The Visual Culture of Catastrophe

Art History 189U-01

Fall, 2003

Instructor: Aaron Kerner

Office: Porter D- 207

Office Hours: Tuesday 6:00 ≠ 7:00

Or by appointment

Contact:

amkerner@cats.ucsc.edu

459 2113

Course Description: This course aims to analyze the various responses to catastrophic events in history, with a particular focus on the Holocaust and Hiroshima. The course will look to some of the most pressing concerns regarding the representations of catastrophe as well as the aesthetic, social and political issues that arise from them. The course is structured around a series of questions that are commonly raised in the field of Holocaust scholarship. But these questions ultimately are not exclusive to this distinct pursuit, because these questions inevitably return to aesthetics and historicism, all immediate concerns of Art History and studies in Visual Culture.

Please note that some of the material presented here is challenging to watch. Do not hesitate to contact me if you have any dilemmas with a particular screening.

Quizzes: are premised on the course material. These are designed to measure your comprehension of the material.

First Assignment: Applying the course material, review any visual media response to a twentieth or twenty-first century catastrophic event. Cite at least two outside resources preferably from a scholarly journal. I will discuss some research methods before the first assignment is due. The review should be 7 to 8 pages. See me promptly if you have any concerns or questions regarding this assignment.

Second Assignment: Choosing only one of the keywords listed below, discuss a twentieth or twenty-first century catastrophic event in relation to your chosen keyword. Do not use the same material from your first assignment. Again, cite at least two outside scholarly resources. The paper must address in what ways your chosen subject relates to, or perhaps challenges, aesthetics and historicism. Your paper should be 7 to 8 pages.

Keywords:

a) witness

b) abjection

c) allegory

d) historicism

The course will be assessed on three criteria:

Attendance 10%

Class Participation 10%

Two in class quizzes 20%

Two 7-8 page essays 60%

Attendance is extremely important. Participation is looked upon with great favor in the course. We should be extremely mindful that much of this courseπs material is highly emotive, and it is essential that students conduct their exchanges respectfully.

Week 1

January 7^th and 9^th, 2003
Lecture:	What is a catastrophe?
Screening:	Paul Wegener Der Golem

Week 2

January 14^th and 16^th
Lecture:	Is it ethically possible to enjoy, perhaps even to laugh at the catastrophic?
Screening:	Life is Beautiful

Theodor Adorno, ≥Commitment,≤ in Aesthetics and Politics, trans. Ronald Taylor (London: NLB, 1977), 177- 195.

Maurizio Viano, ≥Life is Beautiful: Reception, Allegory, and Holocaust Laughter,≤ Jewish Social Studies, vol. 5, no. 3 (1999): 47 - 66.

Week 3

January 21^st and 23^rd
Lecture:	Some challenges to (documentary) realism.
Screening:	Shoah

Lanzmann, Claude. ≥Seminar with Claude Lanzmann, 11 April 1990.≤ Yale French Studies: Literature and the Ethical Questions 79, edited by Claire Nouvet. (1991): 82 - 99.

Felman, Shoshana. ≥In an Era of Testimony: Claude Lanzmannπs Shoah.≤ Yale French Studies: Literature and the Ethical Questions 79, edited by Claire Nouvet. (1991): 39 - 81.

Week 4

January 28^th and 30^th
Lecture:	Is it possible to bear witness after the fact?
Screening:	Night and Fog, Free Fall, and Christian Boltanski (Memory of the Camps)

Ilan Avisar, ≥Introduction≤ to Screen the Holocaust: Cinemaπs Images of the Unimaginable, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988): 1 - 32.

OPTIONAL: Daniel R. Schwartz, ≥The Ethics of Imagining the Holocaust: Representation, Responsibility, and Reading,≤ in Imagining the Holocaust, (New York: St. Martinπs Press, 1999), 1 - 42.

First paper due January 30^th.

Week 5

February 4^th and 6^th
Lecture:	What threats do revisionists pose?
Screening:	Mr. Death (and Holocaust on Trial)

James E. Young, ≥The Holocaust Confessions of Sylvia Plath,≤ Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust: Narrative and the Consequences of Interpretation, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), 117 ≠ 133.

Deborah Lipstadt, "The Gas Chamber Controversy and Watching on the Rhine," Denying the Holocaust: the growing assault on truth and memory, (New York : Free Press, 1993), 157 ≠ 182 and 209 - 222.

Week 6

February 11^th and 13^th
Lecture:	Hollywood does catastrophe.
Screening:	Schindler ≠ a documentary (Schindlerπs List)

Barbie Zelizer, "Every Once in a While: Schindler's List and the Shaping of History," in Spielberg's Holocaust: Critical Perspectives on Schindler's List, Yosefa Loshitzky ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 20 - 35.

Miriam Bratu Hansen, "Schindler's List Is not Shoah: Second Commandment, Popular Modernism, and Public Memory," in Spielberg's Holocaust: Critical Perspectives on Schindler's List, Yosefa Loshitzky ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 77 - 103.

Week 7

February 18^th and 20^th
Lecture:	Allegorizing the Holocaust ≠ The Sadean Allegory
Screening:	SalÚ: The 120 Days of Sodom

Immanuel Kant, ≥What is Enlightenment?≤ in The Philosophy of Kant: Immanuel Kantπs Moral and Political Writing, Carl J. Friedrich, ed. (New York: The Modern Library, 1993), 145 ≠ 153.

Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, ≥Juliette or Enlightenment and Morality,≤ in Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming (New York: Continuum, 1996), 81- 119.

Week 8

February 25^th and 27^th
Lecture:	Why have the Japanese seemingly embraced poetic approaches to the catastrophic?
Screening:	Godzilla (Japan 1954, USA 1957)

Craig Owens, ≥The Allegorical Impulse: Toward a Theory of Postmodernism,≤ in Brian Wallis ed., Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation, (New York: The New Museum of Contemporary Art in association with David R. Godin, Publisher, Inc., 1988), 203 - 235.

Kyo Maclear, ≥Art From the Ashes,≤ in Beclouded Visions: Hiroshima-Nagasaki and the Art of Witness, (New York: State University of New York, 1999), 55 - 71.

Week 9

March 4^th and 6^th
Lecture:	From Maus to Barefoot Gen are these approaching the limits of representation?
Screening:	Barefoot Gen

Hayden White, ≥Historical Emplotment and the Problem of Truth,≤ in Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the ≥Final Solution≤, ed. Saul Friedlander (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 37 - 53.

Art Spiegelman, ≥Barefoot Gen: Comics After the Bomb,≤ in Barefoot Gen, trans. Project Gen (Philadelphia: Penguin Books, 1989), xi ≠ xiv.

Week 10

March 11^th and 13^th
Lecture:	How can one speak of the catastrophic if it defies representation itself? Approaching abjection in the catastrophic experience.
Screening:	Hiroshima Mon Amour and scenes from Begotten

John Lechte, ≥Horror, Love, Melancholy,≤ Julia Kristeva, (London: Routledge, 1991), 157 - 198.

Final paper due on the date of the final.