Literature and History of the Holocaust

Course Description

Summary

The Holocaust is one of the most ethically challenging, traumatic, and consequential occurrences in modern history. This seminar aims to give students a granular understanding of the mass oppression, enslavement, and genocide that occurred in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, in order to then consider how it has been represented in poetry, drama, fiction, and nonfiction both by survivors of the this historical humanitarian crisis and those who've followed. As we consider how writers tell stories about trauma or emerging out of trauma, we will discuss both realist and non-realist approaches, the power of testimony and the role of defamiliarization and innovation, the risks of appropriation and aestheticization and kitsch, and the prevalence of fragmentation and nonlinear narrative in Holocaust literature. Does subject matter dictate the way a story must be told? Who owns this history? Who may speak? All the required readings will deal with genocide and, therefore, may be extraordinarily upsetting. Writers we will study may include Martin Amis, Tadeusz Borowski, Paul Celan, Ida Fink, Vasily Grossman, Imre Kertesz,  Cynthia Ozick, Miklós Radnóti, Chava Rosenfarb, Nelly Sachs, Martin Sherman, Art Spiegelman, Cecil Philip Taylor, DM Thomas, and Elie Wiesel. Students should expect to participate actively in discussions, do a presentation, take a midterm exam, and write two essays.