Close
Close
Search this website

From the Holocaust to the genocide in Rwanda, history has seen many devastating acts of inhumanity and cruelty. To analyze these events and learn from them in order to build a better future, the Holocaust and Genocide Studies Program offers both the university and broader South Florida communities numerous opportunities to study the Holocaust and other cases of genocide and mass violence.

Through organizing lectures, co-sponsoring film screenings and increasing course offerings in these topics, this program strives to raise awareness about the darkest of moments in history. As Holocaust Survivor and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Elie Wiesel has said, it is by keeping the memory of these atrocities alive that we honor those whose lives were lost during such terrible acts of cruelty and genocide.

By approaching the Holocaust and cases of genocide through a multidisciplinary perspective, the program allows students and community members alike to understand the interconnections between history, art, society, culture and how these can impact society in beneficial – or detrimental ways.

Holocaust and Genocide Studies Certificate

Oren B. Stier, Director, Religious Studies

Coordinating Committee

  • Hannibal Travis, College of Law
  • Jacek Kolasinski, Art and Art History
  • Rebecca C. Christ, Teaching and Learning
  • Richard Olson, Politics and International Relations
  • Terrence Peterson, History

The certificate in Holocaust and Genocide Studies allows students of any major to deepen their knowledge about the Holocaust and other cases of mass violence. Community members may also enroll for the certificate program. The certificate is of particular interest to secondary school teachers looking for increased credentials to meet the state mandate in Holocaust education.

It requires at least fifteen (15) credits of coursework, drawn from the list of courses below or as approved by the director, which students must earn a grade of “C” or above. Note: additional online, hybrid, and face-to-face courses will be added as the certificate is further developed; students should consult with the Certificate advisor about all current courses accepted for the certificate.

  • AML 4606 Studies in 19th-Century African American Literature
  • CPO 4057 Political Violence and Revolution
  • CPO 4725 Comparative Genocide
  • EUH 4033 Nazism & Holocaust
  • FIL 3838 Holocaust Cinema
  • HIS 3308 War and Society
  • LIT 3175 Literature of the Holocaust
  • REL 2080 Introduction to Holocaust and Genocide Studies
  • REL 3194 The Holocaust
  • REL 3603 Elie Wiesel
  • REL 4699 Holocaust Memorials
  • RLG 5619 Holocaust Representations (Graduate Course)
  • WST 4930 WST Special Topics: Gender and Genocide

Current Courses

See our currently offered courses

Note: the courses that satisfy the requirements for this certificate are denoted with an asterisk.

Faculty List

Oren Baruch Stier

Director - Holocaust and Genocide Studies Program

Professor – Religious Studies

Oren Stier is Director of the Holocaust and Genocide Studies Program and Professor of Religious Studies at Florida International University, where he also directs the Jewish Studies Certificate Program. He is the author of Holocaust Icons: Symbolizing the Shoah in History and Memory (Rutgers University Press, 2015) and Committed to Memory: Cultural Mediations of the Holocaust (University of Massachusetts Press, 2003) and co-editor of Religion, Violence, Memory, and Place (Indiana University Press, 2006). He has been a Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and was the Guest Curator for an exhibition on “Race and Visual Culture under National Socialism” at The Wolfsonian Teaching Gallery at FIU’s Frost Art Museum in 2013. Stier has served as Co-Chair of the Religion, Holocaust and Genocide Group of the American Academy of Religion and was a founding board member of Limmud Miami. He teaches and lectures widely on the Shoah as well as on issues in religion and violence and contemporary Jewish studies. His research addresses Holocaust testimony, Jewish memory, and the material and visual culture of the Shoah. His current project, for which he was awarded a spring 2017 sabbatical, examines the dimensions of testimony in Elie Wiesel’s writings.

