*Study Abroad embedded trip May 20-29
This course will examine the experience of Poles, both Christian and Jewish, and Ukrainians, both Christian and Jewish, under Nazi and Communist rule in the 20th century through primary historical documents, memoir literature, poetry, and film.
In order to understand the experiences of belonging, dislocations, extermination—and their memory—this course will introduce students to the history of Poland, beginning in its “Golden Age,” which saw the expansion of Jewish settlement throughout the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth—which included Ukrainian lands—and continuing to the effects of the partitions in the late eighteenth century, in which Poland and its peoples became subjects of the Russian, Habsburg, and Austrian Empires. In the “long” nineteenth century, the “national” principle prevailed in East Central Europe, affecting Polish, Ukrainian, and Jewish national aspirations in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The course will investigate the dislocations caused by World War I, the exhilaration of the reestablishment of Polish statehood in the interwar period, and then focus on the catastrophic invasion and occupation of western Poland by the Nazi Third Reich in 1939 (and then of Soviet-occupied eastern Poland in 1941), and the subsuming of Polish sovereignty under Communism in 1946.
Students enrolled in this course will also enroll in the study abroad experience, A Tale of Two Uprisings. A study abroad application is required for entry into this course.
About Professor Sinkoff
https://jewishstudies.rutgers.edu/people/core-faculty/nancy-sinkoff