The Kantor Center at Tel Aviv University is circulating a very interesting Call for Papers on “Autonomous Histories and Studies of the Holocaust,” which the Center is co-convening with four other institutions.  (LDB Advisor Dina Porat heads the Kantor Center.)  The impetus for the conference is the perception that Holocaust studies have developed within two separate silos: in one, historians study the perpetrators to discern their motives, while in the other, researchers develop “autonomous histories” of the persecuted (Jewish) communities.  The conveners ask what can be learned about the conflict, interplay, and meeting points between these two separate scholarly inquiries.  This is a fascinating question which is also more broadly applicable to a basic question of anti-Semitism scholarship, to wit: to what extent should anti-Semitism be considered exclusively a Jewish problem, exclusively a gentile problem, or a problem which requires that we consider the evolution of both Jewish and gentile communities?  The Call for Papers follows the jump. (more…)