Being There: Bearing Witness in Modern Times

What is the significance of one who says, "I was there"? This course explores the ethical, literary and historical dimensions of witnessing in an era when traumatic events are increasingly relayed secondhand or recorded in sound and image. Texts include Forster, Woolf, Camus, Freud, Celan, Coetzee; films by Hitchcock and Kurosawa; and readings in law and psychology.