International Perspectives on Anne Frank
Lecturers and Coordinators:
Prof. Dawn Skorczewski, (dawnskor@brandeis.edu), Brandeis University
Prof. Diederik Oostdijk (d.m.oostdijk@vu.nl), VU University Amsterdam
Prof. Dienke Hondius (d.g.hondius@vu.nl), VU University Amsterdam
Guest Instructors:
Dr. David Barnouw , NIOD
Dr. Denise de Costa
Dr Bettine Siersema, VU Amsterdam
Dr. Anna Ornstein, psychoanalyst and survivor
Course content:
The Diary of Anne Frank is one of the most famous books ever written. Composed during
World War II in her place of hiding, this young Jewish woman’s diary became an enormous
posthumous bestseller after the war. This course explores why and how this book became so
successful around the world, focusing especially on how Anne Frank’s story has been told in
different media over time. The course also invites students to participate in an international
learning experience in which students and faculty at VU Amsterdam and Brandeis University
learn, talk, and work together in a Skype-equipped classroom. The international perspectives
offered in the course are thus represented in its content and its form. In the final weeks of the
term, faculty and students will have the opportunity for further work in a face to face
environment.
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During her short life (Frankfurt 1929 – Bergen Belsen 1945), Anne Frank did not stand out to
her family or friends as special or exceptional. History, legacy, memory, text and images have
created a posthumous life of Anne Frank that is the topic of this course. By studying the many
adaptations of the story of Anne Frank in historical context, we gain in-depth knowledge of
the history and cultural memory of the Holocaust and the Second World War in Europe and
the way in which those events have been remembered, especially in the Netherlands and the
United States. Studying in a trans-Atlantic environment enriches this experience, particularly
given Anne Frank’s status as an “American Heroine.”
Beginning with American incarnations of Anne Frank and a Holocaust Memorial Day
Program, we will join our colleagues in Amsterdam in February via Skype to conduct a close
reading of The Diary of Anne Frank. We will then explore the different ways in which this
narrative has been retold, through the past seventy years and in different media. We will also
“tour” the places mentioned in the diary via the Anne Frank APP. We will study children’s
books, speeches, letters, commemorative texts, documentaries, movies, museum exhibits,
music, plays, poems, and/or sculptures inspired by the story of Anne Frank. Dutch and
American students will design Anne Frank projects and present them in our Skype classroom.
American students and Dutch students will write diary entries for our combined class blog.
In the final weeks of the course, joined by a VU Professor of History who is also an employee
of the Anne Frank House, the class will conduct research in the USC SHOAH archives to
learn about other hidden children of the Netherlands When the course is completed, interested
students are invited to compete for a June 2015 internship at the Anne Frank House in
Amsterdam, where they will work in two teams (one American and one Dutch student) to
study the “memory books,” guest books from the museum, an archive recording visitors
experiences at the Anne Frank House for more than half a century.
Learning objectives:
1. Students will gain a basic understanding of World War II and the Holocaust, and how
those historical events impacted literature and culture afterwards.
2. Students will analyze visual texts in comparison to written texts, and learn how a
literary text can be remediated in other media. They will explore the historical,
methodological, and theoretical implications of such remediations.
3. Students will gain background knowledge about the many versions of the narrative of
Anne Frank.
4. Students will be encouraged to make connections with faculty and students in an
international classroom space, to respond to questions about the literary and visual
texts, and to share responsibility for the intellectual content of the discussion.
5. During the web tours, students will gain insight about how the history of World War II
has impacted the cities of Amsterdam and Boston and how the narrative of Anne
Frank has left traces all around the world.
6. Group projects will introduce students to their own work in Memory Studies, with an
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emphasis on acts of Memorialization.
7. Anne Frank Project Assignments encourage students to cooperate in small groups on a
research project related to Anne Frank and the Holocaust, and to present their findings
in a coherent presentation.
8. The individual essay that the students will write on this Anne Frank Project will
challenge students write coherently and intelligibly about the vision of the legacy of
Anne Frank
9. .Research in the USC SHOAH archives will introduce students to other hidden
children of the Netherlands to critically engage how others have written and spoken
about the Holocaust in different media.
10. Opportunities for continued research and publication will invite students to participate
in the ongoing international conversations about the legacy of Anne Frank and the
responsibilities of those who choose to study and remember the Holocaust .
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Assessment:
Presentation (10%): Students will give a presentation in pairs of their Anne Frank Project.
Each group needs to hand in a presentation proposal of one-page (500 words) by March 7.
Each presentation will take ten minutes followed by a Q & A session.
Attendance and Participation (20%): There is an attendance requirement, which means that
students cannot miss more two classes in total. Students are encouraged to ask questions, to
engage in meaningful discussions with fellow students and their instructors.
