Holocaust Memorial Center Field Trip
Academic Year:
2013 - 2014 (June 1, 2013 through May 31, 2014)
Funding Requested:
$350.00
Project Dates:
-
Applicant(s):
Overview of the Project:
I am hereby submitting an application for the funding of a field trip to the Farmington Hills Holocaust Memorial Center. I am teaching a senior seminar this coming fall for the Program of International and Comparative Studies (PICS) that discusses genocides of the 20th century from a comparative angle. The study of genocide and the possibility to compare one atrocity to another is not uncontroversial. This course by no means seeks to determine which genocide was the worse nor judge the degree of horrors based on a pornography of pain. Instead the goal is—through a variety of primary and interdisciplinary scholarly works, literature, oral histories, court cases, film and material culture—to dive into a critical comparative analysis while at the same time preserving the historic specificity of the various genocides. Questions we will ask are: How do genocides come about? What motivates people to partake or oppose the violence? How is genocide remembered, forgotten, and taught? The field trip to the memorial center will be a hands on experience for students to work out how the holocaust is remembered, taught and represented in Michigan, and they will have an opportunity to discuss it in comparison to the cultural memory of the holocaust in Germany and Poland, as well as with the commemorative practices of the Rwandan genocide.