Charlotte A. Kiechel

Biography

Charlotte Kiechel is a historian of modern Europe. Her research interests include the history of human rights, decolonization, and Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Her first monograph, The Politics of Comparison: Holocaust Memory and the Making of the Third World: A Global History, which is under preparation, contextualizes the political uses of Holocaust references and the genocide term in the Cold War’s global anticolonial and anti-atrocity networks. By following the public protests forged by a diverse range of activists—including West German Maoists, French socialists, Biafran nationalists, and Vietnamese communists, The Politics of Comparison shows the meaningful – and often surprising – ways in which Holocaust references informed the Cold War’s anticolonial and anti-atrocity discourses. When published, The Politics of Comparison will be the first monograph to demonstrate, in an archivally-grounded fashion, how in the 1950s and 1960s western European and Third World elites incorporated Holocaust references in their state-making and anti-atrocity political calls to action. 

Kiechel’s past and forthcoming journal articles engage a similar set of themes, often focusing on the legacies of European colonialism and political responses to violence. Her work has been published in Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal. In summer/fall 2023, her research will be featured in Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development and Edward Elgar’s Handbook of Genocide Studies.

Her work has been supported by international research institutions such as the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah, DAAD, the Max Weber Foundation, USC Shoah Foundation Center, the German Historical Institute, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. In 2019, Kiechel was a Fox Fellow to the Institut d’Études Politiques (Sciences-Po), as well as an affiliate of L’école normale supérieure–both in Paris. Kiechel earned her B.A. from Williams College and received her M.Phil. and Ph.D. in degrees, both in history, from Yale University. 

Theses Advised

Olamide Odeyeri ’23 – Addressing Coloniality in Historical Knowledge Production: A Study of the Early Annales School’s Underemphasized Relations to the Colonial World (1929-1939)