Alexander Barder

Assistant Professor – Politics and International Relations

Alexander Barder’s main research focuses on historical and contemporary forms of international hierarchy, imperialism and war. His current project examines the historical connections between Nazi Germany’s grand strategy and the Holocaust. Barder currently teaches courses in International Relations Theory, Development of International Thought and American Foreign Policy and graduate seminars in International Relations Theory and Contemporary Political Theory.

Stephanie Brenenson

Librarian – Library Operations, Graduate Studies

Stephanie Brenenson is the Graduate Studies/Scholarly Communication Librarian, who promotes and cultivates research skills and services to support research and teaching, while playing a key role in the Libraries’ outreach efforts concerning scholarly communication. She is available to provide assistance and instruction for the Visual History Archive from the USC Shoah Foundation and Yale's Fortunoff Video Archive of Holocaust Testimonies. Brenenson’s subject specialties include Religious Studies and Philosophy, among others.

Rebecca C. Christ

Assistant Professor – Teaching and Learning

Rebecca Christ is an assistant professor of social studies education at FIU’s School of Education and Human Development. Her research interests include social studies education and teacher preparation, specifically focusing on the area of genocide education. Her dissertation followed a group of U.S. college students studying abroad in Rwanda to learn about the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi. Christ is also interested in pedagogies of qualitative inquiry and in drawing on critical, postcolonial, post structural, and posthuman theoretical concepts for inspiration and innovation within qualitative inquiry and pedagogical practice.

Megan Fairlie

Professor – College of Law

Megan Fairlie’s main research interests lie in the field of international and comparative criminal procedure. Since 2009, she has sat on the board of Self-Help Africa-USA, a non-profit organization committed to empowering communities in rural Africa. Fairlie teaches criminal law, criminal procedure, international criminal law, professional responsibility and seminars on international criminal procedure and the International Criminal Court. She has also written some pieces based on Nuremberg, primarily from a procedural perspective.

Charles C. Jalloh

Professor – College of Law

Charles Jalloh is a Professor of Law and member of the UN International Law Commission, where he was elected as Chair of the Drafting Committee for the seventieth (2018) session and the Rapporteur for the Seventy-first (2019) session. A leading expert in international criminal law, Jalloh is founding editor of the African Journal of Legal Studies and the African Journal of International Criminal Justice. He was selected for the FIU Top Scholar Award in 2015, the FIU Senate Faculty Award for Excellence in Research in 2018 and the Fulbright Lund University Distinguished Chair in Public International Law for the 2018-2019 academic year. Before academia, he worked as legal adviser in the Crimes against Humanity and War Crimes Section, Canadian Department of Justice; the Special Court for Sierra Leone, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and as a visiting professional, in the International Criminal Court. Notable works include: The Sierra Leone Special Court and Its Legacy: The Impact for Africa and International Criminal Law (Cambridge, 2014 hardback, 2015 paperback); The International Criminal Court in an Effective Global Justice System (Elgar, 2016, with Linda Carter and Mark Ellis); The International Criminal Court and Africa (Oxford University Press, 2017, with Ilias Bantekas) and The African Court of Justice and Human and Peoples’ Rights in Context: Development and Challenges (Cambridge, 2019, with Kamari Clarke and Vincent Nmehielle).

Jacek Kolasinski

Associate Professor – Art and Art History

Jacek Kolasinski is a New-Media artist, an Associate Professor of Visual Arts and the former Chair of the Art and Art History Department. He is the Founding Director of the Ratcliffe Art and Design Incubator preparing students to the world of entrepreneurship in Art and Design and is also a member of the Holocaust & Genocide Studies Certificate coordinating committee. Kolasinski’s exhibition Stadtluft macht frei (urban air makes you free), which describes a principle of law that offered freedom and land to settlers who took up urban residence for more than “a year and a day,” was on display at the Patricia & Phillip Art Museum as well as the Miami Beach Urban Studios (MBUS).

