JWST 37.02 Nazis, Neonazis, Antifa and the Others: Exploring Responses to the Nazi Past
Why do the Nazis remain the world’s epitome of evil? What did they actually do? And how specifically are they remembered, depicted, emulated, despised or ignored since the catastrophes of the mid-twentieth Century? In this course we will examine the main events connected with the Second World War, the genocide of European Jewry and Roma-Sinti, forced resettlements of various populations, and the Allied attacks on the German civilian population. We will analyze the different stages of coming to grips with that past on the part of German and some other postwar societies, by examining together a number of controversies like those surrounding the Nuremberg, Frankfurt, Eichmann and Barbie trials, the campaign to build a Holocaust memorial in Berlin, Neonazism, the Wehrmacht photo exhibition, and the current campaign to remember German civilian casualties and losses. Approaching our topic with interdisciplinary and comparative methodology, that is, by utilizing history, journalism, video testimony, music, literature, and art, including film, photography and architecture, students will develop their own perspectives on the formation of postwar German identity and why Nazis remain the epitome of evil. An individual midterm project will allow students to practice the skill of summarizing different sides of a debate, and a final group project will invite students to solidify what they have learned in the course about the formation of national identity by creatively staging a contemporary debate about the Nazi past.
Instructor
McGillen
Cross Listed Courses
COLT 64.01 GERM 015