Representations of the Holocaust — fall 2021 course

I have taught “Representations of the Holocaust” now for 36 years. This time we gathered together “in the room,” as we like to put it. Yes, in the room, having been kept from such human spaces for nearly three semesters. How could this course have been taught in any other way? Hard to contemplate. So we were in the room, with each other, gathering together as embodied people rushing from all corners of campus each Tuesday and Thursday afternoon. And, because we were so firmly in the room together, we were always deeply aware of the gap between the depth and complexity of an three-month-long ongoing discussion and the kinds of conversations, fleeting, here and there, that we are able to have outside the room, with loved ones, colleagues, fellow students. We make no judgment about that gap, but it’s a fact and it presents its own problems on top of all the others. That is why, during our final classes—during which each person has a few minutes to speak on any topic, in any form, statements we call “final words”—we feel a particular closeness. In these photos perhaps you can see and feel that closeness.