Europe, 1930 - present
History 23303 01/33303 01
Spring, 2005
M/W 1:30-2:50
Prof. Leora Auslander
Office: Social Sciences 222
Office Hours: Wednesdays 3:00-4:45
Email:
TA: Venus Bivar
Office Hours: TBA
Email:
This course will provide an introduction to European History since World War I. Topics covered will include: the causes, experiences, and effects of the First and Second World Wars, the wars of decolonization, the Cold War and conflict in the former Yugoslavia; transformations in society and economy, including the Depression, the making of the welfare state, changes in gender relations, and the consequences of post-colonial immigration; political contestation, particularly conflict between Left and Right in the 1930s, protests of workers, students and women in the 1960s and 1970s, and anti-globalization mobilization at the end of the 20th century; debates over the place of religion; issues of national sovereignty raised by the European Union and “Americanization.” Materials used will include political treatises, fiction, images, and film.
Texts:
Books are available for purchase at the Seminary Co-op bookstore and on reserve in Regenstein Library. Most will be read in their entirety and it is highly recommended that you purchase them. Articles are available on reserve in Regenstein Library and may also be posted to the course’s chalk site.
Émilie Carles, A Life of Her Own trans. Avriel H. Goldberger, Penguin, 1991 [1977]
Norman M. Naimark, Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe
(Cambridge: Harvard, 2001)
Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914-1991 (New
York: Vintage, 1996)
Georges Perec, Things/A Man Asleeptrans. David Bellos (Boston: David Godine,
2003).
Robert Paxton, Europe in the Twentieth Century (New York: Wadsworth, 2004)
There’s a 4th and a 5th edition. Either will do
Marc Bloch, The Strange Defeat (New York: Norton, 1999)
Kristin Ross, Fast Cars, Clean Bodies: Decolonization and the Reordering of French Culture (Cambridge: MIT, 1995)
DetlevPeukert, Inside Nazi Germany: Conformity, Opposition, and Racism in Everyday Life (New Haven: Yale, 1989)
Timothy Garton Ash, The Magic Lantern: The Revolution of '89 Witnessed in
Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin, and Prague. (New York: Vintage, 1993)
Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas (New York: Harvest, 1966)
Requirements:
Written work:
Undergraduates: 1) Take-home mid-term:
Questions will be posted on Friday, April 22.
Papers due onFriday, April 29 at 4pm
You will be offered a choice of three questions and asked to
write a 5 page essay on one of them. No reading beyond the
syllabus is expected.
2) Take home final:
Questions will be posted on Friday, May 27
Papers due on Monday, June 6 at 9:00 am.
You will be offered a choice of three questions and asked to
write a 7-10 page essay on one of them.
Guidelines for successful essays will be posted on the course’s chalk site.
Papers should be both sent to the Chalk digital drop box and submitted in two paper copies to the course’s box outside the History Department office (3rd floor of Social Sciences).
Graduate Students:
Graduate students may either fulfil the undergraduate requirements or write a 10-15pp historiographic review paper on a subject of their choice. If you choose the paper option, please come see Prof. Auslander within the first three weeks of the term to discuss topics. Bibliographies must be handed in by the end of 5th week (April 29). Final papers are due on the last day of class.
Papers should be both sent to the Chalk digital drop box and submitted in two paper copies to the course’s box outside the History Department office (3rd floor of Social Sciences).
Attendance and Participation: Readings, lectures, and discussions will complement each other. Each class session will include some lecture and some discussion based on the readings assigned for the day (or a film seen that week). Class attendance and participation are therefore required and will be factored into your final grade. Mid-term grades for both will be given. If you need to be absent from class please send both instructors an email explaining absences; prolonged or repeated absence must be justified by a note from a doctor or your advisor or it will be reflected in your final grade.
Please note: The use of computers in class will not be allowed.
