JWST 280 - Re-presenting the Holocaust: Religion, Media, Literature, and the Arts

Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)

(Same as MEDS 280 and RELI 280) This course will examine contemporary re-considerations and representations of the Holocaust. What, exactly, was it as an historical and political event? What are its moral, philosophical, theological and religious implications? How has it been represented via various religious, artistic, political and social mediations? Theoretical and philosophical approaches will comprise selections from the work of James Young, Dominick LaCapra, Marianne Hirsch and Sidra Ezrahi. We will also consider artistic representations in films, literature and graphic novels from the work of Primo Levi, Aaron Appelfeld, and Claude Lanzmann to Art Spiegelman’s Maus and Spielberg’s Schindler’s List. Some central religious and theological issues under consideration will be those of representation, authenticity, appropriateness and uniqueness, the role of memory and post-memory, the problems and limits of language, questions of trauma, and the development of post-Holocaust identities. Ms. Veto.

Two 75-minute periods.