Survivor-Centred Visual Narratives

Category: webinar

A SCVN Graphic Narrative Webinar: ‘Al-Faẓia’ – The Horror: Surviving Assad’s Prisons’ – April 2, 2025

In February 2023, graphic artist Tobi Dahmen was introduced to Syrian survivor Akram al-Saud by Dr. Uğur Ümit Üngör, the Research Cluster Co-Lead on the SSHRC Partnership Grant Survivor-Centred Visual Narratives Project. Based in The Netherlands, Tobi and Akram have been collaborating locally over two years in a series of interviews to share Akram’s unique story of surviving a series of Syrian prisons.

Since the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime on December 8, 2024, Syria has opened up to the world again, and the international community has begun to learn more about the oppression and injustices of the regime. This webinar will feature Tobi Dahmen and Akram al-Saud discussing their collaboration, in conversation with Dr. Üngör and Project Director Dr. Charlotte Schallié. They will explore the difficulties of representing imprisonment and torture, and how graphic narratives can help survivors of mass violence find a voice.

A SCVN Graphic Narrative Webinar: ‘Al-Faẓia’ – The Horror: Surviving Assad’s Prisons
Date: Wednesday, April 2, 2025
Time: 10:30 am – 12:00 pm PDT /  6:30 – 8:00 pm CET
Registration Link:
https://uvic.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Unhe0GVZT1qyMy-q9iijNQ#/registration
Contact: Lia Lancaster | cfgs@uvic.ca

Speakers

Tobi Dahmen
Tobi Dahmen, born in 1971 in Frankfurt/Main, is a German illustrator and comic artist. He has published several comic books, including Fahrradmod (2015). Dahmen has received numerous awards for his work and is currently working on a new graphic novel with a Syrian survivor as part of the Survivor-Centred Visual Narratives Project. The graphic novel Columbusstrasse: Eine Familiengeschichte 1935-1945, was released on May 29, 2024, and is available to order online here.

Akram al-Saud
Akram al-Saud is from Deir Ez-Zor and now lives in the Netherlands. He has been arrested four times before fleeing from Syria. His longest detention began on March 28th, 2010—before the revolution—and lasted for nine months. At the time, he was a student at the Faculty of Architecture in Aleppo, and was arrested by the intelligence services of the air force. After the 2011 revolution, he was arrested three more times.

Dr. Uğur Ümit Üngör

Uğur Ümit Üngör (PhD Amsterdam, 2009) is Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Amsterdam and the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies. His main areas of interest are genocide and mass violence, with a particular focus on the modern and contemporary Middle East. He is an editor of the Journal of Perpetrator Research, and coordinator of the Syria Oral History Project. His publications include Confiscation and Destruction: The Young Turk Seizure of Armenian Property (Continuum, 2011), and the award-winning The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia, 1913-1950 (Oxford University Press, 2011). From 2014 to 2019, Üngör coordinated a Dutch Research Council-funded research project on paramilitarism, which led to the monograph Paramilitarism: Mass Violence in the Shadow of the State (Oxford University Press, 2020). He is currently working on its follow-up monograph Assad’s Militias and Mass Violence in Syria (forthcoming, 2025). He is also co-author of Syrian Gulag: Assad’s Prison System, 1970-2020 (I.B.Tauris, 2023).

Dr. Charlotte Schallié
Charlotte Schallié is a Professor of Germanic Studies in the School of Languages, Linguistics and Culture at the University of Victoria (Canada). Her teaching and research interests include memory studies, visual culture studies & graphic narratives, teaching and learning about the Holocaust, genocide and human rights education, community-engaged participatory research, care ethics, and arts-based action research. Together with Dr. Andrea Webb (UBC), she is the Project Director of a 7-year SSHRC-funded Partnership Grant entitled Visual Storytelling and Graphic Art in Genocide and Human Rights Education.

Supporting Educators in Holocaust Education – Webinar – Jan 29, 2025

Gallery of ‘Examining the Holocaust’ exhibit at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. Images courtesy of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

In an upcoming webinar on January 29, Co-Director Dr. Andrea Webb will be discussing ways that educators can bring Holocaust education into the classroom with respect and consideration. She is joined by Ashley Groff, Interpretive Program Developer from the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR), and institutional host of the webinar in collaboration with the Survivor‐Centred Visual Narratives Project. Webinar participants will be provided with resources that support Holocaust education, teaching about genocides, and teaching about human rights. They will also learn where to seek support and leave with tools to help them teach students Holocaust‐related content according to their provincial or territorial mandate.

