20-21 HS3264: History And Historiography of the Holocaust (Exam)
Course Leader: Dan Stone
Email: d.stone@rhul.ac.uk
Office: IN007B
Office hours: Monday 11am-12pm; Tuesday 10-11am (online)
Seminars: the course is taught by a weekly seminar on Mondays, 4-6pm in McCrea 0-03 (term 1) and International Building 244 (term 2).
First seminar is 28 September. There will be no seminar on 2 November 2020 or 15 February 2021 (research weeks).
Course description:
This course provides students with a deep understanding of the genocide of the Jews of Europe by the Nazis and their collaborators during World War II, the events that have come to be known as 'the Holocaust'. From the rise of Nazism to the aftermath of liberation, the course proceeds chronologically. With a focus on Nazi ideology and the 'racial state', the course examines Nazi thinking, pre-war antisemitic policies, the war in Poland and the creation of ghettos, the war in the Soviet Union and the 'Holocaust by bullets', and the creation of the death camps in occupied Poland. It then looks at how the murder of the Jews was carried out across Europe, with particular focus on Western Europe, the Balkans, Romania and Hungary, and considers the idea of Nazi imperialism and the Holocaust as a pan-European crime in which widespread collaboration occurred. It concludes by looking at resistance, the genocide of the Roma and Sinti, the 'death marches' and the liberation of the camps, the DP camps and the collection of the first postwar testimonies. Finally it explores 'the quest for explanation' by examining competing ways of situating the events of the Holocaust in history.
Assessment: the course is assessed by an oral presentation in the seminar (15%); two gobbets (15%); one 2,000-word essay (30%); one examination (40% - either unseen or take-home, depending on circumstances). In each of the two teachings terms you will either give an oral presentation or write two gobbets - presentation slots will be assigned at the first seminar. You will also write an 8,000-word dissertation attached to this course (HS3265).
Essay questions and gobbets can be found on the course checklist on Moodle.
Submission dates for assessed work: 11 November 2020 (gobbets); 24 February 2021 (essay); 29 January 2021 (dissertation title and proposal); 11 May 2021 (dissertation)
The Humanities School will provide information on how to submit work via Turnitin in due course.
Oral presentations:
Week 2 -
Week 3 -
Week 4 -
Week 5 -
Week 6 - Joel
Week 7 - Dan
Week 8 - Neve
Week 9 - Em
Week 10 - Zachary
Term 2
Week 11 - Susana
Week 12 - Ehsen
Week 13 - Jaiya
Week 14 - Kelvinder
Week 15 - Holly
Week 16 - Natalie
Week 17 - Eleanor
Week 18 - Kiran
Week 19 - Selena
Week 20 - Danny
The aims of the course are:
• to promote an appreciation and critical understanding of the history and historiography of the Holocaust through a close, critical reading of key documents, both contemporary and post-war;
• analyse and evaluate the main currents in the social, political and cultural life of Nazi Germany and its collaborators, again through a close critical reading of the primary sources;
• reveal the enormous political impact the Holocaust has had on post-war society;
• develop in students the ability to read, analyse and reflect critically and contextually on primary source material of different types;
• develop in students the ability to write a long essay using principally primary sources.
Learning outcomes:
Students who successfully complete this course will be able to:
• show an informed understanding of the major events of the Holocaust, including the aims of the perpetrators, the processes that led to genocide, the responses of the victims, and the attempts by post-war generations to grapple with the Holocaust’s impact
• demonstrate a solid grasp of a considerable body of scholarship, and distinguish competing historical ‘schools’, explanations, and methods;
• show an informed understanding of the social, political, and cultural conditions which permitted the occurrence of genocide;
• show an ability to analyse and reflect critically and contextually on primary source material of different types, including official documents, diaries, and testimonies.
• write a well argued, clearly structured long essay (dissertation) using principally primary sources.
About the course tutor:
Dan Stone is Professor of Modern History and Director of the Holocaust Research Institute at RHUL. He is a historian of ideas who works primarily on twentieth-century European history. His research interests include: the history and interpretation of the Holocaust, comparative genocide, history of anthropology, history of fascism, the cultural history of the British Right and theory of history. He is the author or editor of sixteen books and over eighty scholarly articles. Dan Stone was co-editor of Patterns of Prejudice and the Journal of Genocide Research and is now on the editorial boards of those two journals as well as Critical Philosophy of Race, The Journal of Holocaust Research (formerly Dapim: Studies on the Shoah), Hypothesis and History of Communism in Europe. His publications include: Histories of the Holocaust (OUP, 2010), Goodbye to All That? The Story of Europe since 1945 (Oxford University Press, 2014), The Liberation of the Camps: The End of the Holocaust and its Aftermath (Yale University Press, 2015) and Concentration Camps: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2019). From 2016 to 2019 he was engaged on a three-year Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship for a project on the International Tracing Service, the world's largest archive of material relating to Nazi crimes. The resulting book, Fate Unknown: Tracing the Missing after the Holocaust and World War II, will be published by Oxford University Press in 2021. In 2021 he will also publish a new collection of essays, entitled Fascism, Nazism and the Holocaust: Challenging Histories (Routledge). Dan is also currently writing a book on the Holocaust for Penguin's revived Pelican series and co-editing volume 1 of the Cambridge History of the Holocaust (with Mark Roseman). He chairs the academic advisory board for the Imperial War Museum's Holocaust Galleries redesign, due to open in 2021, and is a member of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust's Experts Reference Group and the UK Oversight Committee for the International Tracing Service Archive.
The Holocaust Research Institute holds regular research workshops and other activities, such as the annual David Cesarani Memorial Lecture in January. Students on HS3264 are welcome to attend HRI events. The HRI runs the prestigious Holocaust Studies MA course - please ask for more details.
