UA PROFESSOR’S BOOK GUIDES TEACHERS OF HOLOCAUST STUDIES

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - In Teaching Holocaust Literature, Samuel Totten, professor of secondary education in the UA College of Education and Health Professions, offers a guide to educators seeking to teach about a complex subject in a historically and pedagogically sound manner. Totten edited this book of 11 essays to fill a need he had initially found as a teacher in the 1980’s.

"Dr. Totten’s work is internationally respected in the field of Holocaust studies," said Sharon B. Hunt, interim dean of the college. "He has worked with some of the foremost figures in genocide studies today and has made great contributions to developing effective and sensitive curricula."

Hunt noted that the quality of essays Totten has been able to assemble in his book is a tribute to his stature in the field. The foreword to Teaching Holocaust Literature was written by Israel W. Charny, director, Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem, and editor of the 1999 Encyclopedia of Genocide, of which Totten was an associate editor.

In the foreword, Charny says that Teaching Holocaust Literature "provides teachers with a rich array of resources" and "inspires deeper caring, sensitivity and integrity." Charny praises Totten warmly as "a kind, caring man" whose works "express a deep respect and caring for human life, which is, in fact, the essential meaning of the Holocaust."

After the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum opened in 1993, Totten describes meeting many fine teachers while he gave talks on how to incorporate literature into a study of the Holocaust. In his introduction to Teaching Holocaust Literature, he characterizes the contributors to the book as educators who "care deeply about the history of the Holocaust, and teach the literature in a way that assists students in placing the literature in a historical context."

Totten himself wrote four chapters in the book, "Incorporating Fiction and Poetry into a Study of the Holocaust;" "Analyzing Stories about the Holocaust via a Multiple Intelligences and Reader-Response Approach;" "’Written in Pencil in the Sealed Railway-Car’: Incorporating Poetry into the Study of the Holocaust via a Reader Response Theory Activity;" and "Encountering the 'Night’ of the Holocaust: Studying Elie Wiesel’s 'Night’."

In regard to the two chapters that make use of reader-response theory, Totten notes that such an approach offers students an opportunity to begin to examine the poem from their own unique perspective. He found that students’ responses, even when confused, often provided "excellent entry points" into the poem.

Totten is the editor of several noteworthy texts on the Holocaust, including Century of Genocide: Eyewitness Accounts and Critical Views (1997), Genocide in the Twentieth Century: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Testimony (1995), and First Person Accounts of Genocidal Acts Committed in the Twentieth Century (1991).

In addition to Teaching Holocaust Literature (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2001), Totten edited Teaching and Studying the Holocaust, which was released earlier this year. He is currently at work on Pioneers of Genocide Studies (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002).

Totten, who earned his doctorate from Columbia University in 1985, has been a member of the University of Arkansas faculty since 1987.

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