New Books Network

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 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 …
General History 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 …
General History 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 …
European 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 …
General History 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 …
General History 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 …
General History 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 …
General History 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 …
General History January 23, 2020

The Holocaust in Bohemia and Moravia

Czech Initiatives, German Policies, Jewish Responses

Wulf Gruner

Hosted by Kelly McFall
Holocaust research tends to concentrate on certain geographic regions. We know much about the Holocaust in Poland, Germany and Western Europe. We are learning more and more about the 'Holocaust …
Biography January 8, 2020

Hitler

A Global Biography

Brendan Simms

Hosted by Kelly McFall
Every generation returns to the titanic heroes and villains of the 20th century. And every generation produces a new set of biographies--often immense--in an effort to understand the role of …
General History November 27, 2019

German Railroads, Jewish Souls

The Reichsbahn, Bureaucracy, and the Final Solution

Christopher Browning, Peter Hayes, and Raul Hilberg

Hosted by Kelly McFall
Raul Hilberg was a giant in the field of Genocide and Holocaust Studies. Frequently cited as the founder of the field in the United States, Hilberg wrote, taught, and mentored …
Biography November 4, 2019

Man or Monster?

The Trial of a Khmer Rouge Torturer

Alexander L. Hinton

Hosted by Kelly McFall
Can justice heal? Must there be justice in order to heal? Is there such a thing as justice, something to be striven for regardless of context? Alexander L. Hinton thinks …
General History September 20, 2019

Lives Reclaimed

A Story of Rescue and Resistance in Nazi Germany

Mark Roseman

Hosted by Kelly McFall
What makes some people aid the persecuted while others just stand by? Questions about rescue and resistance have been fundamental to the field of genocide studies since its inception. Mark …
General History August 22, 2019

Ordinary Jews

Choice and Survival during the Holocaust

Evgeny Finkel

Hosted by Kelly McFall
Can there be a political science of the Holocaust? Evgeny Finkel, in his new book Ordinary Jews: Choice and Survival during the Holocaust (Princeton University Press, 2017), answers Charles King's …
Sports August 21, 2019

Routledge Handbook of the Business of Women's Sport

Nancy Lough and Andrea N. Geurin

Hosted by Kelly McFall
Shortly after the conclusion of the Women's World Cup earlier this summer, a friend suggested to me that it signaled the long-awaited arrival of soccer as a mainstream sport in …
Genocide Studies August 16, 2019

Constructing Genocide and Mass Violence

Society, Crisis, Identity

Maureen S. Hiebert

Hosted by Kelly McFall
How can this happen? If there's any question that people interested in genocide ask, it's this one. How can people do this to each other? How can this be possible …
General History August 13, 2019

Let Them Not Return

Sayfo – The Genocide Against the Assyrian, Syriac, and Chaldean Christians in the Ottoman Empire

David Gaunt, Naures Atto, Soner O. Barthoma, eds.

Hosted by Kelly McFall
Sometimes it seems that there’s nothing left to say about mass violence in the 20th century. But the new edited volume Let Them Not Return: Sayfo – The Genocide Against …