 

Asher Milbauer

Professor – English

Asher Milbauer specializes in Late American Literature, Exile Literature, Jewish American Literature, Holocaust Literature and regularly teaches courses in Exile and Immigrant Literature and Literature, and Language and Society. He is the Chair of the Exile Studies Committee and is affiliated with the Global Jewish Studies Program. Milbauer is currently working on projects associated with Exile Literature and transgenerational legacies as reflected in the works of second and third generation descendants of Holocaust survivors.

Michaela Moura-Koçoğlu

Instructor - Center for Women's and Gender Studies

Michaela Moura-Koçoğlu teaches Global Women's and Gender Studies, including courses on Gender Violence, Global Women's Literature, and Feminist Theory. Her research interests include Indigenous Feminism; Studies in Gender Violence and Trauma; Trans-Indigenous Literary Studies; and Gender Dynamics of Globalization in Anglophone and Lusophone Literatures. Moura-Koçoğlu’s most recent article Decolonizing Gender Roles in Pacific Women’s Writing: Indigenous Feminist Theories and the Reconceptualization of Women’s Authority was published in the journal Contemporary Women’s Writing (2017). She is developing a course on Women and Genocide to be implemented in the Spring term of 2020.

Richard Olson

Professor – Politics and International Relations

Richard Olson is a Professor and Director of Extreme Events Research and is a member of the Holocaust & Genocide Studies Certificate coordinating committee. His early work focused on economic sanctions and coercion, primarily in First World-Third World relations, and was published in World Politics and The Journal of Developing Areas. He moved into the multidisciplinary field of disaster research, arguing for understanding and analyzing disasters and catastrophes as inherently and inescapably political, and often as crises. In 2013, along with co-author V. Gawronski, Olson published an article in Latin American Politics and Society that explained how the social response to a 1976 earthquake disaster in Guatemala helped trigger a governmental reaction in that country’s primarily indigenous highlands that had marked genocidal elements.

Tudor Parfitt

Distinguished University Professor - Religious Studies

Tudor Parfitt's current work involves writing, research teaching as well as creative media work on different aspects of Jewish history. In 1963, he spent a year with Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) in Jerusalem where he worked with handicapped people, some of whom had survived the Nazi concentration camps. He is now educational director of the Paris-based Aladin Project which deals with Holocaust education in the Muslim world. Parfitt is also a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and has written extensively about genetic discourses about Jews and was one of the first historians to collaborate with geneticists. He is an authority on the history of the Jews of Africa and Asia and the post-Holocaust movement of Jewish renewal. His recent books include Black Jews in Africa and the Americas; and Joining the Jewish People: New Jewish and Emerging Communities in a Globalized World.

Terrence Peterson

Assistant Professor – History

Terrence Peterson is a member of the Holocaust & Genocide Studies Certificate coordinating committee and a faculty affiliate in African & African Diaspora Studies and the Center for Muslim World Studies. His current book project explores the intersections between the Cold War, decolonization, and the development of contemporary counterinsurgency during Algeria's war of independence. Peterson’s next project examines the Rivesaltes Camp in the south of France, which served as a detention center for Jews during the Second World War.

Laurie Shrage

Professor – Philosophy

Laurie Shrage’s books include Abortion and Social Responsibility, Moral Dilemmas of Feminism, You've Changed: Sex Reassignment and Personal Identity, and the co-authored textbook Philosophizing About Sex. Shrage has also published in numerous scholarly journals and in The New York Times. Her current project, Philosophy and the Jewish Questions, focuses on the first generation of American Jewish philosophers in the early 20th century, and their resistance to anti-Semitism in professional philosophy and in the academy.

Hannibal Travis

Professor – College of Law

Hannibal Travis teaches and conducts research in the fields of cyberlaw, intellectual property, antitrust, international and comparative law, and human rights. He has published articles on copyright, trademark, and antitrust law in a variety of journals and books. Travis is currently an editorial advisory board member of Genocide Studies International and a member of the Holocaust & Genocide Studies Certificate coordinating committee. He has also published widely on genocide, cultural survival, and human rights including The Assyrian Genocide: Cultural and Political Legacies and Genocide in the Middle East: The Ottoman Empire, Iraq, and Sudan; and Genocide, Ethnonationalism, and the United Nations: Exploring the Causes of Mass Killing Since 1945.

