HON 373: The Holocaust and the Arts
Spring 2012

Instructor: Dr. Richard Chess
Office: KH 208
Phone: 251-6576
E-mail: rchess@unca.edu
Office Hours: M and W 2:30 – 3:30, W 9 – 10, F 2 – 3, and by appointment

Required Texts:

War & Genocide: A Concise History
Of the Holocaust, Doris Bergen
Katschen & The Book of Joseph, Yoel Hoffmann
Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered, Ruth Kluger
Yosl Rakover Talks to God, Zvi Kolitz
Survival in Auschwitz, Primo Levi
The Shawl, Cynthia Ozick
Maus I and II, Art Spiegelman
Night, Elie Wiesel

Course Introduction/Overview:

Is there a Holocaust story? More than 66 years following the end of that war, and thousands of poems, novels, films, plays, works of visual art, and musical compositions later, have certain Holocaust narrative conventions been established? If so, can we identify them? Further, can we reflect on the significance—what they reveal, what they overlook or conceal—of such conventions? And what might the existence of such conventions mean for an artist who wants to create new work that draws on some aspect of the Holocaust? Must that artist break one or more of the conventions of Holocaust literature and art to create something new? Might such innovation offend an audience that has come to expect that a Holocaust “story” will be told in a particular way and will express an established meaning? And what about the relationship between art and history? Does that relationship change as the historical event that provides at least the context if not the substance of the work of art recede farther and farther from the present? These are some of the questions we can consider this semester.

Another area of our explorations and investigations this semester is suggested by this question: is the story of the Holocaustour story? It is unlikely (though not unimaginable) that any one of us in the room has ever experienced an event like the Holocaust. Does that mean that the experiences of those individuals caught in the Holocaust are unlike any we have known or are likely to know? What are the emotional, psychological, spiritual, even physical experiences of the Holocaust? What about its social, economic, political, cultural, aesthetic experiences? Are these unlike anything we experience in our mundane, daily lives? These, too, are questions we will consider, if for no other reason than, as we shall soon see, the art associated with the Holocaust demands that we consider such questions.

The Work Itself

Reading, Viewing, Listening

Part of our work will be practicing attentive reading, viewing, and listening itself. It is my hope that you will train your attention both to the texts themselves and to your responses—physical, emotional, mental, spiritual—to the texts.

Reflecting and Responding

Writing: Notebook

Another part of our work will be to reflect on and respond to the course materials. Writing is one of the methods we will use to reflect and respond.

I would like you to keep a notebook in which you will explore in a variety of ways the course materials and your responses to them. For some entries, you may look closely at the construction of a text—written Holocaust testimony, documentary or feature film, painting, etc.—to see how its formal properties express a range of feelings and ideas. For other entries, you may zero in and reflect on a moment in a text of interest to you because of its topic or theme (social structure in camp life, power and limits of language, faith or doubt, etc.) or because of the strong feelings expressed or because of your strong reaction (emotional, spiritual, physical, intellectual) to the passage. In some entries, you might want to explore one of your own experiences in which an attitude or feeling that comes up during the Holocaust is present in your own life: the experience of being an outsider, regarded suspiciously or treated harshly; the experience of speaking out in opposition to or resisting some public policy or behavior that you think is immoral; etc. Other entries might be imaginative and inventive: you might write a scene from a character’s life that isn’t included in a text; you might take a character from a text and place her or him in an entirely new situation and see how, given his or her experiences as represented in the original text, he or she might perceive or act in this new situation; you might write a poem. You also might include other things in your notebook: images—photos, works of visual art, video clips—that have something to do with the Holocaust, quotes from contemporary and current sources (advertising, political comments or speeches, news) that may be read in light of or through the lens of the Holocaust.

The goal is to be thinking about and reflecting on the course material and its implications both in and outside of class. I’d like you to practice becoming aware of the behavioral, intellectual, artistic, spiritual, and other implications of the Holocaust and the arts as you pay close attention to your daily life. Keeping up with this notebook regularly is one way to remind yourself to keep this course in mind throughout the days and weeks of this semester. We will write in these notebooks in class, and we will draw on these notebooks in our class discussions.

