Screening the Holocaust

3 units

This course surveys the history of Holocaust representation on film, examining a wide range of documentary and fictional works from 1945 to the present day. Discussions will consider a number of key questions, including: What challenges does the Holocaust pose to cinematic representation, and how have filmmakers grappled with them? How have directors worked within and against notions of the Holocaust as unrepresentable, and how have they confronted the challenge of its association with a limited set of highly iconic images? What are the more general ethical and political dimensions of representing the Holocaust onscreen -- its victims as well as its perpetrators, the systematic genocidal violence that characterized it, and the sheer absence of so many dead? We will also probe the changing significance of cinematic representation of the Holocaust, exploring the medium's increasingly memorial function for audiences ever further removed from the historical moment of its occurrence. Screenings may include The Last Stage; Distant Journey; Night and Fog; Judgment at Nuremberg; Shoah; Europa, Europa; Schindler's List; Train of Life; The Specialist; Photographer; A Film Unfinished. Critical readings by figures such as Giorgio Agamben, Jean Amery, Shoshana Felman, Geoffrey Hartman, Marianne Hirsch, Sidra Israhi, Dominick LaCapra, Alison Landsberg, Berel Lang, Michael Rothberg, and James Young. Required screenings