About the Chapter:
In the decades following the Holocaust, we find educators at all levels and of a variety of subjects faced with a future without first-hand witnesses and a diverse student body without personal or conceptual connection to the Holocaust, genocide, or mass atrocity. This chapter explores how, where, when, and why to teach these subjects within and beyond the community college context. It ties the volume’s chapters to Montaigne’s notion of the “Essais,” as “attempts” or “trials.” These chapters describe and document a process undertaken by a community college, a Holocaust center, a faculty, and a student body—under the auspices of a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Challenge Grant—to explore the efficacy of profound humanities content in the general education curriculum across the disciplines.
About the Author:
Dan Leshem, Ph.D. is the former executive director of the Kupferberg Holocaust Center at Queensborough Community College, CUNY. He received a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Emory University in 2009. His dissertation, The Language of Suffering: Writing and Reading the Holocaust, argues for the necessity of ethical approaches to interpreting Holocaust testimony. While at Emory, he served as program manager of the Holocaust Denial on Trial (HDOT) website. Between 2010 and 2014, Leshem served as associate director for research of the University of Southern California (USC) Shoah Foundation and adjunct assistant professor of comparative literature.
222-05 56 Avenue, Bayside, New York 11364