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Curriculum Selma Leydesdorff

See the link below for the curriculum vitae and publications of prof. dr. Selma Leydesdorff

• CV Selma Leydesdorff

About Selma Leydesdorff

Selma Leydesdorff is  professorof oral history and culture. Her career is part of the transformation of oral history from mostly a fact-finding method-adding to and criticizing traditional historical narratives-to research on the ways memory is framed and modified over time. It has always been influenced by women's history. She moved from gender studies to her present position.

In 1987, her   dissertation on the Jewish poor of Amsterdam, 1900-1940 (Amsterdam 1987, Wayne State UP 1994; Suhrkamp, 1994) introduced a critical revision of the then-dominant historiography of the modernization and assimilation of poor Jews. Fascinated by trauma stories and the life story approach, and helping to set up the expanding international oral history network, she published Water and Memory on the memories of the Netherlands floods of 1953. Nextshe   participated in several collective studies on the position of women in the Third World.

Publishing books and editing volumes that have shaped oral history the main thread running through her academic career. As   editor since 2001 she is co-responsible for the publication of many volumes and more are in preparation. Themes are totalitarianism, subjectivity, trauma, the transmission of stories. At this moment she is co-editing a volume on 'Evidence'in historical narratives.

Yearly she teaches   a phd-course on oral history at the Dutch National Research School of Cultural History (Huizinga) that is being attended by doctoral students and post-docs from many countries.  

The last tenyears sheinterviewed on life in concentration camps and recorded interviews with survivors of Auschwitz and Mauthausen in international projects.

In 2002, she started a project with survivors of Srebrenica, which brought a major international attention as an oral historianof trauma. The book detailing the Srebrenica story was published first in Dutch, then in Bosnian, and an English translation is forthcoming (Indiana UP, 2011).

Since 2008, she has recorded life stories around the trial of John Demjanjuk in Munich, including survivors of Sobibor and co-plaintiffs in the trial. The results will be published as www.lategevolgenvansobibor.nl

As a result of her work she is   public speaker on themes as 'the holocaust', 'Jewish history' and 'trauma and memory'.

During the academic year 2010-2011 she was asked to collaborate the CNRS/NYU memory project, which rethinks 'the representation of war' in collaboration with the September 11 Museum (New York) and the Memorial of Caen (France).

The coming years she will write a biography of Aleksander (Sascha) Pecherski, the leader of the uprising of Sobibor. After his return to Moscow he became victim of the Stalinist antisemitic purges. She will be visiting archives all over the world and she will meet people who know about his history. At the moment the research is in collaboration with Foundation Sobibor, and the Anne Frank Foundation.

• De Late gevolgen van Sobibor

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