JWST262 - Representations of the Holocaust

The course explores an aspect of 20th-century literature intensively; specific course topics will vary from year to year. Fall 2016 - REPRESENTATION OF THE HOLOCAUST IN LITERATURE AND FILM: This discussion-centered course is about the enormous difficulties faced by those who felt the urgent need to describe their own or others' experiences during the genocide of the European Jews, 1933-1945. We will explore the complex options they have faced as narrators, witnesses, allegorists, memoirists, scholars, teachers, writers and image-makers. Some linguistically (or visually) face the difficulty head on; most evade, avoid, repress, stutter or go silent, and agonize. One purpose of the course is for us to learn how to sympathize with the struggle of those in the latter group. This is not a history course, although the vicissitudes of historiography will be a frequent topic of conversation. Students will write frequent short papers, called position papers, due before class, in order to provide a basis for discussion. Students need not know anything about the Holocaust, although enrollees should consider historical reading over the summer.