Over the past years, numerous surveys adopting a micro perspective applied to different terrains of investigation have enhanced our understanding of the holocaust. Focusing on family trajectories, deportation convoys, the histories of a ghetto, a camp, a city or a region, these studies aim to provide a local contribution to the national and European edifice of the history of the holocaust. The purpose of this international conference is to engage and compare the methods deployed in these studies, to investigate the specificity of the scale of observation thus adopted and to assess how the choice of a scale contributes to our comprehension of the history of the holocaust.
The delimitation of a terrain of investigation means in the first place the possibility of reconstituting the logic of a social space and the decisions facing individuals embedded in this space. Can monographs significantly highlight the dynamics of social relations among victims, executioners and bystanders? Can prosopographies document the victims' beliefs and knowledge in light of their social networks, groups of affiliation, and biographical trajectories? Which contributions can we expect from a focus on interactions and factors of embeddedness? More broadly, how what are the benefits, limitations and possible shortcomings of a micro-historical applied to the analysis of the persecutions?
The organization of this conference builds on the international workshop held at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (Paris) on June 9-10, 2011 which fifteen researchers attended. In light of these exchanges, we propose to reflect on the implications of a shift in scale and to discuss the practical challenges faced by this change of perspective. What are the relevant sources? How are quantitative analyses possible at the local level? Can the methods of social history be applied to objects of research that due to their exceptional character are also objects of intense debates and contention? This conference will address these different questions and, in so doing, will provide the opportunity to confront the methods, findings and hypotheses of researchers who share an approach to the persecutions from a local standpoint.
The topics addressed by this conference might be organized around the following themes:
1. New objects, new questions
- Procedures of identification, classification and filing
- Neighborhood relationships, proximities, social inclusion
- "Aryanization" policies
- Acts of killing
2. Methods and epistemology
- Terminologies and writing styles
- Quantification: limits and contributions
- "I" and family histories
- Testimonies and archives : competition or complementarity?
- The end of the witness: how shall we write the holocaust after the witnesses?
3. The choice of a scale
- What to be done with monographs?
- The normal and the exceptional (small places, outlooks from the margins …)
- Capital cities as terrains of microhistory?
We invite potential contributors to submit a three-page proposal (double space) addressing a research object relevant to the focus or the main themes of this conference by February 15, 2011 to the following address: shoahconference@gmail.com . The final decisions regarding the selection of the proposals will be made in April 2012. The deadline for the paper submissions will be November 1, 2012 and the conference will take place at the Ecole Normal Supérieure (Paris) on December 5-7, 2012.
The organization committee: Claire Zalc (IHMC), Tal Bruttmann (Ville de Grenoble), Ivan Ermakoff (University of Wisconsin at Madison), Nicolas Mariot (CURAPP-CNRS)
The scientific committee: Omer Bartov (Brown University), Jan Grabowski (University of Ottawa), Jan Gross (Princeton University), Dieter Pohl (Universität Klagenfurt), Annette Wieviorka (CNRS-Paris1)