Distinguished Visiting Craig Professor Elisabeth Weber
Taught in English. No prerequisites.
Crosslisted with Comparative Literature 01:195:314:01
Trauma in Literature and Film
How do individuals, communities, cultures, nations remember and/or forget, preserve and/or erase traumatic events? This course will explore literary and filmic representations of massive collective trauma. Media will include Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front (1928 novel and 2022 Oscar-winning film by Edward Berger), Marguerite Duras, Hiroshima mon amour (1959 screenplay and 1959 film by Alain Renais), Claude Lanzman, Shoah (1985 documentary, excerpts), Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz (If this is a Man, 1947 memoir), Ariel Dorfman, Death and the Maiden (1990 play and 1994 film by Roman Polanski), Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987 novel), Wolfgang Fischer, Styx (film, 2018). Theoretical texts will include essays on war, persecution and trauma by Sigmund Freud, Walter Benjamin, Jacques Lacan, Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida, Cathy Caruth, Shoshana Felman, Dori Laub, Zakiyyah Iman Jackson.
Fulfills SAS Core Goals AHo, AHp, WCd
