The Holocaust: a multidisciplinary exploration

Course goals

After the course, students will have:

• gained deep knowledge of the causes and effects of the Holocaust and of its historical and societal context and reception/interpretation, as well as commemoration/memorialization
• gained experience in critically assessing and using primary sources
• gained experience with group work and community engaged learning

Content

The Holocaust, the Nazi-led persecution and murder of Europe’s Jews and other targeted minorities, continues to be one of the most hotly debated topics in history. These debates range from the uniqueness of the Holocaust to the role of Hitler as its mastermind; from the impact of European antisemitism and Christian anti-Judaism to the specificity of German nation-building; from the role of the modern state to that of “ordinary men”. More recent debates also focus on memory politics and the instrumentalization of the Holocaust after 1945. What all these debates show is that the Holocaust has by no means become history, a thing of the past. On the contrary, the Holocaust also serves as a warning from history, a touchstone of European society in the 21^st century, symbolizing absolute evil.

This course offers students a broad introduction to the topic of the Holocaust, its history and memorialization – a course offering that is unique in the Dutch academic landscape. It will be taught by an interdisciplinary group of scholars and is equally tailored to an interdisciplinary body of students. These students will develop their knowledge by discussing major scholarly and societal debates (like those mentioned above), and will gain a better understanding of the Holocaust’s complexity, by combining perspectives from various disciplines. The course will also offer students a chance to engage with the non-academic community at large, to share insights and broaden their horizons.

Weekly we will meet for:
1x 2hr (guest)lecture. Students are asked to come prepared to the meeting (i.e., read the assigned literature).
1x 2hr seminar. The emphasis of the seminar is on primary sources and on creating and presenting a co-production focused on these sources.

The interdisciplinary content and lay-out of the course, as well as the expected student demography, justifies a diversification of the assessment methods. For their first assignment students work together on an auditory or visual co-production. With the teacher’s consent students have the choice to hand in for their second assignment (individual assessment) an essay, or a blog or vlog, a poster-presentation or other output. The assessment criteria will be suitably adjusted to the chosen assessment form and clearly agreed upon between teacher and student beforehand. There will be two assessments:

- 1. An auditory or visual coproduction, based on primary source analysis (30%)
- 2. Individual output, connecting primary source analysis to literature (70%)