(Re-)Living Nazi Germany through the Eyes of the Graphic Novel

Undergraduate / Graduate

This course considers the graphic novel as an aesthetic and political response to Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. Through close reading of three paradigmatic graphic novels by German and American artists from WWII to the present day, we will develop a critical vocabulary to analyze the intermedial form and explore the historical conditions out of which these cultural artefacts emerge. Our journey begins with Charlotte Salomon's pioneering masterpiece Life? Or Theater? (1941-943), a recently discovered autobiographical account of life in the Third Reich created by the visionary German-Jewish artist before her death at Auschwitz at the age of 26. One generation later, Art Spiegelman, the son of a Holocaust survivor, produces his seminal 1980 graphic narrative Maus based on interviews with his father. In Nora Krug's 2018 graphic novel Belonging, the author seeks to understand her grandparents' potential collusion with the forces of ethnic cleansing in Nazi Germany. Our interpretative readings will focus on the authors' engagement with questions of European and Jewish identity and their treatment of historical trauma and culpability in the graphic novel form. This course is designed both for German majors/minors and majors from other disciplines. All texts are available in translation and class will be held in English. German majors are invited to engage directly with the German-language editions and historical sources. Additional discussions in German will be offered bi-weekly