Danny M. Cohen (PhD11), assistant professor of instruction at SESP, presented his work on Holocaust education design at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as part of a symposium on New Research on Roma and the Holocaust.
At the international symposium, Cohen spoke about his upcoming historical novel, TRAIN — a work of human rights fiction for young adults — as well as its new accompanying curriculum, Overlapping Triangles. Cohen's work highlights the interdependencies and distinctions among Jewish, Roma, disabled, homosexual and political targets of the Nazi regime.
TRAIN and the Overlapping Triangles curriculum are designed to help high school students explore how different forms of prejudice are connected, throughout history and today.
Cohen's work builds on the idea that “historical narratives of Holocaust history rely on one another to be understood,” he says. “For example, the Nazis’ gassing of the disabled became a testing ground for the efficient mass murder, by gas, of the Jews, Roma and Sinti that followed.”
Cohen’s presentation at the Holocaust Museum conference was entitled “Teaching about the Porajmos: Guidelines for Including the Roma and Sinti Victims of Nazism within Holocaust Education.” The interdisciplinary symposium at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum highlighted new scholarship on Roma and the Holocaust across Europe.
Cohen is a learning scientist and an assistant professor of instruction at Northwestern University's School of Education and Social Policy. His teaching and research focus on educating about atrocity, and the design of learning environments to promote human rights.
An appointed member of the Illinois Holocaust and Genocide Commission, Cohen is also a member of the editorial board of the journal The Holocaust in History and Memory. At SESP, he teaches a course in Program Design and Implementation, as well as seminars on collective memories and human rights education.
Photo: Danny Cohen leads a School of Education and Social Policy class on a tour of the Illinois Holocaust Museum.