Skip to main content
Image
Holocaust Testimonies hero
Image
OSUN logo
Image
osf logo
Course date
July 10–19, 2024
Location
Budapest
Application deadline
Application for this course is closed.
ECTS Credits
2.0
Course delivery
In-person
SUN Packages
Fee-Paying
Tuition Waiver
Partial Scholarship
Full Scholarship

This 9-day, intensive summer course will investigate the genealogy of the era of the witness, focusing on the emergence of Holocaust testimony as the model for eyewitness documentation of 20th and 21st-century atrocities, and its impact on efforts to record and represent subsequent human rights abuses and acts of mass violence.

The course will feature a series of workshops, seminars, public lectures, and film screenings. The goal of the course is to bring together leading scholars of testimony and oral history, who engage in highly interdisciplinary approaches to documenting, studying, and interpreting the Holocaust and other genocides and mass atrocities through the lens of first-person accounts.

Participants will explore the vast genre of Holocaust testimony through readings, lectures, and hands-on work with a variety of primary sources. The course interrogates testimonies from historical, legal, and moral perspectives, raising theoretical and methodological questions about the "afterlife" of these sources, which are highly relevant for a wide variety of scholarly fields, including History, Jewish Studies, Nationalism Studies, Genocide Studies, Sociology, Anthropology, Cultural and Literary Studies, Memory Studies and Legal Studies. In the second week of the course, special emphasis will be placed on the impact of digitization and new digital methods for presenting and analyzing digital testimonies and their corresponding metadata.

The course will provide historical and epistemological contexts, introduce new methodological approaches of studying testimonies in the digital age, and more importantly, offer participants an opportunity to explore the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies and other discrete collections of testimony in consultation with the leading experts in the field. 

The program encourages applications from students in multiple disciplines at the doctoral and postdoctoral levels, as well as early career oral history and digital humanities scholars and practitioners interested in learning more about the genealogy and impact of Holocaust testimony as a genre. We also invite applications from advanced undergraduate students who have adequate prior study or engagement experience on the subject and make a compelling case in their application/statement of interest. 
There are no prerequisites, but the participants should be doing research on a topic related to the themes of the course. 

The course will focus on the following discipline areas:

  • History
  • Sociology
  • Jewish Studies
  • Memory Studies
  • Nationalism Studies

"The course was extremely useful in providing expert knowledge about archival research related to the Holocaust. It also provided historical and theoretical background for testimony and genocide studies. I have also appreciated the multimodal approaches to concepts of testimony, along with the wide variety of experiences offered for learning about the Holocaust in Hungary the on-site walks and visits, along with the lectures and artistic explorations)." 

"The course contributed not to a specific paper but to my overall understanding of the universe of testimonies." 

"The instructors were engaging, insightful, and accessible. The content was interesting and illuminating. The lectures were delivered in a dynamic fashion. The group work aspects of the course were extremely effective in helping us engage in one another's research." 

"Best academic course that I have attended! Perfect! Stimulating! Dynamic! It was an absolute privilege to attend. Thank you!"  

Please read the following directions carefully. 

Below is the list of the documents you need to prepare or arrange for submission: 

  1. Completed Online SUN Application Form (see notes below)
  2. Full Curriculum Vitae or Resume, including a List of Publications, if any
    Please upload your Curriculum vitae or resume, including a list of publications, if any.
  3. Statement of Purpose (max. 750 words)
    In the Statement of purpose, please describe how the course is relevant to your teaching, research, or professional work, and in what way you expect to benefit from it. Please list relevant courses in the field you have taken previously during your studies. If possible, please include in your statement information about the testimony collection or other ego-document sources you intend to use during the course.
    Please provide the name, contact email, and phone number of a person (a faculty member, job supervisor, etc.) who can be contacted by the course directors to attest to your abilities, qualifications, and academic/professional performance.
  4. Personal Statement on Financial Aid
    Those who are eligible and wish to apply for financial aid should specify their reasons in the “Personal statement on financial aid” section (Funding page of the application form).

Optional Attachments: 

You can upload further optional documents on the Qualifications page such as academic documents that you think may be relevant to support your application in the ‘Other Supporting Documents’ section. All documents should be merged into a single PDF file not exceeding the size 2 MB. No passwords and encryption are allowed. 

Completed CEU Summer University Application Form

We strongly advise the use of Google Chrome to enable the full functionality of the form.

Notes:

  • You may apply to a maximum of two summer courses. In case of being admitted, you can only attend both if the two courses do not overlap in time.
  • If you applied to CEU before, please use your existing login and password to start a new application. If you do not remember your password from last year click on Forgotten Password. With technical problems, bugs, or errors related to the online application forms please contact the CEU IT Help Desk.
  • Right after login, please select the ”Summer University” radio button from the "Type of course" list, and leave all other fields empty.
  • All application materials must be submitted with the online application form(s). Materials sent by postal mail, electronic mail, or fax are not considered.
  • The maximum allowable file size for upload is 2MB per file and the acceptable file formats are PDF, JPG, and JPEG. Ensure all security features (e.g. passwords and encryption) are removed from the documents before uploading them.
  • Applications cannot be edited after submission. Please submit your application only when it is 100% final and complete.
  • Further user instructions for the online application are included in the form itself. Should you have questions regarding the application form, check the relevant Frequently Asked Questions.
  • Applications submitted after the deadline will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

Inquiries

If you need help or more information during the application process, please feel free to contact the SUN staff via email.

Notification

The SUN Office will notify applicants about the selection results in April. Please check the 'Dates and deadlines' section on the relevant course websites for notification deadlines planned earlier or later. The final decision is not open to appeal.