Instructor: Bozena Shallcross
Tuesday and Thursday, 10:30-11:50AM
Office: Foster Hall 402
Tel. 834-2179
Office hours: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 12:00-1:00PM
and by appointment
E-mail: bshallcr@uchicago.edu
 
 

Theodor Adorno’s axiom that writing poetry after Auschwitz is impossible has been challenged by several generations of Polish and Polish-Jewish writers and intellectuals. Our investigation of their search for the proper means of representing the Holocaust ranges from the poetics of absence to testimonial accounts and traumatic memorization. Cinematic, literary, and pictorial representations of the Holocaust run from Borowski’s real life experience of Auschwitz through Grynberg’s sense of mission as a survivor to Polanski’s filmic vision. We reconstruct the geography and realities of the Holocaust against the workings of idealization and aesthetization, trace the emergence of the new approach to the Other, and read current theories on the subject. In this course, the Polish perspective of this historic experience is juxtaposed to the experience of Polish Jewry.
 
 

COURSE REQUIREMENTS:

No knowledge of Polish is required.

Attendance and active class participation; this includes one e-mailed question/comment related to the texts (including films) per session; reading assignments, mid-term exam (for undergraduates only), and term papers are required.

In order to make preparation for your exam easier, taking notes during class is strongly encouraged.

Graduate students’ final grades are based on attendance and active class participation, emailed comments (60% of the total) and term paper (40%). For late assignments 5 points will be taken off.

Undergraduates’ final grades are based on attendance and active class participation, incl. emailed comments (40% of the total), mid-term exam (20%), and the term paper (30%).

Attendance is required. Attendance grades: 0 absences — A; 1-3 absences — A-; 4-5 absences — B; 6-8 absences — C; 9-10 absences — D; 11-12 absences — F.

Term paper: the instructor will offer suggestions for term papers and every student is required to discuss his/her chosen topic with the instructor.

The length of the term paper for graduates: 10 pages (on the subject matter related to this course) including footnotes and bibliography. Graduates should demonstrate a critical approach to existing scholarship; research in another language is highly recommended. The length of the term paper for undergraduates: 5 pages (on the subject matter related to this course) including footnotes and bibliography. Papers which are shorter than the required length or are received late will have points deducted from the final grade. Please be sure to staple and number your pages and to include a cover page with a title, your name, and the date.

Academic dishonesty: cheating and plagiarism will be treated in the appropriate manner as set forth in the students’ handbook. In your writing, always use your own words; otherwise, if quoting from the Web, books, or articles, always indicate that you are quoting and provide footnotes.

TEXTS:

All theoretical texts for this course, either required or optional, are on Reserve in the Joseph Regenstein Library where you can access them for a limited period of time; they can also be accessed electronically.

Books of fiction used in this class are available in the Seminary Co-op. To enhance our close readings of the texts in question, students are required to bring their own copies/photocopies of the texts to class.
 
 

SCHEDULE (subject to change)

Week One

Session One Introduction
 
 

Session Two

Reading assignment: Piotr Szewc, Annihilation (Normal. Ill: Dalkey Archives, 1993).

Week Two

Session One

Reading assignment: Jan T. Gross, Neighbors: the destruction of the Jewish community in Jedwabne (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2001), selections.

Alina Cienciala, review of Gross’s Neighbors, in The Polish Review Spring 2003 no. 1.

Optional: Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, "Polish-Jewish relations in occupied Poland, 1939-1945," in The Jews in Poland, Chimen Abramsky, Maciej Jachimczyk, and Antony Polonsky, eds. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986).

Session Two

Reading assignment: Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1989), chapters "The Uniqueness and Normality of the Holocaust," "Soliciting the Cooperation of the Victims," "The Ethics of Obedience."

Week Three

Session One

Reading assignment: The Lodz Ghetto Chronicle, 1941-1944, Lucjan Dobroszycki, ed. (New Haven: Yale UP, 1984), selections.

Yehuda Bauer, in Rethinking the Holocaust (New Have and London: Yale UP, 2001), chapter "Theology, or God the Surgeon."

Session Two

Reading assignment: Janusz Korczak (Henryk Goldszmit), Ghetto Diary (New York: Holocaust Library, c. 1978), selections.

George Steiner, "A Kind of Survivor," "Postcript," in Language and Silence: Essays on Language, Literature, and the Inhuman (New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1998).

Film screening: Andrzej Wajda, Korczak, room and time tba.

Week Four

Session One

Discussion of Wajda’s film

Reading assignment: Janusz Korczak (Henryk Goldszmit), Ghetto Diary (New York: Holocaust Library, c. 1978), selections, (cont.).

Session Two

Reading assignment: The Pianist, (pp.7-97).

Film screening: Roman Polanski, The Pianist, room and time tba.
 
 

Week Five

Session One

Reading assignment: The Pianist, (pp.98-189).

Discussion of Polanski’s movie.

Mid-term examination

Session Two

Reading assignment: Tadeusz Borowski, This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, and other stories (New York: Viking Press, 1967), selections.

Optional reading: Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, Israel Gutman and Michael Berenbaum, ed. (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1994).

Week Six

Session One

Reading assignment: Reading assignment: Tadeusz Borowski, This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, and other stories (New York: Viking Press, 1967), selections (cont.).

Langer Lawrence, Chapter 1, The Holocaust and the Literary Imagination (New Haven: Yale UP, 1975).

Session Two

Reading assignment: Czeslaw Milosz, the entire cycle "Rescue," in New and Collected Poems (1931-2001), (New York: Harper Collins, 2001).

Week Seven

Session One

Reading assignment: Wladyslaw Szlengel, "What I Read to the Dead…" selections (handout).

Ida Fink, "The Threshold," "An Afternoon on the Grass," "A Second Scrap of Time," "Sabina Under the Sacks," "The Baker’s Ongoing Resurrection," in Traces: Stories (New York: Metropolitan Books Henry Holt and Co., 1997).

Sara R. Horowitz, "Voices from the Killing Ground," in Voicing the Void: Muteness and Memory in Holocaust Fiction (Albany: SUNY P, 1997).

Session Two

Reading assignment: Bogdan Wojdowski, Bread for the Departed (Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1997), selections. (Cont.)

Week Eight

Session One

Reading assignment: Bogdan Wojdowski, Bread for the Departed (Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1997), selections.

Session Two

Reading assignment: Bogdan Wojdowski, Bread for the Departed (Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1997), selections.

Week Nine

Session One

Reading assignment: Zofia Nalkowska, Medallions (Evanston: Northwestern UP, 2000).

Film screening: Zhegota, room and time tba.

Session Two

Discussion of Zhegota

Reading assignment: Henryk Grynberg, The Jewish War and The Victory (Evanston: Northwestern UP, 2001).

Week Ten

Session One

Reading assignment: Jan Blonski, "The Poor Poles Look at the Ghetto" and Wladyslaw Sila-Nowicki, "A Reply to Jan Blonski," Maciej Kozlowski, "The Mission that Failed," in "My brother’s keeper": Recent Polish Debates on the Holocaust, Antony Polonsky, ed. (London, New York: Routledge, 1990).

Teresa Prekerowa, "Relief Council for Jews, 1942-1945," in Jews in Poland, Chimen Abramsky, Maciej Jachimczyk, and Antony Polonsky, eds. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986).

Reading period

Term paper due during the first day of the finals week