culture, society, and war in twentieth century europe syllabus and lucento... · 1 culture,...
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Seth Bernstein, Ph.D.
Angelina Lucento, Ph.D.
Research Fellows
International Center for the History and Sociology of World War II and Its Consequences
Modules 2 & 3 (2015-2016)
1
Culture, Society, and War in Twentieth Century
Europe
Syllabus
Course Description
Course Title: Culture, Society, and War in Twentieth Century Europe
Pre-requisites:
Course Type: Elective
Course Abstract:
The course provides an overview of the social, political, and cultural history of
Europe in the twentieth century through conflict. It emphasizes the ways that war—from
the frontlines of the world’s first mass conflict in 1914 to the regional conflicts that
erupted after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991—altered the meaning of the
political, changed the definitions of society, nation, and community, and led to new
interpretations of the meaning of science and culture. The course will alternate weeks
between sections on European visual culture and sections on the socio-political
consequences of conflict.
The sections devoted to culture will focus on the history and theory of twentieth
century European visual culture. Rapid advances in mechanical reproduction and
projection technologies made visual materials—photographs, illustrated periodicals,
posters, prints, films, and eventually televisual media—more prevalent than they had ever
been before. These materials played a prominent role in political and social conflicts in
twentieth century Europe. In this course, we will treat visual objects as sources of
Seth Bernstein, Ph.D.
Angelina Lucento, Ph.D.
Research Fellows
International Center for the History and Sociology of World War II and Its Consequences
Modules 2 & 3 (2015-2016)
2
historical evidence with the potential to offer unique insights into both specific and
transcultural phenomena. We will also examine the parallel relationship between modern
European visual culture and modern art, in order to understand how visual aesthetics
contributed to historical events, including the socio-political consequences of conflict.
The sections devoted to the social history of conflict will ask students to explore
how war resonated beyond the battlefield. This course will look at mourning and official
commemoration in the aftermath of war; memory and social trauma; population
movement; shifts in gender, generational, and other social dynamics; the militarization of
society; and the role of war in sparking political change.
1. Learning Objectives: Students will learn the history of modern Europe through
conflict. Engagement with primary visual and textual sources will be
emphasized.
2. Learning Outcomes: At the end of the course, students will be able to discern
the role of conflict in shaping societies and cultures. They will also have
developed visual analysis skills that will allow them to build arguments that
incorporate visual media as primary source material. They will also be able to use
primary and secondary sources to sustain an argument over a paper of X pages.
3. Course Plan:
a) Week 1: Introduction: The Great War and Society
b) Week 2: Post-WWI: Mourning and Commemoration in Society
c) Week 3: Post-WWI: From Cubo-Futurism to Suprematism: Art in Russia
after the Last Imperial War
Seth Bernstein, Ph.D.
Angelina Lucento, Ph.D.
Research Fellows
International Center for the History and Sociology of World War II and Its Consequences
Modules 2 & 3 (2015-2016)
3
d) Week 4: Post-WWI: Paramilitarism after WWI
e) Week 5: Post-WWI: Art and the Russian Revolution
f) Week 6: Post-WWI: “Lost Generation” Trauma
g) Week 7: Post WWI: Art after Trauma in the Soviet Union and Weimar
Republic
h) Week 8: Bodies that Matter: The Politics and Aesthetics of Interwar Art
i) Week 9: Interwar Period: Militarization of Societies
j) Week 10: WWII: Evacuation
k) Week 11: WWII: Photography at Home and at War
l) Week 12: WWII: Gender and War
m) Week 13: WWII: Male and Female in Wartime Visual Culture
n) Week 14: WWII: Veterans
o) Week 15: WWII: What is Socialist Realism Now?
p) Week 16: WWII: Displaced Persons
q) Week 17: WWII: Remembering and Rebuilding the Nation: Soviet
Photojournalism after 1945
r) Week 18: WWII: Memory of War
s) Week 19: Is there Art after Auschwitz? The Politics of Aesthetics in a
Europe Divided
t) Week 20: Wrap-up Week
4. Reading List
a) Required
Seth Bernstein, Ph.D.
Angelina Lucento, Ph.D.
