Honors Composition (110) Fall 2011

Remembering the Holocaust: Representing Genocide in Memoir, Fiction, and Film

Course Description & Objectives

The last century (including the beginning of the 21st) has been referred to as the century of genocide: more people have been killed in planned, systematic attacks simply because of their "membership" in a racial, ethnical, or religious group than ever before in human history.  “Remembering the Holocaust: Representing Genocide in Memoir, Fiction, and Film” will confront this dire reality by probing the following questions:  How do we remember such atrocities?  Is it possible to convey through documentaries,  memoirs, and literary texts and films those events that so dramatically exceed normal human experience?  Moreover, are some ways of remembering more authentic, more compelling, or more conducive to preventing future genocides than others?  We will examine these questions and more by reading a variety of textual materials (historical accounts, memoirs, and fictional narratives) and by viewing film representations (documentaries and feature films—fictional and non-fictional).

Over the course of the semester, students should expect to undertake or achieve the following:

• Deepen historical knowledge regarding several genocidal conflicts of the last century;
• Increase global awareness and improve understanding of important world events and issues;
• Develop a more sophisticated understanding of the nature of history and memory;
• Practice complex engagement with and analysis of different types of textual and visual narratives;
• Use Polk Library and technology resources productively and efficiently for university-level work;
• Write clearly, cleanly, and effectively in a variety of rhetorical situations, with an awareness of purpose, audience, and context
  (note that all 110/WBIS courses require a minimum of 5000 words per semester (approximately 20 typed, double-spaced pages);
• Acquire the ability to engage one of the most important human concerns in a substantive way in the hope that we can, in some small way, help to prevent further genocides in the 21st century.

Although our course is offered within the Honors Program, this 110 has been designed and will be taught, essentially, as an intensified, accelerated WBIS, and the above desiderata converge with the WBIS PROGRAM GOALS:

• Writing process strategies. Students will develop a set of strategies to generate ideas and to revise and edit their writing through successive drafts. In addition, students will engage in critical reflections of their texts and of their writing processes. Students will also become aware of how the relationships between audience, purpose, context, and genre shape the meaning and function of any text, including their own.
• Synthesis of sources. Students will gain practice with analytical and argumentative writing, both of which necessitate an ability to integrate sources logically and grammatically; to use summary, paraphrase, and quotations appropriately and effectively; to use the appropriate documentation style; and to meet academic expectations of grammatical and mechanical correctness in final papers.
• Critical analysis. Students will develop skills in critical evaluation and decision-making. This will involve evaluating one's own writing and the writing of peers and professionals. Students will also be faced with evaluating different sources of information, which may include print media, film, and the Internet, as well as primary sources.
• Technology. Students will learn to use available writing technologies effectively. They will learn to efficiently locate and evaluate information found through online sources.
• Collaborative work. Students will learn to work cooperatively within groups to make decisions and to solve problems.