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About Kelly McFall

Kelly McFall is Professor of History and Director of the Honors Program at Newman University.

NBN Episodes hosted by Kelly:

Genocide Studies February 15, 2022

Teaching about Genocide

Advice and Suggestions from Professors, High School Teachers, and Staff Developers

Samuel Totten

Hosted by Kelly McFall
Samuel Totten's Teaching about Genocide (Rowman and Littlefield, 2020) presents the insights, advice and suggestions of secondary level teachers and professors in relation to teaching about various facets of genocide. The contributions are …
Sports February 14, 2022

Before March Madness

The Wars for the Soul of College Basketball

Kurt Edward Kemper

Hosted by Kelly McFall
Big money NCAA basketball had its origins in a many-sided conflict of visions and agendas. On one side stood large schools focused on a commercialized game that privileged wins and …
Sports February 3, 2022

The Sports Revolution

How Texas Changed the Culture of American Athletics

Frank Andre Guridy

Hosted by Kelly McFall
When I was a teenager, I spent entirely too much time at the Pontiac Silverdome watching the Detroit Pistons play basketball.  In all the games I watched, it never occurred …
Genocide Studies December 28, 2021

After Genocide

Memory and Reconciliation in Rwanda

Nicole Fox

Hosted by Kelly McFall
In the wake of unthinkable atrocities, it is reasonable to ask how any population can move on from the experience of genocide. Simply remembering the past can, in the shadow …
Genocide Studies December 6, 2021

Humane

How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War

Samuel Moyn

Hosted by Kelly McFall
Is it possible that efforts to make war more humane can actually make it more common and thus more destructive?   This tension at the heart of this query lies at the …
Genocide Studies December 3, 2021

Propaganda and the Genocide in Indonesia

Imagined Evil

Saskia E. Wieringa and Nursyahbani Katjasungkana

Hosted by Kelly McFall
Several months ago, Saskia Wieringa joined her co-authors Jess Melvin and Annie Pohlman on the show to talk about their edited volume The International People's Tribunal for 1965 and the …
Genocide Studies December 3, 2021

Cultural Genocide

Law, Politics, and Global Manifestations

Jeffrey S. Bachman

Hosted by Kelly McFall
Jeffrey Bachman's edited volume Cultural Genocide: Law, Politics, and Global Manifestations (Routledge, 2019) asks where the boundaries between genocide and other kinds of mass atrocity violence rest and what the stakes are …
Genocide Studies September 22, 2021

Comrades Betrayed

Jewish World War I Veterans under Hitler

Michael Geheran

Hosted by Kelly McFall
What claims could Jewish veterans make on the Nazi state by virtue of their having fought for Germany?  How often did Germans treat Jewish veterans differently from Jewish men without …
Genocide Studies August 19, 2021

The Compromise of Return

Viennese Jews After the Holocaust

Elizabeth Anthony

Hosted by Kelly McFall
Most often our engagement with the Holocaust is a process of wrestling with the absence of presence and the presence of absence.  This is right and important and necessary. But Elizabeth …
Genocide Studies June 10, 2021

Drunk on Genocide

Alcohol and Mass Murder in Nazi Germany

Edward B. Westermann

Hosted by Kelly McFall
The title of Edward Westermann's new book, Drunk on Genocide: Alcohol and Mass Murder in Nazi Germany (Cornell University Press, published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2021) …
Genocide Studies June 9, 2021

A Sad Fiasco

Colonial Concentration Camps in Southern Africa, 1900–1908

Jonas Kreienbaum

Hosted by Kelly McFall
Holocaust and Genocide historians have spent much time and effort recently considering the connections between the experiences and ideas of colonialism and subsequent mass atrocity violence.  Jonas Kreienbaum's recent book …
Genocide Studies March 22, 2021

The Politics of Mass Violence in the Middle East

Laura Robson

Hosted by Kelly McFall
My students are generally 19 or 20 or 21. They have never known the Middle East without American boots on the ground. They have never turned on the news and …
Genocide Studies January 25, 2021

