Photo credit: "The Last Jew in Vinnitsa," Photograph Number 64407, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum courtesy of Sharon Paquette.
Course Description
In this hybrid course, we will use digital humanities tools--including both the analysis of digital texts and the use of digital tools to apply to traditional texts--to study the memorialization of the Holocaust and other genocides. Surveying Holocaust literature and history, we will develop an understanding of what kinds of tools have traditionally formulated the archive and how it structures our cultural memory of this tragedy of the 20th century, and how more contemporary technology can provide, problematize, promote, and prevent different types of memory. We will develop analyses of Holocaust memorials, digital projects that engage in memorialization of the Holocaust, and will look forward to think through the ways in which changing technology alter the concept of the memorial and memory itself .
The first half of the course will be devoted to tools that help us visualize space and time in conversation with the experiences of Holocaust victims, perpetrators, bystanders, military and civilian. The second half of the course will develop our story-telling capacities in relation to Holocaust memory. Ultimately, this class is an experiment in how we can engage differently with stories. As such, our projects will not take the form of traditional essays composed of literary analysis, but instead will employ different means of illuminating aspects of the texts we study. Furthermore, it will involve lots of play, false starts, and unexpected roads. This syllabus is more tentative than usual, because I will adapt the class to meet student needs and interests.
The first half of the course will be devoted to tools that help us visualize space and time in conversation with the experiences of Holocaust victims, perpetrators, bystanders, military and civilian. The second half of the course will develop our story-telling capacities in relation to Holocaust memory. Ultimately, this class is an experiment in how we can engage differently with stories. As such, our projects will not take the form of traditional essays composed of literary analysis, but instead will employ different means of illuminating aspects of the texts we study. Furthermore, it will involve lots of play, false starts, and unexpected roads. This syllabus is more tentative than usual, because I will adapt the class to meet student needs and interests.
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How do we create ethical memorials? How do we appropriately engage with memorials, remembrances, and representations of genocide? |
What is the purpose of the remembrance of genocide? How do we honor the victims without turning them into martyrs or sacrificial figures? |
What can digital means offer the prospect of genocide remembrance? What potential problems accompany the technological turn of memory culture? |
