Holocaust Media

01:195:371:01 (Comparative Literature) 01:563:366:01 (Jewish Studies)

PROVISIONAL SYLLABUS

Rutgers University, Fall 2014

Tuesday / Thursday, 4:30 - 5:50 PM 12 College Avenue, Room 107 (Seminar Room)

Prof. Jeffrey Shandler

Office: Room 102 Tel: 848-932-1709 Miller Hall (14 College Avenue) Fax: 732-932-3052 New Brunswick, NJ 08901 Email: [email protected]

Office Hours: Tuesday/Thursday 3:30-4:30 PM or by appointment

Course description: This course examines the wide array of uses of media to represent the Holocaust, from during World War II to the present. Examples range from wartime radio broadcasts and newsreels to documentaries, television dramas, videotaping of Holocaust testimonies, photography, websites, sound recordings as well as the use of media in museum displays. Works studied include those made in Europe, North America, and Israel.

Learning goals: • Students will gain an overview of the length and breadth of representations of the Holocaust from the war years to the present, in an array of media, and from a variety of countries. • Students will develop their ability to consider the impact of medium and genre on practices of remembering the past. • Students will develop their ability to understand how works of memory are informed by the context in which they are created (time, place, culture, etc.). • Students will develop their ability to express their insights about works of media through analytic expository writing.

Course requirements: 1. Attendance, preparation for, and active participation in all sessions. Students are required to prepare for in-class discussion all assigned readings and screenings/listening selections in advance of each session. Regular attendance of class and active participation in class discussion is required. Students are expected to come to class on time, having prepared the reading or other assignment due that day, with comments, questions, etc., regarding the assigned material; to respect the protocols of classroom conduct (e.g., arriving promptly, turning off cell phones and laptops, not eating during class, avoiding distracting chatter); to check their email regularly for class announcements (e.g., changes in schedule or assignments); and to turn in written work on the dates due. 2. Guided analysis papers: write five out of eight short papers, each 2 double-spaced pages (i.e., 500-600 words), on the reading and/or media work to be prepared for each class. Students choose which six papers they wish to write. Papers must be turned in on the date due in class (see schedule). Guidelines for papers will be distributed at least one week before they are due.

3: Visual History Archive (VHA) analysis: write a short paper (4-5 double-spaced pages) analyzing a selection of clips from videotaped interviews with Holocaust survivors on IWitness website: http://iwitness.usc.edu/SFI/. Detailed guidelines for the analysis will be distributed in advance, Paper due 10/14.

4. Rutgers Jewish Film Festival (RUJFF) analysis: write a short paper (4-5 double-spaced pages) on the screening of a film that deals with the Holocaust at the RUJFF, to be held in early November at the Regal Cinema Commerce Center, US 1 South, North Brunswick. Students receive free admission to one film screening; transportation to and from the cinema will be provided as needed. Festival schedule and detailed guidelines for the analysis will be distributed in advance. Paper due 11/11.

Students must cite properly all outside sources (readings, media works, websites, etc.) consulted in preparing written assignments. Students should review the university policy on Academic Integrity: http://academicintegrity.rutgers.edu. Failure to comply with this policy can result in failure of the course or more severe penalties.

Course grade will be based on class attendance and participation (20%), the five guided analyses (30%), VHA analysis (25%), and RUJFF analysis (25%). Work submitted after the deadline without an acceptable excuse (e.g., illness, family emergency) will be penalized.

SCHEDULE

NOTE: Course schedule is subject to change. If you miss a class, it is your responsibility to check with the professor regarding any changes in assignments, etc.

TOPIC READING DUE MEDIA DUE WRITING DUE 9/2 Introduction 9/4 American Radio during Bonelli WWII 9/9 American Newsreels Shandler 2003 9/11 Early postwar film in Hoberman, Konigsberg Lang iz der veg (in- Europe class screening) 9/16 Early postwar film in Guided Analysis #1: Europe Lang iz der veg 9/18 The Eichmann trial Shandler 2001 9/23 The Eichmann trial Twilight Zone: Guided Analysis #2: Death’s Head Twilight Zone Revisited (online) 9/25 NO CLASS: Rosh ------Hashanah 9/30 Holocaust survivors on Shandler 1994 This Is Your Life: American Television Hanna Kohner (online) 10/2 Holocaust survivors in Morley Kitty: Return to documentary Auschwitz (in-class screening) 10/7 Holocaust survivors in Guided Analysis #3: documentary Kitty: Return to Auschwitz 10/9 NO CLASS: Succos ------10/14 Holocaust survivor Blum-Dobkin VHA assignment interviews online 10/16 NO CLASS: Succos ------10/21 Photography: Prewar Hirsch Roman Vishniac, Guided Analysis #4: images in postwar Polish Jews (reserve Polish Jews contexts book) 10/23 Photography: Wartime Raskin images 10/28 Photography: Postwar Yishay Garbasz, Guided Analysis #5: images In My Mother’s In My Mother’s Footsteps (reserve Footsteps book) 10/30 Holocaust museums Linenthal, Saidel 11/4 NO CLASS: RUJFF Attend screening at RUJFF 11/6 Holocaust film at the Koven RUJFF 11/11 Orthodox Jewish RUJFF assignment Holocaust media 11/13 Soviet Holocaust media Gershenson 11/18 Jewish returns to Hiding and Seeking Europe: documentaries (in-class screening) 11/20 Jewish returns to Kugelmass Guided Analysis #6: Europe: documentaries Hiding and Seeking 11/25 Holocaust humor Zandberg 11/27 NO CLASS: ------Thanksgiving 12/2 Schindler’s List Shandler 1997 M: : The Guided Analysis #7: epiphenomena Raincoats (DVD on Seinfeld reserve?) 12/4 The Holocaust as master Shandler 1999 paradigm on American television 12/9 The Holocaust online Reading M: Website of Guided Analysis #8: choice Website

