HU Credits: 2

Degree/Cycle: 2nd degree (Master)

Responsible Department: Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry

Semester: 1st Semester

Teaching Languages: Hebrew

Campus: Mt. Scopus

Course/Module Coordinator: Amos Goldberg

Coordinator Email: amos.goldberg@mail.huji.ac.il

Coordinator Office Hours: Wednesday 10:15-12:00

Teaching Staff:
Dr. Amos Goldberg

Course/Module description:
The Seminar will combine readings of trauma theory texts together with critical readings in literary texts. We will focus on the ways by which "trauma" has become a key analytic concept for understanding culture in the last few decades and on the critique this trend has received. We will also read literary and other texts that deal with the major personal collective or cultural of traumas of the 20th century. A major emphasis will be out on works dealing with the Holocaust.

Course/Module aims:
a. Basic understanding of primary ideas in trauma theory in cultural and psychoanalytic contexts.
b. Being introduced to canonical texts on the trauma first and foremost on the Holocaust.
c. Developing the abilities to sophisticatedly read texts from the analytic perspective of the concept of trauma.

Learning outcomes - On successful completion of this module, students should be able to:
At the end of this seminar the students will be able to critically reflect on cultural texts from the perspective of trauma theory while maintaining also the capability to reflect critically on this very theory itself.

Attendance requirements(%):
100

Teaching arrangement and method of instruction: Seminar: discussion among participants on texts that were read or films the were seen in advance

Course/Module Content:
Holocaust and Trauma Literature (Semester I 2004, 33808)

Dr. Amos Goldberg
M.A. Seminar, The Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry
Monday 12:30-!4:00 Room 305 Gester Building
Office hours: Wed. 10:15-11:15 Room 311 Gester Building amos.goldberg@mail.huji.ac.il

Seminar's obligations:
Reading and participation
Writing a seminar/ final paper
Bibliography
I Short introduction
Class 1: 14.10
Ida Fink, “Nocturnal Variation on a Theme”, Traces, Philip Boehm and Francine Prose (Translated), New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1998.
Kalonymus Kalmish Shapira, Sacred Fire: Torah from the Years of Fury 1939-1942 Paperback, J. Hershy Worch (Translator(, Debora Miller (Edited).
פלה שפס, בלב בערה השלהבת: יומן ממחנה גרינברג, אלכסנדר נצר (תרגום), יד ושם, 2002.


Class 2: 21.10
What is "trauma"?
Sigmund Freud, "Beyond the Pleasure Principle", On Metapsychology, Albert Dickson (Editor), Middlesex, 1987.

II: The Camp
Class 3: 28.10
Threats of modernity
Franz Kafka, In The Penal Colony & Other Stories, Schocken Books, 1995, pp.191-230. / Franz Kafka, In The Penal Colony, Ian Johnston (translated), Kartindo Books, http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~davis/crs/e321/Kafka-PenalColony.pdf


Class 4: 4.11
In the heart of Hell
זלמן גרדובסקי, בלב הגיהינום: יומני של אסיר וממנהיגי מרד הזונדרקומנדו באושוויץ, ידיעות אחרונות 2012 עמ' 121-185

Class 5: 11.11
The Body
Jean Améry, "Torture", At the Mind's Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and its Realities, Sidney and Stella P. Rosenfeld (translated), Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980, pp. 21-40.
Class 6: 18.11
Identifying with the aggressor?
Watching: Liliana Cavani, "Night Porter"
Primo Levi, "The Great Zone", The Drowned and the Saved, Abacus, 1988, pp. 22-51.

III Trauma and History
Class 7: 27.11
Structural trauma and historical trauma
Dominick Lacapra, Writing History, Writing Trauma, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001, pp. 43-85.

Class 8: 2.12
Between the survivor and the historian
Otto Dov Kulka, Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death, Ralph Mandel (translated), Allen Lane by Penguin Books, 2013.

Class 9: 9.12
Saul Friedländer, "Introduction", The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945, HarperCollins, 2007, pp. xiii-xxvi.
Amos Goldberg,’ The Victim's Voice and Melodramatic Esthetics In History’, History and Theory, 48 (3) Oct. 2009 pp. 220-237.

Class: 10: 16.12
The motive of "Silence"
Watching: Yael Hersonski, "A Film Unfinished"
Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi, "Representing Auschwitz" History and Memory, Vol. 7, No. 2, Fall - Winter, 1995 pp. 121-154.

IV Second Generation
Class 11: 23.12.
Second Generation?
Carol Kidron, "Surviving a Distant Past-. A Case Study of the Cultural Construction of Trauma Descendant Identity", Ethos, 2004 31(4):513-544.


