Course Description
Major political, economic, social, and cultural developments.
Athena Title
20TH CENT EUROPE
Semester Course Offered
Offered every year.
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
Traditionally, European history courses have been taught according to the ideological boundaries of an East/West axis. In this schema “backward” countries belong in the East and “modern” ones belong in the West. While such divisions make for tidy storytelling, they also distort the fluidity of intellectual and cultural boundaries, as well as those of political and social developments. Thus, one of the main objectives of this course is to think, through, over and around the borders of Europe, from the imposition of new national borders in the first part of the century, to racial ones under fascism, and to the construction of the “Iron Curtain” in mid-century, and finally to the transcendence of certain economic and political boundaries within the European Union in the latter part of the century. To this end, we will consider the relationship between the various regions of Europe and will examine both the particularities of the respective regions as well as their shared developments, including two wars and their consequences, nationalism and the triumph of the nation-state, modernization, the rise of the welfare state as well as consumer culture, mass society and leisure. In keeping with this agenda, the scope of this course will be necessarily broad and will incorporate western, eastern, central and to a lesser extent northern and southern Europe. In making connections between political, economic and social changes, on the one hand, and intellectual and conceptual transformations, on the other, we will ask such questions as: Is there such a thing as Europe? And, if so, who is a European? Who has defined what these terms have meant at different points during the twentieth century? How have different historical actors and collectivities defined progress and backwardness? Prosperity versus poverty, male versus female and insider versus outsider? How have the answers to these questions dictated the shape of twentieth-century Europe? The principal objective of the course is to teach students to think critically for themselves about the relationships between the past and the present, to learn to ask questions of the past that enable them to understand the present and mold the future, and to become attuned to both the limitations and possibilities of change. The course seeks to acquaint students with the ways in which past societies and peoples have defined the relationships between community and individual needs and goals, and between ethical norms and decision-making. In general students will be expected to: 1. read a wide range of primary and secondary sources critically. 2. polish skills in critical thinking, including the ability to recognize the difference between opinion and evidence, and the ability to evaluate--and support or refute--arguments effectively. 3. write stylistically appropriate and mature papers and essays using processes that include discovering ideas and evidence, organizing that material, and revising, editing, and polishing the finished papers.
Topical Outline
Course introduction What is Europe? The Borders of Europe: Representations versus Reality Twentieth-Century Europe The Long Century Comes to a Close, Europe up to 1914 The Civilizing Process: The Rise of Nation-States and the Dusk of Empires State and Society: The View from Above, Below and In-Between The Great War and Revolutions, 1914-1920 The War to End All Wars Modernity’s Workshop: The Interwar Period I, 1920s-1930s Nation-Building and Obstacles to Stability Interwar Culture and Society The Rise of Authoritarian Regimes: The Interwar Period II, 1920s-1930s Economic Collapse and the Emerging German Threat Stalinism and Fascism: Ideology, Aesthetics and Politics The Second World War and German Occupation, 1930s-1945 World War II and Ethnic Cleansing A War Without Boundaries: The Experience of War The Emergence of a Bipolar World, 1945-1949 The Origins of the Cold War: An Ideological or Political Conflict? The Legacies of War: From Disorder and Scarcity to Reconstruction, Postwar I, 1945-1950s War and Memory: Victim versus Perpetrator, Hero versus Villain From Chaos to Order and the Rise of the Welfare State The Legacies of War: The Rise and Fall of Stalinism and Challenges to Soviet Hegemony Making Europe “Modern”: The Everyday Under Capitalism and Under Communism, 1950s-1970s Collectivization, Urbanization and the New Middle Classes Mass Leisure and Consumption, and the Coca-Colonization of Europe The Collapse of (West) European Empire, 1950s-1970s Decolonization and “Multi-Kulti” Europe Dissent and Challenges to the Old Order, 1960s-1970s The Legacies of ’68 Utopia Abandoned? Reform, Dissent and Fragmentation, 1970s Second Wave Feminism and the Double Burden A Decade of Stagnation? and Actually Existing Socialism and its Discontents The End of the Postwar Order? Part I, 1980s-1990s Solidarity, Glasnost and the Collapse of the Socialist Regimes Nationalism Reemerges? The Yugoslav Tragedy and the Velvet Divorce The End of the Postwar Order? Part II, 1980s-1990s The Return of (Repressed) Memory? The Dawn of the New Europe
Syllabus