Research Fellows
International Center for the History and Sociology of World War II and Its Consequences
Modules 2 & 3 (2015-2016)
4
i. Week 1: Introduction and the Great War
1. Marinetti, F.T. “War, the World’s Only Hygiene,”
http://www.unknown.nu/futurism/war.html
ii. Week 2: Post-WWI: Mourning and Commemoration
1. Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning, 15-
28, 78-116, 204-222 (pdf)
2. Excerpt from Abel Glance, J’Accuse (1919) (in
class)
iii. Week 3: Post-WWI: From Cubo-Futurism to Suprematism:
Art in Russia after the Last Imperial War
1. John Bowlt, ed., “Suprematist Statements,” Russian
Art of the Avant-Garde, 110-115 (pdf)
2. Nina Gourianova, “The Russian Avant-Garde and
the Aesthetics of Anarchy,” “Movements:
Futurisms and the Principle of Freedom,” and “The
‘Social Test’: The Avant-Garde and the Great War,”
The Aesthetics of Anarchy, 1-17, 59-87, & 161-187
(pdf)
iv. Week 4: Post-WWI: Paramilitarism after WWI
1. Adolph Hitler, “The Conflict with the Red Forces”
and “Fundamental Ideas Regarding the Nature and
Seth Bernstein, Ph.D.
Angelina Lucento, Ph.D.
Research Fellows
International Center for the History and Sociology of World War II and Its Consequences
Modules 2 & 3 (2015-2016)
5
Organization of the Storm Troops,” Mein Kampf
(My Struggle)
2. Robert Gerwarth and Mark Edele, “Limits of
Demobilization: Global Perspectives on the
Aftermath of the Great War” Journal of
Contemporary History 50 (2015): 3-14. (See also
the articles from the special issue)
v. Week 5: Post-WWI: Art and the Russian Revolution
1. Komfut, “Program Declaration” & Aleksandr
Bogdanov, “The Proletarian and Art,” Russian Art
of the Avant-Garde, Bowlt ed., 164-165 & 176-178
(pdf)
2. Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Lunacharsky,” “Proletkult,” and
“The Arts,” The Commissariat of Enlightenment:
Soviet Organization of Education and the Arts
under Lunacharsky, October 1917-1921, 1-11 &
89-139 (pdf)
3. Vladimir Tolstoi, ed. Street Art of the Russian
Revolution, excerpts (pdf)
vi. Week 6: Post-WWI: “Lost Generation” Trauma
1. Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises (book 1)
Seth Bernstein, Ph.D.
Angelina Lucento, Ph.D.
Research Fellows
International Center for the History and Sociology of World War II and Its Consequences
Modules 2 & 3 (2015-2016)
6
2. Guillory, “The Shattered Self of Komsomol
Memoirs,” Slavic Review 71, no. 3 (2012): 546-565.
vii. Week 7: Post-WWI: Art after Trauma in the Soviet Union
and Weimar Republic
1. AKhRR, “Declaration” & Osip Brik, “From
Pictures to Textile Prints,” Russian Art of the Avant-
Garde, Bowlt, ed., 265-268 & 244-250 (pdf)
2. Solomon Nikritin, “The Museum of Static Film,”
Light and Color in the Russian Avant-Garde, 512-
513 (pdf)
3. Matthew Biro, “History at a Standstill: Walter
Benjamin, Otto Dix, and the Question of
Stratigraphy,” Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics 40
(Autumn 2001): 153-176 (pdf)
viii. Week 8: Bodies that Matter: The Politics and Aesthetics of
Interwar Art
1. AKhR, “Declaration of the Association of Artists of
the Revolution” & The October Association
“Declaration,” Russian Art of the Avant-Garde, Bowlt,
ed., 271-273 & 273-279 (pdf)
Seth Bernstein, Ph.D.
Angelina Lucento, Ph.D.
