History 317: Paper Topics

San Francisco State University

Fall 2005

Prof. Jackson

You will write a term paper on one of the following topics. If you wish to pursue another topic, please consult with the instructor.

In some instances you will have to obtain the recommended books elsewhere (e.g., public libraries, other university libraries, etc.). Plan ahead, as document delivery can take time.

Due December 6^th. The paper should be 10-12 pages, double-spaced, with one-inch margins, and with a font no smaller than 10 points and no larger than 12. Be sure to paginate your paper and include your name on the top of every page along with the page number. For usage, style, and grammar guidelines, see the Writing Guidelines on the web page.

Why did the perpetrators of the Holocaust act the way they did? What would cause "ordinary men" to shoot innocent men, women, and children? What evidence do we have as to their motivation? How reliable is it? How did the perpetrators react to their "special assignments"? Using your knowledge of the lectures, your reading of Christopher Browning, and your reading of Daniel Goldhagen in Niewyk's The Holocaust, write an essay on the motivations of the perpetrators.

Raul Hilberg, Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe, 1933-1945 (New York: HarperCollins, 1992).

D804.3.H56

Ernst Klee, et al., eds., The Good Old Days: The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders (New York: Free Press, 1991).

David Kitterman, "Those Who Said 'No!': German Studies Review, 2 (1988), 241-254.

David Bankier, The Germans and the Final Solution: Public Opinion under Nazism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992).

DD256.5.B32

Marlis G. Steinert, Hitler's War and the Germans: Public Mood and Attitude during the Second World War (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1977).

D757.S8613

Sarah Gordon, Hitler, Germans, and the "Jewish Question" (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).

Ian Kershaw, Public Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983).

Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness (New York: Vintage, 1983, orig. pub. 1974).

D805.G3 S456 1982.

Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, rev. ed., (London: Penguin Books, 1963).

Rudolph Höss, Death Dealer: The Memoirs of the SS Kommandant at Auschwitz, Steven Paskuly, ed., trans. Andrew Pollinger (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1992).

D805.P7H6713

How does one remember such a horrible event as the Holocaust? Can different categories of memory be established, and are they useful? Using your reading of Maus, the sections on the Holocaust experience from Niewyk, and a close viewing of the film "Shoah," write an essay on the possibilities and limits of how memory can be represented.

Art Spiegelman, Maus I, II (New York: Pantheon, 1991).

D804.3.S66

Saul Friedländer, ed., Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the "Final Solution" (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992).

Lawrence L. Langer, Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991).

James E. Young, ed., The Art of Memory: Holocaust Memorials in History (New York: Prestel, 1994).

Edward Norden, "Yes and No to the Holocaust Museums," Commentary, August 1993.

Edward T. Linenthal, Preserving Memory: The Struggle to Create America's Holocaust Museum (New York: Viking, 1995).

Yosefa Loshitzky, Spielberg's Holocaust: Critical Perspectives on Schindler's List (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997).

PN1997.S3133S65 1997

Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved (New York: Vintage, 1986).

D 804.3.L4813 1989

Myriam Anissimov, Primo Levi: Tragedy of an Optimist (Overlook Press, 1999).

Carole Angier: The Double Bond: The Life of Primo Levi (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2002).

Saul Friedländer, When Memory Comes (New York: Avon, 1978)

DS 135.F9.F74513 1979

Tom Segev, The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust trans. Haim Watzman (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993).

D804.3 .S44513 1993

Marianne Hirsch. "Family Pictures: Maus, Morning, and Post-Memory," Discourse 15.2 (Winter 1992-93): 1-27.

Alice Yaeger Kaplan, "Theweleit and Spiegelman: Of Men and Mice," Remaking History, Barbara Kruger and Phil Mariani, eds. (Seattle: Bay Press, 1989): 151-172.

Stephen E. Tabachnick. "Of Maus and memory: the structure of Art Spiegelman's graphic novel of the Holocaust," Word & Image 9.2 (April-June 1993): 154-162.

Miles Orvell. "Writing Posthistorically: Krazy Kat, Maus, and the Contemporary Fiction Cartoon," American Literary History 4.1 (Spring 1992): 110-28.

Terrence Des Pres. "Holocaust *Laughter*?" Writing and the Holocaust, Berel Lang, ed. (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1988): 216-233.

Nancy K. Miller, "Cartoons of the Self: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Murderer," M/E/A/N/I/N/G 12 (1992).

Marianne Hirsch, "Family Pictures: Maus and Post-Memory," Discourse (Winter 1992, I believe).