Diary and Blog Post (10%): each student is required to write a weekly entry in a Journal.
The Journal entry needs to be in between 250 and 500 words each week, and is only visible to
you and the other instructors. One student from each country each week will voluntarily post
an entry on the class blog. The entries should be individual responses to either that week’s
lecture, practicum, or seminar, the development of your Anne Frank project (see below), or
something else that is tangentially related to the course. The goal of this assignment is to
allow you experience what it is like to keep a journal for twelve weeks, to write in several
installments a personal reflection of how you experience the course. In class, the instructors
will ask you to reflect on that experience and will try to make connections with The Diary of
Anne Frank. All postings have to be submitted no later than Wednesdays at 5:00 P.M. If you
fail to make a posting or if your posting is late you will be noted as absent.
Essay: (20%): Each student hands in a paper of 2,500 words based on the Anne Frank
Project. This essay needs to analyze the project and to render a personal reflection on it.
Please note that this is an individual assignment (of a group project). Please consult the
document “Writing Academic Essays” before submitting the essay, use the Essay Checklist as
your cover page, and start off your essay with an abstract. The essay is due on April 30 at
12:00 noon.
Research in the USC SHOAH archives (10%): Under the direction of Dutch historian and
Anne Frank House employee Dienke Hondius, students will collect information on other girls
and boys who hid in Holland during the war. They will listen to two interviews on the USC
Shoah Archives and record their findings in a class database.
Written Take Home Exam (20%): The written exam consists of seven questions (with up to
three sub-questions) about all course material, covering all classes of and including the
literature mentioned below. The exam questions will be distributed in the last class and due
online on May 1 2015
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Literature:
Please acquire copies of the following texts.
-Frank, Anne. The Diary of a Young Girl. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2007. ISBN13:
9780141032009.
- Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara and Jeffrey Shandler, Anne Frank Unbound: Media,
Imagination, Memory. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2012. ISBN: 1-800-842-6796.
- Roth, Philip. The Ghost Writer. New York: Vintage, 1995. ISBN: 978-0679748984. (Or
later Vintage edition)
The following texts will be made available to students:
- Berryman, John. “The Development of Anne Frank.” The Freedom of the Poet. New
York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1976. 91-106.
- Goodrich, Frances and Albert Hackett. The Diary of Anne Frank. New York: Dramatists
Play Service, 1986.
- Kesselman, Wendy, The Diary of Anne Frank. New York 1998
- Leon de Winter and Jessica Durlacher, Anne. Amsterdam and Basel 2014
- Motion, Andrew. “Anne Frank House.” Selected Poems: 1976-1997. 16.
- Lidchi, Henrietta. “The Poetics and the Politics of Exhibiting Other Cultures.”
Representations, Second Edition. Ed. Stuart Hall, Jessica Evans, and Sean Nixon.
London: Sage, 2013. 120-179.
-C.K. Williams, “A Day for Anne Frank.” Collected Poems. New York: Farrar Straus
Giroux, 2007. 3-8.
Further Recommended Reading:
De Costa, Denise. Anne Frank and Etty Hillesum: Inscribing Spirtuality and Sexuality. New
Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1999.
-Friedländer, Saul. Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1933-1945. New York: Harper/Collins, 2009.
-Hilberg, Raul, Victims, Perpetrators, Bystanders. The Jewish Catastrophe, 1933-1945. New
York: Harper/Collins 1992.
-Moore, Bob. Victims and Survivors: The Nazi Persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands,
1940-1945. London, Arnold 1997.
-Presser, Jacques. Ashes in the Wind: The Destruction of Dutch Jewry. London: Souvenir
Press, 2010 (1968).
-Prose, Francine. Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife. New York: HarperPerennial,
2009.
-Romijn, Peter. “The War, 1940–1945.”The History of the Jews in the Netherlands. Transl. by
Arnold Pomerans and Erica Pomerans. Ed. J. C. H. Blom, R. G. Fuks Mansfeld, and I.
Schöffer, Oxford: Littmann Library of Jewish Civilization, 2002. 296–335.
-Wolf, Diane L. Beyond Anne Frank: Hidden Children and Postwar Families in Holland.
Berkeley: U of California P, 2007.
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Course Schedule:
Week 1
January 12
Introductions
January 14
From the Present to
the Past: what are your
experiences of reading
Anne Frank?
Reading
“What We Talk About
When We Talk About
Anne Frank,”Nathan
Eglander
Week 2
NO CLASS
January 21
Anna Ornstein, My
Mother’s Eyes
Reading
Anna Ornstein, My
Mother’s Eyes
Week 3
January 26
special guest Anna
Ornstein, MD,
psychoanalyst and
Holocaust survivor
January 28
Diaries of young
women living in the
Netherlands, including
Etty Hillesum.