Notes on Reading:
1)The vast majority of your time outside of class for this course will be spent doing the assigned reading. The two writing assignments are both brief and based entirely on the assigned reading and the material covered in class.We will be discussing the reading on the day it is assigned; it is, therefore, crucial that do all the assigned reading when it is assigned.
2)Assignments for most classes include some primary and some secondary reading. These have different purposes and should be read accordingly:
a)Robert Paxton’s textbook, Europe in the Twentieth Century has been
assigned to provide a clear narrative. The lectures will assume that you have acquired that narrative either by reading the textbook or from previous knowledge. We will not be discussing the Paxton in class (unless, of course, you have questions).
b)Eric Hobsbawm’s The Age of Extremes is a narrative, non-textbook, account of the entire period. It makes an argument to which you should be attentive and it will be a topic of discussion.
c)Topical secondary literature (Ross, Naimark). These have been assigned both to provide you with information and to present differing modes of analysis, argumentation, and evidence. They should be read with an eye towards not just absorbing the information they contain but critically assessing the argument.
d)Primary sources, both excerpted and full texts. These include short stories, novels, memoires, essays and political texts. They should be read carefully and brought to class the week they are assigned. Direct reference will be made to them in class and you will be asked to interpret them. The two films screened in class will be analysed in a similar manner.
3)Guidelines for reading/analysing each of the texts and films assigned will be provided on the chalk-site.
Monday, March 28. Introduction and the Impact of World War I
Start reading:
Carles, A Life of Her Own, xi-142
Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes, Introduction and chapters 1-3.
Paxton, Europe in the 20th century, through ch. 6 (as needed for background and
review)
Wednesday, March 30. Social and Economic Life in the Interwar Period
Carles, A Life of Her Own, 145-230
Paul Lazarsfeld, et al. Marienthal: The Sociography of an Unemployed Community,
RWC 9, pp. 446-463on chalk
From Men Without Work: A Report Made to the Pilgrim Trust(1938), WS,
480-482.on chalk
Hobsbawm, chs. The Age of Extremes, chs. 4 and 5
Paxton, Europe in the 20th Century, 7-12
Monday, April 4. Mass and Other Politics in the 1930s
Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas (1938)
From Program of the Popular Front (1936), WS, 483-486.on chalk
Wednesday, April 6. A New World System? Internationalism and new Claims of
National Sovereignty
Sun Yat-Sen, “San Min Chu I (The three Principles of the People)”(1927) in Prasenjit
Duara, ed. Decolonization: Perspectives from Now and Then, pp. 21-28.
C.L.R. James, “The Case for West Indian Self-Government,” (1933) in the C.L.R.
James Reader, Anna Grimshaw, ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 49-62.
Jawaharlal Nehru, “The Importance of the National Idea,”(1946)in Prasenjit
Duara, ed. Decolonization: Perspectives from Now and Then, pp. 32-41.
Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes, ch. 7
Monday, April 11. Everyday life and Resistance under Fascism
DetlevPeukert, Inside Nazi Germany: Conformity, Opposition, and Racism in Everyday Life, selections—chs. 1, 3, 8, 13 and epilogue
Paxton, Europe in the 20th Century, chs. 13-14
Wednesday, April 13. The War in France
Carles, A Life of Her Own, 195-219.
Marc Bloch, A Strange Defeat (1940), Forward, pp. 1-5, ch. 3 and the Testamentary Instructions of Marc Bloch
Monday, April 18. Destruction and Reconstruction in Film
Werner Fassbinder,The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979).
Wednesday, April 20.The Immediate Postwar Period
Marguerite Duras,”The War” in her collection, The War: A Memoir trans. Barbara
Bray ( New York: Pantheon, 1986)
Jean Améry, “How Much Home Does a Person Need?” in his At the Mind’s
Limits trans. Sidney Rosenfeld and Stella P. Rosenfeld (Bloomington: Indiana
Univ. Press, 1980), pp. 41-62.
Naimark, Fires of Hatred, ch. 4.
