History 650B/850B/2 Section A: Selected Topics in the History of
Genocide (3 credits)

Special Subject: DOCUMENTING MASS VIOLENCE: RECORDING, DESCRIPTION,
DISSEMINATION

INSTRUCTOR: E. Lehrer                                 J 15:00 - 17:30

Writers, filmmakers, and other intellectuals have been trying, for
more than a half-century since the end of World War II, to find ways
to describe the destruction of the European Jews.  Why is this project
so vexed?  Do similar difficulties arise in documenting other cases of
mass violence in history?  How, where, and when is violence documented
-- both publicly and privately?  What motivates such documentation,
and what are its goals?  How do we get at the "experience" or the
"truth" of violence or suffering?  Whose versions of events are
amassed and disseminated, and in what ways?  How close can
representations of violent events bring those who did not experience
them?  What are the structural (cultural and material) conditions of
remembering and forgetting?

Students enrolled in this seminar will examine a broad range of
cultural practices and products that attempt to apprehend, represent,
or come to terms with mass violence and its aftermath, including
theoretical and creative texts, films, photography, monuments, and
exhibitions.  Through both analysis and critique of what we read and
view, as well as experiments in documentation and representation of
violent events, the course will enable us to explore key issues of
ethics, aesthetics, politics, and culture in relation to mass violence
and social suffering.

NOTE: This course is cross listed with the undergraduate level course HIST 481B.



--
Erica Lehrer, Ph.D.
Jackson School of International Studies
University of Washington
Box 353650
Seattle WA 98195-3650
(206) 897-1665
cell (734) 277-3734
elehrer@u.washington.edu