ENGLIT 2652 - Ethics And History In Post-Holocaust Thought

Institution:

University of Pittsburgh-Pittsburgh Campus

Subject:

English Literature

Description:

How do certain episodes in history become sites of ethical as well as historiographical negotiation? Why are some events more potent as objects of memory than others? A major goal of this course will be to examine how particular histories become figured as ‘limit cases’ and emerge as nodes of cultural debate, at once emotionally charged and resistant to satisfactory interpretation. Examples will include some recent debates about medieval Jewish-Christian relations, arguments about conceptualizing questions of responsibility after the Holocaust, and controversies over the representation of nationalism and national pasts in a global marketplace of competing interpretations. Selected texts range from medieval chronicles to memoirs of Holocaust survival to journalistic debates about terrorism. Along the way, we will examine Giorgio Agamben’s arguments about the representative status of Auschwitz for modernity, discuss the relevance of Emmanuel Levinas’ ‘passivity beyond passivity’ for post-Holocaust politics as well as ethics, and ruminate over philosopher Gillian Rose’s evocation of Primo Levi in the service of an ‘ethics of implication.’

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.pitt.edu

Phone Number:

(412) 624-4141

Regional Accreditation:

Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools

Calendar System:

Semester

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