Courses Supported by the Rabb Center in the 2026–2027 Academic Year
From Memorial Sites to Websites: Holocaust Memory in the Digital Age
Dr. Norma Mussi
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Semester Alef: Mondays at 18:00, Building 32, Room 110
How do selfies at Auschwitz, TikTok challenges, and holograms of Holocaust survivors shape Holocaust memory? This course explores the intersection of memory studies and digital media, tracing the journey of Holocaust memory from physical memorial sites to the digital spaces of social media, online archives, and interactive testimonies.
The course begins with the theoretical foundations of memory studies: collective memory, sites of memory, postmemory, and mediated trauma. Each foundational concept will be examined alongside contemporary research exploring its transformation in digital environments. We will consider how the transition from live to recorded testimony, and from physical to digital archives, changes the very nature of memory: who creates it, who controls it, and who can access it.
Throughout the course, we will examine how digital platforms, from Instagram and TikTok to virtual reality and artificial intelligence, create new forms of commemoration, testimony, and learning, while also introducing risks of memory distortion and falsification. We will ask whether digitization strengthens collective memory or fragments it; how algorithms become agents of remembering and forgetting; and whether artificial intelligence and interactive testimony can fill the void that will emerge when we can no longer hear firsthand accounts from Holocaust survivors.
Course registration: During the registration period for Semester Alef of the 2026–2027 academic year.
Narrative Research and Storytelling in Collaboration with “Zikaron BaSalon”
Dr. Avi Schneider
Conflict Management and Resolution Program
Semester Bet
The narrative approach developed during the twentieth century and has been widely used for research, diagnosis, and even therapy across various disciplines in the social sciences and humanities. What distinguishes this approach is that it does not necessarily seek to establish the empirical foundations of the events being described. Rather, it aims to explore how individuals and groups recount events and the personal and collective meanings they attribute to them.
Over the past two decades, an additional component has emerged alongside (or within) the narrative approach: storytelling. This component also addresses the question of how best to structure a story and communicate it to an audience.
This course was developed in collaboration with Zikaron BaSalon (Memory in the Living Room), with the aim of studying, understanding, preserving, and sharing the narratives of Holocaust survivors.
Course registration:
During the registration period for Semester Bet of the 2026–2027 academic year.
