Douglas Greenberg, professor of History and executive director of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education, will offer two presentations focusing on the Holocaust and genocide during a two-day event on Sunday, Jan. 21, and Monday, Jan. 22, in Farmington Hills and at Wayne State University. Both presentations are free and open to the general public.

“Henry’s Harmonica: Memory and History in a Genocidal World,” is scheduled on Sunday, Jan. 21, 4 p.m., at the Holocaust Memorial Center, 28123 Orchard Lake Road, in Farmington Hills. Greenberg uses video testimony (and its availability in searchable, digital format) to examine genocide and mass murder in comparative context. From the foundation\'s large collection of eyewitness accounts, Greenberg focuses on one survivor of the Holocaust to explore the interpretive and intellectual issues raised by the archive. While comparing the generalizations of scholars with the memories of survivors, attempts are made to mediate between history and memory, and to expose some of the implications of digital video libraries.

Greenberg will present “Citizenship, National Identity, and Genocide” on Monday, Jan. 22, 4:30 p.m., at the Bernath Auditorium, David Adamany Undergraduate Library, 5155 Gullen Mall, at Wayne State University’s Detroit campus. He will discuss the relationship of citizenship and genocide in the modern world relying mainly upon examples of the Holocaust and the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

As director of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education, Greenberg oversees an archive of 52,000 video testimonies of survivors and other eyewitnesses to the Holocaust. Formerly, he was president and CEO of the Chicago Historical Society and vice president of the American Council of Learned Societies. He has published several books and numerous articles on aspects of American history, the Holocaust and genocide, the impact of technology on scholarship and public history.

The event is sponsored by Wayne State University’s Center for the Study of Citizenship and The Cohn-Haddow Center for Judaic Studies, Temple Emanu-el and the Holocaust Memorial Center.

Wayne State University is a premier institution of higher education offering more than 350 academic programs through 11 schools and colleges to more than 33,000 students.