HIS 485 Advanced Seminar on the Holocaust

The course aims to provide students with a grounding in some of the major issues concerning the Jewish Holocaust. Among the topics examined will be the intensification of European anti-Semitism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; the growth of eugenic and pseudo-scientific racial theories during the same period; the murder of physically and mentally disabled people before the beginning of the Holocaust; the origins of the Holocaust and the scholarly debate between Functionalism and Intentionalism; the comparative history of genocide; the non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust; the question of Allied knowledge of the death camps and what they could or should have done to prevent the extermination of the Jews; the participation of non-German populations as perpetrators, and the extent of popular knowledge and involvement in the Holocaust. Two seminars concentrate on some of the major literature and documentary films which have emerged from the Holocaust. The course is seminar based, hence student driven. Students will be expected to do a significant amount of reading to present their interpretation of the evidence and participate in discussions.