Landscapes of Holocaust Rescue

October 24, 2024 at 12:00 PM
Taper Hall, Room 309K
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A public lecture by Christopher J. Anderson (PhD candidate in Geographic Information Science, Texas State University)
2024-2025 Greenberg Research Fellow

Organized by the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research
Cosponsored by USC Mellon Humanities in a Digital World, USC Francophone Research and Resource Center, USC Spatial Sciences Institute

(Join us in person or online on Zoom)

With its unique combination of location, topography, history, and people, the Plateau Vivarais-Lignon region in south-central France was a statistically and culturally significant place of rescue during the Holocaust. In his dissertation research, Christopher J. Anderson (PhD candidate in Geographic Information Science) uses a variety of computational methods, including natural language processing, corpus linguistics, and large language models, among others, to analyze Holocaust testimony transcripts about rescue in this region

In this talk, he will discuss what his analysis reveals about the emotional discourse surrounding different kinds of landscapes and the meaning of the Plateau for victims and rescuers. In sharing his processes and some preliminary findings, he will reflect on the successes and challenges of these computational methods, as well as the exciting potential they hold for the wider fields of Holocaust Studies and Digital Humanities.

Christopher Anderson is a geographic information scientist and educator pursuing his PhD at Texas State University. His research explores victims’ experiences with genocide, employing an innovative combination of spatial analytics, natural language processing, artificial intelligence, remote sensing, and social network analysis, to gain a nuanced and contextualized understanding of the landscapes of Holocaust rescue.

Lecture image: Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, on the Plateau Vivarais-Lignon in south-central France. Courtesy Yad Vashem. Read more here: www.yadvashem.org/righteous/stories/trocme

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