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Holocaust Literature and Film

Critical Thinking

Course Description

An examination of a variety of European and American literary and critical texts and films dealing with the Holocaust and its aftermath.

Additional Requirements for Graduate Students:
Graduate students in this course will have to read additional secondary literature on the topic, will be expected to give a longer (20 minutes) oral presentation, and will write a longer (15 pages) research final paper. The syllabus will include a separate bibliography for graduate students which will consist of literary criticism, literary theory, and critical theory texts on the subject of the Holocaust. The graduate students will be required to master the theoretical underpinnings and ramifications of Holocaust studies and to demonstrate that mastery in their oral presentations and in the final comparative research paper.

Athena Title

Holocaust Literature and Film

Undergraduate Prerequisite

Experience engaging critically with literary or other texts and experience developing and expressing ideas in written and oral form.

Graduate Prerequisite

Experience engaging critically with literary or other texts and experience developing and expressing ideas in written and oral form.

Semester Course Offered

Offered every year.

Grading System

A - F (Traditional)

Student Learning Outcomes

  • Students will be able to interpret the formal, aesthetic, and creative elements of literary, cinematic, and cultural texts and the social and historical contexts in which they circulate, specifically WWII in Europe and the Holocaust.
  • Students will be able to investigate, analyze, synthesize, and demonstrate knowledgeably and coherently, in written and oral form, various topics dealing with the artistic and literary interpretation of the Holocaust.
  • Students will be able to develop, support, and express ideas in written and oral form using language with clarity and precision in coherent, cohesive essays, and/or oral presentations.
  • Students will be able to synthesize competing positions into an original argument supported by textual evidence.

Topical Outline

  • The course will focus on the prose, poetry, film, and music from the time of the Holocaust and /or produced in its aftermath. The topical foci of the course are as follows: trauma, memory, guilt, testimony, the difficulty of adequate representation, silence, post-memory.
  • Sample authors will include Janusz Korczak, Ghetto Diary
  • Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz
  • Jurek Becker, Jacob the Liar
  • Imre Kertész, Fatelessness
  • Art Spiegelman, The Complete Maus
  • Alain Resnais, Night and Fog
  • Claude Lanzmann, Shoah
  • Steven Spielberg, Schindler’s List
  • Roberto Benigni, Life Is Beautiful
  • Sidney Lumet, The Pawnbroker

Institutional Competencies

Critical Thinking

The ability to pursue and comprehensively evaluate information before accepting or establishing a conclusion, decision, or action.


Syllabus

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