History, Memory & Representation of the Holocaust

A First-Year Ampersand Program

Look beyond popular narratives to explore the full landscape of the Holocaust through rigorous study of its history, representation, and enduring legacy. 

The Diary of Anne Frank, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, Schindler’s List—these well-known books and films about the Holocaust are part of nearly every teenager’s education. But as powerfully affective as they are, such popular treatments of the Holocaust represent (and often even misrepresent) just a narrow piece of its complex history. This year-long rigorous program goes deeper into the subject of the Holocaust by engaging intensively with the history and memory of the Nazi genocide of the European Jews and other groups between 1933 and 1945. In addition, it examines representations of this experience in literature and film and at memorial sites and museums. 

Students gain a more thorough understanding of better-known histories and narratives of the Holocaust and explore aspects of the Holocaust that are underrepresented in contemporary American culture or that have otherwise been marginalized. They additionally learn about some of the important scholarly methodologies for approaching the study of the Holocaust and its legacy.  

 

How to Sign Up

Signing up for a First-Year Program is a structured process designed to help match you with a program that best fits your interests. Ampersand Programs require a short essay responding to a program-specific prompt.

If you plan to rank this Ampersand Program, prepare a 250-500 word essay that responds to the following prompt: What has been your experience learning about the Holocaust? What would you want to get out of your academic study of the Holocaust at WashU?

Learn More About Sign-Ups

Ampersand Program Courses

Semester 1: The Holocaust: A European Experience 

Between 1939 and 1945, Nazi troops invaded, occupied and destroyed major parts of Europe. A central aim of the Nazi project was the destruction of European Jewry, the killing of people, and the annihilation of a cultural heritage. This course seeks to deal with questions that, more than seventy years after what is now known as the Holocaust, still continue to perplex. Why did Germany turn to a dictatorship of racism, war, and mass murder? Why did the Nazis see Jews as the supreme enemy, while also targeting Poles, Ukranians, Soviets, homosexuals, the Roma, and the disabled? The course introduces students to issues that are central to understanding Nazi occupation and extermination regimes. Students will look at survival strategies in Western Europe including emigration, resistance movements in Eastern European ghettos, local residents' reactions to the murder in their midst, and non-European governments' reactions.

 

 

 

Semester 2:  Representations of the Holocaust in Literature and Film 

As the Holocaust recedes into the historical past, our knowledge of the event becomes increasingly dominated by literary and cinematic representations of it. This course focuses on such depictions of the Holocaust in literature and film and raises a number of provocative questions: What does it mean to represent the horror of the Holocaust, and how can literary works and films adequately do so?  Can one effectively depict the event in realistic terms, or do unrealistic representations work better?  What happens to the history of the Holocaust when it becomes the subject of a fictional text?  Who is authorized to speak for the victims?  Are representations of perpetrators appropriate?  Which experiences of the Holocaust are most often represented in the contemporary public imagination, and which are ignored or repressed?  Can one speak of a "master narrative" of the Holocaust?  We will grapple with these challenging questions by examining representations in a range of genres and media, including survivor memoirs, wartime accounts, journalistic explorations, fictional narratives, a graphic novel, art and photography, documentary and feature film, museums and memorial sites, and social media. 

 

Ampersand Program Faculty

Erin McGlothlin

Vice Dean of Undergraduate Affairs, College of Arts & Sciences


314-935-7747

Erin McGlothlin is responsible for the university’s liberal arts curriculum as well as every phase of student life, from admission through graduation and onward to postgraduate success. She is passionate about the value of a liberal arts education and seeks to create challenging, enriching educational experiences for undergraduates across all areas of study.

Student Voices

Many students enter Washington University thinking they know what they want to study and how they want to spend their four years here. However, few students are fully aware of the breadth and depth of intellectual and academic experiences available to them here. This program aims to make the challenges and rewards of humanistic thinking more visible to first-year students by demonstrating to them the ways in which the disciplines of history and literary criticism approach a topic that continues to be of fundamental importance.