Category: Blog

The Legacy of the Wannsee Conference: 80 Years Later

The New York Times recently featured an article on the Wannsee Conference, one of the most significant events in the history of The Holocaust. On 20 January 1942, fifteen senior German government officials attended a short meeting in Berlin to discuss the deportation and murder of the Jews of Nazi-occupied Europe. Despite lasting less than two hours, the Wannsee Conference is today understood as a signal episode in the history of the Holocaust, exemplifying the labor division and bureaucratization that made the “Final Solution” possible. Yet while the conference itself has been exhaustively researched, many of its attendees remain relatively obscure. In recognition of the historical 80th anniversary this year, we present an excerpt from The Participants: The Men of the Wannsee Conference (edited by Hans-Christian Jasch and Christoph Kreutzmüller). We are also offering 25% off the paperback for this title until 5th February, 2022. Just use code JASCH6713 at checkout.

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Capacity Building in Ethnographic Comparison

by Rachel Douglas-Jones and Justin Shaffner, editors of Hope and Insufficiency: Capacity Building in Ethnographic Comparison

We open our new edited collection Hope and Insufficiency by traveling the world in workshops. Three capacity building events, ranging from Paramaribo to Addis Ababa, sketched as thumbnails, form our introductory paragraph. These three events, drawn from thousands, simply demonstrate the breadth of topics to which it is applied. Capacity building, or its more recent iteration as capacity development, is, we argue, both ubiquitous and under-theorised within the social sciences. The title of our book identifies characteristics of capacity building’s intervention: as we put it, hope and insufficiency interplay in a way that makes the idea of capacity building persuasive.

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Reading Against Racism: a Berghahn Collection

ANNOUNCING:
Reading Against Racism
a Berghahn Collection

Following an initial proposal for lasting solidarity in June of 2020, Berghahn Books committed to joining the global academic community and our publishing peers in challenging racism. Since then, we have fostered company-wide conversations on how best to contribute in perpetuity to that cause from the vantage point of our publishing program.

Through establishing a new collection titled Reading Against Racism: A Berghahn Collection, we have committed to increasing the visibility of and access to materials which contribute to ongoing conversations surrounding race and racism.

Here, a growing collection –– international in scope –– hosts contributions from our global community and is freely available as part of an expanded Digital Resources section to help further activity in vital areas of scholarship.

As we settle into a new academic year, we encourage you to use this as a teaching and learning resource, in or outside the classroom, or as a tool to continue your independent education. 

Teachers, consider sharing this with your students. Students, consider this for your academic research. Individuals, consider adding this to your reading list or book club.

To coincide with the release of Reading Against Racism, our newest Salon B podcast episode features four interviews with writers included in the collection. This podcast episode thus serves as a friendly, informal introduction to the collection itself and a few of the individuals whose scholarly work has made this effort possible. Listen via the link below. 

Reading Against Racism includes chapters and articles from the following works published by Berghahn Books and Berghahn Journals.