Holocaust Studies in Our Age of Catastrophe

Abstract

ABSTRACT Written and revised in stages, from the “BC,” pre-COVID “Age of Trump” era to an uncertain current transitional moment in February 2021, the article considers questions about shifting approaches to research, teaching, and public engagement in Holocaust Studies and the history of National Socialism. It argues that, precisely in order to deepen and focus understanding of the Nazi legacy in the “Age of Trump,” especially among diverse politically attuned students, we can no longer think the Holocaust outside of a more comparative history of genocide, war, displacement, and extreme violence across time and place. The article suggests two specific arenas of inquiry that seem especially suitable for this ongoing rethinking and repositioning of Nazism and the Holocaust in comparative studies of trauma and resistance. First, a focus on expanding the chronological and geographical parameters to highlight the global dimensions of flight and rescue, especially in non-Western colonial or semi-colonial regions. Secondly, recent scholarship on gender—a “Holocaust #MeToo” moment—revealing still mostly untold stories about sexual violence and coercion as well as instrumental sexuality, desire, and even love during the Holocaust, opens up questions that can both integrate and differentiate histories of Nazism and the Holocaust in comparative studies and contemporary experience.