Writing: Analytical Essay

This notebook should provide you with the raw materials and the origins of ideas that can be developed in two essays, the first of which I’ll discuss here. For the analytical essay, I’d like you to use one or more of the course texts as the lens through which you will look at something going on in the world today. The “something” you choose to look at through the lens of one or more of the course texts can be very close to home: something you see or encounter in your daily life (what’s hidden and what’s exposed? what encourages and perpetuates discrimination and/or what tries to expose and eliminate discrimination? etc.). You can also examine a topic that you encounter indirectly—by means of the news or other sources of information. This essay will reflect your deep understanding of at least one of the assigned Holocaust texts (your choice doesn’t need to be limited to one of the literary texts)—not only its surface, summarizable content but also its other expressive elements—and your ability to apply the text’s knowledge and wisdom to a close look at some contemporary situation. You can consider the following question as one of those underlying this particular essay: is knowledge of the Holocaust and the arts of any use to us today?

Writing: Collage Essay

The second text you’ll produce will be a collage essay. This piece will be a condensed version of the notebook you keep throughout the semester. For this piece, you’ll choose the strongest and most meaningful sections from your notebook and, using juxtaposition and collage as a means of construction, organize and present them in a way that they will hold together though not necessarily by means of a single, unifying, linear argumentative thread. This piece can include visual imagery and reflections on that imagery, if you choose. I’ll explain this piece at greater length in class.

The Classroom Experience

In class, we’ll have an opportunity to explore the assigned texts (some of which we’ll view together). We’ll use a number of approaches to engage with the texts: writing, discussion, and contemplative exercises. Some of the informal writing and the contemplative exercises will give us an opportunity to explore possible connections between the course material and our own daily lives.

We will also have an opportunity to hear a performance of Holocaust and Holocaust-related music performed live by Pan Harmonia, a local chamber group led by flutist Kate Steinbeck. This performance will take place on Wednesday, April 18, at 6:30 p.m. in the Laurel Forum. I hope you can all make arrangements to attend this special event.

Grading Weights and Scale

In addition to receiving grades for your notebook, analytical essay, collage-essay, and participation in class discussion and experiences, you will have a chance to do a self-assessment. In this self-assessment, you will describe and reflect on the quality of your engagement with all aspects of the class. Based on your narrative self-assessment, you will assign yourself a grade. This grade will be worth 20% of your final grade for the course. If there is a significant difference between the grade you assign yourself in this assessment and the grade I would assign to you, we will meet and discuss the grade.

Notebook = 20 points
Analytical Essay = 20 points
Collage-Essay = 20 points
Participation = 20 points
Self-Assessment = 20 points

Total = 100 points

95 and above = A
92 – 94.5 = A-
87.5 – 91.5 = B+
85 – 87 = B
82 – 84.5 = B-
77.5 – 81.5 = C+
75 – 77 = C
72 – 74.5 = C-
67.5 – 71.5 = D+
65 – 67 = D
62 – 64.5 = D-

ARTS and IDEAS: Mission and Student Learning Outcomes

Mission

The Arts & Ideas Program, as an integral component of the Integrative Liberal Studies (ILS) Curriculum, provides students with an intellectual engagement with the arts while also fostering opportunities for creative and aesthetic interactions. ILS Arts courses examine the significance of the arts in the human experience, the cultural framework of creative composition and performance, the foundations of aesthetic values, and the communicative function of the arts.

