18th Annual Powell-Heller Conference for Holocaust Education
“More Than Dust: Reclaiming LGBTQ+ Voices of the Holocaust”
Speakers
Free and Open to the Public - Registration Required
Wednesday, November 4th
Jeremy Borison
Jeremy Borison is a filmmaker based in Los Angeles, whose work explores the intersection of religion and sexuality. His films have received grants from organizations including Micah Philanthropies, Aviv Foundation, and the Steven Spielberg supported Jewish Story Partners, for their efforts in creating discourse around LGBTQ inclusion in religious communities. Jeremy has been selected for various initiatives that explore art and religion, as an Asylum Arts Fellow, a writer for Imagination Productions, a Wexner Heritage fellow, and a Filmmaker in Residence for the Jewish Film Institute. His debut feature film, ‘Unspoken,’ which follows a closeted teenager in a religious community, premiered at the British Film Institute’s Flare Film Festival, and was awarded Best Narrative Film at the Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival and Out at the Movies. He is currently working on a documentary about the Supreme Court lawsuit between Yeshiva University and its Pride Alliance, regarding the Orthodox institution’s rejection of an LGTBQ club on campus.
Thursday, November 5th
Dr. Anna Hájková
Dr. Anna Hájková is Reader for modern European continental history at the University of Warwick, where she co-directs the Centre for Global Jewish Studies. Her first book, The Last Ghetto: An Everyday History of Theresienstadt, came out in 2020 with Oxford University Press. Her second book People Without History are Dust: Queer Desire in the Holocaust (University of Toronto Press, 2025) was awarded the National Jewish Book Award 2026. She is a pioneer of queer Holocaust history, and her work has been awarded the 2020 Orfeo Iris Prize.
The Love Markets
Laurie Marhoefer
Laurie Marhoefer is a historian of queer and transgender people in Germany from the turn of the twentieth century through 1945. He has written many essays and two books, Sex and the Weimar Republic, a study of sexual politics and the Weimar Republic, and Racism and the Making of Gay Rights, a double biography of Magnus Hirschfeld and Li Shiu Tong that was shortlisted for the Susanne M. Glasscock Book Prize. He also co-wrote two amicus briefs for United States Supreme Court cases involving transgender rights. He has had visiting positions at the University of Oxford, the University of Toronto, and the University of Michigan, and won fellowships from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. He is currently writing Trans Berlin: The Jazz Age Story of Love, Survival, and the First Transgender Political Movement (forthcoming fall 2027 with Tiny Reparations Books (Penguin Random House US), The Bodley Head (Penguin Random House UK), Grupo Editorial Record (Brazil)). Marhoefer lives in Seattle and at the moment holds the Jon Bridgman Endowed Professorship of history at the University of Washington.
Friday, November 6th
Lisa Biton
Lisa Biton is an educator with over twenty years of experience teaching history and humanities in the United States and Israel. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Classical Studies and European History from Santa Clara University and a Master of Arts in Teaching from the University of Southern California. Lisa has taught diverse curricula with a focus on history, cultural identity, and global education. She recently served as Dean of Israel Studies at the Alexander Muss High School in Israel, where she was responsible for the curricular and programmatic development. Her current role as the head of the English-speaking Education Section at Yad Vashem focuses on developing educational programs and resources that engage international English-speaking audiences with Holocaust history, memory, and contemporary relevance.
Samuel Clowes Huneke
Samuel Clowes Huneke is associate professor of history at George Mason University. A historian of modern Europe, his work focuses on gender and sexuality in twentieth-century Germany. He is the author of States of Liberation: Gay Men between Dictatorship and Democracy in Cold War Germany (2022), A Queer Theory of the State (2023), and I Will Not Abandon You: Queer Women in Nazi Germany (2026).
