Testimony: The Holocaust in Literature, Theory and Visual Culture

Descriptif

In this seminar, we will examine a range of texts, literary, cinematic and theoretical, that pay attention to the memory of the holocaust or shoah. We will quickly discover that at the heart of any effort to think about this event is the problem of representation, embodied in the inadequacy of either of these names in naming it. This problem of representation, we'll see, leads creative artists, survivors, comic writers, novelists, film-makers, as well as critical theorists, to unorthodox styles of engagement. The texts will be read on equal terms, and so the course will in part depend on a willingness to think different media ' film, critical theory and the 'graphic novel' - alongside of more traditional literary genres such as the novel and lyric poetry (as well as to commit to presence at film screenings). As well as thinking about representation, we will focus on the body, memory, trauma, including intergenerational trauma, gender and the holocaust, and form. Our reading will be guided by the need to think the holocaust in what one critic describes as 'multi-directional' terms: to refuse, that is, to quarantine it from other acts of atrocity and insist on its uniqueness. But we will also try to understand it with a sense of its historical particularity.

Stufe:

BA

Fächer:

Literatur

Hochschultyp:

Universitäre Hochschulen (UH)