Student Learning Outcomes

A student who completes 3.0 credits of ILSA will be able to do the following:

1. Articulate the value of the arts studied and their impact on the self and others
2. Recognize cultural, historical, spiritual, and/or political aspects of the arts studied
3. Define and articulate the concepts, methods, and organizing principles of the arts studied

The Holocaust and the Arts Schedule of Assignments

Schedule

Week 1

Jan 9 Intro

Everyday Objects/Enduring Legacies
Choosing to visit a death camp (a poem or two)

Jan 11 Film: Night and Fog

Week 2

Jan 16 Martin Luther King Holiday: No Class

Jan 18 Holocaust Testimonies
Night, Elie Wiesel

Week 3

Jan 23

Jan 25 Survival in Auschwitz, Primo Levi, Chapters 1 – 9

Week 4

Jan 30 Survival in Auschwitz, Primo Levi, Chapters 10 – 17

Feb 1

Week 5

Feb 6 Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered (through page 131)

Feb 8

Week 6

Feb 13 Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered (finish the text)

Feb 15 Choosing to Remember: From the Shoah to the Mountains
http://toto.lib.unca.edu/findingaids/oralhistory/SHOAH/default.htm

Week 7

Feb 20 Yosl Rakover Talks to God, Zvi Kolitz

Feb 22 Notebook Due

Week 8

Feb 27 Maus I and Maus II, Art Spiegelman

Feb 29 Draft of Analytical Essay Due

Week 9

March 5 Spring Break

March 7 Spring Break

Week 10

March 12 Holocaust Fictions
Film: Max (106 minutes)

March 14 finish viewing Max

Week 11

March 19 The Book of Joseph

March 21 Analytical Essay Due

Week 12

March 26 The Shawl, Cynthia Ozick

March 28 Notebook + Draft of Collage Essay Due

Week 13

April 2 Documenting the Story of the Holocaust and the Arts
Film: The Rape of Europa (117 minutes)

April 4 finish screening The Rape of Europa

Week 14

April 9 We Want the Light: film screening (60 minutes)

April 11

Week 15

April 16 Collage Essay Due

April 18 Undergraduate Research Symposium: No Class

But

“Elegy,” performance by Pan Harmonia, 7 p.m., Laurel Forum

Week 16

April 23 Post-Modern Visual Art and Music in Response to Holocaust

Self-Assessment Due

Week 17

April 30

8:00 – 10:30 a.m. Final Experience

Hon 373: Contemplation and Imagination:

A Writing and Contemplative Practice Workshop
Spring 2012

Dr. Richard Chess
Karpen Hall 208
rchess@unca.edu
828-251-6576
Office Hours: M 2:30 – 3:30, W 9:00 – 10:00, F 2:00 – 3:00

Required Texts

The Spell of the Sensuous, David Abrams
The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson & Issa, ed. Robert Haas
Given Sugar, Given Salt: Poems, Jane Hirshfield
The Jew in the Lotus, Rodger Kamenetz
The Snow Leopard, Peter Matthiessen
Dakota: A Spiritual Geography, Kathleen Norris
Angel’s Task: Poems in Biblical Time, Laurie Patton
No Nature: New and Selected Poems , Gary Snyder

Guiding Questions, Intentions, Possibilities, Hopes

What if, by exploring and inquiring into our own experiences, we could find insights into how to live deeply, compassionately, lovingly? What if, by paying close attention to our experiences we could develop the strength and wisdom not to react, in ways that could harm ourselves and others, to our fears and discomforts? These are two of the questions that will guide us as we engage in our work this semester, the work of exploration and inquiry. Our methods of exploration and inquiry will include attentive reading and writing as well as several contemplative practices that could help us develop and strengthen our ability to pay close attention—to the world within us and to the world in which we live.

As we’ll see, writing itself is a kind of contemplative practice. One aspect of writing as contemplative practice that we’ll focus on is developing the ability to remain open, in a non-judgmental way, to the moment by moment arising of one syllable and then another, one word and then another. The meditative technique—mindfulness meditation—we’ll work with in class and on our own may be useful to us as we try to develop the skill of mindful writing.

Reading—each other’s work as well as the work of published writers and poets—will be approached in this class as another form of contemplative practice. We will use some meditative techniques to create new possibilities for deep, attentive reading. We’ll use the assigned texts as models, guides, and sources of inspiration for our own writing.

