Digital Holocaust Memory – Resources and Readings
Over the summer, the Landecker Digital Memory Lab team members are busy taking well-deserved breaks. Whilst our blog goes on hiatus, here are some suggested reads from our back catalogue which might help inspire or inform your autumn teaching, research and practice.
The remit of the Landecker Digital Memory Lab is broad – we conceptualise ‘the digital’ as socio-technical and thus connective, and as an entanglement of human and computational actancies. But what does this mean in practice?
Firstly, it means our research covers a range of different digital media, this includes computer games. Last year we hosted an international junior research associate, Austin Xie, from the University of Chicago who thought through the challenges of navigating Holocaust memory in computer games shared in two blogs on our site, part I and part II. We also launched recommendations for using VR, XR and computer games. We captured more on these topics in our blog archive, check out pieces on Playing Memories, Reading Call of Duty, and student ideas for Holocaust computer games.
The first series of our new Digital Memory Dialogues also focuses on this topic asking to what extent can the Holocaust be made playable in computer games? This expands on initial discussions we had several years ago with academics, then game developers and designers on this topic. It’s worth reviewing these resources together to reflect on how much has changed in the past five years.
Whilst more on extended realities can be found regarding virtual tours of Bergen-Belsen from the Spaces of Memory project to Instagram Live Tours, an overview of virtuality in virtual Holocaust museum, and in online discussions on virtual memoryscapes. We’ve also covered the broader issue of ‘interactivity’ in Holocaust memory, introducing a theoretical framework for understanding this.
Another topic we have covered extensively is Holocaust memory on social media, including blogs about USHMM’s ‘Next Chapter’ video series on YouTube, the #HolocaustChallenge on TikTok, online denial and distortion, the #WeRemember campaign, Serious TikTok, commemoration and algorithmic cultures on TikTok, a report on a workshop with young ambassadors on using social media for Holocaust education. We also previously held an online discussion on the Holocaust and social media (back in 2021 – another opportunity to reflect on how things have changed!).
Algorithms, AI and machine learning have increasingly become an important area of research for the Lab. We have had a series of guest blogs from the leading expert in this area Dr. Mykola Makhortykh and colleagues including on algorithmic auditing, Anne Frank memes, and AI and the future of Holocaust memory. We’ve written about imagining human-AI memory symbiosis, presented on panels about AI, Holocaust distortion and education, and made policy recommendations regarding AI use in our fields.
Whilst the Lab’s remit covers a broad range of digital media, we are also particularly interested in the (under-studied) role humans play in shaping digital Holocaust memory, and in listening to and talking with people. You can read blogs about our workshop with Latin America Holocaust memory professionals in Peru last summer here, and a workshop we hosted with key stakeholders in funding and policymaking, which led to the publication of a United Nations working paper asking how can we ensure a sustainable future for digital Holocaust memory?
In the past year, we officially launched our Lab at the Imperial War Museums, London; have been working on developing our flagship resource Digital Memory Database; launched a new online publishing platform Digital Memory Dialogues and our digital Holocaust memory map; and held the inaugural Connective Holocaust Commemoration Expo.
Leading up to the launch of our database, we’ve been presenting a Spotlight series focused on digital practice at a number of Holocaust museums, these include the Melbourne Holocaust Museum, Australia; Žanis Lipke Memorial, Latvia; the Auschwitz Jewish Center, Poland; and Dachau Memorial, Germany.
If you’re interested in the methodology that underpins our human-computer entanglement lens that helps us shape how we record and index our data check out this blog on ‘Centralising the Human in Digital Humanities Methods’.
If you would like to take a peek at how we do all this work, you can also track what we’ve been up to in our ‘Building a Lab’ and ‘Behind the Scenes’ blog series.
Looking back into our archives each year can be quite nostalgic, but also reflective. One of our first blogs focused on the need to debunk digital myths and take digital media on its own terms if we are going to integrate it into Holocaust memory. Whilst digital Holocaust memory has been a phenomenon for 30 years, it is still relatively apparent that the myths we highlighted back in 2021 hold strong.
If you are looking for a range of nuanced research sources to inform your syllabi, publications or practice related to digital Holocaust memory, then check out our comprehensive Zotero bibliography. Do let us know if anything is missing.
If you work for a Holocaust museum, memorial site, library or educational organisation and haven’t yet told us about your digital projects, practices and strategy, please do take 20 minutes to complete our survey.