May be elected eight times for credit. May be elected more than once in the same term.
This seminar will enable participants to grapple with the Holocaust as a historical event, and to explore its impact on Jewish (and non-Jewish) thought and culture. The first—briefer—part of the course will survey the historical context: the European Jewish community on the eve of the destruction, and the events leading up to and culminating in that destruction. The second part of the course will focus on inner Jewish (and non-Jewish) reactions to the Holocaust: its representation in literature, art, and architecture, and the philosophical and ethical implications for those of us who come "after." Historical writing, film, memoir, poetry and the graphic novel, theology, art and architecture (and conversations with survivors) will all be treated as sources for exploration. This course demands engagement—intellectual, emotional, ethical—but the rewards for such engagement are, I believe, considerable. Rooted in the specificities of one watershed event (the Holocaust), our inquiry will open out to address fundamental questions of being human: how we treat (or “see”) the Other; how memory is shaped; the interplay between hatred and indifference; the dynamics of trauma and resilience; and how our understanding of these events has evolved over the years.