The George and Irina Schaeffer Center for the Study of Genocide, Human Rights and Conflict Prevention are pleased to host an evening with Sarah Gensburger. Sociologist of memory and historian of the Shoah in Paris, she is one half of the team who created the collection of soundwalks Gens de Paris.
Gens de Paris is a soundwalks collection recounting events that took place on this street corner, in the shade of that tree, in that building over there. Based on the lives of former inhabitants, it tells the stories from their perspectives. It aims to cover all time periods, places and themes, as long as there are characters to bring the past to life and in-depth historical research to give them meaning, situating them in their social context.
Each story is born of a dialogue, precious and unprecedented, between a historian and an author. It thus calls on the imagination and emotion of today’s visitors in order to bring these former Parisians back to life. Available both in French and English, the documentary stories created by Gens de Paris will be eventually available as an app, designed to transform our relationship to the town and its past.
The first soundwalk produced by Gens de Paris was the winner of the jury special award of the Decibels d’or competition (2016): http://gensdelaseine.com
Each thematic soundwalk will be the object of a public, private or associative partnership, two of the planned projects being on the People of the Second World War and on the Americans in Paris.
At AUP, in addition to presenting the collection Gens de Paris, Sarah Gensburger opened the discussion on how members from the AUP community could be involved in these potential projects of digital humanities, be it by sharing and showcasing their research, looking for new material, translations, by working on IT or sound design.
Fellowships are available to AUP students willing to participate in this research project. For more info, please contact Constance Pâris de Bollardière: cparisdebollardiere
aup.edu
Sarah Gensburger is a researcher at the CNRS. She a sociologist of memory and a historian of the Shoah in Paris. She is the author of Witnessing the Robbing of the Jews. A photographic album, Paris 1940-1944 (Indiana University Press, 2016) and C'étaient des enfants. Déportation et sauvetage des enfants juifs à Paris (Skira-Flammarion, 2012).