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This freshman seminar abroad will explore Berlin and its history while studying how post-Holocaust Berlin has engaged in a complex inquiry into its past. We will focus on how memory of the Holocaust is still present in Germany. During spring break in Berlin, the vibrant cultural, political, and film capital of Germany, we will learn about the complex layers of historical and cultural memory in Berlin through exploring a number of important film and visual art projects. Among other sites we will visit are the Olympic Stadium, the Jewish Museum, the Monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe, remnants of the Berlin Wall, and public art projects that reflect on histories of trauma. There are few cities so scarred by a traumatic history and so often reborn—and so well documented by films from the entire span of the 20th century and into the new one. This course will look at some of those films and the city in which they were made. At home and abroad, we will discuss how German visual culture has been intertwined with German history and politics, and how that role has evolved over time.

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