Holocaust and Genocide Educator Workshop
“Teaching and Exploring the Holocaust through Graphic Novels”

With Jessica Carr, Lafayette College

May 9, 2024 at Ramapo College, 8:30 – 3:00
The workshop included breakfast, lunch, and coffee.
It was offered free of charge to teachers, teachers in training, and informal educators. Participants earned professional development credits.

Prof. Jessica Carr discussed how graphic novels locate the Holocaust in context, including different regional and local experiences of the Holocaust in Germany and Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and North Africa. The workshop also addressed the legacy and reception of major figures such as Anne Frank, as well as issues such as Holocaust denial and why antisemitism persists. We looked at examples of new and innovative texts that offer novel angles, questions, and teaching methods—texts which connect the Holocaust to matters of migration and global politics, while simultaneously shining lights on manifestations and histories of Jewishness that have often gone unrepresented. Through this methodology, Jewish and non-Jewish students alike will learn to make sense of the Holocaust and also of their own lives and the political contexts of today.

Dr. Carr’s goal is to teach students and help other teachers to cultivate, “cosmopolitan pluralism.” This may be summarized in the question: How can we move beyond a simplistic tolerance- or multiculturalism-based educational model in which people are presented as “all equal” and “all different,” and instead seriously engage in questions about power and heritage, in which we see that difference matters but is also historically and contextually produced? How can we come to understand that some differences come with greater political and social opportunities by design? For example, instead of simply identifying with victims like Anne Frank for reasons that have to do with coming of age as a teenager, how can we ask our students—as appropriate by age/grade—to grapple with questions that arise from the Holocaust. How, moreover, can we connect questions about antisemitism and racism in the 1930s-1940s to classroom units that come before and after?

Our program also featured pedagogy workshops with Colleen Tambuscio (GC Board Member) and Heather Lutz.

Please email holgen@ramapo.edu to be added to our Educator Workshop announcement list. Include your name, institutional affiliation, and role (grade level, subject matter, etc.).

The Center’s Holocaust and Genocide Educator Workshop is supported by a generous grant from the Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey.