| Description |
In the immediate aftermath of the cataclysmic event of the Holocaust the philosopher and sociologist Theodor W. Adorno interrogated the meaning of ‘culture’ after the failure of culture. In contemporary discourse, the Holocaust has long since turned into a marketable icon of suffering. Indeed, the encroachment on the victims’ memory of what has contentiously been called the “Holocaust industry” or, with a gruesome pun, “Shoah business,” is frequently perceived as threatening to pervert remembrance of this singular, unfathomable, and most inhumanly destructive occurrence in history. Adorno’s often quoted ‘dictum’ that it is “barbaric” to write poetry “after Auschwitz” (1949) triggered an ongoing discussion about the value and the significance of the representation of the Holocaust in cultural production. Many of the concerns informing this debate remain controversial, among them the questions of the memory of the Holocaust and its medial representations and of the potentially therapeutic value of confronting the emotional trauma of genocide in cultural production. More recently, the generic classification of what has been described as “Holocaust literature” has been challenged and its specificity questioned.
In this seminar, students will enter into these debates by enquiring into the ability of narrative, in literature, film, and other forms of memorialization (such as museums and memorials), to represent the ‘unrepresentable,’ by exploring the use of these narratives as ‘history,’ and by investigating the so-called “Americanization” of the Holocaust.
Required Reading: Students should ensure to have read each text prior to the relevant seminar session as indicated in the schedule on ILIAS. Additional material, including the short stories, will be made available on ILIAS.
Novels:
Edward Lewis Wallant, The Pawnbroker (1961; PDF available on ILIAS)
Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces (1996)
Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated (2002)
Tova Reich, My Holocaust (2007)
Graphic Novels:
Bernard Krigstein, “Master Race” (1955)
Art Spiegelman, The Complete Maus (1996; 1986, 1992)
Short Stories:
Rebecca Goldstein, “The Legacy of Raizel Kaidish” (1993)
Thane Rosenbaum, “The Cattle Car Complex” (1996)
Erika Dreifus, “Homecomings” (2011)
Nathan Englander, “What We Talk about When We Talk about Anne Frank” (2011)
Films:
Judgment at Nuremberg, dir. Stanley Kramer (1961; excerpts)
Schindler’s List, dir. Steven Spielberg (1993) |
User:
Öffentlicher Bereich
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