The International People’s Tribunal for 1965 and the Indonesian Genocide

Annie Pohlman, Jess Melvin, Saskia E. Wieringa

Hosted by Kelly McFall
How do you hold a government accountable for crimes it refuses to acknowledge?  Today's book, The International People's Tribunal for 1965 and the Indonesian Genocide (Routledge, 2019) emerges out of the International …
Genocide Studies January 22, 2021

Spain, the Second World War, and the Holocaust

History and Representation

Sara J. Brenneis and Gina Herrmann

Hosted by Kelly McFall
Spain has for too long been considered peripheral to the human catastrophes of World War II and the Holocaust. This volume is the first broadly interdisciplinary, scholarly collection to situate …
Genocide Studies January 18, 2021

Understanding and Teaching the Holocaust

Laura Hilton and Avinoam Patt

Hosted by Kelly McFall
I wish I had seen Laura Hilton and Avinoam Patt's Understanding and Teaching the Holocaust (University of Wisconsin Press, 2020) six months ago. I taught a course in the fall titled …
Genocide Studies January 14, 2021

Advancing Holocaust Studies

Carol Rittner and John K. Roth

Hosted by Kelly McFall
I think this is the fifth time I've interviewed John K. Roth for the podcast (and the second for Carol Rittner).  He has always been relentlessly realistic about the challenges, intellectual …
Genocide Studies October 22, 2020

Japanese War Crimes during World War II

Atrocity and the Psychology of Collective Violence

Frank Jacob

Hosted by Kelly McFall
When you mention Japanese War crimes in World War Two, you’ll often get different responses from different generations. The oldest among us will talk about the Bataan Death March. Younger …
Genocide Studies September 8, 2020

Resisting Persecution

Jews and Their Petitions during the Holocaust

T. P. Kaplan and W. Gruner (eds.)

Hosted by Kelly McFall
In 20 years of studying the Holocaust, it didn’t occur to me that German officials might, when petitioned by German Jews or by Germans advocating for German Jews, change their …
Genocide Studies August 7, 2020

The Journal of Holocaust and Genocide Studies

Richard Breitman

Hosted by Kelly McFall
The Journal of Holocaust and Genocide Studies is turning twenty-five. One of the first academic journals focused on the study of the Holocaust and Genocide Studies, it has been one …
Genocide Studies June 22, 2020

Justice behind the Iron Curtain

Nazis on Trial in Communist Poland

Gabriel Finder

Hosted by Kelly McFall
When Americans think about trials of Holocaust perpetrators, they generally think of the Nuremberg Trials or the trial of Adolf Eichmann or perhaps of the Frankfort trials of perpetrators from …
Genocide Studies June 15, 2020

Sources of Holocaust Insight

Learning and Teaching about the Genocide

John K. Roth

Hosted by Kelly McFall
At Newman I co-teach a class titled "The Holocaust and its Legacies." I teach the course with a Professor of Theology and it's designed to help students understand the ways …
Genocide Studies June 5, 2020

From Hope to Horror

Diplomacy and the Making of the Rwanda Genocide

Joyce E. Leader

Hosted by Kelly McFall
Earlier this year the world marked the 25th anniversary of the Rwandan Genocide. An occasion for mourning and reflection also offered a chance to reflect on the state of research …
Genocide Studies April 6, 2020

Hitler's First Hundred Days

When Germans Embraced the Third Reich

Peter A. Fritzsche

Hosted by Kelly McFall
We've grown to understand in the past few weeks how worlds can change in just a few days. Peter Fritzsche's new book Hitler's First Hundred Days: When Germans Embraced the …
Genocide Studies March 5, 2020

New Perspectives on Kristallnacht

After 80 years, the Nazi Pogrom in Global Comparison

Steven Ross and Wolf Gruner

Hosted by Kelly McFall
It's possible to organize a 20th-century German history course around the date 9 November. In 1918, Phillipp Schedemann proclaimed the creation of a new German Republic. In 1989, 9 November …