271: Genre: Film & Literature of the Holocaust
“There is a crack in everything. / That’s how the light gets in.” – Leonard Cohen
In this course, we will explore themes of trauma, resistance, and healing in film and literature of the Holocaust. We will situate the Holocaust within its historical, literary, and filmic contexts, and explore works by Holocaust survivors and their descendants. Literature and film themes will include background on the Armenian genocide and a focus on the ongoing history, culture, and arts practices of populations targeted during the Holocaust, such as Eastern European Jews, Romani people, queer people, people with disabilities, and Eastern European ethnic groups.
We will read works of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and hybrid genres; writing by women, men, and queer-identified writers; and writing within occupied territories and in worldwide diasporas. Topics of focus may include, among others, writing the body and the senses, intersectional expressions of identity; frameworks, definitions, and aesthetics of resistance; and multilingual dimensions of resistance literature.
You will have the opportunity to examine and experiment with a variety of writing genres, and to workshop your writing in formats including group workshop, peer workshop, and discussion board workshop. We will discuss craft elements of each genre and ways that these elements can be applied across genres. We will also explore writing strategies, and you will have a chance to discuss your writing process, writing goals, and preferences in terms of genre and craft.
Some questions to consider:
We all interact with the world through the body and through the senses – taste, touch, smell, sound, sight. How do the senses influence our communities, including food culture, decorative arts, and other community traditions?
How do we write as individuals who live in bodies marked for categories such as race, ethnicity, gender, nationality, dis/ability, and socioeconomic class? What does it mean to write when we have been marked as “other” in terms of one or more of these categories? How do we understand and construct our own identities within the framework of multiple categories of belonging and non-belonging, including membership in language-based communities?
Major Assignments will include 5000 words of polished prose, broken up into weekly blog posts, writing workshops, three short papers, and a final exam, which will involve a collaborative exploration of creative responses and publishing options.
- Blog Posts – 15 points – Based on Prompts for Critical and Creative Writing
- Paper 1 – 15 points – Genre and Craft
- Paper 2 – 20 points – The Body, The Senses, and Healing From Trauma
- Paper 3 – 20 points – Personal Narrative
- Workshop – 10 points – Writing Portfolio and Process Paper
- Final Exam – 5 points
- Attendance – 10 points
- Participation – 5 points
Attendance is mandatory.