CTSJ 158 The Politics of Holocaust Memory
This course serves as an introduction to the field of cultural memory studies, using Holocaust memory and memorialization as an in-depth case study. After surveying theoretical approaches to individual and collective memory, we explore how genre, politics, and national culture shaped the emergency of Holocaust memory, the potentials and pitfalls of witness testimony, as well as complex forms of transmission across generations. We consider how Holocaust memory has been institutionalized in museums and archives, its ambivalent globalization in recent decades, and ensuing dilemmas of political responsibility and post-traumatic representation. Students also have an opportunity to visit and interrogate public sites of memory in Los Angeles. Throughout, we engage the general theories and methods of cultural memory studies to reflect on the possibilities and limits of collective memory for understanding historical atrocities, enacting justice, and preventing ongoing violence.
Cross Listed Courses
HIST 158