Email: d.stone@rhul.ac.uk
Office: IN007B
Office hours: Monday 11am-12pm; Tuesday 10-11am (online)
Seminars: the course is taught by a weekly seminar on Mondays, 4-6pm in McCrea 0-03 (term 1) and International Building 244 (term 2).
First seminar is 28 September. There will be no seminar on 2 November 2020 or 15 February 2021 (research weeks).
Course description:
This course provides students with a deep understanding of the genocide of the Jews of Europe by the Nazis and their collaborators during World War II, the events that have come to be known as 'the Holocaust'. From the rise of Nazism to the aftermath of liberation, the course proceeds chronologically. With a focus on Nazi ideology and the 'racial state', the course examines Nazi thinking, pre-war antisemitic policies, the war in Poland and the creation of ghettos, the war in the Soviet Union and the 'Holocaust by bullets', and the creation of the death camps in occupied Poland. It then looks at how the murder of the Jews was carried out across Europe, with particular focus on Western Europe, the Balkans, Romania and Hungary, and considers the idea of Nazi imperialism and the Holocaust as a pan-European crime in which widespread collaboration occurred. It concludes by looking at resistance, the genocide of the Roma and Sinti, the 'death marches' and the liberation of the camps, the DP camps and the collection of the first postwar testimonies. Finally it explores 'the quest for explanation' by examining competing ways of situating the events of the Holocaust in history.
Assessment: the course is assessed by an oral presentation in the seminar (15%); two gobbets (15%); one 2,000-word essay (30%); one examination (40% - either unseen or take-home, depending on circumstances). In each of the two teachings terms you will either give an oral presentation or write two gobbets - presentation slots will be assigned at the first seminar. You will also write an 8,000-word dissertation attached to this course (HS3265).
Essay questions and gobbets can be found on the course checklist on Moodle.
Submission dates for assessed work: 11 November 2020 (gobbets); 24 February 2021 (essay); 29 January 2021 (dissertation title and proposal); 11 May 2021 (dissertation)
The Humanities School will provide information on how to submit work via Turnitin in due course.
Oral presentations:
Week 2 -
Week 3 -
Week 4 -
Week 5 -
Week 6 - Joel
Week 7 - Dan
Week 8 - Neve
Week 9 - Em
Week 10 - Zachary
Term 2
Week 11 - Susana
Week 12 - Ehsen
Week 13 - Jaiya
Week 14 - Kelvinder
Week 15 - Holly
Week 16 - Natalie
Week 17 - Eleanor
Week 18 - Kiran
Week 19 - Selena
Week 20 - Danny
The aims of the course are:
• to promote an appreciation and critical understanding of the history and historiography of the Holocaust through a close, critical reading of key documents, both contemporary and post-war;
• analyse and evaluate the main currents in the social, political and cultural life of Nazi Germany and its collaborators, again through a close critical reading of the primary sources;
• reveal the enormous political impact the Holocaust has had on post-war society;
• develop in students the ability to read, analyse and reflect critically and contextually on primary source material of different types;
• develop in students the ability to write a long essay using principally primary sources.
Learning outcomes:
Students who successfully complete this course will be able to:
• show an informed understanding of the major events of the Holocaust, including the aims of the perpetrators, the processes that led to genocide, the responses of the victims, and the attempts by post-war generations to grapple with the Holocaust’s impact
• demonstrate a solid grasp of a considerable body of scholarship, and distinguish competing historical ‘schools’, explanations, and methods;
• show an informed understanding of the social, political, and cultural conditions which permitted the occurrence of genocide;
• show an ability to analyse and reflect critically and contextually on primary source material of different types, including official documents, diaries, and testimonies.
• write a well argued, clearly structured long essay (dissertation) using principally primary sources.
About the course tutor:
Dan Stone is Professor of Modern History and Director of the Holocaust Research Institute at RHUL. He is a historian of ideas who works primarily on twentieth-century European history. His research interests include: the history and interpretation of the Holocaust, comparative genocide, history of anthropology, history of fascism, the cultural history of the British Right and theory of history. He is the author or editor of sixteen books and over eighty scholarly articles. Dan Stone was co-editor of Patterns of Prejudice and the Journal of Genocide Research and is now on the editorial boards of those two journals as well as Critical Philosophy of Race, The Journal of Holocaust Research (formerly Dapim: Studies on the Shoah), Hypothesis and History of Communism in Europe. His publications include: Histories of the Holocaust (OUP, 2010), Goodbye to All That? The Story of Europe since 1945 (Oxford University Press, 2014), The Liberation of the Camps: The End of the Holocaust and its Aftermath (Yale University Press, 2015) and Concentration Camps: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2019). From 2016 to 2019 he was engaged on a three-year Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship for a project on the International Tracing Service, the world's largest archive of material relating to Nazi crimes. The resulting book, Fate Unknown: Tracing the Missing after the Holocaust and World War II, will be published by Oxford University Press in 2021. In 2021 he will also publish a new collection of essays, entitled Fascism, Nazism and the Holocaust: Challenging Histories (Routledge). Dan is also currently writing a book on the Holocaust for Penguin's revived Pelican series and co-editing volume 1 of the Cambridge History of the Holocaust (with Mark Roseman). He chairs the academic advisory board for the Imperial War Museum's Holocaust Galleries redesign, due to open in 2021, and is a member of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust's Experts Reference Group and the UK Oversight Committee for the International Tracing Service Archive.
The Holocaust Research Institute holds regular research workshops and other activities, such as the annual David Cesarani Memorial Lecture in January. Students on HS3264 are welcome to attend HRI events. The HRI runs the prestigious Holocaust Studies MA course - please ask for more details.