Paul Buhle, "Of Mice and Menschen: Jewish Comics Come of Age," Tikkun (March/April 1992).

Michael Rothberg, "'We Were Talking Jewish': Art Spiegelman's Maus as 'Holocaust' Production." Contemporary Literature (Winter 1994).

Various literary schemes have been employed to portray the Holocaust, from hard, unrelenting memoirs to surrealistic fantasies. What is the best way for literature to portray the Holocaust? Are there literary forms that should not be used? Why not? Using your reading of Primo Levi, the poetry on reserve for the class, and at least two other literary forms, write an essay on Holocaust literature.

Alvin H. Rosenfeld, A Double Dying: Reflections on Holocaust Literature (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980).

PN 56.3.J4.R6 M&M

Lawrence Langer, ed. Art from the Ashes: A Holocaust Anthology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).

D804.3.A78

Lawrence Langer, Admitting the Holocaust: Collected Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).

D803.3.L358

Saul S. Friedman,ed., Holocaust Literature: A Handbook of Critical, Historical, and Literary Writings (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1993).

UCB D804.3 .

James E. Young, Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust: Narrative and the Consequences of Interpretation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988).

UCB M&M, UCD D810.J4 Y58 1988

Yala Korwin, To Tell the Story (New York: Holocaust Library, 1987).

PS 3561.O79.T61 1981

Berel Lang, ed., Writing and the Holocaust (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1988).

D804.3.W751 1988

George Steiner, The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981).

PR 6069.T417.P6 1981

Andre Schwarz-Bart, The Last of the Just (New York: Atheneum, 1961).

PQ 2637.C736.D42 M&M

Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz

Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved

Nicholas Patruno, Understanding Primo Levi (University of South Carolina Press, 1995).

Gillian Banner, Holocaust Literature:  Schulz, Levi, Spiegelman and the Memory of Offence (Vallentine Mitchell, 2000)

One of the most contentious issues surrounding the study of the Holocaust is one of comparability. To what extent was the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis unique? By what standards? What are the politics surrounding the claim for uniqueness? Using your readings from Niewyk on gentiles during the Holocaust, your reading of Century of Genocide, and your reading of Steven Katz and David Stannard on e-reserve, write an essay on the comparability of the Holocaust.

Alternatively, using the bibliography from Century of Genocide, write an essay on one or more other genocides and consider its/their comparability to the Nazi anti-Jewish genocide.

Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn, The History and Sociology of Genocide: Analyses and Case Studies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990).

Charles Maier, The Unmasterable Past (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988).

Alan S. Rosenbaum, ed., Is the Holocaust Unique? Perspectives on Comparative Genocide (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1996).

Leo Kuper, Genocide (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981).

JX5418.K86 1981b M&M

Charles B. Strozier and Michael Flynn, ed., Genocide, War, and Human Survival (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996).

Erik Makusen and David Kopf, The Holocaust and Strategic Bombing: Genocide and Total War in the Twentieth Century (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995).

HV6322.7.M37 1995

Michael Berenbaum, ed., A Mosaic of Victims: Non-Jews Persecuted and Murdered by the Nazis (New York: New York University Press, 1990).

Steven Katz, The Holocaust in Historical Context (New York : Oxford University Press, 1994)

Should the history of the Holocaust be written as an episode of an ancient tradition of anti-Semitism, or as the expression of a modern form of racism? Was German anti-Semitism peculiarly virulent, and thus the cause of the Holocaust? What is the relationship between anti-Semitism and racism? Using your reading of Frederickson, Niewyk, and Century of Genocide, and your knowledge of the lectures, write an essay on the importance of anti-Semitism and/or racism in constructing the Holocaust.

George Mosse, Toward the Final Solution: A History of European Racism Paperback (June 1997) Howard Fertig; ISBN: 0865274282

Peter Pulzer, History of Political Anti-Semitism in Germany and Austria, rev. ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988)

DS146.G4.P81

Paul Lawrence Rose, Revolutionary Anti-Semitism in Germany from Kant to Wagner (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990).

DS 146.G4.R64 1990

Leon Poliakov, The History of Anti-Semitism, trans. Richard Howard, 4 vols. (New York, Vanguard Press, 1965-1985).

Charles Patterson, Anti-Semitism: The Road to the Holocaust and Beyond (New York: Walker and Company, 1988).

Jacob Katz, From Prejudice to Destruction: Anti-Semitism, 1700-1933 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980).

DS145 .K354

Lucy Dawidowicz, The War Against the Jews, 1933-45 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990).

