The History, Memory, and Representation of the Holocaust: Reflections on a Yearlong Freshman Seminar and Study Trip

Presented at the Lessons and Legacies conference on Holocaust Studies in November 2016, these posters document a year-long freshman FOCUS seminar held at Washington University in St. Louis in 2015-2016 that aimed to give incoming college students a sophisticated understanding of the causes, dynamics, representation, and memory of the Nazi genocide. Created and co-taught by Anika Walke and Erin McGlothlin, this intensive academic engagement featured two semesters of coursework focusing on the history and the literary and filmic representation of the Holocaust and a twelve-day trip to Germany, Poland and Lithuania. The group visited important Holocaust-related sites to deepen their understanding of the historic events, to study current trends of commemoration and to analyze the effects of the increasing commercialization of Holocaust and Jewish memory. With the assistance of Germanic Studies Librarian Brian Vetruba, the students documented the trip and their experiences through a blog.https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/lib_present/1023/thumbnail.jp