Papers by Dr. Maria Zalewska
Spectator, 2020
How are the virtualized spaces of the Holocaust different from the ones we know from traditional ... more How are the virtualized spaces of the Holocaust different from the ones we know from traditional survivors’ testimonies?
This article tracks the evolution of Holocaust witness testimonies from video and 3-D holograms to virtual reality. It argues that The Last Goodbye (2017) - the first-ever Holocaust VR film - reframes the politics of witness testimony around the way VR alters our relationship to real-world spaces of Holocaust memorialization.
By building its argument around the case study of Pinchas Gutter’s witness testimonies (video; hologram; VR), this paper illuminates different ways in which we commemorate and learn about the Holocaust today. Using the USC Shoah Foundation’s
Holocaust Archive as its point of reference, this paper explores epistemological and ethical issues associated with the design and development of contemporary archives of Holocaust memory. Here, Emmanuel Levinas’ notion of the face-to-face relation (rapport de face à face) becomes an instructive theoretical principle that opens the discussion up to notions of human sociality and empathy.
Memoria, 2018
New media have created new spaces for people to communicate, build identity, and discuss issues a... more New media have created new spaces for people to communicate, build identity, and discuss issues across the globe. How digital communities interact with the past and memory through posts, images, and content on social media is becoming increasingly relevant to Holocaust and genocide scholars. While some social media users employ Holocaust-related visual content in transgressive and often insensitive ways, others take advantage of social media affordances to participate in online communities of Holocaust memory and history educators. It is the latter group of social media users that Marina Amaral - a self-taught Brazilian colourist – belongs to.
Studies in Russian, Eurasian and Central European New Media | Special Issue: Digital Trauma in Eastern and Central Europe, 2018
This paper seeks to map theoretical and practical preoccupations in the contemporary relationship... more This paper seeks to map theoretical and practical preoccupations in the contemporary relationship between places of commemoration and more abstract spaces of Holocaust memory. While the range of this topic is broad, I narrow the scope by interrogating specific ways in which the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum engages with Holocaust-related visual content on Instagram. The direction in which the memory of the Holocaust is moving and the ubiquity of social media posts, forces institutions like the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum to valorize, react, and engage with new media content. Therefore, the case study of 'selfies from Auschwitz' resonates in productive ways with questions of individual and institutional socio-historical agency in curatorship of 21 st century Holocaust memory, as well as discussions on guardianship and claims to ownership of memory in the digital age. Contending that the Museum asserts itself as an increasingly visible actor in the transnational social media Holocaust discourse, I trace the history of the Museum's social media presence and engagement.
Memoria, 2018
What new information can we learn from using mapping and geography to examine spaces and places o... more What new information can we learn from using mapping and geography to examine spaces and places of the Holocaust?
USC Shoah Foundation: Through Testimony, 2018
The future of Polish-Israeli relations can be driven by compassion and forgiveness, or a retreat ... more The future of Polish-Israeli relations can be driven by compassion and forgiveness, or a retreat behind walls of fossilized antisemitism, essentialist prejudice, nationalistic egotism, and fear.
Spectator, 2016
Each year less and less survivors arrive in Auschwitz to commemorate the International Holocaust ... more Each year less and less survivors arrive in Auschwitz to commemorate the International Holocaust Remembrance Day. In 2005, almost 1500 survivors attended the anniversary; in 2015, only 300 survivors came to Auschwitz. Therefore, as the memory of the Holocaust increasingly depends on commemoration and re-telling of the story for the sake of the new generations, various Holocaust-related educational institutions come up with innovative ways of bridging the past with the present. This fact motivates the main question of this paper: what happens when all the survivors are gone?
By focusing on a case study of the USC Shoah Foundation’s holographic testimony-based project developed with the USC Institute for Creative Technologies: New Dimensions in Testimony, this paper centers on the relationship between new technologies, visual studies, and Holocaust memory. By technology, I mean the study of interactivity in contemporary Holocaust memory, representation, and education, as well as developments in digital media, digital humanities, and computer science. On a more abstract level, this research discusses how technology informs the way we relate to our past. The second question, therefore, that motivates this paper is: what is the future of Holocaust memory?
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Papers by Dr. Maria Zalewska
This article tracks the evolution of Holocaust witness testimonies from video and 3-D holograms to virtual reality. It argues that The Last Goodbye (2017) - the first-ever Holocaust VR film - reframes the politics of witness testimony around the way VR alters our relationship to real-world spaces of Holocaust memorialization.
By building its argument around the case study of Pinchas Gutter’s witness testimonies (video; hologram; VR), this paper illuminates different ways in which we commemorate and learn about the Holocaust today. Using the USC Shoah Foundation’s
Holocaust Archive as its point of reference, this paper explores epistemological and ethical issues associated with the design and development of contemporary archives of Holocaust memory. Here, Emmanuel Levinas’ notion of the face-to-face relation (rapport de face à face) becomes an instructive theoretical principle that opens the discussion up to notions of human sociality and empathy.
By focusing on a case study of the USC Shoah Foundation’s holographic testimony-based project developed with the USC Institute for Creative Technologies: New Dimensions in Testimony, this paper centers on the relationship between new technologies, visual studies, and Holocaust memory. By technology, I mean the study of interactivity in contemporary Holocaust memory, representation, and education, as well as developments in digital media, digital humanities, and computer science. On a more abstract level, this research discusses how technology informs the way we relate to our past. The second question, therefore, that motivates this paper is: what is the future of Holocaust memory?
This article tracks the evolution of Holocaust witness testimonies from video and 3-D holograms to virtual reality. It argues that The Last Goodbye (2017) - the first-ever Holocaust VR film - reframes the politics of witness testimony around the way VR alters our relationship to real-world spaces of Holocaust memorialization.
By building its argument around the case study of Pinchas Gutter’s witness testimonies (video; hologram; VR), this paper illuminates different ways in which we commemorate and learn about the Holocaust today. Using the USC Shoah Foundation’s
Holocaust Archive as its point of reference, this paper explores epistemological and ethical issues associated with the design and development of contemporary archives of Holocaust memory. Here, Emmanuel Levinas’ notion of the face-to-face relation (rapport de face à face) becomes an instructive theoretical principle that opens the discussion up to notions of human sociality and empathy.
By focusing on a case study of the USC Shoah Foundation’s holographic testimony-based project developed with the USC Institute for Creative Technologies: New Dimensions in Testimony, this paper centers on the relationship between new technologies, visual studies, and Holocaust memory. By technology, I mean the study of interactivity in contemporary Holocaust memory, representation, and education, as well as developments in digital media, digital humanities, and computer science. On a more abstract level, this research discusses how technology informs the way we relate to our past. The second question, therefore, that motivates this paper is: what is the future of Holocaust memory?