Writing the Holocaust

Description

Writing the Holocaust provides students and teachers with an accessibly written overview of the key themes and major theoretical developments which continue to inform the nature of historical writing on the Holocaust. Holocaust studies is at a paradox: while historians of the Holocaust defend it as a legitimate and well-defined area of research, they write against a complex political and ideological background that undermines any claim for it as a normative field of historical study. Writing the Holocaust offers a lucid enquiry into this complex field by demonstrating the impact of current theories from the humanities and social sciences upon the treatment of Holocaust studies.

Jean-Marc Dreyfus is Lecturer in Holocaust Studies and Daniel Langton is Professor of the History of Jewish-Christian relations. Both operate in the Department of Religions and Theology at the University of Manchester, UK.

This diversity in theoretical perspectives and the way each of them confronts and addresses the Holocaust results in a highly readable and accessible introduction to the field of Holocaust studies. In all articles the reader is introduced to the developments, trends and major debates within the respective disciplines regarding the writing of the history of the Holocaust during the last 60 years. Besides, at the end of each chapter there is a short list with suggestions for further reading, which offers the reader the possibility to further dive into the subject s/he is interested in...In conclusion, the volume gives a good overview of how the thinking about ways to deal with the Holocaust has progressed. It is highly useful for scholars who want to take it as a basis to find out what literature has been published in the field of Holocaust writing, what perspectives have been taken, what problems have been debated, and what is the current state of the art. It is a broad overview and offers many openings for those who want to dig deeper into the material. -- Mare van den Eeden, Central European University, Budapest * European Review of History *