Undergraduates will discuss research on the Holocaust on Feb. 11 from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. as part of the first-ever Virginia Tech Humanities Week.

“Researching the Holocaust as It Unfolded” is open to the Virginia Tech community and the general public and will be held at McBryde Hall Room 113, 225 Stanger Street.

To attend in person or virtually, register through this link.

The event will feature an undergraduate research panel reflecting on a history class’s contributions to a public history project organized by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The class was taught by Anndal Narayanan, an instructor of military history in the Virginia Tech Department of History.

Narayan and his students will lead the discussion about the students’ work. The class engaged in original primary source research by combing through digital newspaper archives from Virginia newspapers to examine how events in the timeline of the Holocaust were covered by local American newspapers, and thus what American civilians were able to learn about the events we now call the Holocaust as this history unfolded.

Collectively, the class discovered, tagged, and submitted 64 newspaper articles to the “History Unfolded” archive that the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is assembling. The archive will benefit future researchers and facilitate exhibits on what Americans were able to learn about the Holocaust as it happened.

Student panelists will discuss how the research experience informed their understanding of the Holocaust, and, more broadly, how historical knowledge is produced.

The panel will demonstrate the value of undergraduate historical research at Virginia Tech to numerous audiences, including those who are already affiliated with the Department of History, history buffs among the broader Virginia tech community, supporters of the museum around the world, and the global community of Holocaust educators.

The presentation is one of several Virginia Tech Humanities Week events celebrating 150 years of the humanities at Virginia Tech and the university’s Sesquicentennial Celebration.

To learn more about other Humanities Week events, visit the Humanities Week webpage.

Virginia Tech Humanities Week Events