Reading
Etty Hillesum, excerpts
from diary
Week 4
The city
February 2
Background:
What happened in
Amsterdam during World
War II? What remains of
the war in the city today?
Where can we find traces
of Anne Frank and her
contemporaries?
February 4
“Walking tour”
WEB TOUR
Hollandsche
Schouwburg, Jewish
Resistance Fighters
Memorial, Resistance
Monument, The
Dockworker, pavement
markers indicating
former Jewish boys
boarding school and
houses formerly owned
by Amsterdam Jews
Reading
“Introduction: Anne
Frank, the Phenomenon”
(AFU) 1-22.
February 9
February 11
(w Denise de Costa)
How was the diary
written? How was it
edited? How has it been
translated?
Discussion: Anne
Frank, The Diary of
Anne Frank
Reading
“Suturing In: Anne
Frank As a Conceptional
Model for Visual Art”
(AFU), 254-264
Week 5:
The book
Anne Frank, The Diary of
Anne Frank
“From Diary to Book:
Text, Object, Structure”
(AFU), 25-58.
“Sounds from the Secret
Annex: Composing a
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Young Girl’s Thoughts”
(AFU), 265-287
“
Week 6:
The Play
Spring Break
Spring Break
Spring Break
February 26
(w Diederik Oostdijk)
February 28
Reading
Anne Frank from Page to
Stage” (AFU), 59-92.
How does the Anne
How did the play of Anne Frank Museum present
Frank get to Broadway in her to the world? How
1955 and the Dutch
has the concept of the
stage? How was the diary museum changed over
converted to a play? How time?
was the reception?
“Sounds from the Secret
Annex: Composing a
Young Girl’s Thoughts”
(AFU), 265-287;
“Anne Frank on Crank:
Comic Anxieties” (AFU),
309-323.
Frances Goodrich and
Albert Hackett, The
Diary of Anne Frank
Henrietta Lidchi, “The
Poetics and the Politics of
Exhibiting Other
Cultures.”
Week 7:
The film
March 2
March 4
Readings*
How did the movie of
Anne Frank get to
Hollywood? How is
Anne Frank portrayed in
later movies?
Film clips discussion:
“Anne Frank’s Moving
Images” (AFU), 93-134.
Watch George Stevens,
The Diary of Anne Frank
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(1959)
*Groups will hand in
presentation proposal.
Lecture 6
Week 8:
March 9
The
inspiration (Diederik Oostdijk)
How has the story of
Anne Frank inspired
American and British
poets?
Practicum 6
March 11
(Dawn Skorczewski)
Philip Roth, The Ghost
Writer
Seminar 6
Readings
“Literary Afterlives of
Anne Frank (AFU), 215253)
John Berryman, “The
Development of Anne
Frank”
Andrew Motion, “Anne
Frank House”
C.K. Williams, “A Day
for Anne Frank.”
Philip Roth, The Ghost
Writer
Week 9:
The world
March 16
Memory Studies
How is Anne Frank
remembered around the
world? What does this
tell us about “cultural
memory,” “collected
memory,” “collective
memory,” and “cultural
recall”?
March 18
“Remembering”
Anne Frank Abroad
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Reading
“Hauntings and Sitings in
Germany” (AFU), 137157
Ilana Abramovitch,
“Teaching Anne Frank in
the United States” (AFU),
160-177
Brigitte Sion, “Anne
Frank as Icon, from
Human Rights to
Holocaust Denial”
(AFU), 178-192
Liora Gubkin, “Anne
Frank, a Guest at the
Seder” (AFU), 193-211.
Week 10
March 23:
Anne Frank Projects
March 25:
Anne Frank Projects
*Dienke Hondius and
Dawn Skorczewski both
in Boston
Week 11
March 30:
Anne Frank Projects
April 1:
Anne Frank Projects
Dawn Skorczewski now
participates from
Amsterdam
April 15
Dienke Hondius
Archival Research
USC Shoah
Foundation
No readings: work on
archival research on
hiding in Amsterdam
Week 12
April 13
Dienke Hondius
1. A short wrap up of the
aftermath of the hiding
place in Amsterdam.
Who were in hiding?
What happened?
4.
Introduction to all
historical actors around
the hiding place.
2. Return and Reception of
Jewish Survivors in 1945.
Leave a Message.
What visitors write in
the Anne Frank House
comments’ books.
3.
Week 13
April 20
Dienke Hondius
Archival Research USC
April 22
Dienke Hondius
Archival Research
USC
April 27
Dienke Hondius
5. Holocaust Denial,
Antisemitism, and
Racism in Europe.
Continue work on
archival research; add to
database.
Final take home exam due
May 1
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