While doing the assigned readings, I thought that perhaps the best place to examine social interactions between site and readers and gauge reactions to Holocaust memorials and their relation to contemporary issues like the immigration debate (my research focus) would be personal blogs. However, after skimming several I realized this would not be appropriate-- they were too emotionally loaded and polemic. Instead I stuck to more mainstream sites:
Holocaust Memorials and Public Memory
Lists and discusses the Holocaust memorials and the role they play in commemorating the event, creating public awareness of the facts, and enhancing public empathy and memory.
List of Holocaust Memorials in Amsterdam
Lists and depicts existing memorials; this would be something to physcially follow up on while in Amsterdam. Basis for James E. Young-type work, I would want to gauge reactions to these.
The Virtual Jewish History Tour: Netherlands
Provides context and describes horror and scale of the Holocaust. This is an interesting social relationship to examine: how the site communicates the devastation of WWII to its viewers. This would be within the realm of my research interests...
Blog: Islam in Europe
Links to articles regarding the immigration debate in Amsterdam. Organized by topic...
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Excellent post, with wonderfully rich resources. Perhaps mournfully, I cling to James Young's work on monuments being in the background, even as your approach is clearly torqued toward the interactivity of such sites. To that end, Erving Goffman might be interesting. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erving_Goffman
(Hopefully one of our summer speakers will be addressing Goffman's work: Leon Deben.)
This is a great topic: it combines memory, ethnography, and monuments. The topic of "empathy" may well figure into your research question: there's a rich history of how empathy comes to function (in terms of its connection to space, you might want to check out the very strange ABSTRACTION AND EMPATHY by Wilhelm Worringer: but see me for context). Empathy showed up in the 19th century as a means of interacting with psychiatric patients (see Lanzoni's article, "The Epistemology of the Clinic," in the journal CRITICAL INQUIRY:
http://criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/issues/v30/30n1.Lanzoni.html
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