Practically Speaking

I would like you to establish a regular practice of doing three things throughout the semester: reading, writing, and meditating. What do I mean by “regular”? Well, ideally, on a daily basis. I know that we all have busy, demanding schedules. I understand that it may not be possible for you to keep up with all three activities every day throughout the semester. So, let’s call daily practice a goal. Try to establish a routine of doing these things, if possible at a fixed time, as many days of the week as you can. I think you will find that if you establish the routine, you may increase the likelihood that you will write and read with greater insight and that you will experience some other benefits that can come from meditation. You need not spend a lot of time on this on a daily basis—even five minutes of daily meditation, and maybe ten or fifteen minutes of daily writing, and a few minutes of daily reading. Let’s say 30 minutes total. Of course, before assignments are due you will probably need to spend more time writing and/or reading.

Writing

Notebook

I’d like you to keep some kind of notebook—it can be on your computer, in a physical notebook, or a combination of the two—in which you will record your observations of and reflections on your experiences with the contemplative practices and with writing. At the end of the semester, I’ll ask you to review what you’ve written in your notebook and compose a short essay in which you identify and reflect on a few insights into your experiences of writing, reading, and meditating this semester.

Poetry and Non-Fiction

I would like you to produce one piece of fully realized work, by which I mean, in part, a piece of writing that leads both you and a reader to some meaningful, fresh insight into whatever experience you are exploring in that piece of writing. What do I mean by one piece of work? Well, it could be one non-fiction essay or one poem. While the goal, as I said, is to produce just one piece (poetry or non-fiction) as fully realized as possible, we will start many pieces of writing, especially during the first half of the semester. To set a pace that should help us generate enough raw material with which to work, I will ask you to turn in drafts of two different pieces of writing each week during the first half of the semester. This should give you enough raw material (10 early drafts) from which to choose a couple of pieces that have potential for further development. We’ll work on the next drafts of three pieces during the first few weeks after spring break. From these developed drafts, you’ll choose one piece to continuing developing and, finally, finish by the end of the semester.

We will have opportunities to share work-in-progress with each other—with partners, in small groups, and with the entire class—for feedback. You will also receive feedback from me on much but not all of your written work.

Reading

The reading we do for the course should give us opportunities to look carefully at the craft of shaping an engaging and insightful poem, essay, or full length work of non-fiction. It will also give us an opportunity to study a writer’s process of inquiring into and exploring a subject as he or she moves toward insight and understanding. To practice reading deeply, in our class discussions we’ll focus on only a few poems, essays or parts of essays from the assigned readings.

Recitation

You will be asked to learn by heart and then recite one haiku from The Essential Haiku every other week in class.

Individual Conferences

We will meet for individual conferences at least once and possibly twice during the semester.

Special Events

Visiting Writers

We are very fortunate to be having two writers, Norman Fischer and Laurie Patton, visit our class this semester. Both of these accomplished writers have deep experience with contemplative practices; their writing and teaching can offer us guidance and, I hope, inspiration for our work.

Creating a Mindful Campus: Teaching, Learning, and Working at UNC Asheville,
March 23 – 25, 2012

This semester we’ll be hosting a retreat/conference called “Creating a Mindful Campus: Teaching, Learning, and Working at UNC Asheville.” The retreat/conference will provide participants—UNCA students, faculty and staff as well as folks from other institutions (local, throughout the state, and perhaps elsewhere in the Southeast)—an extended opportunity for contemplative practice and for exchanging ideas about the use and experience of what’s called contemplative pedagogy.

Our class will play a role in this retreat/conference. Together, we can discuss some of the specific things each of you can do for the retreat/conference, but I’ll give you some ideas here. A few of you, I hope, will make presentations as part of a student panel on what it’s like to be in a class in which contemplative pedagogy is used. One or more of you might work on documenting—audio, video—appropriate parts of the conference. One or more of you can help promote the conference. One or more of you can work on the website and blog for the conference. These are a few possibilities that I can think of at this moment. Whatever role you play, I’d like each of you to commit four hours to doing something meaningful for the retreat/conference. And, of course, I’d you’ll participate in the retreat itself!

