Personalia
Judith Keilbach, born in Bietigheim, Germany, in 1969. Ph.D. from the Freie Universität Berlin. Assistant Professor of Media Studies at Utrecht University.
Fellow (1 September 2014 – 31 January 2015)
Televising the Eichmann Trial. Technological, Institutional and Political Contentions of a Transnational Media Event
Research Question
The project researches the television coverage of the Eichmann trial (1961) from a media-historical perspective. It analyses the transnational co-operations, the technical and institutional contentions, and the political contexts to understand the differences between national television programs about the trial and to place its coverage within the changing media landscape of the early 1960s.
Project Description
The trial against Adolf Eichmann is one of the first transnational television events. Journalists from all over the world were in Jerusalem to report on the proceedings. The trial was not only covered in the printed press and on radio, but also recorded for television. This research project focuses on the technical and institutional preconditions that facilitated the television broadcasts. Furthermore it discusses the historical and political context of the trial and explores the transnational collaboration, negotiations and conflicts before and during the recording of the proceedings. Beyond analyzing a particular media constellation the project also provides an insight into the making of global media events and addresses Cold War politics and the changing global media landscape.
Selected Publications
1) Collecting, Indexing and Digitizing Survivors. Holocaust Testimonies in the Digital Age. In: Holocaust Intersections. Genocide and Visual Culture at the New Millennium. Ed. by Axel Bangert, Robert C. S. Gordon and Libby Saxton. Oxford: Legenda, 2013: 46-63.
2) Photographs, Symbolic Images, and the Holocaust. On the (Im)Possibility of Depicting Historical Truth. In: History and Theory, Theme Issue 47 (Historical Representation and Historical Truth), (2009): 54-76.
3) Geschichtsbilder und Zeitzeugen. Zur Darstellung des Nationalsozialismus im bundesdeutschen Fernsehen. Münster: Lit Verlag, 2008.