David Patterson (historian)

David Patterson (born 1948) is a historian and professor at the Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies, University of Texas at Dallas. Patterson's areas of expertise are Holocaust, Jewish Thought, Anti-Semitism and Israel. He is the Hillel A. Feinberg Distinguished Chair in Holocaust Studies. Patterson is author of a study of Holocaust memoir literature and said that reading of first person testimonials has a function, the reader "must become not an interpreter of texts but a mender of the world, a part of the recovery that this memory demands".