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Meaningful Encounters

Preparing Educators to Teach Holocaust Literature

Paula Ressler and Becca Chase

Teaching about the Holocaust presents one of the most formidable challenges teachers face. Meaningful Encounters is Paula Ressler and Becca Chase’s contribution to the efforts of those educators who wish to meet this challenge more knowledgeably and effectively. It tells the story of a unique, inquiry-based English teacher education course focused on Holocaust literature from several genres that integrated literacy pedagogies and literary criticism with historical, philosophical, psychological, and political theories and contexts.

The book involves the reader in the complicated tangle of Holocaust education, critically illuminating how difficult this work is, but also demonstrating how teachers can introduce their students responsibly and ethically to this perennially relevant body of literature. The authors offer no facile solutions to the obstacles and pitfalls inherent in teaching this literature. They raise questions, pose problems, consider and analyze how participants responded to issues that emerged, and suggest alternative approaches.

The authors recount the students’ and teacher’s unsettling and enlightening experiences, failures, and successes. By following along, preservice educators will be able to conceptualize, discuss, and practice, and inservice teachers and teacher educators rethink, how to teach Holocaust and other literatures about genocide and mass atrocities in culturally relevant and meaningful ways today.

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 202 • Trim: 6⅜ x 9

978-1-4758-2208-3 • Hardback • April 2019 • $75.00 • (£58.00)

978-1-4758-2209-0 • Paperback • April 2019 • $38.00 • (£30.00)

978-1-4758-2210-6 • eBook • April 2019 • $36.00 • (£30.00)

Subjects: Education / Teaching Methods & Materials / Reading & Phonics, Education / Professional Development, Education / Secondary / Reading and Phonics

Meaningful Encounters

Preparing Educators to Teach Holocaust Literature

Hardback

Paperback

eBook

Summary

Teaching about the Holocaust presents one of the most formidable challenges teachers face. Meaningful Encounters is Paula Ressler and Becca Chase’s contribution to the efforts of those educators who wish to meet this challenge more knowledgeably and effectively. It tells the story of a unique, inquiry-based English teacher education course focused on Holocaust literature from several genres that integrated literacy pedagogies and literary criticism with historical, philosophical, psychological, and political theories and contexts.

The book involves the reader in the complicated tangle of Holocaust education, critically illuminating how difficult this work is, but also demonstrating how teachers can introduce their students responsibly and ethically to this perennially relevant body of literature. The authors offer no facile solutions to the obstacles and pitfalls inherent in teaching this literature. They raise questions, pose problems, consider and analyze how participants responded to issues that emerged, and suggest alternative approaches.

The authors recount the students’ and teacher’s unsettling and enlightening experiences, failures, and successes. By following along, preservice educators will be able to conceptualize, discuss, and practice, and inservice teachers and teacher educators rethink, how to teach Holocaust and other literatures about genocide and mass atrocities in culturally relevant and meaningful ways today.

Details

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 202 • Trim: 6⅜ x 9

978-1-4758-2208-3 • Hardback • April 2019 • $75.00 • (£58.00)

978-1-4758-2209-0 • Paperback • April 2019 • $38.00 • (£30.00)

978-1-4758-2210-6 • eBook • April 2019 • $36.00 • (£30.00)

Subjects: Education / Teaching Methods & Materials / Reading & Phonics, Education / Professional Development, Education / Secondary / Reading and Phonics

Author

Paula Ressler is associate professor emerita at Illinois State University. She is a former director of the English Education Program and faculty member in English and Women’s & Gender Studies.

Rebecca Chase is a former assistant director of the Women’s & Gender Studies Program and former faculty member in Women’s & Gender Studies, English, and English Education at Illinois State University.

Table of Contents

Dedication

Preface

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Ch. 1: A Historical Context for Teaching Holocaust Literature

Ch. 2: A Pedagogical Framework for Teaching Holocaust Literature

Ch. 3: Jewish Culture and Contemporary Antisemitism

Ch. 4: Constantine’s Sword: Inviting Passionate Dissonance

Ch. 5: Friedrich: The Erosion of Jewish Rights and Gentile Ethics

Ch. 6: “Esther’s First Born” and “The Shawl”: Women and Children in the Concentrationary Universe

Ch. 7: Maus: The Holocaust Years and the Aftermath

Ch. 8: Some Final Considerations

References

Reviews

Teachers are asked to perform many wondrous feats – and one of them is providing age-appropriate Holocaust education. Meaningful Encounters helps educators to grapple with the ethics, history, and pedagogy of Holocaust education. Drawing on their own experience as educators and learners, Paula Ressler and Becca Chase contextualize the literature historically, address important gender and other issues, and demonstrate effective classroom strategies. Educators working in a wide range of contexts will find inspiration and guidance in this highly readable book.
— Elizabeth D. Heineman, professor, History and Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies, University of Iowa

As more states mandate the teaching of the Holocaust, it is imperative that teachers are prepared to correctly teach such lessons. Ressler and Chase thoughtfully present strong rationale and methodology for using Holocaust literature in the classroom. This book is essential for preservice and inservice teachers and teacher educators, especially those in English Language Arts. I wish this book had been available when I started teaching a Holocaust literature course!
— Kimberly Klett, MA, English teacher, Dobson High School, Mesa, Arizona; Museum Teacher Fellow, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; teacher trainer, Echoes and Reflections

Meaningful Encounters

Preparing Educators to Teach Holocaust Literature

Paula Ressler and Becca Chase

Meaningful Encounters

Preparing Educators to Teach Holocaust Literature

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