Category: New Book Releases

Do Petitions matter? Rethinking Jewish Petitioning during the Holocaust

Thomas Pegelow Kaplan and Wolf Gruner

Raul Hilberg’s path-breaking 1961 study The Destruction of the European Jews rightfully remains on the reading list of any serious student of the Holocaust. Nonetheless, Hilberg’s insistence on European Jews‘ alleged “almost complete lack of resistance” has been subjected to frequent scholarly criticism. He partially based this claim on a cursory reading of petitions: “Everywhere, the Jews pitted words against rifles” and “everywhere they lost.”

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June is Gypsy, Roma, Traveller History Month

Pictured: The French Holocaust survivor Raymond Gurême (1925-2020), an outstanding personality of the Sinti and Roma civil rights movement in Europe.

Gypsy, Roma, Traveller History Month recognizes the history and celebrates the cultures, traditions, and contributions of Gypsy, Roma and Traveler communities. See a growing list of digital #GRTHM2020 activities here.

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Voices on War and Genocide

Omer Bartov, Brown University

Now available in print and eBook, VOICES OF WAR AND GENOCIDE “assembles three extraordinarily rich personal accounts covering different periods and aspects of the history of the Galician town and region of Buczacz. Such narratives are extremely rare; even rarer are ones that are as informative and illuminating as these three” (Thomas Kühne, Clark University). Learn more here.

This book is derived from research I carried out for my recent monograph, Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz (2018). In the course of looking for documents in scores of archives and libraries, as well as  seeking personal accounts that would help me reconstruct the “biography” of a small town in eastern Europe, I found three remarkable diaries about events in Buczacz during the two world wars. While the monograph I was writing attempted to capture the individual voices of the town’s residents as a way of understanding how a community of interethnic coexistence was transformed into a site of communal genocide, it was not possible to bring to light the different protagonists’ personal stories as told from their own perspective. This is precisely what Voices on War and Genocide offers. 

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International Day of Action for Women’s Health

May 28 is the International Day of Action for Women’s Health. For over 30 years, women’s rights advocates and allies in the sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) movement worldwide have commemorated this day in diverse ways. Visit the campaign’s website for more information and ways to participate.

At a time when women’s human rights, particularly sexual and reproductive rights, continue to be systematically violated worldwide, our Fertility, Reproduction, and Sexuality: Social and Cultural Perspectives series remains an important resource for understanding the complex and multifaceted issue of human reproduction. View our latest and forthcoming titles in the series below.

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A place for sexually variant and gender non-conforming America

On May 17th 1990, the World Health Organization decided to declassify homosexuality as a mental disorder. 14 years later, the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia was established to expose the relentless violence and discrimination experienced by lesbian, gay, bisexuals, transgender, intersex people and all other people with diverse sexual orientations, gender identities or expressions, and sex characteristics.

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An Interview with Julie Patricia Johnson

Julie Patricia Johnson is an associate researcher at the University of Melbourne. She is the author of The Candle and the Guillotine: Revolution and Justice in Lyon, 1789–93, published by Berghahn Books. She has presented her research at international conferences and has published work in journals such as French History and Lilith: A Feminist History Journal.

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