Timeline: Spring

• Part I: Human Rights and the Memory of Judgment: Famous Trials of the Holocaust on Film
  

  • Week 1: The Legacy of Nuremberg and the "Look" of Authenticity
    

  • Week 2: The Banality of Evil: The Eichmann Trial
    

  • Week 3: "Did Six Million Really Die?": Holocaust Deniers and the Law, Part 1
    

  • Week 4: "Did Six Million Really Die?": Holocaust Deniers and the Law, Part 2
    

• Part II: Ethical and Aesthetic Issues in Representing the Holocaust
  

  • Week 5: Visualizing the Unvisualizable: the Holocaust as Negative Sublime
    

  • Week 6: Psychoanalysis, Trauma and Survivor Testimonies
    

  • Week 7: Between Fact and Fiction: Shoah-business and Tales of Heroism
    

  • Week 8: Templates of Horror and Sexuality
    

  • Week 9: Humor and the Holocaust
    

• Part III: Narrative Templates of the Holocaust and Human Rights
  

  • Key Questions for Weeks 10-15
    

  • Week 10: Consultations on Final Papers and Final Presentations.
    

  • Week 11: The Hollywood and New German Versions of the Holocaust.
    

  • Week 12: Black Humor
    

  • Propaganda, Resistance, Positionality and Representations of the Holocaust
    

  • Week 14: Mock Conference Presentations and Final Papers
    

  • Week 15: Final Exam Week
    

Part I:  Human Rights and the Memory of Judgment:  Famous Trials of the Holocaust on Film [top]

Week 1:  The Legacy of Nuremberg and the "Look" of Authenticity [top]

Overall View of the Course
Lesson on film form
If there is time, one of the films will be shown in class
Assignment for week 2

Key Questions:

1. How does the materiality of film (its emphasis on the visual, its "preference" for narrative "progression," its "documentary" nature) affect our willingness or unwillingness to believe what we see?  (Introduction to film form vocabulary as well.)
2. What legacies have the Nuremberg trials left us?
3. What are the relations between history, literature and film, in representing the Holocaust?

Films (A selection to be shown on Thursday, January 8):Nuremberg/Nazi Concentration Camps (documentary), Judgment at Nuremberg and Nuremberg; one of the films for week 2 will also be shown at this time.

Required Readings:

Lawrence Douglas, The Memory of Judgment: Making Law and History in the Trials of the Holocaust (New Haven and London:  Yale University Press, 2001), chapters 1-3.

Supplementary Reading:

Raul Hilberg, Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders (HarperPerennial, 1993).

Geoffrey Robertson, Crimes Against Humanity: The Struggle for Global Justice (New York: The New Press, 2000), Chapter 1.

Week 2:  The Banality of Evil:  The Eichmann Trial [top]

Films:  The Specialist and The Wannsee Conference
Excerpts will be shown in class.

Key Questions: 

1. What was unique about the Eichmann trial?
2. What have been some past and contemporary challenges to the promotion and protection of international human rights, and how has the individual body, in relation to the national and international bodies politic, been envisaged in relation to these challenges?
3. What roles do survivors, witnesses, third parties play in memorializing the Holocaust?

Required Readings:

Lawrence Douglas, The Memory of Judgment: Making Law and History in the Trials of the Holocaust (New Haven and London:  Yale University Press, 2001), chapters 4-6.

Supplementary Reading:

Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem (NY: Penguin, 1992).

Geoffrey Robertson, Crimes Against Humanity: The Struggle for Global Justice (New York: The New Press, 2000), Chapter 2.

Week 3:  "Did Six Million Really Die?": Holocaust Deniers and the Law, Part 1 [top]

All readings and activities for this week are suspended. Sign-ups for reports, as well as the tasks for the 2008 FSU Film and Literature Conference will be discussed. All activities associated with the conference are purely voluntary, and will not result in any deductions, should you opt not to assist in any way.

