Responding to Challenges with Holocaust and Genocide Literacy Curriculum in Times of Rising Ethnoreligious Nationalism

Paper 1 outlined how ethnoreligious nationalisms pose a looming challenge for literacy education. Against the backdrop of ethnoreligious nationalist literacies in Israel/Palestine and the US specifically, we detail challenges in teaching Holocaust and genocide texts in US classrooms, drawing on survey data and curriculum innovation projects developed by Michigan teachers.

For example, since October 7, 2023, the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has mobilized Israeli Jews toward intensifying perspectives on Palestinians (as a group) as “less than human.” While such dehumanization already circulated widely, to be sure, it intensified in the wake of atrocities perpetrated by Iran-backed Hamas, alongside other Palestinian armed groups, on October 7, 2023: An estimated 251 Israeli civilians  – including at least 36 children – were kidnapped and taken hostage, dozens of women and children were targeted and sexually assaulted, and 815 civilians were brutally murdered (Human Rights Watch, 2024). Hamas combines nationalism with Salafist interpretations of Islam and thus “seek a Palestinian state governed by Islamic Sharia law,” (Magarino, 2023), along the lines of Iran’s Islamic Republic. On the other hand, Netanyahu’s mobilization of Jewish nationalist sentiments – fueled by the October 7th attacks – has contributed to conditions making possible Israel’s heinous assault on Gaza, an atrocity and human rights crisis of staggering scope that has injured 87,903 civilians, displaced approximately 1.7 million people (estimated to be 75% of the total population of Gaza), and killed more than 38,193 civilians, including over 10,000 women, 6000 mothers, and 14,500 children (UN Women, 2024).  The magnitude of human suffering and loss endured by Palestinians since October 2023 truly strains comprehension. This conflict – including widely conflicting interpretations about it in the US – exemplifies the rising force of ethnoreligious nationalism in our times and its role in state-sponsored atrocity and genocide.

But rising ethnoreligious nationalism is not just a faraway issue for US teachers, because White Christian nationalism – a form of ethnoreligious nationalism like Jewish nationalism in Israel or Islamic nationalism in Iran – is shaping our lives as citizens and teachers. The White Christian nationalist movement has coalesced around a set of ideas that propelled the second presidency of former President Donald Trump: First, the US is a chosen nation (in biblical terms, cast as a “new Israel”), divinely blessed by an America-preferring God. This idea is the basis of the doctrine of American exceptionalism. Rigid, clearly defined, God-ordained order must be maintained across the social order, from families to the nation: men over women, White people over other racial and ethnic groups, straight over queer people, US born over immigrants, and so on. Preserving God-given freedom (or liberty) is paramount, but only for White Christian men at the top of the hierarchy. For all others, authoritarian and violent forms of governance are needed to maintain God-given order in families, communities, the nation, and the world. Understanding White Christian nationalism illuminates the logic through which the following excerpt of US President Trump’s 2023 Veterans Day speech could make sense:

"And today…we pledge…that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical-left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, that lie and steal and cheat on elections and will do anything possible…to destroy America and to destroy the American dream. The real threat is not from the radical right. The real threat is from the radical left. And it is growing every day. Every single day. The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave than the threat from within."

Because of the swift rise and acceptance of White Christian nationalism among US voters and because of the broader context of Israel/Palestine, literacy educators are experiencing unprecedented pedagogical and curricular challenges in teaching Holocaust and genocide texts.

Genocide education is required by many state laws. The Michigan law, for example, mandates that students must learn about the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, and one other genocide. Yet as suggested by the work on White Christian nationalist school board rhetoric, teachers in many districts in the state are experiencing book challenges from parents who are plugged into well-organized White Christian nationalist networks. Such groups are pushing back on what "our children" are being exposed to in public schools.

With Holocaust literature instruction specifically, these groups nationally have advocated bans on certain texts, including for example Spiegelman’s comic Holocaust memoir, Maus (Burke et al, pp. 286, 291). This book was banned by a school board in Tennessee, purportedly because of concerns that it depicted naked mice figures. A White Christian nationalist logic becomes more evident with closer inspection of the text: Spiegelman’s sympathetic mouse protagonists (his parents, in the allegorical comic narrative) are eastern European Jewish immigrants who not only endured racialization as non-White ethnoreligious Others but also suffered and survived death camps that were the central apparatus of state-sponsored Nazi genocide (Hitler’s Nazi state being a paradigmatic example of White ethnic nationalism appropriating Christian tropes, as discussed by Carroll). Instead of such (hi)stories, White Christian nationalism advocates for White dominant, Christian-centric stories to define secondary literacy curricula. Identifying such curricular campaigns as part of the White Christian nationalist movement directs explicit attention toward the ideologies of the United States as a divinely sanctioned model nation ruled by an authoritarian Christian God who presides over a hierarchical social order with White, English-speaking, native-born, US citizens at its top.

Framed by this concept of ethnoreligious nationalist literacies, this paper describes the example of a year-long teacher learning community about Holocaust and Genocide Curriculum for Gen Alpha for Michigan teachers, detailing a) diverse challenges English and social studies teachers are experiencing with teaching Holocaust and genocide texts given these broader geopolitical contexts, based on survey data generated in 2025, and b) curricular and instructional innovations teachers are generating in response to these challenges, based on data from teacher presentations given in spring 2025.