ClassInfo

THIS COURSE IS TAUGHT IN ENGLISH. NO KNOWLEDGE OF GERMAN REQUIRED. THERE ARE NO PREREQUISITES

Seventy-five years after the end of the second world war, the Holocaust continues to play a formative role in public discourse about the past not only in Germany and Austria, but in the U.S. as well. As the event itself recedes into the past, our knowledge about the Holocaust has become increasingly shaped by literary and filmic representations of it. This course has several objectives: first, to deepen students' historical knowledge of the events and experiences of the Holocaust, and at the same time to introduce critical models for examining the relationship between personal experience, historical events, and forms of representation. This course will introduce students to the debates about the politics of memory and the artistic representation of the Holocaust, with special focus on public debates about the complex ways in which Holocaust memory surfaces in contemporary Germany and Austria, and by the accrual of layers of text and discourse about the Holocaust. We will explore the controversies and debates about public Holocaust memorialization in Germany, Austria, and the U.S. We will also explore the complex interplay between documentary and fictional accounts of the Holocaust, with attention paid to literature and films that challenge and "remediate" the limits of Holocaust representation. Additional topics will include Holocaust testimony; Holocaust memoirs, and 2^nd
and 3^rd generation Holocaust literature, the Historians' Debate of the 1980s. Writers/filmmakers will include Heimrad Bäcker, Rob Fitterman, Art Spiegelman, Georges Perec, W.G. Sebald, Peter Weiss, Charles Reznikoff, Alan Sondheim, H.G. Adler, Günther Grass, Primo Levi, Paul Celan, Harun Farocki, Daniel Blaufuks, Alain Resnais, and Claude Lanzmann.

This course addresses the Student Learning Outcome of mastering a body of knowledge and a mode of inquiry. The range of materials we will read and discuss in this class will help students to ascertain the key historical, philosophical and aesthetic questions that are at the heart of Holocaust studies today. Students will learn how to evaluate and think critically about the vast amount of information on the Holocaust that is available. The Holocaust is a topic with which many students already feel a degree of familiarity: they have read novels and memoirs, seen Hollywood films about the Holocaust, and in general have a relationship of some sort to this pivotal moment in western culture. This course will introduce students to writers, thinkers, and artists who offer new and challenging ways to approach the Holocaust, in particular about the artistic forms that Holocaust memory takes. The class is intended to enable students to gain new knowledge about the Holocaust that will help them in the critical evaluation of questions about the artistic representation of the Holocaust, the politics of Holocaust memory, and the interplay between document and source in Holocaust historiography. In addition, students will develop critical skills of contextualizing and interpreting historical and cultural material, with a focus on how to formulate and execute an argument for a paper.