Criminalizing Difference in the Holocaust and Beyond
Criminalizing Difference in the Holocaust and Beyond: Jews, Roma, African Americans, and Latinx People
In order to subjugate or in some cases destroy racial, ethnic, and religious minorities, a state or governing body often criminalizes whole communities through the mobilization of legal and societal discrimination. This panel brings together experts on criminalization and state discrimination against European Jews, Roma communities and individuals, and Native Peoples of the U.S. and Canada that occurred during overlapping periods. As part of a moderated panel, the speakers will discuss the unique and common characteristics of criminalization and its role in racial prejudice and violence. While discussing specific marginalized groups – Jews, Roma, and Native Peoples in the U.S. and Canada – the panelists will help describe the process of creating racialized “others” through legal and societal discrimination.
This interdisciplinary study will explore the persecution experienced by these communities at the hands of their governments and by exclusionary state laws. “Criminalizing Difference” is part of a three-day symposium at ISU, UNI, and the University of Iowa co-sponsored by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum as part of its Great Plains Regional Programming theme, “Physical and Social Spaces of Exclusion in Nazi Germany and the Great Plains.”
Panelists:
- Kierra Crago-Schneider, Campus Outreach Program officer, the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
- Chelsi West Ohueri, assistant professor, Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies, the University of Texas, Austin
- Brian Behnken, professor, ISU Department of History, affiliate faculty in U.S. Latino/a Studies Program and African and African American Studies Program
- Moderator: Jeremy Best, associate professor, ISU Department of History