The Holocaust at the Crossroads of Empire: West and Sub-Saharan African Approaches to African, Holocaust, and Jewish Studies

In this workshop, we discuss the state of African research and archival collecting on the subject of the Jews of West and Sub-Saharan Africa and their many complex cultural, spiritual, and economic engagements. We also reflect on the emerging interest among many African scholars in the history of Nazi and Vichy race laws, forced labor, and internment in West Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa—as well as the arena of Holocaust studies more generally. This program assembles a group of scholars from Morocco, Ghana, Mauritania, Senegal, Nigeria, and Mali in conversation with each other and scholars from the United States, Europe, and Israel to address the place of Black African Jewish history within the wider corpus of Jewish studies and the place for Jewish/Holocaust studies in West and Sub-Saharan African studies.

Panelists include Chigbo Arthur Anyaduba (University of Winnipeg), Alioune Dème (Université Cheikh Anta Diop), Ismaël Diadié Haïdara (Fondo Kati), Ruth Ginio (Ben Gurion University of the Negev), Maguèye Kassé (Université Cheikh Anta Diop), Edward Kissi (University of South Florida), Janice Levi (University of California, Los Angeles), Sidi N’Diaye (Université Paris 3 Sorbonne-Nouvelle)

This program has been made possible by the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in partnership with the Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies and the 1939 Society Program in Holocaust Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Live on Zoom. RSVP: https://bit.ly/holocaustcrossroads