May 15, 2008 Humanities Core Course

Today's Plan

1) The Prospectus -- a fun activity.

2) Kluger's Still Alive

3) Midterms

2.Who are the individual members of Kluger’s family and what happens to them?

3. How does she describe torture (18)? Does her definition differ from your own understanding?

4. Look at the description of the aunt who died in the gas chamber on pp. 18-19. Kluger is not trying to convey petulance or lack of concern, but she is trying to convey something important. How do you understand her failure to forgive her poor murdered aunt?

5. What is the significance of poetry/poems and ballads in this account? Watch for her use of poetry.

6. Kluger writes of her “shabby, shameful childhood in Vienna” (24-26). What were the restrictions on Jewish children?

7. She criticizes Judaism for its male-dominated funeral rituals on p.30. How does this differ from what we have read about Sophocles’ world?

8. (42) What is the significance of her taking the name Ruth?

9. How does Snow White figure in this narrative?

10. (50-52) How does she experience Nazi propaganda?

11. How does she react to the man who is surprised that an Auschwitz survivor in Israel could hold Arabs in such contempt? (65)

12. (66) She makes some provocative comments about the museum culture of the camps. Do you agree?

13. What do you make of her comments on p. 71 and elsewhere that her readers are most likely female?

14. What is Theresienstadt? Name 2-3 things that happen to her there. Why is she so annoyed by the colleague’s wife who says it was not so bad?

Now, midterms.

Here are the questions if you want to look at them.

1. What was the Peasants’ War, what was Martin Luther’s response to it, and why is it relevant to reading Michael Kohlhaas?

2. What is the central argument of Hind Swaraj regarding civilization?

3. What is Gandhi’s interpretation of “English people”? Are they to blame for India’s problems? Who, according to Gandhi, is to blame for colonialism?

4. Give 2-3 possible translations of “Hind Swaraj” and explain the significance of each. Why might knowing these translations and what they mean be significant for understanding Gandhi’s book?

5. What is counterargument? List at least three strategies for counterargument, with examples.

6. Explain the role of Tiresias in Antigone. What is the crucial thing that he does?

7. How are the “green glasses” that Kleist says we all wear similar to the bureaucrats in Michael Kohlhaas?

8. How are the conditions of “doing” different in Antigone’s Thebes and Michael Kohlhaas’ Holy Roman Empire? Give specific instances.

See me with particular questions.