“The Holocaust as an Interdisciplinary Tapestry” is an 8 part series that will engage with scholars and experts who grapple with themes related to Holocaust studies. The series will explore the multifaceted discipline of Holocaust Studies through different lenses. Our experts will challenge us to understand the causes, impacts, and legacies of the Holocaust.

The seventh lecture in this series focuses on women and the Holocaust. Research on women and the Holocaust developed driven by the political strategy formulated by Joan Ringelheim in 1983 that in failing to recognise that men and women suffer differently we “lose the lives of women for a second time”. Andrea Pető analyses the consequences that the scholarship on women and the Holocaust followed the same epistemological route as women’s history writing in general. It started to collect the facts – making women visible and collecting evidence – and establish the history of women’s participation in, for example, the ghetto and among the Jewish resistance movements building up a considerable scholarship by now. The talk closes by analysing the causes and actors of the recent illiberal challenge on Holocaust Studies and its consequences on gendering the Holocaust. She will also explore the causes and actors of the recent illiberal challenge on Holocaust Studies and its consequences on gendering the Holocaust.

This programme is in partnership with Classrooms Without Borders, Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, the Ghetto Fighters’ House, Generations of the Shoah, and Liberation75.

Andrea Pető is Professor in the Department of Gender Studies at Central European University, Vienna, Austria, and a Doctor of Science of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Her works on gender, politics, Holocaust and war have been translated into 23 languages. She edited three pioneering books in the field of Jewish Studies with Louise Hecht, Karoline Krasuska Women and Holocaust: New Perspectives and Challenges. IBL, Warsawa, 2015., and with Szapor, Judith, Hametz, Maura, Calloni, Marina, Jewish Intellectual Women in Central Europe 1860-2000. The Edwin Mellen Press, 2012., with Helga Thorson The Future of Holocaust Memorialisation. Confronting Racism, Anti-Semitism, and Homophobia Through Memory Work. Tom Lantos Institute, Budapest, 2015. Her recent monographs are: Women in the Arrow Cross Party (Palgrave, 2020), Forgotten Massacre, Budapest in 1944 (DeGruyter 2021). She the editor-in-chief of East European Holocaust Studies (DeGruyter). In 2018 she was awarded the 2018 All European Academies (ALLEA) Madame de Staël Prize for Cultural Values and 2022 University of Oslo Human Rights Award. She is Doctor Honoris Causa of Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden.

Register Here: https://cwbpgh.org/event/the-holocaust-as-an-interdisciplinary-tapestry-8/