Memoirs & Diaries in Mod European Jewish History

Catalog description

Readings of memoirs and diaries written by European Jewish women and men from the 18th century through the Holocaust. Students read memoirs with several issues in mind: (1) the history we can learn from them and how to use them critically, (2) the relationship between personal viewpoints and collective experiences, (3) the ways in which Jewish and European societies cultivated memory, (4) the question of why individuals wrote and how they framed and fashioned their lives for their readers, (5) how gender, class, and European context influenced memoirists, (6) how audience (or lack of an intended audience) influenced writers.