Queer(ing) Holocaust Video Testimonies:
Introductions, Explorations, and Reimaginings

September 24, 2024 at 12:00 PM
Taper Hall, Room 309K
Join us in person or on Zoom

A public lecture by Sarah Ernst (PhD candidate in History, University of Southern California)
2024 Lev Student Research Fellow

Organized by the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research

(Join us in person or online on Zoom)

In a month of summer research at the Center, Sarah Ernst (they/them/theirs) used the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive (VHA) to think about the role of video testimonies in queer Holocaust histories. In this talk, they will discuss the queer histories that can be found in the VHA, as well as how “queering” archival approaches can reframe and broaden Holocaust histories to consider, among other themes, kinship, sexuality, “normativity,” and performativity. Through case studies, Sarah Ernst will reflect on how their approach of looking for the “messy” opens avenues from which researchers can include in their work testimonies that have so far not fit into dominant histories of the Holocaust.

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Sarah Ernst (they/them/theirs) is a Ph.D. candidate in USC’s Van Hunnick History Department. Their current dissertation project, entitled “(Un)Belonging: Queer(ing) Life in the Holocaust and Beyond,” delves into the experiences of queer individuals in 20th-century Germany, with special focus given to those living during the Third Reich who were targeted by the Nazis in mass killing programs, including Jewish, Sinti/Roma, and disabled individuals. They have received funding support from the German Historical Institute’s Fritz Thyssen Pre-Dissertation Fellowship, the Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellowship, and the USC Ralph and Jean Hovel Memorial Summer Travel Award.

Lecture image: Holocaust survivor Kenneth Roman with his “very dear and loyal friend” Jimmy Draper in their home at the end of his VHA testimony, Interview Code 40310.

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