SOURCES AND TRENDS OF HISTORICAL RESEARCH
Learning outcomes of the course unit
At the end of the course the student must be able to contextualize the transformation of the public discourse on the Holocaustin the broader framework of the evolution of the concepts of history, memory, testimony .
Prerequisites
Basic knowledge of Modern and Contemporary History.
Course contents summary
The course consists of a critical excursus on the concepts of History, Memory, witness with particular regard to the public discourse on the Shoah understood not only as a war crime but as a universal sacralized trauma.
Course contents
The course consists of a critical excursus on the concepts of History, Memory, witness with particular regard to the transformation, over the last thirty years, of the public discourse on the Shoah and the affirmation also of a memorial, emotional story based on the centrality of the trauma and the eyewitness opposed to the classic vision of a story based on written sources and intended as progressive liberation, a vision that entered into crisis during the second half of the twentieth century, with the crisis itself of the concept of modernity. In this context the public perception of the Holocaust has been transformed, also through non-historiographical narratives (diaries and memoirs, interviews, documentaries, fiction, memorial days, museums and memorials) from war crime to universal sacralized trauma. The aim of the course is to reconstruct the reasons and modalities of this transformation.
Recommended readings
1) A book of your choice among the following:
- Primo Levi, I sommersi e i salvati, Einaudi, Torino, 1997
- Hanna Arendt, La banalità del male. Eichmann a Gerusalemme, Feltrinelli, Milano 1997
- Claude Lanzmann, Shoah, Torino, Einaudi, Torino, 2007 (con DVD)
2) 2) A second book among the following:
- Annette Wieviorka, L’era del testimone, Raffaello Cortina Editore, Milano 1999
- Giorgio Agamben, Quel che resta di Auschwitz. L’archivio e il testimone, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 1998
-Frida Bertolini, Gli ingannni della memoria. Testimonianza, falsificazioni, negazioni, Mimesis, 2015
- Georges Didi-Huberman, Immagini malgrado tutto, Milano, 2005
-Zygmunt Bauman, Modernità e olocausto, Bologna 2010
-Anna Foa, Ebrei in Europa. Dalla Peste nera all'emancipazione XIV-XIX secolo, Roma-Bari 2004
Teaching methods
Frontal and interactive lessons. After a methodological introduction on the concepts of history, memory, testimony, Holocaust / Sterminio / Shoah, will be examined and discussed in class, in addition to the texts indicated for the exam, also articles and excerpts from essays on the subject, documentaries and films about the Holocaust.
Spurces and texts will be available on the Elly platform.
Assessment methods and criteria
The exam consists of an oral test in which the student must explain in a reasoned and critical way the two texts chosen from those proposed.
The final grade is formulated by evaluating the ability to present and analyze the topics discussed during the course and in the proposed readings.
