This course is designed to engage students in conversations about particular perspectives on the history of a selected nation, region, people, culture, institution, or historical phenomenon as specified by the respective instructor. By taking this course, students will come to understand, and develop an appreciation for, some combination of: the origins and evolution of the people, cultures, and/or political, economic, and/or social institutions of a particular region(s) of the world. They may also explore how human encounters shaped individual and collective identities and the complex political, economic, and social orders of the region/nation/communities under study. Instructors and subject will vary.

Holocaust museums have become, over the past years, one of the most popular mediums of Holocaust commemoration. This course will explore the history, exhibitions, and design of various Holocaust museums around the world, and study their social, cultural and political agendas. This examination will reveal their role and responsibility in Holocaust commemoration. In order to understand the museum mechanism and the ways in which it constructs social agendas and memory, we will begin the course by studying the history of museums from ancient history to the present. This history will explain how museum exhibitions have changed from displaying treasures to disseminating ideas, strengthening national or community identity, and constructing memory of historical events. We will then study the development of Holocaust museums, from the first museum that was built on a remote kibbutz in Israel, through the establishment of prominent National museums, such as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC. We will examine the process that led to the museums’ foundation, the social and political motives behind them, and their exhibitions, architecture and design.

All readings for this class will be available on bCourses. Questions for the final exam will be given a week in advance and will integrate material delivered in class and individual readings. Students will be allowed to use notes during the exam.

Instructor bio: Visiting professor and architect Stephanie Shosh Rotem is a graduate of Tel Aviv University. She received a PhD in 2010 in the Program for Interdisciplinary Arts, and her doctorate was published in 2013, as “Constructing Memory: Architectural Narratives of Holocaust Museums.” From 2011 to 2017, Rotem was Head of the Museum Studies Program at Tel Aviv University. She also taught graduate courses in Tel Aviv’s Faculty of the Arts and in the International Program for Holocaust Studies at the University of Haifa. In 2018-19 she was a visiting professor for Israel Studies at the University of Virginia. Rotem lectures and publishes on architectural history, museum history and architecture, and Holocaust museums.

Lectures will be delivered synchronously but will be recorded for later viewing.

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Requirements class fulfills