By Judy Young Drache
A new third-year undergraduate course on the Holocaust was offered as planned in the fall semester of 2022 by Carleton University (see CHES Newsletter, Vol 2, No 4, September 2022).
The course was presented jointly by the Departments of Religion and History. It was meant to introduce the historical and religious dimensions of the Holocaust and was developed with financial support from funds raised by CHES while affiliated with the Zelikovitz Centre. This year’s course was taught by Megan Hollinger who is currently completing her PhD at the University of Ottawa.
Megan reports that she enjoyed developing and teaching the course and feels it reached a significant number of students registered at Carleton. “I truly enjoyed teaching this course and look forward to doing so again in the fall of 2023. We had between 60 to 70 students enrolled.” Attendance was generally good with a little fluctuation around exam time. Megan felt that the online format was helpful not only for the numbers attending but for showing visual materials and hosting visitors. She is already working on making changes to the syllabus by including more primary sources, incorporating more time for in-class discussion, and inviting a survivor to speak to the students. This year the class had a member of the Second Generation participate in a class.
CHES is pleased that the course has been established and has had a successful start. We congratulate the Zelikovitz Centre for preparing the groundwork and express our hope that next year the course may be made available to a broader audience of interested students from other Canadian universities. Given its online format, this should not be too difficult to achieve.
