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Leo Baeck Summer University 2010
Module II
Transnational, Transcultural, and Transmedial German Jewish Studies
Instructors: Leslie Morris
morri074@umn.edu
Karen Remmler
kremmler@mtholyoke.edu
Description:
This unit explores the cultural discourses and spaces that constitute the multifaceted
contemporary notions of German Jewish histories, representations, and cultures. Through
close readings of contemporary literary texts, film screenings, field trips, and discussions
with writers, filmmakers, and members of Jewish communities in Berlin, we explore the
shifting understanding of German Jewish relations within a larger matrix of discussions
about diaspora, displacement, memory, space, and representation as well as
German/Jewish/Turkish relations and the actual experience of Russian Jews, particularly
in post-Wall Berlin. We pursue such questions as:
1) To what extent and in what form have interpretations of Jewish spaces expanded
beyond sites designated as memorial sites (i.e. Holocaust Memorials, Jewish
Museum) to include sites that comprise multiple histories and identities?
2) How has the focus on loss and trauma in the aftermath of the Holocaust shifted
away from Jewish experiences to those defined through the lens of transnational
theories and movements?
3) What are the current tropes for describing spaces as Jewish, German Jewish,
and/or European or non-European?
4) What constitutes the “New German Jewry” after the fall of the Berlin Wall?
5) What constitutes the real and virtual spaces of contact across Europe and beyond?
Field trips will include memorial sites, spaces significant for contemporary Jewish
communities, artistic installations, and those sites where traces of Jewish histories have
intermingled with other transnational histories.
Format: Morning sessions include lectures with instructors and guests, student
presentations on course readings and films, and discussion. Occasional afternoon sessions
include tours within Berlin, visits to memorial sites, and meetings at key museums,
community centers, and organizations relevant to Jewish lives and their intersection with
other minorities in Berlin.
Requirements:
1) Full attendance of seminar sessions, field trips, discussions with guests, and film
screenings and/or other occasional events.
2) After an initial introduction of the topic or focus, students give an oral
presentation of material for that session. Students present in pairs with prior
consultation and are responsible for highlighting the main concerns or themes of
the text under discussion and to raising at least two discussion questions. The
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presentation should not be a summary of the material, but rather should engage
the text critically. The presentation is not a simple description or iteration of the
reading, but rather an expression of the text’s meaning within the larger context of
our discussion. Each presentation should focus on one or two passages in the text
that are compelling to you and form the basis of your discussion questions. We
also expect the presentations to integrate ongoing class discussion. You may
choose the form of your presentation (debate, analysis, performance, series of
questions, and/or close reading); we encourage you to use these presentations as a
way to reflect on the “performative” act of engaging in critical dialogue. We
expect presentations to be no longer than 10-15 minutes.
3) As part of this module, students continue to focus on their seminar project.
Students are encouraged to incorporate their work on the final projects into their
presentations and ongoing theorization about the meaning of transnational
concepts of space, memory, or diaspora.
A sign-up sheet for presentations will be available in the main office the week of
July 20. Signing up will be on a first come, first serve basis. Please remember to sign
up for two texts. All readings will have at least two presenters. Please refer to the
reading list at the end of this syllabus.
Mon. July 26:
Introduction and Overview
What constitutes Jewish German Cultural Studies? How do we define “Germanness?”
How do we define “Jewishness?” How do close readings of texts, images, and spaces
coincide with theoretical shifts and debates? What are the major debates and events
defining cultures of memory after 1945 to the present? What is the interplay between
history, memory and narrative in Germany post-1945?
Readings: Morris and Remmler (Introduction to Contemporary Jewish Writing in
Germany); Remmler (“Encounters Across the Void”), Morris (Introduction to German
Quarterly special issue on German-Jewish Studies”)
Afternoon tba:
Tues. July 27: Mapping texts to German Jewish spaces and memorial sites
Readings: Tony Judt; Todd Presner; Geyer (recommended)
Evening Film: “The White Ribbon” (Michael Haneke, 2009)
Wed. July 28:
Contextualizing issues of diaspora, migration, Jewishness and memory
Discussion of “The White Ribbon”
Guest Participant: Siobhan Craig
Readings: Aviv/Shneer; Pinto; Peck.
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Thurs. July 29:
Background texts about the current state of German Jewish Studies
in transnational contexts and the status of the category of “German Jew”
Readings: Herz; Voloj (recommended)
Field Trip (10.00 h): leave for tour of Skulpturenpark; Guest lecture by Dan Seiple, cofounder of Skulpturenpark; Zvi Hecker’s memorial at the periphery of the former Berlin
Wall; Lindenstrasse memorial; vestiges of wall.
