Waitman Wade Beorn
Waitman Wade Beorn is a historian who studies the Holocaust in Eastern Europe.[1] He is currently a Senior Lecturer in History at Northumbria University in Newcastle, UK.[2] Previously, he served as the Louis and Frances Blumkin Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Nebraska-Omaha. From 2015-2016, he was the executive director of the Virginia Holocaust Museum in Richmond, Va.
Early life
Waitman Wade Beorn is a native of Richmond, Virginia. He attended the United States Military Academy at West Point as a member of the Class of 2000. Dr. Beorn was commissioned as a 2LT (Armor branch) and served in the 1st Squadron, 10th United States Cavalry (Buffalo Soldiers) in the 4th Infantry Division at Ft. Hood, Texas and during Operation Iraqi Freedom, 2003-2004. After leaving the Army, he attended graduate school at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, earning his PhD in history in 2011.
Research
Monographs
Dr. Beorn's first book, Marching into Darkness: The Wehrmacht and the Holocaust in Belarus, explored the local participation of the German Army in the Holocaust, It looked at a series of case studies of units in the Generalbezirk Weissruthenien during World War II. It argued for a progression of ever-increasing complicity by the Wehrmacht in genocide. His second book, The Holocaust in Eastern Europe: At the Epicenter of the Final Solution, is a general survey of the Holocaust in the East. He is currently finishing a book on the Janowska concentration camp and the Holocaust in Lviv.
Digital Humanities Work
Beorn is a founding member of the Holocaust Geographies Collaborative, an interdisciplinary group of scholars interested in exploring how a spatial and digital approach can better inform our understanding of the Holocaust.[3] He is a digital humanist who integrates mapping, modeling, and social network analyses into his work.
Awards and Fellowships
- Thomas J. Wilson Prize for Best First Book from Harvard University Press (2014)[4]
- Harry Frank Guggenheim Dissertation Fellowship (2010-2011)[5]
- National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend FT-259641-18 “Between the Wires: The Janowska Camp and the Holocaust in Lviv,” 2019[6]
- USC Shoah Foundation Archive Teaching Fellow, 2013-4[7]
- National Science Foundation (NSF) Grant “Collaborative Research - Holocaust Historical GIS,” Award # 0820501 (with Tim Cole, Simone Gigliotti, Alberto Giordano, Anna Holian, Paul Jaskot, Anne Knowles, Marc Masurovsky, and Erik Steiner), 2008-2011[8]
- Fulbright Fellowship, Germany (2008-2009)[9]
Selected Works
- Beorn, Waitman Wade. Marching into Darkness: The Wehrmacht and the Holocaust in Belarus. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014.
- Beorn, Waitman Wade. The Holocaust in Eastern Europe: At the Epicenter of the Final Solution. London: Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2018.[10][11][12][13]
- Beorn, Waitman Wade. "Understanding the Holocaust in the Context of the Second World War." In Understanding and Teaching the Holocaust, edited by Laura Hilton and Avinoam Patt. Madison WI: Wisconsin University Press, 2020.
- Beorn, Waitman Wade. "All the Other Neighbors: Communal Genocide in Eastern Europe." In The Wiley Blackwell Companion to the Holocaust, edited by Hilary Earl and Simone Gigliotti, 153-72. Hoboken, MJ: Wiley and Sons, 2020.
- Beorn, Waitman Wade. "Unraveling Janowska: Excavating an Understudied Camp through Spatial Testimonies." In Beyond "Ordinary Men": Christopher R. Browning and Holocaust Historiography edited by Thomas Pegelow Kaplan, Jürgen Matthäus and Mark W. Hornburg, 250-68. Paderborn: Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, 2019.
- Beorn, Waitman Wade. "Safe Simulations? Best Practices for Exercising History in the Classroom." In Teaching Genocide: Insights and Advice from Secondary Teachers and Professors, edited by Samuel Totten, 125-32. New York: Rowman Littlefield, 2018.
- Beorn, Waitman Wade. "Bodily Conquest: Sexual Violence in the Nazi East." In Mass Violence in Nazi-Occupied Europe, edited by Alex J Kay and David Stahel, 195-215. Bloomington, Indiana USA: Indiana University Press, 2018.
- Beorn, Waitman Wade. "Killing on the Ground and in the Mind: The Spatialities of Genocide in the East." In Geographies of the Holocaust, edited by Anne Kelly Knowles, Tim Cole and Alberto Giordano, 89-118. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2014.
References
- "Waitman Wade Beorn | Northumbria University - Academia.edu". northumbria.academia.edu. Retrieved 29 November 2020.
- "Waitman Beorn". www.northumbria.ac.uk. Retrieved 2020-12-26.
- "Holocaust Geographies Collaborative". holocaustgeographies.org. Retrieved 2020-12-26.
- Staff, Gateway (2014-05-06). "UNO Professsor awarded Harvard University Press book prize". Gateway. Retrieved 2020-12-26.
- "HFG || Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation". www.hfg.org. Retrieved 2020-12-26.
- "NEH grant details: Between the Wires: The Janowska Camp and the Holocaust in Lviv". securegrants.neh.gov. Retrieved 2020-12-26.
- "Announcing Our New Fellows for 2013/2014". USC Shoah Foundation. Retrieved 2020-12-26.
- "NSF Award Search: Award#0820487 - Collaborative Research: Holocaust Historical GIS". nsf.gov. Retrieved 2020-12-26.
- "Waitman Wade Beorn | Northumbria University - Academia.edu". northumbria.academia.edu. Retrieved 2020-12-26.
- Boboc, Daniel-Valeriu (2019). "The Holocaust in Eastern Europe: At the Epicenter of the Final Solution (Waitman Wade Beorn)". Holocaust. Studii şi cercetări. XI (12): 208–2012. ISSN 2065-6602.
- "Lazar on Beorn, 'The Holocaust in Eastern Europe: At the Epicenter of the Final Solution' | H-Judaic | H-Net". networks.h-net.org.
- Mezger, Caroline (2018). "The Holocaust in Eastern Europe: At the Epicenter of the Final Solution". German History. 36 (4): 664–666. doi:10.1093/gerhis/ghy069.
- Pastushenko, Tetiana (2019). "Waitman Wade Beorn, The Holocaust in Eastern Europe: At the Epicenter of the Final Solution". European History Quarterly. 49 (2): 305–307. doi:10.1177/0265691419839585b.