Supporting Educators in Holocaust Education”
Wednesday, January 29, 2025
12:00 – 1:00 pm PST / 2:00 – 3:00 pm CST

Registration: https://humanrights.ca/event/webinar-supporting-educators-holocaust-education

This online event is free to attend. Registration is required.

Reading and Discussion of ‘But I Live’ with Dr. Charlotte Schallié and Barbara Yelin at Utrecht University

On October 29, graphic artist Barbara Yelin and SCVN Co-Director Dr. Charlotte Schallié will be featured in a public online webinar as part of the 27th Workshop on National Socialist Camps and Killing Sites. Barbara and Charlotte will be reading from the publication ‘But I Live: Three Stories of Child Survivors of the Holocaust.’ This webinar and the other workshop activities are geared towards young scholars who are interested in working with stories and histories of camps and killing sites associated with genocide and mass atrocity worldwide.

In addition to reading from ‘But I Live,’ Charlotte and Barbara will engage in a dialogue about trauma-informed storytelling and the compelling power of drawing as a language to communicate about stories of memory, trauma, and resilience. The visual testimony of Holocaust child survivor Emmie Arbel, collected in ‘But I Live’ by Barbara Yelin is one example of how visual arts can be engaged in Holocaust education and communication.

Event Details:

Tuesday, October 29, 2024

5:00 pm CET /11:00 am PDT

Sweelinckzaal, Room 0.05, Utrecht University, Drift 21, 3512 BR Utrecht or online via zoom

Register online to join at here.

Our thanks to the Utrecht University, the University of Toronto Press, and the Dr. Hildegaard Hansche Stiftung for supporting this event.

Gathering Memories in Trauma-Informed Storytelling

On March 20, 2024 join SCVN co-director Charlotte Schallié and illustrator Barbara Yelin for the next instalment of the Art & Testimony webinar series.

In this webinar session, Barbara Yelin will discuss her collaborative memory work with Holocaust child survivor Emmie Arbel for ‘But I Live’ (2022) and ‘Emmie Arbel. The Colour of Memory’ (2023). In conversation with Charlotte Schallié, Barbara Yelin will reflect on how drawing can be used as a language to gather memories in trauma-informed storytelling. Yelin and Schallié will explore how the relationships they have formed with Emmie and with the research team guide the work and yield many insights, including the importance of emotion and subjectivity in witnessing survivor-centred testimony sharing. Yelin will begin with a reading from select pages of ‘The Colour of Memory’, grounding the conversation in Emmie’s story and the visual arts-based methodology of the Survivor-Centred Visual Narratives (SCVN) project.

Hosted by Dr. Andrea Webb, Associate Professor of Teaching, UBC Curriculum & Pedagogy.

Wednesday, March 20, 2024
1:00-2:30 PM Pacific Time
Online via Zoom 

Find more information and get to know our international team here.

Art and Testimony: Starting off the 2024 Webinar Series with Dr Hank Greenspan

We are pleased to announce the launch of a new webinar series on the theme of Art and Testimony. In collaboration with UBC-V Public Humanities Hub this series has been developed as a critical exploration of contemporary arts-based research. The first webinar session with Dr Hank Greenspan will take place on January 25, 2024. Find the registration link below.*

This webinar series is an opportunity to engage with scholars of many backgrounds as they reflect on arts-based methods and relational processes of working with testimony.

In this first session, Dr Greenspan will discuss how his work as a theatre artist is interconnected with his decades-long research and teaching as a Holocaust scholar.

“Listening, Telling, Showing (and back): The Practice of a Holocaust scholar-teacher-playwright-actor”

Thursday, January 25, 2024
9:00-10:30 AM Pacific Time
Online via Zoom 

*Registration will not be confirmed via email. Simply fill out and submit the form to secure a spot. Email reminders are sent out ahead of the scheduled session.

Interested in our past webinars? Find the Ethics of Trauma-Informed Research webinar recordings here.