Module overview
‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ is the most widely read non-fiction book in the post-war world. The author has become a symbol of Jewish suffering during (what we now term) the Holocaust and a figure emblematic of all victims of the Second World War. Indeed she might be described as an iconic figure, her name invoked across the world in campaigns promoting anti-racism and human rights. This module will introduce you to the life of Anne Frank and to her writing and legacy. It will place her singular experience in the wider context of a history of the Holocaust as a whole and introduce you to broad themes of recent Holocaust historiography. Providing a history of ‘the Diary’, tracing the development of the book from a relatively unknown publication in the late 1940s to a bestseller ten years later, analysing why it became so successful in a range of national contexts, including Germany and Japan, you will be encouraged to analyse ‘the Diary’ from a variety of perspectives – as an historical source but also as a literary and cultural text. ‘The Diary’ has been the focus of some controversy since its publication and we will examine issues surrounding the abridgement of the original text and attempts to deny its authenticity.