Class 12: 30.12
Perpetrators' second generation
Bernhard Schlink, The Reader, Carol Brown Janeway (translated), Phoenix House, 1997.

V Trauma and Nationalism
Class 13: War and Trauma
Haim Sabato, Adjusting Sights, Hillel Halkin (Translator), Toby Press, 2003.

Class 14: 13.1
When national traumas clash
Watching: Returning to Haifa (by Ghassan Kanafani), staged by the Camery Theatre Group.

Required Reading:
Holocaust and Trauma Literature (Semester I 2004, 33808)

Dr. Amos Goldberg
M.A. Seminar, The Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry
Monday 12:30-!4:00 Room 305 Gester Building
Office hours: Wed. 10:15-11:15 Room 311 Gester Building amos.goldberg@mail.huji.ac.il

Seminar's obligations:
Reading and participation
Writing a seminar/ final paper
Bibliography
I Short introduction
Class 1: 14.10
Ida Fink, “Nocturnal Variation on a Theme”, Traces, Philip Boehm and Francine Prose (Translated), New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1998.
Kalonymus Kalmish Shapira, Sacred Fire: Torah from the Years of Fury 1939-1942 Paperback, J. Hershy Worch (Translator(, Debora Miller (Edited).
פלה שפס, בלב בערה השלהבת: יומן ממחנה גרינברג, אלכסנדר נצר (תרגום), יד ושם, 2002.


Class 2: 21.10
What is "trauma"?
Sigmund Freud, "Beyond the Pleasure Principle", On Metapsychology, Albert Dickson (Editor), Middlesex, 1987.

II: The Camp
Class 3: 28.10
Threats of modernity
Franz Kafka, In The Penal Colony & Other Stories, Schocken Books, 1995, pp.191-230. / Franz Kafka, In The Penal Colony, Ian Johnston (translated), Kartindo Books, http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~davis/crs/e321/Kafka-PenalColony.pdf


Class 4: 4.11
In the heart of Hell
זלמן גרדובסקי, בלב הגיהינום: יומני של אסיר וממנהיגי מרד הזונדרקומנדו באושוויץ, ידיעות אחרונות 2012 עמ' 121-185

Class 5: 11.11
The Body
Jean Améry, "Torture", At the Mind's Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and its Realities, Sidney and Stella P. Rosenfeld (translated), Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980, pp. 21-40.
Class 6: 18.11
Identifying with the aggressor?
Watching: Liliana Cavani, "Night Porter"
Primo Levi, "The Great Zone", The Drowned and the Saved, Abacus, 1988, pp. 22-51.

III Trauma and History
Class 7: 27.11
Structural trauma and historical trauma
Dominick Lacapra, Writing History, Writing Trauma, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001, pp. 43-85.

Class 8: 2.12
Between the survivor and the historian
Otto Dov Kulka, Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death, Ralph Mandel (translated), Allen Lane by Penguin Books, 2013.

Class 9: 9.12
Saul Friedländer, "Introduction", The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945, HarperCollins, 2007, pp. xiii-xxvi.
Amos Goldberg,’ The Victim's Voice and Melodramatic Esthetics In History’, History and Theory, 48 (3) Oct. 2009 pp. 220-237.

Class: 10: 16.12
The motive of "Silence"
Watching: Yael Hersonski, "A Film Unfinished"
Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi, "Representing Auschwitz" History and Memory, Vol. 7, No. 2, Fall - Winter, 1995 pp. 121-154.

IV Second Generation
Class 11: 23.12.
Second Generation?
Carol Kidron, "Surviving a Distant Past-. A Case Study of the Cultural Construction of Trauma Descendant Identity", Ethos, 2004 31(4):513-544.


Class 12: 30.12
Perpetrators' second generation
Bernhard Schlink, The Reader, Carol Brown Janeway (translated), Phoenix House, 1997.

V Trauma and Nationalism
Class 13: War and Trauma
Haim Sabato, Adjusting Sights, Hillel Halkin (Translator), Toby Press, 2003.

Class 14: 13.1
When national traumas clash
Watching: Returning to Haifa (by Ghassan Kanafani), staged by the Camery Theatre Group.

Additional Reading Material:

Course/Module evaluation:
End of year written/oral examination 0 %
Presentation 0 %
Participation in Tutorials 20 %
Project work 80 %
Assignments 0 %
Reports 0 %
Research project 0 %
Quizzes 0 %
Other 0 %

Additional information: