Methods of Assessment

Option 2

Seminar contribution (10%)

1500 word review (10%)

3000 word essay on a source (40%)

Memoir essay (40%)

Review examples, here, here, and also here.

The 1500 words review needs to review a full length book that addresses the Holocaust. It can be a research monograph, anthology, or a published source. You can pick it from the Talis list or you can pick your own. Important: the book, or part of it, should not be on the essential reading list for the course. If in doubt, email me. Here are marking criteria.

The second, source-based essay of 3000 words should offer a close analysis of a single or small set of directly related primary sources. You can pick these yourselves, or if you cannot, pick one from our readings seminars. The essay should showcase your skill to read the source, point out its layers and possible interpretations, put it into context and relevant historiography. Here are marking criteria.

The third assignment, memoir, based on Alexandra Garbarini's award-winning syllabus, is a 3000 word essay which will be a first person account by a fictional person who has experienced the Holocaust. This can be a victim (Jew, gay man, Roma, etc), bystander, or a perpetrator. In your essay, you offer a short memoir on your life as it was impacted by the Third Reich/occupation. Your protagonist can survive, but may also perish. The essay does not need to have footnotes, but please include a bibliography (which does not count towards the word count). The bibliography will help you position your protagonist in historical context and make their experience authentic and probable. The bibliography should draw on both scholarly literature and (published or unpublished) sources. The aim here is to offer as authentic biography as possible that is positioned in the contents of the syllabus. The essay does not need to be analytical, and if it suits the person's narrative and your inclination, can be written in formal or informal tone. If your narrator does not survive, you end at that point. (you can offer a short post script about what happens to the others - or not). Here are marking criteria.

The essay will not be marked for literary quality. I look for:

- authenticity: your narrative needs to be probable; avoid wildly improbable turns of events (miracles, partisans operating in 1942 Saxony, etc)

- detail: do not be vague, tell where you are, what happens these, give (approximate) dates, mention, if appropriate, important historical factors you may have probably met (say Adam Czerniakow, if you are a Jewish functionary in Warsaw ghetto, or Gisi Fleischmann, if you are in Slovak Jewish resistance)

- contextualization into primary and secondary literature (by means of bibliography). For instance, if your narrator is imprisoned in a concentration camp or a ghetto (these need to be real), offer some specifics. A useful source, including further references, is the USHMM encyclopedia of camps and ghettos

For details of examination and assessment, please see: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/undergraduate/teaching/assessment/deadlines

 
Contact Hours

Student contact hours for this final-year Special Subject module will be comprised as follows:

Lectures:	None
Seminars:	Eighteen two-hour seminars
Tutorials:	Two hours of feedback and long essay preparation
Revision:	Four hours of revision seminar
Total:	Forty-four hours