Programming and Partnerships

The Holocaust and Genocide Studies Program Programming and Partnership includes:

  • Collaboration with Hillel@FIU to host the FIU Annual Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Week
  • Partnership with the Jewish-Museum of Florida-FIU and The Wolfsonian–FIU
  • The annual Fishman Holocaust Studies Scholar-in-Residence
  • Partnership with the College of Arts, Sciences and Education and Miami Dade College for Teaching the Holocaust
  • Access to University of Southern California’s Shoah Foundation Institute’s Visual History Archive and Yale University’s Fortunoff Visual Archive for Holocaust Testimonies databases and resources.
  • Annual Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Week

    The program collaborates with Hillel@FIU to host the FIU Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Week – an entire week of programming dedicated to honoring the memory of victims of genocide across the world. One of the hallmark events of the week, the FIU Annual Holocaust Remembrance Ceremony has featured President Mark B. Rosenberg along with survivors who reflect on the importance of standing up for justice and honoring the memory of those who lost their lives during dark moments in history. Partners for this week of events include academic units at the university, student organizations and non-profit organizations across the country.

  • Jewish Museum of Florida - FIU

    Through its partnership with the Jewish-Museum of Florida-FIU, the Holocaust and Genocide Studies Program allows students and community members to interact and engage with art exhibits, film screenings, concerts and workshops while exploring history.

    JMOF-FIU is the only museum dedicated to telling the story of more than 250 years of Florida Jewish history, arts and culture, with a growing collection of more than 100,000 items. The museum is housed in two restored historic buildings that were once synagogues for Miami Beach's first Jewish congregation. JMOF-FIU presents a vibrant schedule of thought-provoking history and art exhibits that change periodically, paired with a dynamic array of programs.

    Visit the Jewish Museum of Florida - FIU Website

  • The Wolfsonian - FIU

    Through its collaboration with The Wolfsonian–FIU, the program provides access to numerous historical artifacts that allow students to analyze the messages and cultural atmosphere that led to and propagated the Holocaust. The Wolfsonian has substantial holdings of materials documenting the National Socialists’ rise to power and their rule in Germany through the Second World War. Books, magazines, posters and other printed materials, as well as fine and decorative art from the Third Reich demonstrate how the Nazis used propaganda to promote their policies, including the demonization of non-Aryan peoples. Rare items in the Wolfsonian library include children’s books designed to inculcate fear and hatred of Jewish people as a necessary preparation for and precursor to the Holocaust.

    Visit The Wolfsonian - FIU Website

  • Fishman Scholar

    The Holocaust and Genocide Studies Program hosts the annual Fishman Holocaust Studies Scholar-in-Residence, which is supported by Dr. Lawrence M. Fishman and his wife Suzanne R. Fishman’s $100,000 gift to expand Holocaust education and outreach. The scholar-in-residence lectures about the Jewish experience of the Holocaust at FIU, the Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU (JMOF) and at local high schools to raise awareness among the youth.

     

    2019 – Sara R. Horowitz

    • Friday, Feb. 8: “What We Learn, At Last: Sexual Abuse, Sexual Violence and Sexuality in Deferred Holocaust Autobiographies and Testimonies,” MMC
    • Sunday, Feb. 10: “Holocaust Shadows on the City of Lights,” JMOF
    • Monday, Feb. 11: “Mothers and Daughters in the Shoah,” KYHS