Films to be shown on January 24: Night and Fog and Shoah (part 1)

Key Questions:

1. What was unique about the Barbie case?
2. What is the definition of torture under international law, and what are the implicit depictions of the "healthy"/ "free" human body?
3. How are women's rights and bodies configured in relation to the rights and bodies of their children, and their spouses?
4. How are women's and children's bodies configured in relation to property?
5. How is the allure of Fascism portrayed in film and literature?

Film:  Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie (1988)

Required Readings:

Lawrence Douglas, The Memory of Judgment: Making Law and History in the Trials of the Holocaust (New Haven and London:  Yale University Press, 2001), chapters 7-8.

George Steiner, The Portage to San Cristobal of AH (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).

Supplementary Reading:

Geoffrey Robertson, Crimes Against Humanity: The Struggle for Global Justice (New York: The New Press, 2000), Chapter 3

Week 4:  "Did Six Million Really Die?": Holocaust Deniers and the Law, Part 2 [top]

This is the week of the 2008 FSU Film and Literature Conference. All activities to be done in conjunction with the conference are voluntary, and count as bonus points. The official conference site is: http://www.carolinekaypicart.com/filmliteratureconf08/

Key Question:

1. How has international law responded to the challenge of Holocaust deniers?
2. How is the rise of Neo-Nazism and Holocaust denial portrayed in film and literature?

Film:  Mr. Death

Required Readings:

Lawrence Douglas, The Memory of Judgment: Making Law and History in the Trials of the Holocaust (New Haven and London:  Yale University Press, 2001), chapters 9-10.

Czeslaw Milosz, The Captive Mind (NY: Vintage, 1990).

Supplementary Reading:

Geoffrey Robertson, Crimes Against Humanity: The Struggle for Global Justice (New York: The New Press, 2000), Chapter 6.

Part II:  Ethical and Aesthetic Issues in Representing the Holocaust [top]

Week 5:  Visualizing the Unvisualizable: the Holocaust as Negative Sublime [top]

Student Reports Begin Here:

Key Questions:

What are the ethical issues involved in representing the Holocaust through a variety of media (film, literature, autobiographies and biographies, historical accounts, visual art)?

Films:  Night and Fog and Shoah  (part 1)

Required Readings: 

Michael Bernard-Donals and Richard Glejzer, Between Witness and Testimony:  The Holocaust and Limits of Representation (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2001), Chapters 1 and 5.

Reporter:_______________________________________

Elie Wiesel, The Elie Wiesel Trilogy(especially "Night") (NY: Hill and Wang, 1985).

Films to be shown on Thursday, Feb. 7: Shoah (part 2) and Schindler's List (part 1)

Week 6: Psychoanalysis, Trauma and Survivor Testimonies [top]

Key Questions: 

1.   How do we deal with the trauma of the Holocaust through film?

2.   What roles do survivor testimonies in film and literature play in memorializing the Holocaust?

Films:  Shoah (part 2) and Schindler's List (part 1)

Required Reading:  Dominick LaCapra, History and Memory After Auschwitz (Ithaca and London:  Cornell University Press, 1998), Chapter 4

Reporter:_______________________________________

Supplementary Reading:

Claude Lanzmann, Shoah: The Complete Text of the Acclaimed Holocaust Film (Da Capo Press/Perseus Books, 1995).

Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz (NY: Touchstone, 1996).

Primo Levi, The Reawakening (NY: Touchstone, 1993).

Films, to choose from, to be shown on Feb. 14: Schindler's List (part 2), Good Evening, Mr. Wallenberg and The Seventh Cross

Week 7:  Between Fact and Fiction:  Shoah-business and Tales of Heroism [top]

Key Questions:

1. What role does popular culture play in envisaging the Holocaust?
2. What are the political, aesthetic and ethical effects of a film like Schindler's List?
3. How does it differ from the other films we have discussed so far, and how does it compare with Good Evening, Mr. Wallenberg?
4. What roles do literature, history, autobiographies, biographies and the visual arts play in relation to film and popular culture in depicting the Holocaust?

