Professor > Magic, Monsters & The Holocaust
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How can we harness the power of collective learning to drive tangible social change? What does the design process look like when our goals include inspiring community engagement, sustained reflection, and deep empathy? Using Holocaust history as an entry point to these questions, we will explore how film and fiction can be vehicles for collective action and healing. We will explore processes, challenges, and possibilities of community program design. We will consider how certain tropes and narrative framings affect our perceptions and collective memories of Holocaust history and of atrocities in the past and present. We will ask: How has the Holocaust come to be represented in popular culture? What lessons from history do popular films and literature attempt to convey? And what unintended lessons do they carry? We will consider how movies and literature about the Holocaust intended for young people may affect their perceptions of atrocities today. And we will ask questions about the gaps and misconceptions that Holocaust film and fiction can leave in their wake and how those gaps and misconceptions can stand in the way of justice. School of Education & Social Policy The Crown Family Center for Jewish & Israel Studies Northwestern University |