D810.J4 D331 1990

Malcolm Hay, Europe and the Jews: The Pressure of Christendom on the People of Israel for 1900 Years (Boston: Beacon Press 1960).

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York: Knopf, 1996).

D804.3.G648

Neil MacMaster, Racism in Europe, 1870-2000 (New York : Palgrave, 2001).

Perpetrators and victims are probably the most important sociological categories of the Holocaust, but where do "bystanders" fit into the dynamic of the event? What responsibility does the world hold for allowing the genocide to occur? What were the possibilities of rescue during the war? Was it really possible for other nations to save the Jews, or is this a "myth"? Based on your reading the Niewyk anthology, write an essay on the role of other nations in resisting, facilitating, or simply ignoring the Holocaust.

Robert Paxton, Michael Marrus, Vichy France and the Jews (New York: Basic Books, 1981).

DS 135.F83.M3813 M&M

David S. Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 1941-1945 (New York: Pantheon, 1984).

D 810.J4.W95 1984 M&M

David S. Wyman, Paper Walls: America and the Refugee Crisis, 1938-1941 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1968).

JV6455 .W95

Arthur D. Morse, While Six Million Died: A Chronicle of American Apathy (New York: Random House, 1968).

D810.J4.M68 M&M

Bernard Wasserstein, Britain and the Jews of Europe, 1939-1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).

D804.3.W37 1988

A.J. Sherman, Island Refuge: Britain and Refugees from the Third Reich, 1933-1939 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973).

DS135.E5 S5

Henry Feingold, The Politics of Rescue: The Roosevelt administration and the Holocaust, 1938-1945 (New Brunswick, N.J., Rutgers University Press, 1970).

D810.J4 F48

Yehuda Bauer, Jews for Sale? Nazi-Jewish negotiations, 1933-1945 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994).

DS135.G3315 B38 1994

Deborah Lipstadt, Beyond Belief: The American Press and the coming of the Holocaust, 1933-1945 (New York: Free Press, 1986).

William D. Rubinstein, The Myth of Rescue: Why the Democracies Could Not Have Saved More Jews from the Nazis (London: Routlege, 1997).

Michael Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930-1965 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000).

Jan T. Gross, Neighbors: Neighbors : The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. ISBN: 0691086672

Gordon Horowitz, In the Shadow of Death: Living Outside the Gates of Mauthausen (New York: Free Press, 1990).

Tzvetan Todorov, The Fragility of Goodness: Why Bulgaria's Jews Survived the Holocaust (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2001)

Susan Zuccotti, The Italians and the Holocaust: Persecution, Rescue, and Survival (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996).

Can one speak of a gendered experience of the Holocaust? How did the Holocaust affect men and women differently? Your essay should focus on both what women and men had in common as well as how their experiences differed.

Claudia Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland

Alison Owings, Frauen: German Women Recall the Third Reich

Marion A. Kaplan, Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany

Renate Bridenthal, et al., eds., When Biology Became Destiny: Women in Weimar and Nazi Germany (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1984).

Vera Laska, Women in the Resistance and in the Holocaust: The Voices of Eyewitnesses (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1983).

Marlene E. Heinemann, Gender and Destiny: Women Writers and the Holocaust (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1986).

Carol Ann Rittner, John K. Roth, and Kohn K. Roth, eds., Different Voices: Women and the Holocaust (New York: Paragon, 1993).

Inge Deutschkron, Outcast: A Jewish Girl in Wartime Berlin, trans. Jean Steinberg (New York: 1989).

Mary Felstiner, To Paint Her Life: Charlotte Salomon in the Nazi Era (New York: 1994).

Ute Frevert, Women in German History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).

Jill Stephenson, Women in Nazi Society (New York: 1975).

Nathan Stoltzfus, Resistance of the Heart: Intermarriage and the Rosenstrasse Protest in Germany (New York: 1996).

Tzvetan Todorov, Facing the Extreme: Moral Life in the Concentration Camps, trans. Arthur Denner and Abigail Pollak (New York: Metropolitan Books, 1996).

Dalia Ofer and Lenore J. Weitzman, eds., Women in the Holocaust (Yale UP, 1998)

Judith Tydor Baumel, Double Jeopardy:  Gender and the Holocaust (Vallentine Mitchell, 1998) 

Laura Palosuo, "The Holocaust in Hungary:  The Importance of Gender, Age and Geography for the Jewish Experience"
 

Holocaust and Genocide Studies

Yad Vashem

History and Memory

Shoah

Journal of Contemporary History

Journal of Modern History

Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte

Central European History

Yearbook of the Leo Baeck Institute