(December 5, 2012)

Professor chosen for prestigious seminar

SHREVEPORT, LA — Centenary Professor Lisa Nicoletti is one of twenty professors selected internationally for a prestigious seminar at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Dr. James E. Young, Distinguished University Professor in English and Judaic Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and founding director of its Institute for Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies, will lead the seminar.

"This is a great honor as the seminar will be taught by eminent scholar Dr. James E. Young, whose works are canonical in the field of memorial studies and used by me and my students every year," said Dr. Nicoletti. "Given his expertise, Professor Young is often asked to serve on major memorial projects, most recently the selection committee for the 9/11 World Trade Center Memorial at Ground Zero."

The 2013 seminar examines the history, memory, and memorialization of the Holocaust by analyzing the intent, form, content, and context—as well as change and continuity—of Holocaust representation.

This event marks the second time Nicoletti has been invited to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum as a seminar fellow. She believes these types of experiences are central to not only her Holocaust research but also her teaching. Bruce Allen, Chair of the Art and Visual Culture Department, agrees.

"Dr. Nicoletti's research and programs have already added a wealth of knowledge to the academy and our local community," said Allen. "Her selection as a seminar fellow is a great bonus for our students who take her course on the Holocaust and the public who regularly attend her Holocaust-related events."

Nicoletti has worked in Holocaust studies for over a decade and has been actively teaching Centenary students about the Holocaust since 2001. She has met and traveled with Holocaust survivors, rescuers, and educators to the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Israel to examine historical museums and Nazi ghettos, concentration camps, and death camps firsthand.

In 2003, she was a recipient of a Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst scholarship for Cornell University's Holocaust seminar on "Visual Representations of the Holocaust." Last year, her Holocaust programming through Centenary's Van Thyn and Attaway Professorships involved over 1,000 local middle and high school students who learned about Anne Frank and the experiences of Dutch Jewish children during the Holocaust.