Please note: schedule is subject to change. Please check for updates.
Teaching Visual Culture through the Holocaust
Bowdoin College
July 11-22, 2022
Co-Directors:
Natasha Goldman, PhD, Research Associate, Department of Art, Art History Division, Bowdoin College
Page Herrlinger, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of History, Bowdoin College
K-12 Team Member:
Samantha Taylor Francis, MA, Language Arts, Brunswick High School, Brunswick, ME
Guest Scholars:
- Paul Jaskot, PhD, Professor of Art History and Visual Culture, Duke University
- Jonathan Petropoulos, PhD, John V. Croul Professor of European History, Claremont McKenna College
- Robert Katz, MFA, Professor of Art, University of Maine, Augusta
Activities:
All activities are meant to be translated directly into participants’ own middle school and high school classes.
- Archive: Participants will create an internet-ready mini-archive of images and other resources for their classes, as well as assignments associated with those archives.
- Museum Label: Participants will learn how to write concise and informative museum labels for original works of art, an assignment that they will be able to replicate for their own students.
To prepare before the start of the seminar:
- Please read before the seminar begins (note: these books will be sent to all participants):
Doris L. Bergen, War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust, 3rd edition. Lanham, MD: Roman and Littlefield, 2016.
Recommended (as background): Peter Hayes, Why? Explaining the Holocaust (NY: W.W. Norton & Co., 2017) and Art Spiegelman, Maus: A Survivor’s Tale. Vols. 1 and 2. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986–1991.
- Two of our goals are to ensure that participants will incorporate new material into their current classes and to help them enrich their current assignments. To demonstrate what they are currently teaching, participants should please bring examples of their assignments (including visual material, if used) related to the Holocaust.
SCHEDULE OF READINGS AND DAILY ACTIVITIES
Note: readings should be completed before the day’s discussion and will be available on the seminar website before the start of the program. All readings (with the exception of Bergen, which will be sent to participants) will be available to participants via a shared drive.
Seminar Goals:
Explore ways to analyze visual images in relation to Nazism, WWII, and Holocaust
- Read primary and secondary texts related to visual culture and history of the Holocaust
- Design activities to take back to home classrooms (museum label assignment amd mini-archive assignment)
- Leave with PowerPoints that can be shared with others
- Share assignments that teachers have previously taught
- Brainstorm about new assignments
- Become familiar with using a college’s special collections
- Gain facility with reaching out to directors of local Holocaust centers
- Form a network of teachers and scholars who teach the Holocaust and continue to share information after the seminar
- Generate a list of questions that participants think are vital to ask in the classroom.
Activities:
All activities are meant to be translated directly into participants’ own middle school and high school classes.
1. Digital Archive: Participants will create an internet-ready mini-archive related to a seminar topic/s of their choice that relates to their own pedagogy, consisting images and other resources (books, articles, websites, videos, etc.). Based on their archives, participants will write assignments for their students. Museum Label: Participants will learn how to write concise and informative museum labels for original works of art. Based on their experience writing a museum label, they will design an assignment for their own students.
To prepare before the start of the seminar:
- Please read before the seminar begins:
Doris L. Bergen, War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust, 3rd edition. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016.
Charlotte Salomon, Life or Theatre? (W Books, 1999)
Recommended (as background): Peter Hayes, Why? Explaining the Holocaust (NY: W.W. Norton & Co., 2017).
- Two of our goals are to ensure that participants will incorporate new material into their current classes as well as to enrich their current assignments. To demonstrate what they are currently teaching, participants should please bring examples of their assignments (including visual material, if used) related to the Holocaust.
SCHEDULE OF READINGS AND DAILY ACTIVITIES
Note: readings should be complete before the day’s discussion and will be available on the seminar website before the start of the program.
Sessions start at 9:00 am, break at 10:30 – 10:50, break for lunch at 12:30, and reconvene 1:30 – 5:00 (with a break as needed in the afternoon).
July 11: Course Overview and Introduction
8:00 am meet at the Office of Events, One Card Office for the Antigen Test. 1st Floor Cole’s tower (the tallest building on campus)
Morning
9 – 9:30: Introduction of seminar co-directors, origin of the project, and participants. “Break the Ice” activities to promote community and trust. Coffee/tea/light breakfast.
Goal-setting for the seminar.
Discussion: Ways to look at visual images about the Holocaust. Discussion led by Goldman (how art historians look at images) and Herrlinger (how historians look at images).
