Summer Institute on the Holocaust and Holocaust Education
July 6-10, 2009
Program Highlights:
In partnership with the Holocaust
Educational Foundation, Northwestern University is pleased to present
a special five-day summer institute designed for middle and
secondary school teachers of grades 7-12
to effectively incorporate Holocaust studies into their teaching,
and to meet the Illinois state mandate for Holocaust education.
Enrollment is by application only, and tuition is free. This
program will:
- Provide teachers with a background on the history of the Holocaust as well as its aftermath;
- Show teachers several ways of approaching the subject of the Holocaust;
- Assist teachers in presenting sensitive and potentially disturbing material to students;
- Familiarize teachers with some of the vast number of resource materials (books, films, Web sites, etc.) available on the Holocaust;
- Offer continuing education units for teachers from the State of Illinois
The Institute will offer a seminar atmosphere in which discussion will play a major role, and ways of presenting the facts of the Holocaust through different media (books, documents, PowerPoint lectures, films, web sites) can be explored. A meeting with a Holocaust survivor is planned, as is a session with one of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's "Master Teachers'. Topics of particular relevance and interest to teachers and students today will be highlighted, such as
- the activities of the Hitler Youth, membership of which was virtually mandatory
- the slanted curriculum and indoctrination process in German schools during the Third Reich, even in apparently neutral subjects like mathematics
- the treatment of ethnic minorities like Afro-Germans
The principal focus of any teaching about the Holocaust must be on the Jews as the main target of Nazi repression. Much of the literature focuses on the horrific conditions of the concentration camps, but the Institute will also explore what life was like for a teenager in the Lodz ghetto, and for an unemployed professor in a German city, fired from his job for being born a Jew but protected from deportation through his marriage to a Christian. Each of them kept an insightful and riveting diary. The Institute will also convey the most up-to-date on perhaps familiar topics like Kristallnacht. The removal of the Jews was the major ingredient in the Nazi recipe for the creation of a purely "Aryan" racial state. Yet there were other important groups of "undesirables" such as people deemed to have mental health problems, and homosexuals. Familiarity with the way in which the Nazis succeeded in heightening the public perception of such groups as "social outsiders" (with ultimately deadly consequences) will resonate in American classrooms today.
The main textbook used for the workshop will be the new, second edition (released this spring) of Doris Bergen's War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust. Participants will be asked to read this and a couple of other books prior to the program, in order to enable more time for discussion on site. The Holocaust Educational Foundation will provide complimentary copies of these books to those enrolled.
Program Faculty
Geoffrey Giles received his Ph.D. in history from the University of Cambridge. Following four years as a Postdoctoral Fellow in a Yale University think tank, he has been a professor in the History Department at the University of Florida since 1978.
His book, Students and National Socialism in Germany, published by Princeton University Press, examined the attempts of the Nazi college students' association to indoctrinate undergraduates. He has continued to publish articles and book chapters on the history of education in Nazi Germany. Out of his work on students grew another specialty: the social history of alcohol in Germany
For the academic year 2000-2001, Professor Giles was invited to become the Senior Scholar-in-Residence at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies in Washington DC, with the request to conduct research on a neglected victim group, namely homosexuals during the Third Reich. He continued work on the book as an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the University of Munich in 2003-2004. His recent published article analyzes the landmark court case in 1935 that allowed the Supreme Court in Nazi Germany to change the law on homosexuality and make it more sweeping and more radical. This article, "Legislating Homophobia in the Third Reich: The Radicalization of Prosecution Against Homosexuality by the Legal Profession," notes that what has become known as the "Nazi" law was in fact toughened by professional lawyers, not by Nazi party stooges, and is part of the most recent trend in scholarship which explores the contribution to the Holocaust not just of fanatical Nazis, but of the mainstream professions [German History, 23, 3, 2005, pp. 339-354].
Since 1994, Geoffrey Giles has led several traveling study seminars for college faculty to meet with museum staff at the death camps and other Holocaust sites in Poland and the Czech Republic, on behalf of the Holocaust Educational Foundation. He is one of the three honorary Consultants for the foundation. Dr. Giles serves on the State of Florida Education Commissioner's Task Force on Holocaust Education, and has co-directed annually since 2002 a week-long summer institute for schoolteachers on the Holocaust at the University of Florida. His spring semester Holocaust course there caters annually to 180 students, and he regularly teaches a small, research-intensive, senior seminar on the topic as well.
Who Should Attend:
This summer institute is designed specifically for middle and high school teachers, primarily in history, English, language arts, and social studies, and for those whose areas are related to or would be enhanced by study of the Holocaust.
Registration Information
Enrollment is by application only and a limited number of full tuition scholarships
are available through a grant from the Holocaust Educational Foundation. This course is now full. We are no longer accepting applications for the 2009 institute.
Directions, Parking, and Accommodations
Directions to the Northwestern campus in Evanston are available online at http://www.northwestern.edu/campus/directions/.
Permits for parking on campus during the institute will be available upon request after registration. Permits are free to participants, but must be requested by May 29th. Permits will be mailed the week of June 8th.
Participants who are accepted to the program will have the choice of either commuting to campus or residing in a dormitory during the week. Applicants should indicate their preference on the application form.
Contact Us
Office of Summer Session and Special Programs
Phone: (847) 491-3443
summerinstitutes@northwestern.edu
This program is made possible through a generous gift from the Holocaust Educational Foundation. Dedicated to spreading and strengthening Holocaust studies at colleges and universities, the Holocaust Educational Foundation assists in launching courses related to the Holocaust and improving institutional resources to support such programming.
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