Assessment

Since this is a class of exploration and inquiry, I would like to explore something else with you this semester—the possibility of self-assessment for determining 30% of your grade for the course.

Self Assessment

Just before spring break, and then again a week before the end of classes, you will be asked to turn in a written self-assessment of your work. In this self-assessment, you will have the opportunity to reflect on each aspect of your work—writing, reading, participation in contemplative practices, contribution to class discussions, involvement in the “Creating a Mindful Campus” retreat, and whatever else comes up. In your self-assessment, you will also assign yourself a grade worth 30% of your final grade.

My Assessment

I will read and respond to your self-assessment, offering additional observations as they seem appropriate. If I don’t agree with the grade you’ve assigned yourself, I will assign you a different grade and I will provide my rationale for giving you that grade. If we are not in agreement on this portion of your grade, we can discuss the grade in a private conference.

Credit for Assignments Submitted

I will give you full credit for each required assignment you complete and submit on the due date. In total, this credit will count for 70% of your final grade.

Grading Weights and Scale

Weekly Writing Assignments: 5 @ 20 = 100

Draft #2 of each of three pieces @ 50 = 150

Finished piece of writing = 100

Final reflective essay = 100

Haiku by Heart = 100

Creating a Mindful Campus
Conference Participation = 100

Self Assessment essays @ 25 = 50

Self Assessment = 300

Total = 1,000

95 and above = A
92 – 94.5 = A-
87.5 – 91.5 = B+
85 – 87 = B
82 – 84.5 = B-
77.5 – 81.5 = C+
75 – 77 = C
72 – 74.5 = C-
67.5 – 71.5 = D+
65 – 67 = D
62 – 64.5 = D-

Calendar

1/9 River and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy

1/16 MLK Day: No class

1/23 Dakota (pages to be announced)

Weekly writing #1 due

1/30 Norman Fischer handout: essays, poems

Weekly writing #2 due

2/6 Norman Fischer: class visit: 6 – 7 p.m.; public reading: 7:30 p.m.

Weekly writing #3 due

2/13 The Jew in the Lotus

Weekly writing #4 due

2/20 Given Sugar, Given Salt

Weekly writing #5 due

2/27 Angel’s Task

Mid-term self assessment due

3/5 Spring Break

3/12 Laurie Patton: class visit

Note: class ends at 7 p.m. for Shalom Goldman talk

Draft #2 of each of two pieces

3/19 The Spell of the Sensuous (pages to be announced)

Draft #2 of one piece

3/23 – 3/25

Creating a Mindful Campus: Teaching, Learning and Working at UNC Asheville

3/26 No Nature (pages to be announced)

4/2 Draft #3 of one piece

4/9 The Snow Leopard (pages to be announced)

4/16

4/23 Last Class (may end at 7 p.m.; Asheville Jewish Film Festival, free tickets available)

4/30 Final Meeting: Celebration!

An award winning and much-sought after teacher, he is the Roy Carroll Professor of Honors Arts and Sciences and Professor of Literature and Language at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. He directs UNCA’s Center for Jewish Studies. He has been a member of the low-residency MFA faculties at Warren Wilson College and Queens College. He served for a number of years as writer-in-residence at the Brandeis Bardin Institute in Simi Valley, California. He also served as assistant director of The Jewish Arts Institute at Elat Chayyim, located at the Isabella Freedman Retreat Center, where he taught creative writing in a two year training institute.

Having completed the Jewish Mindfulness Teacher Training Program, he is a co-leader of the Asheville Jewish Mindfulness Meditation Circle at Congregation Beth Israel.  He is also working to introduce, and encourage and provide support for the use of contemplative pedagogy at UNC Asheville and other educational institutions.