Reading: Richard Raskin, A Child at Gunpoint: A Case Study in the Life of a Photo, (Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press, 2004), Chapter One.
Activity: Participants will present and discuss visual material they have incorporated into their class sessions on the Holocaust. Co-directors will also bring examples of visual material, which participants will analyze and discuss in small groups.
Lunch Break
Afternoon
Screening: Leni Riefenstahl’s film Triumph of the Will (1935). Discussion will draw on the documentary to introduce Nazism and to elaborate on the inter-relationship between political and visual culture in the 1930s. Discussion led by Herrlinger.
Recommended reading: Eric Michaud, The Cult of Art in Nazi Germany (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004), chapter 3, “Exhibiting the Genius.”
Activity: Introduce participant projects: 1) The mini-archive: a web-ready document that contains URLs, PDFs of articles, and images. Participants will work on their own archives throughout the seminar, which they will use for their own pedagogy. Input will be provided by the seminar team, as well as by Bowdoin librarians and the Bowdoin visual resource curator. All mini-archives will be made available to all participants on the seminar’s website. 2) The museum label activity: Participants will learn how to write effective museum labels that succinctly provide interpretive texts to accompany works of art and to model assignments for their own students. Input from the Bowdoin College Museum of Art curator.
Welcome dinner at Cram Alumni Barn 6:30 pm
July 12: John Heartfield, George Grosz, Kathe Kollwitz, Roman Vishniac: Artistic Response to the Rise of Fascism
Morning
Reading:
Maud Lavin, “Heartfield in Context,” Art in America [full citation needed]
Maya Benton, ed., Roman Vishniac Rediscovered (New York: Prestel, 2015). Full exhibition online: https://www.icp.org/exhibitions/roman-vishniac-rediscovered-traveling-exhibition
Recommended:
Sabine T. Kriebel, “Photomontage in the Year 1932,” in Revolutionary Beauty: The Radical Photomontages of John Heartfield (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014), excerpts.
Peter Hayes, Why? Explaining the Holocaust (New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 2017), chapter three: “Escalation: Why Murder?”
Discussion: Goldman will lead a brief overview of modernism, 1900-1932, as well as a discussion about photomontage as a technique of political commentary and Herrlinger will lead a discussion on the rise of Nazism, including the use of clips from feature films (such as Europa Europa).
Activities: Participants will work in small groups to locate images associated with the day’s topic for the archive and to devise assignments about Heartfield that fit their curricula.
Lunch break
Afternoon
Activity: Break-out group with discussions of participants’ curricula and the challenges of teaching the Nazi period and the Holocaust to high school students.
Discussion: Francis-Taylor, in conjunction with Goldman and Herrlinger, leads a discussion bringing together the entire group and address challenges.
3:30 – 5:00 meet in HL Lobby: Activity: How to find images and resources on the internet, focusing on the differences between reliable and unreliable websites, how to avoid Holocaust denial websites, and including the resources of a variety of museums and historical websites. Visit by Jennifer Edwards, MA, Visual Resources Curator, Bowdoin College. Participants research fair-use images to include in their mini-archives.
Screening: Rape of Europe w/JP as respondent.
July 13: From the Swastika to the Yellow Star: Exploring the Nazis’ Visual Vocabulary of “Self-Love” and “Other-Hate”
Morning
Reading:
Claudia Koonz, The Nazi Conscience, (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2003, chapters 5 and 6.
Sebastian Haffner, Defying Hitler, chapters 35-36.
Website, German History in Documents and Images: http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/section.cfm?section_id=13
Discussion: Drawing on a range of signs, symbols and propaganda, discussion will focus on the visual culture of National Socialism in thought and practice, with special attention to how visual means were used to promote different forms of social inclusion and exclusion. It will also suggest ways in which the use of visual materials can complement and enhance students’ understanding of written sources. Discussion led by: Herrlinger and Guest Scholar Jonathan Petropoulos.
There’s a Swastika in My School: Strategies for Talking to Students. Presentation led by Goldman.
Lunch Break
Afternoon
Reading:
Jonathan Petropoulos, “Accommodation Realized,” in Artists under Hitler: Collaboration and Survival in Nazi Germany (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014). Focus on Speer, Breker, Riefenstahl.
1:30 – 3:00 Presentation and Discussion: Afternoon lecture and Q&A by Petropoulos on the challenges faced by artists under Nazism.
