The
Holocaust
This writing
intensive course introduces you to the genre of life writing and specifically
to memoirs, diaries, films, poems, biographies, and fiction about the
Holocaust. You’ll explore the difficult options that authors face when they are
witnesses or survivors, children or grandchildren, or writers of short stories
and fiction. You’ll learn how the
genocides of World War II—the systematic murder of Jews, Slavs, black Germans,
Roma, homosexuals, disabled people, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and political opponents
of the Nazis–have influenced our understanding of contemporary genocide
campaigns. You’ll come to recognize
the high stakes involved in writing, reading, and critically thinking about
what we define as Holocaust life writing.
Texts: Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz; Art Spiegelman, Maus:
My Father Bleeds History;Elie Weisel, Night;Cynthia
Ozick,The Shawl.
Website materials on the poetry of Paul Celan and Charlotte Delbo and others.
Requirements: Series of essays and revisions, midterm,
final, reading quizzes.