HIST 268 - Special Topics:

SPRING 2020 Topic: BORDERLANDS: VIOLENCE AND COEXISTENCE

A border is a line separating two sovereign entities-crossing a border means switching into a different state. But borderlands are also spaces of interaction. They are characterized by diversity, malleable identities, and-at times-violence. This course explores the modern history of borderland regions, including case studies in Central and East Central Europe, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and the US-Mexico border. Looking at these examples we will consider how populations in these regions coexist, as well as the processes that transform groups in the borderlands into perpetrators and objects of intense violence.

FALL 2019 Topic: HOLOCAUST MEMORY 

This seminar will examine the development of Holocaust memory after 1945, with a special emphasis on communist and post-communist Europe and the role Holocaust memory has played in European integration. Together we will explore the relationship between Holocaust memory as individual experience, family history, national project, and a transnational discourse of European identity and human rights. How have individual and family memories challenged, shaped, or conformed to national, European, or global representations of the Holocaust? Students will think about how the memory of the Holocaust is framed, mediated, and performed through readings of important secondary scholarship, eyewitness reports, postwar testimonies, memoirs, and relevant works of fiction and film. Students with an interest in the memory of genocide and violence in other geographical regions and chronologies are encouraged to attend and bring their different perspectives to the discussion.

Anticipated Terms Offered: yearly