Research Fellows
International Center for the History and Sociology of World War II and Its Consequences
Modules 2 & 3 (2015-2016)
7
2. Christina Kiaer, “Was Socialist Realism Forced
Labor? The Case of Aleksandr Deineka,” Oxford Art
Journal 28:3 (October 2005): 321-345 (pdf)
3. Maud Lavin, “Hannah Höch’s Mass Media
Scrapbook: Utopias of the Twenties,” Cut with a
Kitchen Knife: The Weimar Photomontages of Hannah
Höch (pdf)
ix. Week 9: Interwar Period: Militarization of Societies
1. Volker Berghahn, Militarism, 8-64 (pdf)
2. Film: Timur and His Team (Timur i ego komanda,
1940) (in class)
x. Week 10: WWII: Evacuation
1. Excerpt from Georgii Efron, Dvevniki vol. 1, 71-
142.
2. “The Perils of Displacement: The Soviet Evacuee
between Refugee and Evacuee,” Contemporary
European History 16, (2007): 495-509
xi. Week 11: WWII: Photography at Home and at War
1. David Shneer, “’Without the Newspaper We Are
Defenseless!’” Through Soviet Jewish Eyes:
Photography, War, and the Holocaust, 87-140 (pdf)
xii. Week 12: WWII: Gender and War
Seth Bernstein, Ph.D.
Angelina Lucento, Ph.D.
Research Fellows
International Center for the History and Sociology of World War II and Its Consequences
Modules 2 & 3 (2015-2016)
8
1. Fabrice Virgili, Shorn Women 1-6, 177-217.
2. Krylova, “Stalinist Identity from the Viewpoint of
Gender: Rearing a Generation of Professionally Violent
Women Fighters in 1930s Stalinist Russia,” Gender and
History 16, no. 3 (2004): 626-53.
xiii. Week 13: Male and Female in Wartime Visual Culture
1. Susan Reid, “All Stalin’s Women: Gender and
Power in Soviet Art of the 1930s,” Slavic Review
57:1 (Spring 1998): 133-173 (pdf)
2. Jelena Batiníc, “’To the People, She Was a
Character from Folk Poetry,’” Women and Yugoslav
Partisans, 26-76 (pdf)
3. Film: Leni Riefenstahl, Triumph of the Will
xiv. Week 14: WWII: Veterans
1. Mark Edele, “Soviet Veterans as an Entitlement
Group,” Slavic Review 65, no. 1 (2006): 111-137.
xv. Week 15: WWII: What is Socialist Realism Now?
1. Oliver Johnson, “Kul’turnost’ or Kitsch? Vanishing
Reality in the Art of Aleksandr Lationov,” Studies
in Slavic Cultures (May 2007) 6: 82-106
Seth Bernstein, Ph.D.
Angelina Lucento, Ph.D.
Research Fellows
International Center for the History and Sociology of World War II and Its Consequences
Modules 2 & 3 (2015-2016)
9
2. Alla Efimova, “Touch of the Raw: The Aesthetic
Affections of Socialist Realism,” Art Journal 56:1
(Spring 1997): 72-80 (pdf)
3. Film: The Cranes Are Flying (Letiat zhuravly)
xvi. Week 16: WWII: Displaced Persons
1. Tara Zahra The Lost Children, 1-60.
2. Film They Have a Motherland (U nikh est' Rodina,
1950) (in class)
xvii. Week 17: WWII: Remembering and Rebuilding the Nation:
Soviet Photojournalism after 1945
1. Elena Barkhatova, “Soviet Policy on Photography,”
Beyond Memory: Soviet Nonconformist
Photography and Photo-Related Works of Art, 46-
73 (pdf)
2. Erika Wolf, Koretsky: The Soviet Photo Poster:
1930-1984, excerpts
xviii. Week 18: WWII: Memory of War
1. “Collective Memory and Cultural History:
Problems of Method,” American Historical Review
105, no.2 (December 1997): 1386-1403.
2. Student assignment
Seth Bernstein, Ph.D.
Angelina Lucento, Ph.D.
Research Fellows
International Center for the History and Sociology of World War II and Its Consequences
Modules 2 & 3 (2015-2016)
10
xix. Week 19: Is there Art after Auschwitz? The Politics of
Aesthetics in a Europe Divided
1. Piotr Piotrowski, “After Stalin’s Death: Modernism
in Central Europe in the late 1950s,” ARTMargins
15:30 (15 October 2001)
http://www.artmargins.com/index.php/archive/363-
after-stalins-death-modernism-in-central-europe-in-
the-late-1950s
2. Jérôme Bazin, “Socialist Realism and Its
International Models,” Vingtième Siècle. Revue
D’Histoire 1:109 (November 2011): 72-87
3. Susan Reid, “Communist Comfort: Socialist
Modernism and the Making of Cosy Homes in the
Khrushchev Era,” Gender & History 21:3
(November 2009): 465-498
xx. Week 20: Wrap-up Week
b.) Optional:
i. Commemoration and Post-WWI Trauma
1. Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning
2. Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory
3. George Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of
the World Wars
Seth Bernstein, Ph.D.
