A Geography of Hunger in the Łódź Ghetto

November 13, 2025 at 12:00 PM
Taper Hall (THH), Room 309K
Join us in person or on Zoom

A public lecture by Christine Liu (PhD candidate in History, University of Maine)
2025-2026 Robert J. Katz Research Fellow in Genocide Studies

Organized by the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research

Cosponsored by the USC Dornsife Spatial Sciences Institute

(Join us in person or online on Zoom)

Facing massive overcrowding and scant resources, Jews imprisoned in Holocaust ghettos faced life-threatening hunger. This sustained deprivation dominated the physiological and psychological state of incarcerated Jews, reconfiguring perceptions of space. Christine Liu’s doctoral research examines the use of starvation as a tool of war and mass violence. It investigates a core question of how hunger fundamentally defined experiences of Holocaust ghettos. Looking beyond just descriptions of ghetto organization or food distribution networks, this work is particularly interested in how starvation conditions altered social relations, were crucial to the maintenance of ghetto territoriality, and created a spatial economy at disparate scales.

During her residency at the USC Center for Advanced Genocide Research, Christine will examine memoirs and testimonies for specific memories of starvation that survivors recount and the places associated with such moments. She will analyze how individuals speak of bodies, both their own and generally, to understand the physical and psychological effects of prolonged starvation and to understand bodies as sites where power was enacted. In this talk, she will introduce the frameworks she intends to us to study hunger in the Łódź ghetto and the challenges of mapping such experiences at the scale of the ghetto, the household, and the body.

Lecture image: Residents of the Lodz ghetto wait outside the kitchen #452 to receive their food rations, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (2005.285), courtesy of Jehuda Widawsk

REGISTER HERE

Lunch will be served.

Christine Liu is a PhD Candidate in History at the University of Maine. Her dissertation, currently titled “‘No place to go, no place to sleep, no place to eat’: Reimagining hunger in Holocaust ghettos in German-occupied Poland through spatial analysis” looks at experiences of Holocaust ghettos as inherently defined by hunger. It analyzes how starvation conditions destabilized conceptions of traditional gender roles, actions undertaken in pursuit of survival, and the permeability of boundaries. Liu holds a BA in History from the University of California, Berkeley and an MA in Computational Media from Duke University. Her research has been funded by grants from Duke University, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI). Read more here.

Discover more about the Center’s events here

Visit the Center’s YouTube channel to explore our video library of events (and subscribe!)