ENGL 151   Literature of Survival: Genocide, Trauma, and Memory

An exploration of memoirs and personal narratives that have emerged from mass political violence. These texts bring us into catastrophic events with various perspectives on the historical event and the human encounter with violence and mass destruction, as well as insights to human endurance and resilience under extreme conditions (dislocation, loss, survival, and aftermath). Students investigate the impact of genocide on the self and on the imagination. Students read history, literary criticism, and trauma theory. Crucial questions include: how does trauma shape the imagination and open up access to the site of disaster; how do representations of violence shape and inflect aesthetic orientations and literary form; what are the ethical roles of these texts in the broader discourse of social thought and current affairs? Coursework is globally comparative and focuses on several genocidal histories: the,Lakota/Sioux in The United States, Armenians in Ottoman Turkey,Jews in Nazi occupied Europe, and Cambodians during Pol Pot's rule.