HIST 4294 Holocaust Literature: History, Memory, Legacy

An overview of the history and legacy of the Shoah (Holocaust) followed by an examination of the variety of literary responses by literary witnesses and survivors, as well as by writers removed from the wartime horrors by distance, time, country, and language. Questions of metaphysics, ideology, ethics, aesthetics, memory, and cultural theory as formulated and debated in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and discursive writings. The readings include works originally written in Russian, Yiddish, Polish, German, Italian, French, and English by Ilya Selvinsky, Vasily Grossman, Ilya Ehrenburg, Avrom Sutzkever, Tadeusz Borowski, Paul Celan, Primo Levi, Theodor Adorno, Elie Wiesel, Vladimir Nabokov, Hannah Arendt, Arthur Miller, W. G. Sebald and others. All the required readings will be in English translation.