Comparative Literature 218 - HOLOCAUST LITERATURE

Creative responses to the destruction of European Jewry, differentiating between literature written in extremis in ghettos, concentration/extermination camps or in hiding, and the vast post-war literature about the Holocaust. How to balance competing claims of individual and collective experience, the rights of the imagination and the pressures for historical accuracy. Selections from a variety of artistic genres (diary, reportage, poetry, novel, film, monuments, museums), and critical theory of representation. All readings in translation.