The authors chronicle developing and teaching a National Endowment for the Humanities-funded trauma literature seminar at a public Historically Black University. The course focused on how literary and visual art from different countries and historical eras address two questions: "Can people survive and heal after trauma, not just physically,…

This paper addresses the interaction of three equivalent issues: education, cultural trauma and the Internet. Theory suggests that the educational system plays an important role in the transmission and maintenance of the memory of a group's defining cultural trauma. However little is empirically known of the ways education influences the attitudes…

Teaching about the Holocaust is mandatory in many societies. This prescription is justified by authorities with many reasons: educating pupils for a better understanding of human rights, peace, war, genocide, critical thinking, historical thinking, racism, etc. The Holocaust can carry a very strong moral and emotional charge. But why do teachers…

This study was based on the theory that adolescents view scenes of violent ethnic conflicts in the mass media through the lens of their own ethnicity, and that the resulting social-cognitive reactions influence their negative stereotypes about similar ethnic groups in their own country. We interviewed 89 Jewish and 180 Arab American high school…

This dissertation investigated the impact of being the child of a Holocaust survivor on teaching in a university setting. A life history method was utilized. Participants were asked about their backgrounds, parents' survival stories, and how the Holocaust has carried forward into their adult lives and teaching. Multiple interviews with a time…

We examine cumulative and prospective effects of exposure to conflict and violence across four contexts (ethnic-political, community, family, school) on posttraumatic stress (PTS) symptoms in Palestinian and Israeli youth. Interviews were conducted with 600 Palestinian and 901 Israeli (Jewish and Arab) children (ages 8, 11, and 14) and their…

Great strife has plagued the Middle East for decades. Israel and the Occupied Territories of the West Bank of Palestine' have been battling over the land they both claim as holy. Regional threats of war loom and increasingly violent rhetoric has been exchanged regarding the claims to holy sites, land, olives, water, and other natural resources in…

We evaluated the accuracy of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and major depression (MD) diagnoses using brief assessment instruments conducted by phone. PTSD and MD were assessed by telephone interview in a randomly selected sample of Jewish and Palestinian residents of Jerusalem (N = 150) during a period of marked threat of terrorism and war.…

Too often students perceive history as boring with no relevance to their lives. Although students describe history as boring, this does not seem to be the case with one aspect of social studies education--Holocaust studies. Courses about the Holocaust have grown in number in recent years; and classes are routinely full. Why do students choose to…

This is a study of the transgenerational effects of the Holocaust as manifested by one family in the United States. It looks at three generations from the perspective of a member of the third generation and attempts to connect research to her family. The study examines two married survivors, their two children, and the survivors' grandchildren…

This book examines the complex and varied relations between educational institutions and societies at war. Drawn from the pages of the "Harvard Educational Review," the essays provide multiple perspectives on how educational institutions support and oppose wartime efforts. As the editors of the volume note, the book reveals how people…

This study utilized a qualitative analysis of child survivors of the Holocaust who were sexually abused during World War II. The research study aimed to give this specific group of survivors a voice and to explore the impact of multiple extreme traumas, the Holocaust and childhood sexual abuse, on the survivors. Twenty-two child survivors of the…

Gerda Weissmann Klein was 15 years old in September 1939 when Germany invaded the city of Bielitz (present-day Bielsko), Poland. In her memoir, "All But My Life," she recounts the horror of losing family and friends, of life in concentration camps, of the death march and of liberation in 1945 by an American soldier named Kurt Klein, who…