A PORTION OF THE ABOVE CLASS RESERVED FOR MAJORS
ABOVE CLASS OPEN TO GRADUATES ONLY

This graduate colloquium seeks to familiarize students with the
flood of outstanding recent work, as well as some contemporary
texts, relating to the reemergence of German society in the decade
and a half following WW2.  It will look at both non-Jewish and
Jewish Germans and ask about the ways in which the two post-war
Germanies (though with particular emphasis on West Germany) ignored,
worked through, absorbed or otherwise responded to or dealt with the
material, psychological and cultural legacies  of the recent past.
Topics will include trauma, racial identities, German-Jewish
interactions, religion after the Holocaust, prosperity and
stability, gender and militarism, Soviet and Stasi terror and their
relationships to Nazi terror, and so forth.   Although we will look
at some contemporary source material (OMGUS reports, Ernst von
Salomon’s the Questionnaire) the main works will be recent
literature on the two Germanies as well as, to set the scene, Tony
Judt’s new magnum opus “Postwar”.   Course grades will be based on
short response papers and a 20 page final paper.