ClassInfo

THIS COURSE IS TAUGHT IN ENGLISH. THERE ARE NO PREREQUISITES

Decades after the end of the second world war, the Holocaust continues to play a formative role in public discourse about the past in Germany and Austria. 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 class 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 literary and film texts 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.