Activity: Continue working on mini-archive, focusing on sources related to the day’s topic.
July 14: Art and Artists under Fascism: The Degenerate Art Exhibition and the Great German Art Exhibition
Morning
Reading:
Jonathan Petropoulos, “Culture and Barbarism: Architecture and Arts in Nazi Germany,” in The Oxford Illustrated History of the Third Reich (Oxford University Press, 2018).
Discussion: led by Petropoulos, participants will have the opportunity to ask further questions about the material at hand and to learn about the process of research and writing behind the book. Discussion will also touch upon Nazi art looting and Allied restitution, and participants will be introduced to the website: http://www.lootedart.com/home
Lunch Break
Afternoon
Recommended Reading:
Olaf Peters, “Genesis, Conception, and Consequences: The ‘Entartete Kunst’ Exhibition in Munich 1937,” in Degenerate Art: The Attack on Modern Art in Nazi Germany, 1937 (Munich: Prestel, 2014).
Mario-Andreas von Lüttichau, “’Crazy at Any Price’: The Pathologizing of Modernism in The Run-Up to the ‘Entartete Kunst’ Exhibition in Munich in 1937,” in Degenerate Art: The Attack on Modern Art in Nazi Germany, 1937 (Munich: Prestel, 2014).
Lecture and Discussion: Comparison of Great German Exhibition and Degenerate Art Exhibition, focusing on the political dimensions of abstraction and representational art.
Participants will be introduced to relevant digital resources, including:
http://www.gdk-research.de/db/apsisa.dll/ete
http://www.geschkult.fu-berlin.de/e/db_entart_kunst/index.html
Activity: Visit to Bowdoin College Museum of Art (BCMA) for hands-on analysis and discussion of original works of art by artists labeled by the Nazis as “degenerate.” Participants choose work of art on which to focus the art museum label assignment. Homann gives an introduction on label writing.
Homework for tomorrow: look at Ross images and analyze: which would you use, and why?
July 15: Imaging the Holocaust: Henryk Ross, Charlotte Salomon, Felix Nussbaum, and Photographs of Atrocity
Morning
Reading:
Maia-Mari Sutnik, ed., Memory Unearthed: The Lodz Ghetto Photographs of Henryk Ross (Toronto, Ontario: Art Gallery of Ontario, 2015), (selections). Sutnik essay is required; others are optional.
Discussion (led by Herrlinger):
Part 1: Jewish ghetto photographer Henryk Ross’s photo-documentation of the Lodz Ghetto humanizes the victims of the Holocaust, while also uniquely capturing their lived experiences.
Part 2: The benefits and challenges of teaching with atrocity photos.
Lunch Break
Afternoon
Readings:
Mary Felstiner, “Create Her World Anew,” in Bohm-Duchen and Michael P. Steinberg, eds., Reading Charlotte Salomon, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006).
James E. Young, “Regarding the Pain of Women: Gender and the Arts of Holocaust Memory,” in Young, The Stages of Memory (Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2016).
Discussion: women’s perspectives on the Holocaust through the works of Charlotte Salomon and Young’s discussion of photographs of female victims. Discussion led by Goldman.
Activity: Continue work on museum labels and re-visit original works of art in the BCMA, as necessary. All team members give feedback as appropriate.
July 18: Imaging the Unimaginable: The Holocaust as told by Graphic Artist Art Spiegelman
Morning
Reading:
Art Spiegelman, Maus: A Survivor’s Tale (New York: Pantheon Books, 1986-1991), selections from volumes 1 and 2. We hope that if you haven’t had a chance to read the two volumes, we hope you have time to read it in time for class.
James E. Young, “The Holocaust as Vicarious Past: Art Spiegelman’s ‘Maus’ and the Afterimages of History,” Critical Inquiry vol. 24, no. 3 (Spring, 1998): 666-699.
Discussion led by Goldman and Herrlinger on the role of history and post-war memory in Maus narrative, especially regarding approaches that might not already be covered by the teachers, including but not limited to: first- and second-generational trauma; the context of Holocaust memory in the U.S. at the times of the books’ publications; and close visual analysis of the images.