Films:  Schindler's List (part 2), Good Evening, Mr. Wallenberg and The Seventh Cross

Required Readings: 

Picart, C.J.S. and David Frank. Frames of Evil (Carbondale, S.C.: Southern Illinois University Press, 2006), Chapter 3, "Classic Horror in Schindler's List," pp. 36-69.

Reporter (for both readings above):__________________________

Miriam Bratu Hansen, "Schindler's List is not Shoah:  The Second Commandment, Popular Modernism, and Public Memory," Critical Inquiry 22 (Winter 1996):  292-312.

Supplementary Texts:

Thomas Kenneally, Schindler's List: A Novel (New York: Touchstone (Simon & Schuster, 1982)

Anna Segher, The Seventh Cross(Monthly Review Press, 1987)

Thomas Fensch, ed. Oskar Schindler and his List (Forest Dale, Vermont:  Paul S. Eriksson, 1995)

Films to be shown on Feb. 21: Apt Pupil and The Night Porter

Week 8:  Templates of Horror and Sexuality [top]

Key Questions:

1. What genre conventions do popular cinematic appropriations of the story of the Holocaust fall back on?
2. How do genre and gender crossings intersect with the notion of the "monstrous"?
3. Compare and contrast real and "reel" life depictions of gender and sexuality based on cinematic, literary, historical, and critical texts.

Films: Apt Pupil and The Night Porter

Required Readings:

Caroline J.S. (Kay) Picart and Jason McKahan, "Sadomasochism, Sexual Torture, and the Holocaust Film:  From Misogyny to Homoeroticism and Homophobia in Apt Pupil," Jump Cut 45 (2002) (online at: http://www.ejumpcut.org/currentissue/picart)

Stephen King, "Apt Pupil," in Different Seasons (Signet, 1995).

Reporter (for both readings above):__________________________

Supplementary Readings:

Carol Rittner and John K. Roth, eds., " Part I: Voices of Experience," Different Voices (MN: Paragon, 1994).

Heinz Heger, Kalus Miller, David Fernback, Men with the Pink Triangle: The True, Life-and-Death Story of Homosexuals in the Nazi Death Camps (Alyson Publications, 1994).

Richard Plant, The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals (Henry Holt, 1988).

Films, to be chosen from, to be shown on Feb. 28: Life is Beautiful and Jacob the Liar

Week 9: Humor and the Holocaust [top]

Key Questions:

1.   Does humor have an appropriate role to play in relation to remembering the Holocaust through film, literature and the visual arts?

2.   What functions might humor have in relation to memorializing the Holocaust?

Films:  Life is Beautiful and Jacob the Liar

Required Readings:

Sander L. Gilman, "Is Life Beautiful?  Can the Shoah be Funny?  Some Thoughts on Recent and Older Films," Critical Inquiry 26 (Winter 2000): 279-307.

Roberto Benigni, Vincenzo Cerami, S. Strinzi, Life is Beautiful (La Vita E Bella) (Hyperion-Miramax, 1998).

Reporter (for both readings above):__________________________

Sign up for consultations with Dr. Picart on the final paper and final mock conference presentation topics. Sign-up for mock conference schedule, to be held on the last day of class.

Supplementary Reading:

Jürek Becker, Leila Vennewitz (trans.), Jacob the Liar (Arcade, February 1996).

Films to be chosen from, to be shown on Mar. 6: Holocaust, The Diary of Anne Frank, and The Tin Drum

Spring Break [top]

Part III:  Narrative Templates of the Holocaust and Human Rights [top]

Key Questions for Weeks 10-15:

1.   What human rights are highlighted in these novels, literary texts, artistic pieces, historical accounts, biographies and autobiographies and films?  Are there significant convergences and departures in the depictions of human rights and the body in these different texts?

2.   What human rights are in conflict in the depictions of these gendered, raced, classed, aged and multi-classified human bodies in these different texts?

