The Department of English welcomes applications for an hourly-paid teaching opportunity for the second semester of 2022/23.
Testimony: The Holocaust and Rwanda 6AAEC070
The successful applicant will teach one seminar group of this final-year module:
one 1 x 2-hour seminar per week (20 hours).
Module Description
Over the past sixty years writers and film-makers have pushed new aesthetic boundaries in their representations of two major genocides of the twentieth century – the Holocaust and the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. Separated by fifty years and occurring on different continents, we will consider both common representative strategies and points of radical divergence.
Literature and film have key roles to play in bearing witness to the crime of genocide and in stressing the nuances and complexities of individual identity in the face of homogenising violence. Art also plays a role in reconciliation and in exploring the aftermath of massive suffering.
We will begin the term with a range of classic Holocaust films, memoirs and collected testimony, alongside theoretical insights into strategies for witnessing abuses of human rights. In the second half of the course we will turn our attention to Rwanda, examining how writers and film-makers responding to that genocide draw on aesthetic strategies that can be traced back to Holocaust literature but also create very different narratives.
We will pay particular attention to places of memory – memorials and sites of massacre – that will help us to draw further links between both genocides. We also discuss what it means to listen to and receive testimony, and the emotional charge of this kind of work. We pay attention to our varied individual styles of witnessing, whilst also building analytical skills to help us understand how and why testimony affects our world today.
This course will appeal to students interested in Holocaust Studies, African literature, Memory Studies and Human Rights. Some of the set readings are grounded in languages other than English (Italian, Yiddish, French, Kinyarwanda) but all are available in translation. No prior knowledge of the Holocaust or African literature is required.
Applicants will need to hold a Ph.D by December 2022 and have the right to work in the UK.
The payment is £22.13 per hour with two preparation hours for every classroom hour. The role will also include payment for office hours and marking.
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To apply:
Please send a CV and short statement (500 words maximum) to Alan Marshall (Head of English), at alan.marshall@kcl.ac.uk, outlining the skills and experience you would bring to the role. Please use the subject heading: HPL Application: 6AAEC070: [Your surname]
Please note the early closing date for applications: 10.00 am, Friday 9 December 2022. We hope to conduct interviews the following week.