Readings

Blum-Dobkin, Toby. 1994. “Videotaping Holocaust Interviews: Questions and Answers from an Interviewer.” Jewish Folklore and Ethnology Review 16, no. 1: pp. 46-50.

Bonelli, Charlotte. 2013. “The Story Behind NBC’s Historic Yom Kippur Broadcast on the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.” Tablet. Sept. 12.

Gershenson, Olga. 2013. The Phantom Holocaust: Soviet Cinema and Jewish Catastrophe. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Selection TBA.

Hirsch, Marianne. 2001. “Surviving Images: Holocaust photographs and the work of postmemory.” Visual Culture and the Holocaust, ed. Barbie Zelizer. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Presss. pp. 215-246.

Hoberman, J. 1991. Bridge of Light: Yiddish Film Between Two Worlds. New York: Schocken. pp. 329-336.

Konigsberg, Ira. 1998. “‘Our Children’ and the limits of cinema: early Jewish responses to the Holocaust.” Film Quarterly 52, no. 1: pp. 7-19.

Koven, Mikel J. 1999. “‘You Don’t Have To Be Filmish:’ The Toronto Jewish Film Festival,” Ethnologies 21:1, pp. 115-132.

Kugelmass, Jack. 1994. “Why we go to Poland: Holocaust tourism as secular ritual.” The Art of Memory: Holocaust Memorials in History, ed. James E. Young. Munich: Prestel, pp. 175-185.

Linenthal, Edward T. 1994. “The boundaries of memory: the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.” American Quarterly 46, no. 3: pp. 406-433.

Morley, Peter. 2005. “Kitty: Return to Auschwitz.” Holocaust and the Moving Image: Representations in Film and Television since 1933, ed. Toby Haggith and Joanna . London: Wallflower. pp. 154-160.

Raskin, Richard. A Child at Gunpoint: A Case Study in the Life of a Photo. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press. 2004. Chapters 1, 4.

Reading, Anna. 2001. “Clicking on Hitler: the virtual Holocaust @Home.” Visual Culture and the Holocaust, ed. Barbie Zelizer. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Presss. pp. 323-339.

Saidel, Rochelle. 1996. Never Too Late to Remember: The Politics behind New York City’s Holocaust Museum. New York: Holmes and Meier. pp. 214-229, 270-272.

Shandler, Jeffrey. 1994. “‘This Is Your Life’: Telling a Holocaust Survivor’s Life Story on Early American Television,” in Journal of Narrative and Life History vol. 4, nos. 1 & 2.

Shandler, Jeffrey. 1997. “ Discourse: America Discusses the Holocaust and Its Mediation, from NBC’s Miniseries to Spielberg’s Film,” in Spielberg’s Holocaust: Critical Perspectives on “Schindler’s List,” ed. Yosefa Loshitzky, Indiana University Press.

Shandler, Jeffrey. 1999. While America Watches: Televising the Holocaust. Oxford University Press. Chapter 8.

Shandler, Jeffrey. 2003. “The Testimony of Images: The Allied Liberation of Nazi Concentration Camps in American Newsreels,” in American and International Journalism during the Holocaust, ed. Robert Moses Shapiro, Yeshiva University Press.

Shandler, Jeffrey. 2001. “The Man in the Glass Box: Watching the Eichmann Trial on American Television,” in Visual Culture and the Holocaust, ed. Barbie Zelizer, Rutgers University Press.

Zandberg, 2006“Critical laughter: humor, popular culture and Israeli Holocaust commemoration. Media, Culture & Society. 28(4): 561–579

Media

In-class screenings: • Lang iz der veg • Kitty: Return to Auschwitz Hiding and Seeking

Photography books on reserve in Alexander Library: • Roman Vishniac, Polish Jews • Yishay Garbasz,In My Mother’s Footsteps

Media available online: • This Is Your Life: Hanna Kohner https://archive.org/details/this_is_your_life_hanna_bloch_kohner

• Twilight Zone: Death’s Head Revisited http://www.hulu.com/watch/440793

• iWitness http://iwitness.usc.edu/SFI/

• Seinfeld: The Raincoats http://pollystreaming.com/Seinfeld-Season-5-Episode-1819-The-Raincoats- 12_v7902