the
                                 AfterWords Project
    a study of Holocaust survivor
                                             resettlement narratives

    Project Description
    The AfterWords Project will collect, preserve, and analyze the
    resettlement stories of Holocaust survivors from the time they
    came to the US to the present. The project focuses on survivors
    now living in North Carolina. The objectives are: (1) To collect the
    oral histories and make them available for educational purposes;
    (2) To determine patterns in the structures and use of language
    (root metaphors, etc.) among the narratives. The collection and
    analysis will illuminate how Holocaust survivors reconstructed
    their identities and crafted life anew following their displacement.

    Rationale
    AfterWords takes an approach that differs from and complements
    the collection of survivor narratives assembled by organizations
    such as the Shoah Foundation, the US Holocaust Memorial
    Museum, etc. Essentially the AfterWords story begins where
    many Holocaust narratives conclude. Furthermore, although
survivor stories have been collected meticulously, little analysis has been conducted across these stories.
Generally, each story is treated as entirely unique (bypassing key patterns in experiences, story structures, or
linguistic frameworks) or researchers try to discover the essence of Holocaust experiences (thereby reducing each
story to an average or an example in a typology). Too often, Holocaust survival becomes categorized alongside
pathologies, especially psychopathologies such as post-traumatic stress disorder. The AfterWords Project explores
the themes within survivors' own stories that help reveal how identities were re-created and lives were rebuilt. The
project tracks the process of renewing life through the stories themselves, treating the process of self-definition as
central to understanding survival as something more active and nuanced than victimage or sheer endurance.

Donations
Private donors should contact Dr. Schwartzman for proper routing and disbursement procedures.

Endorsements

Funding & Resource Support
  • UNCG Office of Undergraduate Research student research assistantships
  • Fall 2008 (2)
  • Spring 2009 (1)
  • UNCG Community-Based Research Grant [2008-2009]
  • North Carolina Council on the Holocaust
  • Renaissance Computing Institute, UNC Chapel Hill
  • University of Southern California Shoah Foundation Institute Visual History Archive

Principal Investigator/Project Coordinator

Dr. Roy Schwartzman, Professor
Communication Studies Dept.
109 Ferguson Building
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Greensboro, NC 27402
(336) 334-5297
docroy@triad.rr.com

Dr. Schwartzman has a long record of award-winning scholarship on the communication aspects of the Holocaust.
He served on the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education's Board of Governors for five years. He has delivered
many public presentations at academic conferences, religious organizations, civic events, and teacher education
programs across the nation. He developed and teaches a university course titled "Propaganda" to develop critical
awareness.

Student Research Team

    Undergraduates
  • Frances Walton (Fall 2008)
  • Bethany Barnes (Fall 2008, Spring 2009)
  • Melinda Alston (Spring 2009)
  • Fawn Cannon (Spring 2009)
  • Lindsey Fox (Fall 2009)

    Graduate Students
  • Susan von Cannon (Spring 2009)

Participants
If you are interested in participating by sharing your survival story or referring a survivor, please contact Dr.
Schwartzman. This project has been approved by the UNC Greensboro Institutional Review Board (human subjects
research), proposal #089102, project protocol categories 6 & 7 of 45 CFR 46.110 (2008-2009).

AfterWords Scholarship and Presentations

    Scholarly Presentations

    Conference on Applied Learning in Higher Education (St. Joseph, MO: Feb. 20-21, 2009)
    "Integrating Service-Learning with Research: The AfterWords Project Confronts Challenges to Applied
    Learning" [Roy Schwartzman]

    UNCG Undergraduate Research Exposition (Greensboro, NC: April 23, 2009)
    "'AfterWords”: Crafting Identity Through Holocaust Resettlement Narratives" [Melinda Alston & Bethany
    Barnes]
    "Denying Closure, Foreclosing Denial: Life After the Holocaust" [Fawn Cannon]

    Public Presentations

  • Southern Guilford High School (Greensboro, NC: April 20, 2009) [Roy Schwartzman]

Awards

  • Top Undergraduate Research Project in the Humanities, UNCG (2009)

Publicity

Publicity