SHUM 1110 - FWS: Reporting from Hell

Fall, spring. 3 credits. Letter grades only.

First-Year Writing Seminar.

S. Orlov.

When you’re being bombed, hunted down or otherwise persecuted, can you objectively report on what’s happening? Is your on-the-spot report on hell superior to testimony you give years later? Is an eyewitness report superior to that of an historian? Is a filmed report superior to a written one? We will address these and related questions through analytic discussion and writing about the legendary Edward R. Murrow’s radio broadcasts during the Blitz of London in World War II, written accounts by Jewish children trapped in the Holocaust, and a report smuggled out of a Soviet labor camp for women political prisoners. We will also examine documentary films, oral testimony of Holocaust and Soviet camp survivors, and (if time permits) Internet reports on some recent hells.