Fri. July 30: Visualization of Spaces; Redefining and Recreating Jewish spaces
Barbara Honigmann, “Double Burial”
(Begin reading W.G. Sebald, excerpt from The Emigrants, “Max Ferber”)
Mon. Aug. 2:
Cultures of Jewish memory
Readings: Sebald: Excerpt from The Emigrants, “Max Ferber”
Leslie Morris: (“How Jewish Is It? W.G. Sebald and the Question of Contemporary
German-Jewish Writing”)
Karen Remmler: (“’On the Natural History of Destruction’ and Cultural Memory”)
Tues. Aug. 3:
Refractions of Jewishness in Germany:
Jewish/Turkish/French/Algerian/Israeli
Readings: Honigmann, “Sohara’s Journey”
Hélène Cixous, My Algeriance
Bodemann and Yurdakul
Evening: Film “Fremde Haut”
Wed. Aug. 4:
Discuss “Fremde Haut”
Individual Appointments to discuss final projects
Thurs. Aug 5:
Readings: Benjamin; Senocak
Fri. Aug. 6: Wrap-up and Conclusions
Readings:
Aviv, Caryn and David Shneer. New Jews: The End of the Jewish Diaspora (New York:
NYU P, 2005): 1-25.
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Benjamin, Walter Berlin Childhood Around 1900. Translated by Howard Eiland.
Harvard University Press, 2006.
Bodemann, Y.M. and Gökçe Yurdakul, “Learning Diaspora. German Turks and the
Jewish Narrative.” In: The New German Jewry and the European Context. The
Return of the Diaspora. Bodemann, ed. (London: Palgrave Macmillan: 2008): 73100.
Cixous, Hélène. “My Algeriance.” Stigmata. London/New York: Routledge, 1998.
Geyer, Michael. “Germany, or, The Twentieth Century as History.” SAQ Special Issue
on German Dis/Continuities 96:4 (Fall 1997): 663-702.
Herz, Manuel. “Eruv: Urbanism Towards an Alternative “Jewish Architecture” in
Germany.” Jewish Topographies.Visions of Space, Traditions of Place. Eds. Julia
Brauch, Anna Lipphardt and Alexendra Nocke. (Hampshire, England: Ashgate, 2008):
43-61.
Honigmann, Barbara. “Double Burial” In: Contemporary Jewish Writing In Germany:
An Anthology Eds. Leslie Morris and Karen Remmler (Lincoln: U of Nebraska P,
2002).
Honigmann, Barbara. Sohara’s Journey. Trans. John Barrett. (Verba Mundi Books,
2003).
Judt, Tony. “Toni” New York Review of Books (May 13, 2010).
Morris, Leslie and Karen L. Remmler. “Introduction”. Eds. Contemporary Jewish
Writing In Germany: An Anthology (Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2002): 1-32.
Morris, Leslie. “How Jewish is German Studies? How German is Jewish Studies? In: The
German Quarterly (82:3) 2009, vii-xii.
Morris, Morris “How Jewish Is It? W.G. Sebald and the Question of Contemporary
German-JewishWriting.” In: The New German Jewry and the European Context. The
Return of the European Diaspora. Ed. Y. Michal Bodemann. (NY: Palgrave
Macmillan: 2008): 111-128.
Peck, Jeff. “Preface”. Being Jewish in the New Germany. (New Brunswick: Rutgers
UP, 2007): ix-xvi.
Pinto, Diane. “Can One Reconcile the Jewish World and Europe? In: The New German
Jewry and the European Context. The Return of the European Diaspora. Ed. Y.
Michal Bodemann. (NY: Palgrave Macmillan: 2008): 13-32.
Presner, Todd “Remapping German/Jewish Studies: Benjamin, Cartography, Modernity,”
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in: German Quarterly 82:3 (2009) Ed. Leslie Morris, 293-315
Remmler, Karen. “On the Natural History of Destruction" and Cultural Memory: W. G.
Sebald.” German Politics & Society 23:3 (Fall 2005): 42-64.
Remmler, Karen. “Encounters Across the Void: Rethinking Approaches to GermanJewish Symbiosis.” Unlikely History: The Changing German-Jewish Symbiosis, 1945
-2000. Eds. Leslie Morris and Jack Zipes. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002): 329.
Sebald, W.G. “Max Ferber.” The Emigrants. Trans. Michael Hulse. (New York: New
Directions, 1996): 147-237.
Senocak, Zafer. “War and Peace in Modernty.” Atlas of a Tropical Germany: Essays on
Politics and Culture, 1990-1998. Ed. and trans. Leslie A. Adelson. (Lincoln: U of
Nebraska P, 2000): 83-98.
Senocak, Zafer. “The Capital of the Fragment” New German Critique 88 (2003): 141146.
Voloj, Julian. “Virtual Jewish Topography. The Genesis of Jewish (Second) Life.
In: Jewish Topographies. Visions of Space, Traditions of Place. Eds. Julia Brauch,
Anna Lipphardt and Alexendra Nocke. (Hampshire, England: Ashgate: 2008): 346356.