Great Lakes History Conference to focus on Holocaust and global genocide

The Holocaust and genocide from a global perspective will be addressed in more than 20 presentations at the 40th annual Great Lakes History Conference at Grand Valley State University.

The 2014 conference will take place Friday, October 10 and Saturday, October 11 on the Pew Grand Rapids Campus.

“Considering that this year is the 100th anniversary of World War I, this topic is especially timely,” said Gordon Andrews, assistant professor of history at Grand Valley and executive director for the Michigan Council of History Education. “The ‘Great War’ led to the Holocaust and so much of the violence of the twentieth century.”

Stephen Feinberg, former special assistant for education programs at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial, will be the keynote speaker on Friday, October 10 at 7:30 p.m. in the Loosemore Auditorium in the Richard M. DeVos Center. His address, “Pedagogical Issues and Concerns When Teaching About the Holocaust,” is free and open to the public.

Jan Gross, professor of European history at Princeton University, will give a keynote address, “On the Periphery of the Holocaust: Pillage and Killings of Jews by their Neighbors,” on Saturday, October 11, at noon on the second floor of the L.V. Eberhard Center.

The conference will also include roundtable discussions; scholarly panels with educators, librarians, archivists and public historians; and presentations of research given by both graduate and undergraduate students.

Registration is required for the event and can be completed through the beginning of the conference on October 10. Conference fees are $40 for out-of-state attendees and $20 for West Michigan attendees.

The Michigan Council of History Education, Grand Valley’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and History Department sponsor the conference.

The Great Lakes History Conference was established in 1975 as a means to allow faculty from educational institutions in the Midwest to present their research to colleagues and to cultivate interdisciplinary work. The conference has since evolved and now bridges the divide between university’s and the general public by attracting educators, graduate students, public historians and independent scholars from across the world.

For more details and online registration, visit www.gvsu.edu/history and click on the link to the Great Lakes History Conference.

For more details on Holocaust education at Grand Valley, visit www.gvsu.edu/holocausteducation.