial policies intersected with competing nationalisms, shifting borders, and the sovereignty of nation states.
The history of the German Nazi persecution, expulsion, flight, deportation, and murder of Jewish and Roma women took place during the Holocaust on the broader map of ethnic and other rifts and conflicts in East-Central Europe, and beyond. The study of gender in the Holocaust confronts the question of how to fruitfully integrate the histories of occupation, antisemitism, and ethnic racism, as well as issues of competing victimhood in the various countries of East-Central Europe remain a research challenge and a point of contention in public and scholarly debate. There also are scholarly challenges involved when one considers the intersectionality of religious, ethnic, and gender identities and the impact, tensions, and traumas they have produced.
Conference organizers invite proposals examining the connection of Holocaust Studies to a variety of other research fields and disciplines, including, but not limited to, the social sciences, culture, memory studies, the arts, and education. We welcome proposals for papers that challenge both established and new disciplinary approaches to the study of the Holocaust, including proposals that address and incorporate the histories of migration (including refugees and displaced persons) focusing on women in the Holocaust.
Call for papers deadline is May 15th, 2023.