Specialization:
Languages: German, French. Specialization: Narrative, Holocaust Studies; Trauma Studies; War and Literature.
Education:
Ph.D., The Johns Hopkins University,1988.
Bio:
Susan Derwin is Professor of German and Comparative Literature, and Director of the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center. Her fields include Holocaust studies, humanities and human rights, and nineteenth- and twentieth-century narrative, and psychoanalysis. Her publications include The Ambivalence of Form: Lukács, Freud, and the Novel (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), essays on Holocaust denial, the Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance, Huckleberry Finn, Blue Velvet and the essays of M.F.K. Fisher. Her latest book is entitled Rage is the Subtext. Readings in Holocaust Literature and Film (2012). It deals with the relationship between narrative and healing in texts by Jean Améry, Primo Levi, Saul Friedlaender, Imre Kertész, Binjamin Wilkomirski and in Liliane Cavani's film The Night Porter.
Courses:
Professor Derwin teaches courses on representations of the Holocaust, humanities in times of torture, contemporary European literature, and literary theory, with an emphasis on psychoanalysis. She recently created and taught a creative writing workshop, affiliated with the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, for veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who want to write about their military experiences. http://www.ihc.ucsb.edu/public-humanities/uc-vww/