name: Patrick Henry

institution: Whitman College

language: French

status: Full-time, tenure track

project:

title: The Holocaust in France

duration: June, 1998

description: I intend to travel to Le Chambon-sur-lignon,France this summer in order to copy some recently discovered photographs of Jewish children saved by the Protestants of this small village during the Nazi Occupation. I also intend to travel to Paris,where an elderly relative of Daniel Trocme, one of the leaders of the rescue efort in Le Chambon, has promised to speak with me and to allow me to see several personal letters written by Daniel Trocme during the 1940s. With these new pictures and documents,I plan to complete the multi-media lesson on the French Holocaust I have been working on for two years. This final part will focus on the lives and written reactions of children during World War II, especially of those children who found themselves in greatest peril. The personal testimony found in letters will make a nice addition to the rest of the lesson, which contains poetry, sermons, and political speeches. In July and August, I will assemble the project.

outcome: My project is a multi-media approach to teaching the Holocaust in France. It also attepts to create a dialogical approach to ethics by pairing literature and film, or two texts or videotapes with opposing views, on the same screen. This lesson, appropriate for students at the intermediate and advanced levels of French language and literary studies, has already been tested with success this past fall in my French Civilization through Literature course at Whitman College.

timeline:
June: travel to Paris for interviews with Jean Trocme, cousin of Daniel Trocme. Research into family archives. Then, travel to Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, to obtain copies of photographs of rescued children and of their daily lives during World War II.

July-August: I will assemble the materials, write the new portions of the lesson, and incorporate them into my lesson on the Holocaust.

September: Evaluation of the project in my French 247 class, "French Civilization through Literature".

amount: $1000

breakdown: travel grant