HYM4290 - Holocaust memories: Landscape, mourning, identity

Leader(s): Associate Professor Mark Baker

Offered

Not offered in 2009

Synopsis

This unit will trace the changing contours of Holocaust memory from its inception to the present day. Topics include witnessing, survivor testimony, second-generation memoirs, representations of the Holocaust in cinema, photography, museums, literature and online, the practices of 'death camp tourism', the memory debates of Germany and Poland and the globalising of Holocaust memory, the relationship that remembering the Holocaust has to Jewish identity and to Jewish political existence, questions of ethics 'after Auschwitz', and the rise of Holocaust denial.

Objectives

Students completing this unit will have the ability to:

1. understand differences between individual, collective, and official memories of the Holocaust
2. have researched different mediums in which Holocaust memory is transmitted including testimony, literature, memorials, cinema, museums, annual days of remembrance
3. have engaged with theoretical debates about the relationship between history and memory and modern participation in remembrance practices
4. understand some of the ways in which memory informs personal and national identities
5. have formulated their own arguments on key issues of Holocaust memory, informed by the relevant primary sources and secondary readings.

Assessment

Seminar Participation: 10%; Short Essay (3000 words): 30%; Research Essay (6000 words): 60%.

Contact hours

One 2 hour seminar

Prohibitions

HSY4290, HYM5290