HST 111 - Holocaust in Cinema

Course unit(s): 1
Meets GAR (students beginning prior to Fall 2024): Meets general academic requirement HU.
Meets Explore Core requirement (students beginning Fall 2024 and later): HS
Film is one of the primary means by which people across the world come to think about the Holocaust. And the cinematic representation of the Holocaust is deeply inscribed by historians’ and popular conceptions of the Holocaust contemporary to each film. Our study of Holocaust film, therefore, is necessarily a study of the history of the Holocaust, the history of its changing representation, and the great debates on its origins, development, and impacts. Students will devote most of the semester to examination of films on the Shoah from six countries. The films of the United States, Great Britain, Italy, France, Germany, and Poland will allow us to compare and contrast different nation’s memories of these events and to explore the surprising controversies that surround popular representation of the Holocaust.