David Patterson (born 1948)[1] 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.[2] He is the Hillel A. Feinberg Distinguished Chair in Holocaust Studies.[2] 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".[3]