Symposium: Material Culture and the Holocaust

Thursday, October 4, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.
Helena Rubinstein Auditorium, 100 Raoul Wallenberg Place, SW, Washington DC

Pile of hundreds of rusted scissors — Scissors confiscated from prisoners upon their arrival at the Auschwitz concentration camp. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau

How do the things we leave behind tell the story of a life? Material culture—the study of ordinary objects—is another way to study complex traumatic histories such as the Holocaust. Experts in the diverse fields of material culture and Holocaust studies will address the major developments in their research over the past 20 years; the ethical issues arising from the study, storage, and exhibition of traumatic material culture; and the application of material culture research and collecting methodologies to Holocaust studies.

Speaker:
Caroline Sturdy Colls, Professor of Conflict Archaeology and Genocide Investigation, Staffordshire University, Stoke-on-Trent, United Kingdom

Panel One: Opportunities and Challenges to the Study of Traumatic Material Culture
Panel Two: Conserving and Exhibiting Traumatic Material Culture
Panel Three: Digital Technologies and Material Culture

This program is free and open to the public but reservations are required at ushmm.org/events/material-culture. For more information, please contact Jennifer Cashin at jcashin@ushmm.org.

This program is made possible through support from the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Foundation.

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