Dr. Kenneth Waltzer to Present Public Lecture

The departments of Political Science and Africana Studies, with the support of the Office of the CAS Dean, presents “The Turn Towards Testimony and What Can Be Learned in Holocaust Studies,” a lecture by Dr. Kenneth Waltzer. The lecture will be held Wednesday, November 12th, from 5:30-7:30pm in French Hall 111. This lecture is free and open to the public.

 Kenneth Waltzer is professor of history at James Madison College of Michigan State University and the former director of MSU’s Jewish Studies Program. He has had a long career at MSU as a scholar-teacher, winning the State of Michigan Teaching Excellence Award and the Mid-Michigan Alumni Quality in Teaching Award, and he has served as Dean and Associate Dean of James Madison College and as Director of Integrative Studies in the Arts and Humanities at MSU.

He is co-author of The American Identity Explorer: Immigration and Migration CD Rom (1999, 2002) and is currently completing a book on The Rescue of Children and Youths at Buchenwald. He research work at Buchenwald has resulted in a full length feature documentary, Kinderblock 66, in the naming of two former prisoners as Righteous Among the Nations, and in the discovery and outing of a Holocaust memoir fraud, Angel at the Fence.

Trained as an American immigration historian, Professor Waltzer employs similar methods, drawing on testimonies and camp documents, to enter the Nazi concentration camp universe and explore the social history of life beyond extremity. In 2011-12, Professor Waltzer served as the Myron and Margaret Weingarden Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan-Flint.

For more information on this event, please contact the Department of Political Science at 810-762-3470.