Teaching the Holocaust through Visual Culture

FAIN: FV-261636-18

Bowdoin College (Brunswick, ME 04011-8447)
Natasha Goldman (Project Director: February 2018 to April 2021)
Page Herrlinger (Co Project Director: August 2018 to April 2021)

A two-week seminar for 16 school teachers on the visual culture of the Holocaust.

The Holocaust left behind an emotionally powerful, aesthetically diverse, and ethically challenging visual landscape. The two-week Summer Seminar, for sixteen teachers from across the US, at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, ME seeks to enrich the middle school and high school curricula by investigating how history and visual culture inform each other when we seek to understand the Holocaust. "Visual culture” is defined as art objects, including photomontage, sculpture, painting, book art, and film, as well as more mundane visual forms, such as posters, flags and uniforms, and magazine illustrations. Led by art historian Natasha Goldman, PhD, and historian Page Herrlinger, PhD, participants will be introduced to teaching and viewing this topic through the visual lens and be encouraged to share their own teaching experiences and how they have confronted the challenges unique to the visual legacy of the Holocaust and genocide.

Associated Products

"Holocaust Museums: Generating Knowledge through Aesthetic Spaces" (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: "Holocaust Museums: Generating Knowledge through Aesthetic Spaces"
Author: Natasha Goldman
Abstract: National sites of Holocaust memory are often the travel destinations of myriad school children. This paper examines how aesthetic spaces can reinforce or undermine the educational goals of Holocaust memorials and museums. Aesthetic spaces in the Berlin Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum serve as case studies in how aesthetic spaces can speak to and about educational aims of memorial exhibitions. Artists and architects include Richard Serra, Peter Eisenman, Ellsworth Kelly, Sol Le Witt, and Joel Schapiro.
Date: 12/18/19
Conference Name: Association Jewish Studies 2019

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