LANG 3110 - Holocaust, Genocide, and Atrocities: Global Histories and Ethics

3 Credit(s) | $12 Fee

While the Holocaust (or: Shoah) is front and center in many discussions of historical violence and mass trauma, it is certainly not an independent occurrence in world history. In this course, we will examine, in addition to the Holocaust, events such as the Yangzhou massacre (1645), the genocide of Native American/First Nations peoples (culminating in the 19th century), the mass murder of the Nama and Herero peoples in Namibia (1904-1907), the Armenian genocide (1915), the Nanking Massacre (1937), the Holodomor (Stalin’s campaign to eradicate Ukrainians in the 1930s), the brutal history of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia (1970s), the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, the genocide in Rwanda (1994), and the ongoing conflict between the state of Israel and Palestine. Typically, readers and viewers would like to forget the past, especially the world events that make us most uncomfortable to behold. Paradoxically, our very survival as human beings is arguably predicated on our continued observation and examination of past traumas and how they form patterns of violence and abuse that circulate worldwide. A thorough coming to terms with the past will guide us in learning how to live a better and more just life. This course will provide students with theoretical frameworks and critical methods for engaging with these histories and representations of them, so that they may also apply what they learn to their own lives, careers, and development as responsible citizens who demand justice and fairness in the world.

In this course, we will pursue two primary objectives. First, we will explore the historical events of genocide and acquire an historical framework for understanding the breadth and the scope of the violence committed by perpetrators. Second, we will explore the ways in which visual arts, literature and film, both fictional and documentary, have attempted to narrate the events and aftermath of genocidal violence. Central to our investigation of these texts will be issues of representation, authenticity, appropriateness, and uniqueness, the role of memory, the problems and limits of language, questions of trauma, the phenomenon of post-memory, and the development of post-traumatic identities. Throughout the semester, students will read/view primary texts, engage in classroom discussion and teamwork, culminating with a final project that allows them to explore human history, violence, and the dilemma of survival and witnessing. (As Needed) [Graded (Standard Letter)]