Please note: Due to alternative arrangements for teaching and
assessment in place from 18 March 2020 to mitigate against the restrictions in
place due to COVID-19, information shown for 2019/20 may not always be accurate.
Please note: you are viewing unit and programme information
for a past academic year. Please see the current academic year for up to date information.
| Unit name |
Holocaust Landscapes (Level H Lecture Response) |
| Unit code |
HIST39009 |
| Credit points |
20 |
| Level of study |
H/6
|
| Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12)
|
| Unit director |
Dr. Andy Flack |
| Open unit status |
Not open |
| Pre-requisites |
None
|
| Co-requisites |
None
|
| School/department |
Department of History (Historical Studies) |
| Faculty |
Faculty of Arts |
Description including Unit Aims
This unit explores the Holocaust and Holocaust memory through the lens of spatial history. Doing so aims to raise new questions in three main areas:
- Firstly, how does thinking spatially help us better understand the broader story of a genocide that was enacted across the European continent over a number of years? How – and why – did the genocide change shape? How does thinking geographically about the Holocaust focus renewed attention on its history (or chronology)? How far was genocide not only enacted in space but also through space?
- Secondly, how do spatial concepts help us to better understand victim experiences during the Holocaust? How did victims exercise agency within the midst of genocide, and what spatial forms did this take? How far were Holocaust landscapes gendered?
- Thirdly, what has happened to the places where the Holocaust was enacted in the post-war world? How – and why – have they variously been memorialised or erased? Who has – and does – visit these sites and why?
We will adopt a broadly chronological, thematic approach, exploring a number of different landscapes where the Holocaust was enacted, experienced, and has been remembered and forgotten. We will move from Germany in the late 1930s, eastwards to occupied Poland and the Soviet Union, before heading westwards again ending up in Germany in 1945. As we examine this genocide that was constantly on the move we will explore what unfolded in ghettos, forests, train cars, camps, attics and cellars, mountains and sea, rivers and roads, and we will also consider what has happened to those material sites in the post-war years.
Intended Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of this unit students will be able to:
- demonstrate historical knowledge of a range of periods/geographical areas/themes relating to the Holocaust
- Discuss and evaluate the key historiographical debates that surround the topic
- Critically assess and interpret primary sources and select pertinent evidence in order to illustrate specific and more general historical points
- Present their research and judgements in written forms and styles appropriate to the discipline and to level H/6
Teaching Information
- 1 x two-hour interactive lecture per week
- 1 x one-hour workshop per week
Assessment Information
1 x 3000 word summative essay (50%) [ILOs 1-4]
1 x two hour exam (50%) [ILOs 1-4]
Reading and References
- Andrew Charlesworth, ‘The Topography of Genocide’ in Dan Stone (ed.), The Historiography of the Holocaust (Houndmills, 2004)
- Tim Cole, Holocaust Landscapes (London, 2016)
- Paolo Giaccaria and Claudio Minca (eds.), Hitler’s Geographies (Chicago, 2016)
- Anne Kelly Knowles, Tim Cole and Alberto Giordano, Geographies of the Holocaust (Bloomington, 2014)
- James E. Young, The Texture of Memory (New Haven: 1993)
