ARTH 363 The Holocaust Visualized (Same as Literary Studies 363) (Not offered 1998-99)

This course will examine how memories of the Holocaust have been conveyed through visual means and consider what historical, cultural and political circumstances have caused various nations to remember the Holocaust differently. We will discuss the issues prompted by public memorials, exhibitions and, as one writer puts it, the "museumification" of concentration camps. How should we define the Holocaust? Whose memory should take precedence? What is lost or gained by the inclusion of texts with images? How might memory be misrepresented by the exhibition of visual materials such as video testimony, photographs and artifacts? In addition, we will study art about the Holocaust, including Art Spiegelman's non-comic "comic book" Maus and non-fiction films such as Night and Fog, Shoah and Schindler's List, to ask whether constructed or simulated images can convey the experience of the Holocaust as well as documentary ones.
Requirements: active participation in class discussion and regular participation in a class listserver discussion group, class trip to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, one oral presentation, and one research paper. No exams. No prerequisites, but course not open to auditors or first-year students. (This course is part of the new Jewish Studies cluster.)

E. GRUDIN