German

Open, Seminar—Fall

Wars of the 19th and 20th centuries shaped Europe’s borders and societies. Ideas of the privileges of citizenship grew in tandem with the responsibilities of military service. Colonial expansion allowed militaries to test out new technologies and forms of rule, while expanding their empires. Armies were used to keep diverse empires together, not only through force, but also by creating a common sense of purpose and co-opting elites. Battles were a legitimate, legal way to decide territorial disputes, until they were not. In the course of the 20th century, wars of unimaginable destruction reshaped societies and expanded the boundaries of what was imaginable, including the destruction of all life on Earth. This course will examine the interplay of military and society from the early 19th century to the present. We will examine the relationship between citizenship and military service, war as politics, Europe’s colonial wars, mobilization and demobilization, the World Wars, Cold War, and the current crises in Europe. We will look at radical attempts to reimagine the place of the military by communists and fascists, the most destructive wars in recorded history, the long period of relative peace in Europe, the end of the Cold War and its aftermath.

Faculty

• Brandon Schechter

Open, Lecture—Spring

The 20th century revealed the potential for humans to destroy each other in new and shocking ways and also a variety of projects to create better people and governments. Europe was ground zero for both these disasters and attempts to mitigate them. It was the primary battlefield of both world wars, the laboratory of both fascism and communism, rebuilt by both capitalists and communists. In the latter half of the century, it formed a Union, moving beyond the nationalism that had defined much of its past. Europe was also a central stage of the Cold War, the point of contact between the capitalist and communist worlds, until—seemingly miraculously—the communist world imploded. Throughout the "short 20th century"—the period between the Great War and the fall of communism in Europe, a term coined by historian Eric Hobsbawm—and to this day, this space is haunted, another subject of this course. This lecture will cover major events and trends in Europe from the eve of the Great War to the fall of the Berlin Wall (with an epilogue). It will examine the major cultural and political events of the bloodiest century in recorded history. Among topics covered will be the World Wars, rise of dictatorships, Cold War, emergence of the European Union, the “end of history” and historical memory. Our readings will be divided between scholarship interpreting these events, primary sources, and films. We will continually ask what defines “Europe,” what its borders are, and think about the future of its past.

Faculty

• Brandon Schechter

Sophomore and Above, Seminar—Year

Against the backdrop of the bloodiest half-century in human history, continental European culture produced an astonishingly rich and diverse body of lyric poetry. Robert Frost famously remarked that "poetry is what gets lost in translation," but the unmistakable genius of modern European poetry largely survives its passage into English, thanks to the inspired efforts of its translators. In this course, we will learn to hear the voices they have made available to English-language readers, often comparing multiple translations of a single poem, or referring to the original in bilingual editions. We will read selections from twelve poets translated from seven languages: Cavafy, Valéry, Rilke, Trakl, Pessoa, Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Tsvetaeva, Lorca, Cernuda, Montale, and Celan.

Faculty

• Neil Arditi