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Syllabus The Holocaust Collective Memory and Cinema - 50987
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Last update 27-09-2018
HU Credits: 2

Degree/Cycle: 2nd degree (Master)

Responsible Department: Communication & Journalism

Semester: 1st Semester

Teaching Languages: English

Campus: Mt. Scopus

Course/Module Coordinator: Dr. Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann


Coordinator Office Hours: Mondays, 12:00-14:00

Teaching Staff:
Dr. Tobias Ebbrecht Hartmann

Course/Module description:
The course introduces important theoretical concepts of collective, communicative, cultural, media and post-memory and relates these approaches to different narrative and documentary films that remediate and process the visual memory of the Shoah. We will watch and analyze sequences from different movies and analyze specific motifs and tropes as well as the migration of images. The corpus includes 'classic' examples such as Schindler’s List and The Pianist as well as appropriation films such as Night and Fog and The 81st Blow and recent award winning films such as Son of Saul or Phoenix.

Course/Module aims:
This course focuses on intersections between collective Holocaust memory and cinema. It discusses films from various countries and decades in relation to concepts of cultural and collective memory. It will provide interdisciplinary knowledge in transnational cinema studies, memory studies, Holocaust and European studies. The aim of the course is enabling the students to analyze visual culture in relation to social and historical discourses and to situate current cinema in a transnational as well as film historical context.

Learning outcomes - On successful completion of this module, students should be able to:
• learning about the history of Holocaust cinema as well as contemporary discourses on Holocaust memory
• analyzing films and applying knowledge of film language and aesthetics in order to understand them as social and historiographical mediators
• using and applying theoretical and empirical concepts of Holocaust memory (including memory conflicts) on popular visual culture
• conducting independent research on different films

Attendance requirements(%):
80 %

Teaching arrangement and method of instruction: We will discuss how far films mediate visual memories from the Holocaust through the repetition and circulation of particular images or narratives. In doing so the course is based on a reevaluation of the concept of "migrating images" and juxtaposes this crucial aspect of a visual memory of the Holocaust to related concepts such as the “Traveling Memory”, “Postmemory” and "Multidirectional Memory". Students will introduce these specific memory concepts and we will relate them to specific films. A focus of the course will be on the use and reuse of specific images and narratives in films about the Holocaust.

Course/Module Content:
15-10-2018 | The Return of the Past: Migrating images

22-10-2018 | Filming the Unimaginable? Memories of the Camps

29-10-2018 | Memory Frames and Portable Memory Places

05-11-2018 | National Memory and Self-Victimization

12-11-2018 | Dramatizing the Holocaust – Visual Memories from the ‘Night of Broken Glass’ and its aftermath

19-11-2018 | The Holocaust as Visual Paradigm

26-11-2018 | Gazes from the Ghetto

03-12-2018 | Voices from the Past

10-12-2018 | Memory Ghosts

17-12-2018 | Traveling Memories

24-012-2018 | Digging the Past

31-12-2018 | Archived Pasts and Testimonies

07-01-2019 | Voices, Images, Memories

14-01-2019 | Conclusion: Fragments from the Past

Required Reading:
• Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann. Migrating Images: Iconic Images of the Holocaust and the Representation of War in Popular Film. Shofar, Vol. 28, No. 4, 2010, 86-103.
• Thomas Elsaesser. German Cinema – Terror and Trauma: Cultural Memory since 1945. London: Routledge, 2013.
• Daniel Levy, Natan Sznaider. The Holocaust and Memory in the Global Age. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2005

A full reading list will be provided at the beginning of the seminar.

Additional Reading Material:
A full reading list will be provided at the beginning of the seminar.

Course/Module evaluation:
End of year written/oral examination 0 %
Presentation 20 %
Participation in Tutorials 0 %
Project work 60 %
Assignments 20 %
Reports 0 %
Research project 0 %
Quizzes 0 %
Other 0 %

Additional information:
• Oral Presentation
• Review of a Holocaust related film
• Final essay
 
Students needing academic accommodations based on a disability should contact the Center for Diagnosis and Support of Students with Learning Disabilities, or the Office for Students with Disabilities, as early as possible, to discuss and coordinate accommodations, based on relevant documentation.
For further information, please visit the site of the Dean of Students Office.
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