Angelina Lucento, Ph.D.
Research Fellows
International Center for the History and Sociology of World War II and Its Consequences
Modules 2 & 3 (2015-2016)
11
4. Klaus Theweleit, Male Fantasies
5. Robert Gerwarth and John Horne, “Vectors of Violence:
Paramilitarism in Europe after the Great War, 1917-23,”
Journal of Modern History 83, no. 3 (2011): 489-512.
ii. Militarization
1. Michael Kater, Hitler Youth
2. David Hoffman, Cultivating the Masses: Modern State
Practices and Soviet Socialism
3. John Gillis (ed.), The Militarization of the Western World
4. David Stone, Hammer and Rifle: The Militarization of the
Soviet Union 1926-1933
5. Mark von Hagen, Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship:
The Red Army and the Soviet Socialist State, 1917-1930
6. Film: The Circus (Tsirk)
iii. Art, Revolution, and Trauma
1. Nikolai Punin, “Cycle of Lectures [Extracts],” Russian
Art of the Avant-Garde, Bowlt, ed., 170-176 (pdf)
2. Constructivists, “The First Working Group of
Constructivists,” Russian Art of the Avant-Garde,
Bowlt, ed., 241-242 (pdf)
Seth Bernstein, Ph.D.
Angelina Lucento, Ph.D.
Research Fellows
International Center for the History and Sociology of World War II and Its Consequences
Modules 2 & 3 (2015-2016)
12
3. Devin Fore, “The Secret Always on Display:
Caricature and Physiognomy in the Work of John
Heartfield,” Realism after Modernism, 243-305 (pdf)
4. Toby Clark, “Fascist Interpretations of the Body,” Art
and Propaganda in the Twentieth Century, 66-74 (pdf)
5. Erika Wolf, “The Context of Early Soviet
Photojournalism,” Zimmerli Journal 2 (Fall 2004):
106-117 (pdf)
iv. Evacuation, Migration, and Displaced Persons
1. Ray M. Douglas, Orderly and Humane: The Expulsion of
the Germans after the Second World War
2. Benjamin Frommer, National Cleansing: Retribution
against Nazi Collaborators in Post-War Czechoslovakia
3. Rebecca Manley, To the Tashkent Station: Evacuation and
Survival in the Soviet Union at War
4. Tara Zahra, The Lost Children: Reconstructing Europe's
Families after World War II
5. Pavel Polian, Ne po svoei vole
xxi. Wartime and Post-War Visual Cultures
1. Jeffery Herf, “Reactionary Modernism in the Third
Reich,” in Reactionary Modernism: Technology,
Seth Bernstein, Ph.D.
Angelina Lucento, Ph.D.
Research Fellows
International Center for the History and Sociology of World War II and Its Consequences
Modules 2 & 3 (2015-2016)
13
Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third
Reich, 189-216 (pdf)
2. Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, “A Note on Gerhard
Richter's 'October 18, 1977,'” October 48 (Spring
1989): 88-109 (pdf)
3. Lisa Saltzman, “'Though Shall Not Make Graven
Images': Adorno, Kiefer, and the Ethics of
Representation,” Anslem Kiefer and Art after
Auschwitz, 17-48 (pdf)
4. Hannah Feldman, “Art during War and the
Potentialites of Decolonial Representation,” From a
Nation Torn: Decolonizing Art and Representation
in France, 1945-1962, 1-17 (pdf)
5. Film: Come and See (Idi i smotri)
5. Grading System
a. Oral Exam (33%)
b. Essay (34%)
c. Participation (33%, including reaction statements in course blog)
6. Guidelines for Knowledge Assessment
7. Methods of Instruction
a. Each week will consist of a lecture and then a discussion of course
materials.