Lunch break
Afternoon
Discussion: Continue discussion of Maus
1:30 Nixon Lounge Campus Outing: Visit Bowdoin College’s Special Collections to view Tana Kellner’s two artist books about her parents’ experiences in the concentration camps, B 11226 Fifty years of Silence: Eugene Kellner’s Story, and 71125 Fifty Years of Silence: Eva Kellner’s Story. Marieke Van Der Steenhoven, MA, Special Collections Education and Outreach Librarian, will introduce and lead a discussion Kellner’s works. She will also present the benefits and strategies for engaging local special collections and libraries in teaching.
Recommended reading: Marianne Hirsch, “Marked by Memory.”
Activity: Roundtable on challenges on label writing assignment and digital archives. Discussion led by Goldman and Herrlinger. All team members available for feedback.
July 19: Survivors Remember the Holocaust
Morning
Field trip: Holocaust and Human Rights Center of Maine (Augusta). Meet with artist Robert Katz and view his four video, 16-channel sound installation, Were the House Still Standing: Maine Survivors and Liberators Remember the Holocaust (2004).
Lunch break in Augusta at the HHRC & conversation with Director Shenna Bellows about the status of Holocaust and genocide research in the State of Maine.
Afternoon
Activity: Work on final mini-archives and devising assignments related to those archives. Bowdoin IT staff available for feedback. Coffee/tea/snacks available.
Evening film screening: Mick Jackson’s Denial (2016) (optional)
July 20: Architecture of Oppression
Morning
Jean-Louis Cohen, Architecture in Uniform: Designing and Building for the Second World War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), 280-313.
Recommended (but not required) background: Paul B. Jaskot, “Anti-Semitic Policy in Albert Speer’s Plans for the Rebuilding of Berlin,” The Art Bulletin 78, no. 4 (December 1996): 622-32.
Afternoon
Paul Jaskot, Anne Kelly Knowles, and Chester Harvey, “Visualizing the Archive: Building at Auschwitz as a Geographic Problem,” in Geographies of the Holocaust (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2014): 159–190.
Jaskot presents Geographies of the Holocaust (2014), focusing on how digital humanities can enrich the study of the Holocaust.
Screening and discussion of filmed survivor testimonies, including clips from Donna Doron’s and Uriel Sinais’s 2012 documentary Numbered, Kary Antholis’s One Survivor Remembers, the Yale Fortunoff Archive, the USHMM archives, and the Yad Vashem website. Focus will be on different forms of testimony and witnessing. Herrlinger will lead conversation, Goldman and Jaskot can chime in as appropriate
Activity: work on mini-archive projects; write and critique two assignments related to mini-archive; and work on museum label assignments (to be presented on the last day of the seminar; see Day 10, below). Goldman, Jaskot, and Herrlinger give feedback.
July 21: Poland, Germany, and the US in comparison: Memorialization of the Holocaust
Morning
Reading:
W. E. B. DuBois, “The Negro and the Warsaw Ghetto,” in The Negro and the Warsaw Ghetto. (New York, NY: Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, 1952).
Avinoam J. Patt, “The First Anniversary of the Revolt,” The Jewish Heroes of Warsaw: The Afterlife of the Revolt (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2021), 169-204.
Recommended (but not required) background reading: James E. Young, “The Biography of a Memorial Icon: Nathan Rapoport’s Warsaw Ghetto Monument,” Representations 26 (1989), no. 4, 69-106.
Presentation/Discussion: Jaskot leads discussion on Rapoport
Lunch break.
Afternoon
Reading:
Natasha Goldman, “From Ravensbrück to Berlin: Will Lammert’s Memorial to the Deported Jews of Berlin,” Images: A Journal of Jewish Art and Visual Culture (2016): 140–63.
Presentation: by Goldman on German memorials, ranging from Will Lammert’s two memorials (1959 and 1985) to Peter Eisenman’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, and Norman Foster’s 2005 re-building of the Reichstag Cupola.
Discussion: Goldman leads discussion of Holocaust memory in the American context.
Activity: Participants finalize mini-archive and museum labels. Everyone present gives feedback to participants
Final Celebration Dinner at Page Herrlinger’s House.
July 22: Presentations and Wrap Up
Morning
Presentations: Participants present their mini-archives, associated assignments for students. Participants give feedback.
Lunch
Afternoon
Participants share their labels and present their accompanying label assignments that they will give to their own students.
Wrap-up and Review
Late afternoon: Self Reflection/Seminar Assessment
Post-Seminar
Goldman, Herrlinger, and Francis-Taylor will follow up with participants about their assignments, make recommendations, and answer questions. The website intern will upload all archives, museum labels, and assignments.