ENGL 248T(S) Bearing Witness (W)

"And I only am escaped alone to tell thee," says the messenger who reports back to Job the disaster he has witnessed. This course will focus on the figure of the "sole survivor," the one who alone returns from a harrowing ordeal to tell the world the story of what happened. We will ask: what motives and pressures propel the lone survivor to narrate the experience s/he has undergone? how do these pressures influence the shaping of the story? In what ways do the stories of "sole survivors" become part of a collective, social account? In the first section of the course, students will read a number of pre-20th-century narratives of "sole survival," including the books of Job and Ezekial from the Old Testament, Dante's Inferno, and Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell. The final two sections of the course will each focus on a 20th-century historical event in which survivor testimony has played an important role: the Holocaust (here, materials will include Lanzmann's documentary film Shoah, Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz, the poetry of Paul Celan, and Art Spiegelman's Mauss); and the proceedings of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission following the dismantling of apartheid (here, materials will include transcripts of testimony, the Handspring Theater's Ubu and the Truth Commission, and Antjie Krog's Country of my Skull).
Format: tutorial. Students will meet in pairs with the instructor once a week; one student will present a short analytical paper on the texts covered that week, and the other will write a response paper and join the instructor in a discussion of both papers. Evaluation will be based on the quality of written work, discussions and oral presentations.
Prerequisite: 100-level English course, except 150. Enrollment limit: 10 (Expected: 10). Preference given to sophomores.
(Post-1900)

Tutorial meetings to be arranged. SWANN