Chad S.A. Gibbs

Biography

My name is Chad S.A. Gibbs and I am a Ph.D. candidate in Holocaust studies and modern European Jewish history. I have also completed a minor and certificate with the Program in Gender and Women’s History. I currently hold the Fred and Maria Devinki Memorial Fellowship with the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. I was recently the 2020-2021 Breslauer, Rutman, and Anderson Research Fellow at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Studies. I have also held the inaugural Dori Laub Fellowship with the Yale University Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. From July 2019 to March 2020, I studied Modern Hebrew and conducted archival research at Yad Vashem as well as other collections in Jerusalem as a George L. Mosse Graduate Exchange Fellow to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.

In my dissertation, “Against that Darkness: Perseverance, Resistance, and Revolt at Treblinka,” I use spatial and social network analyses to uncover relationships and geographies important to prisoner resistance at the extermination camp Treblinka II. Taking advantage of a greatly expanded testimonial source base, my research adds to our understanding of life inside the camp by exploring inmate relationships—or social networks—and how prisoners leveraged these bonds to gain some measure of control over lethally restricted camp geography. Maintaining these methods throughout, I further craft the first analyses of gender and masculinity in life and resistance at the camp while working to recover the long-overlooked experiences of women inside Treblinka.

My research and teaching interests extend from Holocaust and genocide studies to modern European Jewish history, modern Germany, military history, gender, memory, and antisemitism. My ongoing efforts to identify Treblinka survivors and locate their testimonies contribute complementary interests in transnational archival practice, dispersed sources, and the issues that diaspora collections like the Treblinka testimonial archive create for historical research.

Education

M.A., University of Nebraska at Omaha
B.A., University of Wyoming

Field

• European History

MA Title

• “To Sell Your Life at a Higher Price: Social and Spatial Networks of Resistance at Treblinka”

Working Dissertation Title

• “Against that Darkness: Perseverance, Resistance, and Revolt at Treblinka”

Selected Publications

• “Placing Women in the Revolt: Gender and the History and Memory of Resistance at Treblinka.” Holocaust and Genocide Studies (under review).
• Review of Hitler’s First Hundred Days: When Germans Embraced the Third Reich by Peter Fritzsche, Religious Studies Review (forthcoming).
• “Briv funem arkhiv: A Memoir in Four Acts: Moyshe Klaynman and Survival at Treblinka.” With Matthew M. Greene. In geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies (May 2020).
• Review of The Law of Blood: Thinking and Acting as a Nazi by Johann Chapoutot, Religious Studies Review 45, no.2 (June 2019): 197.
• “Lessons from the Treblinka Archive: Transnational Collections and their Implications for Historical Research.”  Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies (2018).

Selected Awards

• Fred and Maria Devinki Memorial Fellow, Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (2020-2021)
• Breslauer, Rutman, and Anderson Research Fellow, USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Studies (2020-2021)
• Inaugural Dori Laub Fellow, Yale University Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies (2020-2021)
• George L. Mosse Graduate Exchange Fellow to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel (2019-2020)
• George L. Mosse Distinguished Graduate Fellow in Modern European Jewish History (2016-2017)
• Early Excellence in Teaching Award, Department of History, University of Wisconsin-Madison (2019)

Professional Affiliations

• Affiliated Researcher, USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research
• Editor, H-Holocaust Network, H-Net, 2020-2022
• Association for Jewish Studies
• American Historical Association
• Central European History Society
• German Studies Association
• Society for Military History

Courses Taught as TA

• History 201 – “The Historian’s Craft: Civilians and War on the Eastern Front in World War II”
• History 224/JS 231 –  “The Holocaust”
• History 1000 – “World Civilizations I” (University of Nebraska at Omaha)

Courses Taught as Instructor

• History 357: “The Second World War” (Summer 2021)