    Sara R. Horowitz is Professor of Comparative Literature and Humanities and former Director of the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies at York University in Toronto. She is the author of Voicing the Void: Muteness and Memory in Holocaust Fiction, which received the Choice Award for Outstanding Academic Book, and served the senior founding editor of the Azrieli Series of Holocaust Memoirs—Canada (Series 1 and 2). She is the editor of Lessons and Legacies of the Holocaust Volume X: Back to the Sources (2012), and co-editor of Hans Günther Adler: Life, Literature, Legacy (2016) which received the Canadian Jewish Literary Award, and of Encounter with Appelfeld, and other books. In addition, she is founding co-editor of the journal KEREM: A Journal of Creative Explorations in Judaism. She served as editor for Literature for The Cambridge Dictionary of Judaism and Jewish Culture, ed. Judith Baskin. She publishes extensively on contemporary Holocaust literature, gender and Holocaust memory survivors, and Jewish North American fiction. She served as president of the Association for Jewish Studies, sits on the Academic Advisory Committee of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Academic Advisory Council of the Holocaust Education Foundation. Currently, she is completing a book called “Gender, Genocide, and Jewish Memory” and another entitled “Jewish Shadows on the City of Lights.”

    What We Learn, At Last: Sexual Abuse, Sexual Violence and Sexuality in Deferred Holocaust Autobiographies and Testimonies (MMC)

    Deferred and belated memory narratives of the Shoah enrich and complicate our understanding of how people experienced, contended with, and recollected their experiences in the Nazi genocide. The stories survivors eventually tell—publicly, privately, cryptically or directly—sometimes contain revelations about delicate and sensitive issues that survivors did not feel free to share earlier. Particularly for women who were children or teenagers during the Shoah—but also for some men—topics such as sexual barter, sexual experimentation, and sexual abuse emerge. Their stories disturb us and challenge us as listeners. How do survivors give shape to narratives of sexual encounters? In thinking about these difficult narratives, Dr. Horowitz complicated such categories as abuse, agency, coercion, and consent, and examined first-hand accounts about sexuality as attempts to engage, deflect, shape and resist interpretation and judgment.

    Holocaust Shadows on the City of Lights (JMOF)

    Between the two World Wars, Paris was a magnet for eastern European Jews fleeing oppression and attracted by its promise of equality. But these “foreign Jews”—immigrants and their children—were the most vulnerable during the Nazi occupation of Paris and the ensuing round-ups and deportations. After World War II, the public conversation about the evils of the war rarely acknowledged Jewish victimization. Post-war Jewish writing—by both native Parisians and war refugees—walks their readers through the city’s streets and neighborhoods. In their writing, the cityscape itself bears witness to the absent Jews, and what happened to them. Dr. Horowitz shared her latest research on Jewish refugees and residents of Paris—including those who survived in hiding—writing in and about the city of lights immediately after World War II, exploring themes of absence, mourning, home and displacement in the aftermath of the Shoah.

    Mothers and Daughters in the Shoah (KYHS)

    The Shoah created circumstances that had a powerful impact on women in their roles as mothers and as daughters. In a wide-ranging and interactive discussion with KYHS seniors, Dr. Horowitz took a close look at some of the implications, as described through memoirs and testimonies from women about their experiences before, during, and after the war. Based on testimonies she has personally collected or read, Dr. Horowitz raised a series of challenging issues specific to the mother-daughter relationship and responded to a series of probing and thoughtful questions from students.

  • Teaching The Holocaust

    In partnership with the College of Arts, Sciences and Education and Miami Dade College, the program organizes trainings for education students preparing to enter the workforce. These workshops allow students to explore teaching methods, best practices and resources available to them that will help equip them to lead conversations and discuss course material on the Holocaust.

  • Resources

    The University of Southern California’s Shoah Foundation Institute’s Visual History Archive and Yale University’s Fortunoff Visual Archive for Holocaust Testimonies – the leading digitized databases featuring first-person testimonies of Holocaust and genocide survivors around the world – are both accessible to all registered users of FIU’s Dorothea Green Library.

    To raise awareness about these two resources and help enhance curricular integration of first-person testimonies the program, the program hosts annual interdisciplinary faculty workshops on these archives, in collaboration with the Green Library.

    Access the FIU Libraries Website