Conference: Lessons & Legacies Europe. Bridging Disciplines, Histories, and Cultures

Taking place in Prague, Czech Republic, the 2023 Lessons & Legacies Conference will be the first to be conducted in East-Central Europe, a region in which Nazi occupation and racial policies intersected with competing nationalisms, shifting borders, and the sovereignty of new nation states. It will be the second European iteration of the conference series, after the 2019 Lessons & Legacies Conference in Munich.

Taking its location as a point of departure, but not limiting the geographical scope of conference presentations, we invite proposals that investigate the crossings of boundaries of various kinds, including national and group or community histories as well as scholarly disciplines. Combining a thematic and a methodological track, the Prague Lessons & Legacies Conference aims to promote scholarly debate on the manifold divides and connections that exist in Holocaust studies.

Sponsored by the Holocaust Educational Foundation of Northwestern University, Center for Holocaust Studies at the Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History, the German Federal Agency for Civic Education, Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences, and the Charles University, the conference invites proposals for papers, panels, and workshops. Proposals should relate to recent issues and advances in Holocaust scholarship, Holocaust education, and Public History and should conform broadly to the two tracks of the conference:

1. Situating the history of the persecution, exclusion and flight, deportation, and murder of Jews and Roma on a broader map of ethnic and other cleavages and conflicts in East-Central Europe and beyond, remains a research challenge and a point of contention in public debate. Probing sites of competing victimhood, the study of the Holocaust faces the question of how to fruitfully integrate the histories of occupation, national histories of antisemitism, racism and ethnic conflict. We welcome proposals that address and incorporate the histories of migration, including refugees and displaced persons, or which challenge the often prevalent methodological nationalism of history writing. This thematic track aims to place the Holocaust and its aftermath in its wider contexts and to engage with the variety of histories of exclusionary processes and mass violence in diverse societies. It may include analyses of how this troubled past is used or weaponized in recent conflicts.
2. The methodological track aims to probe and challenge disciplinary boundaries in order to advance multidisciplinary inquiries into the Holocaust. We invite proposals examining the connection of Holocaust Studies to a variety of other research fields and disciplines, including, but not limited to social sciences, culture, and memory studies. This track includes the exploration of methodological connections when it comes to placing the Holocaust into the context of social, cultural, linguistical, and ethnic diversity to colonial, postcolonial and decolonial studies. We welcome contributions from the field of digital humanities, digital history, and the emerging quantitative studies on the Holocaust, using large prosopographic and other datasets. We also welcome papers that challenge both established and new disciplinary approaches to the study of the Holocaust.

Submission Deadline: 15 December 2022

Conference sessions include several formats as outlined below. Submissions should clearly aim at one of these formats. 

Individual Papers should include title and abstract (up to 300 words) and a CV (max. 1 page). Individual submissions will be grouped into appropriate thematic panels by the conference chairs/organizers. 

Conference Panels will consist of three to four papers and a moderator. Each paper proposal should include title and abstract (up to 300 words) and a CV (max. 1 page). Proposals for full panels should additionally include the panel title and a brief description of the full session (up to 300 words). 

Workshops consisting of one or two presenters should focus on particular questions, approaches or sources. Workshops are intended to be interactive and practical, highlighting (for example) a new pedagogical approach, research question, or method; curricular innovations; or creative ways to examine and interpret artifacts or texts both in research and the classroom. Conference organizers will prioritize proposals centered on participation and discussion.

Registered participants will not be charged with fees for the conference or the visiting program. To the extent possible, financial assistance towards travel and accommodation costs for conference presenters will be provided. Priority is given to graduate students, faculty at teaching-oriented colleges not offering research support, staff members at memorial sites without institutional funding, and scholars with unusually high travel costs. Instructions for funding applications will be posted once the conference program is finalized. 

Program Committee:

• Ildikó Barna (Eötvös Loránd University)
• Sarah Cushman (Holocaust Educational Foundation of Northwestern University)
• Michal Frankl (Masaryk Institute and Archives, Czech Academy of Sciences) 
• Hana Kubátová (Charles University)
• Zuzana Schreiberová (Multicultural Center Prague) 
• Anna Ullrich (Center for Holocaust Studies at the Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History)
• Amy Wlodarski (Dickinson College)
• Florian Zabransky (Federal Agency for Civic Education)

All proposals must be submitted online via the Lessons & Legacies ConfTool conference system.

Questions regarding registration and submission can be addressed to lessons@mua.cas.cz.