Bella Zisere

Academic Year: 
2004-05
Direction: 
To Yale
Exchange Partners: 
Sciences Po
Research Interest: 
Memory of the Holocaust In the Baltic States After Perestroika, Evolution And Instrumentalisations

Ms. Zisere will analyze the concept of collective memory of a community using as an example the Jewish community in the Baltic states and the Holocaust, one of the strongest founding myths of the collective memory of Baltic Jews. The memory of the Holocaust of the Baltic Jews was shaped by the same general conditions, but today with three different democratic states and with significant emigration, the collective memory of the Holocaust in the Baltics is dispersed and placed in different political and social contexts and corresponds to a certain number of distinguished memories. She will demonstrate the extent to which a complex of shared convictions, ideas, dogmas, recollections, that one can call Collective memory of a population, is a flexible and evolving phenomenon, and extremely sensitive to a political and social context rather than a historic truth. Ms. Zisere is particularly interested in the work of the Genocide Studies Program. While at Yale she also plans to attend classes on ethnic and minority politics.