RELI 332 - The Holocaust: Witnesses and Representations

This course explores Holocaust memory and representation in Europe, Israel and the United States through various media and genres from diaries, memoirs and oral testimonies to Yiddish and Hebrew poetry, second generation graphic novels and film to memorial gardens and resistance monuments, archives and museums. We engage with some of the most fundamental questions of memory and Holocaust trauma from multiple perspectives and contexts. Is it possible to communicate the horrors of the concentration camp? Who has the right to speak about the Holocaust? How does "Jewish" memory of the Holocaust shape our understanding of the history of Nazism, genocide, World War II and its aftermath? In what ways, has Holocaust memory become associated with movements for historical justice and human rights, in particular, in the United States?