Memory & Memoirs of 20th Century Europe

The eye-witness account and the personal memoir offer powerful ways of exploring the human legacy of overwhelming historical events on individual lives. But how do literary genres like the memoir and autobiography manage to speak about unspeakable topics, how do they represent the unrepresentable and write about trauma? What is the function, and what is the effect, of writing memory for the victim, for the reader, and for the perpetrator? What is the relationship between fiction and memory in memoir writing and how do we read a testimonial of a Holocaust survivor that has been faked? In this subject, students will engage in these questions through a close reading of individual stories of a shameful national past. Students will explore the effect of generic convention on the relation of history and memory, and the need for generic invention to speak trauma and tell the un-tellable. Focusing on writings and film from different European contexts, students will apply critical reflection and interpretation skills to examine the history of the 20th century through individual memory.