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Art and Testimony
Art and Testimony
From January to November 2024, the UBC-V Public Humanities Hub and the University of Victoria’s Survivor-Centred Visual Narratives project co-hosted the Art and Testimony Webinar Series 2024, with support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). This series brought critical issues in art-based research into contemporary focus by engaging with art not only as a tool for knowledge mobilization but also as an impactful form of participatory action research. It centred on how visual narratives can disrupt traditional testimony collection practices, which often favour language over image.
This toolkit builds on the advice and resources shared by experts during the webinar series and explores arts-based research methodologies for constructing survivor testimonies. The chapters examine a variety of art forms—including performance, graphic novels, and comics—as approaches for documenting testimonies, conducting research, and teaching. Organized into three thematic clusters, the toolkit provides both methodological insights and practical resources available at UBC and beyond.
Theme 1: Performance as Testimony
Theme 1: Performance as Testimony
This theme explores how performance can serve as a mode of witnessing, emphasizing deep listening, survivor agency, and the power of unresolved narratives. The chapter illustrates how iterative, trust-based engagements with survivors enable testimonies that are not static records but evolving accounts of memory.
Featured Webinar
Featured Webinar
"Listening, Telling, Showing (and back): The Practice of a Holocaust scholar-teacher-playwright-actor"
Dr. Henry “Hank” Greenspan, Psychologist, oral historian, and playwright, emeritus, University of Michigan
Moderator:
Dr. Charlotte Schallié, Professor and Chair of Germanic and Slavic Studies, University of Victoria
Theme 2: Videotaped Interviews, Graphic Novels and Comics as Testimony
Theme 2: Videotaped Interviews, Graphic Novels and Comics as Testimony
This theme presents graphic narratives as an opportunity for a more survivor-centred method of crafting testimonies. The chapters explore how graphic novels gently leave space for imagination, offer trauma-informed approaches to interviewing, and serve as alternative tools that document fragmented memories. Notably, resources such as the graphic novel But I Live: Three Stories of Child Survivors of the Holocaust and discussions on drawing memories, highlight the collaborative and ethical dimensions of visual testimony.
Featured Webinars
Featured Webinars
"Empowering Narratives: Videotaped Interviews vs Graphic Novels"
Dr. Uğur Ümit Üngör, Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, University of Amsterdam, and NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies.
Dr. Peter W. Klein, Founder of the Global Reporting Centre, a UBC-based non-profit focused on producing and innovating journalism on under-reported issues around the world
"Why Comics?"
Dr. Fransiska Louwagie, Senior Lecturer in French and Francophone Studies, University of Aberdeen
Dr. Véronique Sina, Film and media studies scholar, Goethe University Frankfurt
Moderator:
Dr. Elizabeth “Biz” Nijdam, Assistant Professor and settler scholar in the Department of Central, Eastern, and Northern European Studies, University of British Columbia
"Drawing Memories"
Barbara Yelin, Graphic novelist and illustrator
Dr. Charlotte Schallié, Professor of Germanic Studies and Chair of the Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies, University of Victoria
"The Art of Comics-Engaged Research"
Raey Costain (they/them), PhD student in visual anthropology, University of Victoria
Cal Smith (he/him), PhD student, University of British Columbia
Theme 3: Teaching through Visual Testimony
Theme 3: Teaching through Visual Testimony
This theme considers how graphic narratives can transform classroom practices. It emphasizes the unique power of visual testimony, the importance of trauma-informed pedagogies in addressing mass violence, and an interdisciplinary, adaptive approach to teaching Holocaust history. Insights drawn from But I Live are interwoven to show how educators can create safe, engaging learning environments that encourage students to become historians.
Featured Webinar
Featured Webinar
"The Art of Testimony in the Classroom"
Dr. Andrea Webb, Associate Professor of Teaching, Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy, University of British Columbia
Alyssa Wood, Teacher of Social Studies and English, HJ Cambie secondary
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