3.   Who act to defend and/or deny human rights in these different texts, in keeping with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?  How are these champions or oppressors raced, classed, gendered, aged and otherwise categorized?

4.   Is  the action to defend human rights effective or successful in these different texts?  Justify your answers carefully.

5.   Is the action to defend human rights in these different texts violent or non-violent?  Did it bring long range effects for the better or not?

6.   How are rights and responsibilities implicitly related in the depictions of raced, gendered, classed, aged bodies in these different texts?

7.   How are individual human bodies and rights configured in relation to those of the body politic in these different texts?

8.   Do any of these situations still have contemporary pertinence?

9.   What literary and cinematic devices are used in order to create a bodily rhetoric of human rights?

Week 10:  Consultations on Final Papers and Final Presentations. [top]

Consultation Session for Final Reports and Final Papers: Dr. Picart will be in class for consultations.

Week 11: The Hollywood and New German Versions of the Holocaust.  [top]

Week 11, Part 1:
Question:  What is distinctive about the Hollywood and the new German versions of the Holocaust?

Films: Holocaust, The Diary of Anne Frank, and The Tin Drum

Required Readings:

Annette Insdorf, Indelible Shadows: Film and the Holocaust (New York:  Cambridge University Press, 1989), Chapters 1 and 11.

Reporter: ___________________________________

Supplementary Reading:

Mary Lowenthal Felstiner, To Paint Her Life: Charlotte Salomon in the Nazi Era (University of California Press, 1997).

Week 11 part 2:

Required Reading:

Anne Frank, BM Moovart (trans.), Eleanor Roosevelt (intro), Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl (Prentice Hall, 1993).

Reporter: ___________________________________

Supplementary Reading:

Gunter Grass, Ralph Manheim (trans.), The Tin Drum (Knopf, 1990).

Films to be chosen from, to be shown on Mar. 27: The Great Dictator, Seven Beauties and To Be or Not to Be

Week 12:  Black Humor [top]

Additional Questions:

1. How is humor created in these films and visual texts?
2. How effectively is humor maintained in these cinematic and comic book narratives?

Films:  The Great Dictator, Seven Beauties and To Be or Not to Be

Required Reading:

Annette Insdorf, Indelible Shadows: Film and the Holocaust (New York:  Cambridge University Press, 1989), Chapter 4

Reporter: ___________________________________

Supplementary Reading:

Art Spiegelman, Maus: A Survivor's Tale (NY: Random House, 1986).

Films to be chosen from, to be viewed on April 3: Triumph of the Will (excerpt), Cartoons Go to War (excerpt), Ashes and Diamonds and The Sorrow and the Pity

Week 13:  Propaganda, Resistance, Positionality and Representations of the Holocaust [top]

Additional Questions:

1.   Do elements of propaganda creep into representations of the Holocaust?  How are they visualized?

2.   What implications follow from the recognition of these elements?

3.   How does resistance against the Nazis, or the process of becoming a Nazi, get depicted in film, literature, autobiography, biography, critical theory, and visual art?

Films:  Triumph of the Will (excerpt), Cartoons Go to War (excerpt), Ashes and Diamonds and The Sorrow and the Pity

Required Reading: 

Annette Insdorf, Indelible Shadows: Film and the Holocaust (New York:  Cambridge University Press, 1989), Chapters 9 and 13.

Reporter: ___________________________________

Supplementary Readings:

Katherine Taylor, Address Unknown (Washington Square Press, 2001).

Gregor Athalwin Ziemer, Education for Death, the Making of the Nazi (Octagon, 1972).

Carol Rittner and John K. Roth, eds., Part II: "Voices of Interpretation," Different Voices (MN: Paragon, 1993).

Nelly Toll, When Memory Speaks: The Holocaust in Art (Westport: Praeger, 1998).

Week 14:  Mock Conference Presentations and Final Papers. [top]

Week 15: Final Exam Week [top]