2024-2025 IHGMS Faculty Seminar Call for Applications

Call for Applications: Institute for Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies Faculty Seminar 2024-2025

"Understanding and Confronting Authoritarian Narratives and Practices," Co-facilitated by Interim IHGMS Directors Profs. David Mednicoff and Jon Olsen

In recent years, authoritarian political systems have become increasingly influential, and many democratic political systems have been marked by authoritarian influences and practices. These include the increasing global policy engagements of China and Russia, the democratic backsliding of countries as diverse as Hungary, Israel, Poland, Tunisia, and the US, and the growing power of large non-accountable corporate leaders like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and others. Not only are the sources of anti-democratic might plentiful, but social media and authoritarian political practices have fostered illiberal norms and tropes more broadly, including efforts to control or limit free expression and anti-hegemonic academic disciplines on university campuses.

Of course, illiberal ideas and actions are hardly new, and underpin the demonization of minority groups in numerous societies that have presaged the Holocaust and other instances of genocide that IHGMS exists to study and commemorate. Thus, efforts to understand authoritarian narratives and practices across a wide range of historical periods and geographic spaces can be studied through diverse academic fields.

This seminar will bring together 10-15 fellows, with full-time faculty appointments at UMass or one of the other Five Colleges, who have an interest in the interdisciplinary exploration of comparative authoritarian narratives and practices across time and space. Not only will the seminar consider the building blocks of authoritarianism from a wide variety of perspectives, but we shall also think about ways that scholarship, advocacy, and resources at our university and others might be imagined and deployed to push back against authoritarianism. As part of the seminar, we shall bring in external speakers and have at least one broad event to spotlight the issues and ideas that we consider. Our work may also connect to related initiatives, such as the fall college-wide focus on democracy in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, or the campus-wide Community, Democracy, and Dialogue initiative.

Seminar members will be awarded a stipend of $3000, and a modest book allowance. Fellows will be expected to participate fully in the seminar activities, which will include regular meetings at the IHGMS throughout the year, and participation in planning a workshop to take place in 2025.

Applicants should send a CV and brief letter of interest to Eric Ross at ericross@umass.edu by 5 PM on Friday, May 31.