Paxton, Europe in the 20th Century, ch. 16
Monday, April 25.The Cold War in Europe
Winston S. Churchill, “The Sinews of Peace,” (1946) in Churchill’s ‘Iron Curtain’
Speech Fifty Years Later ed. James W. Muller (Columbia: Univ. of Missouri
Press, 1999), pp. 1-14. D 843 .C5295 1999
Marquis Childs, The Ragged Edge: The Diary of a Crisis (New York: Doubleday,
1955), pp. 7-19; selections.D 843 C.52
Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes, ch. 8
Paxton, Europe in the 20th Century, chs. 15 and 17-18
Wednesday, April 27.The Development of the Welfare State and new Gender
Politics
Simone de Beauvoir, from the The Second Sex (1949) in Feminism in Our Time,
Miriam Schneier, ed. (New York: Vintage, 1994), pp. 3-20.
Monday, May 2. The Postwar Political Economy of Mass-Production and Mass-
Consumption
Georges Perec, Things
Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes, chs. 9 and 10
Paxton,Europe, ch.19
Wednesday, May 4.The Debate over Americanization
Kristin Ross, Introduction and chs. 1 and 2 in her Fast Cars, Clean Bodies:
Rob Kroes, “Americanization: What are we Talking About?” in his If You’ve seen
one, You’ve Seen the Mall (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois, 1996 )pp. 162-178
Monday, May 9. Decolonization: The Algerian Case
Carles, A Life of Her Own, pp. 231-237
Frantz Fanon, “Algeria Unveiled,” (1965) in Duara, Decolonization pp 42-55.
Kristin Ross, Fast Cars, Clean Bodies chs. 3 and 4.
Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes, ch. 12 and 15
Wednesday, May 11. Decolonization on Film
Gillo Pontecorvo, The Battle of Algiers, (1966)
Monday, May 16. 1968 -- 1970s: Challenges to Postwar solutions
Carles, A Life of Her Own, pp. pp. 239-264.
Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes, ch. 11.
Paxton, Europe, ch. 22
Wednesday, May 18.Race, Immigration and Citizenship
Hanif Kureishi, “My Son the Fanatic,” from hisLove in a Blue Time
Ien Ang, “On Not Speaking Chinese” on chalk
Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes, ch. 14
Recommended: Film: My Beautiful Launderette
Monday, May 23. 1989 and the End of the Cold War
Timothy Garton Ash, The Magic Lantern: The Revolution of '89 Witnessed in
Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin, and Prague,11-24; 61-77; 131-167.
Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes, ch. 16
Paxton, Europe, ch. 23
Wednesday, May 25. War in the Former Yugoslavia
Naimark, Fires of Hatred, ch. 5
Vesna Kesic, “From Reverence to Rape,” Zorica Mrsevic, “The Opposite of War is
Not Peace – It is Creativity,” Habiba Metikos, “Conversion,” and Vinka
Ljubimir, “The Passage,” in Frontline Feminisms: Women, War, and
Resistance Marguerite R. Waller and Jennifer Rycenga, eds. (New York:
Routledge, 2001), pp. 23-36; 41-56; 195-206.
Monday, May 30 – Memorial Day. No class
Wednesday, June 1.Challenges for The new Millenium in Europe
Margaret Thatcher, “New Threats for Old,” (1996 in Churchill’s ‘Iron Curtain’
Speech Fifty Years Later ed. James W. Muller (Columbia: Univ. of Missouri
Press, 1999), pp. 151-168. D 843 C.C5295 1999
Etienne Balibar, “Droit de cité or Apartheid?” (1999) in his We, The People of
Europe?(Princeton: PrincetonUniv. Press, 2004), pp. 31-50.
Tony Judt, “The Past is Another Country: Myth and Memory in Postwar Europe,” in
István Deák, Jan T. Gross, and Tony Judt, eds. The Politics of Retribution in Europe (Princeton: PUP, 2000), 295-324. D843 .P65 2000
Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes, ch. 19.
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