"One way of posing the question of who “we” are in these times of war is by asking whose lives are considered valuable, whose lives are mourned, and whose lives are considered ungrievable. We might think of war as dividing populations into those who are grievable and those who are not. An ungrievable life is one that cannot be mourned because it has never lived, that is, it has never counted as a life at all. We can see the division of the globe into grievable and ungrievable lives from the perspective of those who wage war in order to defend the lives of certain communities, and to defend them against the lives of others—even if it means taking those latter lives."

—Judith Butler, Frames of War

Butler suggests here that it is war that divides populations into the grievable and ungrievable. How does Bauman’s claim differ? In what ways did this issue of grievability play itself out in the Holocaust with reference to the population your group read about? Do you see this issue of grievability playing itself out today? Note: You don’t all have to agree – in case of disagreements, transcribe or otherwise depict your conversation or the issues at stake. You can be creative in how you lay out your essay: you can write a dialogue if you want.

All Groups: excerpts from Zygmunt Bauman, The Uniqueness and Normality of the Holocaust.

Option 1 Mosaic of Victims, Persecution of Roma Links: 1, 2

Option 2 Mosaic of Victims, First Targets: Persecution of Disabled Links: 1, 2, Persecution of Afro-Germans Link: 1

Option 3 Mosaic of Victims, Persecution of Homosexuals Links: 1, 2

Option 4 Mosaic of Victims, Holocaust Denial Links 1, 2

and Chapter 1 on the Fascist tactic of creating a mythic past.

• Step 1: Set up a group meeting with the professor to brainstorm your approach to the text/film. [Any group that fails to meet with me before their presentation cannot hope to get a grade higher than a C]
• Step 2: Draft your questions and email them to anelhe@illinois. I will suggest edits. [Failure to run your questions by me will mean you cannot hope to get a grade higher than a B.] Step 2 can also be Step 1 and Step 1 can happen after Step 2. Do not proceed to Step 3 before completing both Steps 1 and 2.
• Step 3: Post your presentation by the end of the day on the day it is due. If you use google slides, be sure to set the permissions so that everyone in the class can access it.
  
  
  
• Student presentations should consist of the following:
  
  
• Introduction to the author or history of the work
  
  
  
• Close reading of 3 short passages/scenes
  
  
• 3 discussion questions
  
  
• Groups that respond to the presentation will  be challenged to come up with a thesis based on the presentation and their own responses to the discussion questions.
  
  

• How to develop your presentation:
  
  
• You need to prepare a) close readings of passages/scenes and b) questions to pose to the class. 
• 
  
• Where to start?
  
  
• Develop your reading:
• Don't decide on a topic. Decide on PASSAGES/SCENES that interest you. Let whatever questions and observations you are going to make come out of the passage -- don't impose them on the passage.
  
  
• Deciding what to say about the passage:
  
  
• You could start by describing the passage in your own words. But remember: a description is NOT a close reading. It's paraphrase. Paraphrase can be useful for you in figuring out what you see when you look at the passage -- and what you don't see. A paraphrase is helpful because it helps you figure out what you find surprising about the actual words on the page. How does it NOT conform to your own description of it? The point of a close reading is not to give your interpretation in such a way that it makes reading the passage unnecessary. The point of a close reading is that over the course of unpacking the words on the page, the words begin to seem more vibrant and alive than they were before.
  
  
• So if you're going to start with a description, maybe don't describe the content. Instead describe HOW the author is telling their story. Don't paraphrase WHAT they're saying, describe HOW they're saying it. Example: watch out for moments when the narrator switches tenses. First we were in past tense, now suddenly he/she is in the present tense. What do you make of this shift?
  
  
• This link to how to write a close reading below advises that you begin not by paraphrasing but by annotating the text and it gives you an example of how to move from there to interpreting the words on the page. How to do a close reading
  
  
• Make your Presentation:
  
  
• Texts: Quote the full quote you will be speaking about.
  
  
• Films:
  
  
• Make your own clips rather than relying on what's available on Youtube.
  
  
• on Mac: the newest OS system allows you to press: control, shift, 5. a bar will crop up at the bottom of the screen. you may need to use a non-Safari browser if recording things off of Netflix.
  
  
• Develop your questions:
  
  
• Your questions need to guide other groups' discussions. They should not be factual questions – it is not your job to quiz your classmates about what happened in the reading/movie. Give us some food for thought! Comparisons are always a good place to start. 
  
  
•  
  
  
• Grading Rubric for the Presentations:
  
  
• A+ = great questions, delivered to me and posted on time. exceptional and detailed readings of specific scenes that help us see works in a new light; thought-provoking, in-depth, well-rounded comparisons; helps us think about the questions of the course in a new/original way (not discussed often in class).
  
  
• A = great questions, delivered to me and posted on time. good readings of scenes, well-evidenced with a lot of analysis of details from the scenes; thought-provoking comparisons. helps us think about the questions of the course (perhaps in ways we talked about in class).
  
  
• A- = good questions, delivered to me and posted on time. offers readings of scenes that could be better-evidenced/more detail-orientated. good comparisons. helps us think about the questions of the course (perhaps in ways we talked about in class).
  
  
• B+ = good questions. delivered to me late but posted on time / good presentation in class. OR: good questions delivered and posted on time but less robust dissections of scenes, comparisons are good but could be more fleshed out, tackles the overarching questions of the course.
  
  
• B = questions needed work but were better after consultation with me/were late/presentation relied more on paraphrase/generalizations/plot summary than readings of scenes. comparisons are good. tackles the overarching questions of the course.
  
  
• B- = questions needed work/were late/ contains more paraphrase/generalizations/plot summary/opinions than dissections of individual scenes, comparisons could be stronger, tackles the overarching questions of the course.
  
  
• C+ = questions were unfocused even after revisions/were late/presentation contains more paraphrase/generalizations/opinions than dissections of individual scenes, comparisons are unclear, tackles the relevant questions of the course.
  
  
• C = questions were unfocused even after revisions/were late/weren't sent, could contain factual errors, contains more paraphrase/generalizations/opinions than dissections of individual scenes, comparisons are unclear, presentation/question don’t adequately tackle the overarching questions of the course.
  
  
• C- = lateness/failure to run anything by me/disconnect between questions and evidence/readings/overall themes of the course
  
  
• D+ or lower = failure to communicate with prof/incoherent questions/presentation.
  
  

Discuss May Ayim's concept of a "facade of tolerance". Discuss American law models through the lens of how they served as a basis for Nazi race law, and connect this back to the Whitman book from Week 2.

2. Selecting a passage from Showing Our Colours, discuss how contradiction (i.e. conflicting information) affects the concept of building narrative. Why is contradiction handled in this way?

3. Notice the nationalist themes of the poem We Need Colonies! (page 4). How does this compare to the themes of other sources we’ve looked at, like Conspiracy, that are also from a Nazi point of view?

4. We have looked at multiple examples of relevant art in this class - for example: Maus, degenerate art. Unlike these examples, the art found in Showing our Colours was created by the Nazis and is racially motivated. Discuss the differences between an art piece from this text and a piece we looked at previously.

5. Discuss the quote from Mein Kampf on page 10. Much of Showing our Colours describes the narratives built by the Nazis to influence public opinion. What considerations should this bring when looking at historical sources from the Holocaust period?

-->this is the link to the presentation used in the video