Course Description
“’Peace’ meant ‘before 1914’: after that came something that no longer deserved the name” contends historian Eric Hobsbawm in his landmark history of the 20th century, which he calls The Age of Extremes. The twentieth century has been characterized as a time of unprecedented conflict starting with World War I, the first global conflict, which spawned not only physical casualties but also a whole new class of psychological casualties explored in literature, as well as in psychology, a relatively new field at the time. Following quickly on the heels of WWI was WWII and the horrors of the Holocaust and the gulag, the former being the inspiration for the term “genocide.” The innovation of mechanized death lead philosopher and cultural critic Theodor Adorno to assert that “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric,” and yet, poetry continues to this day alongside of time progressing steadily punctuated by war.
In this class, we will seek to trace the representation of the conflicts in the hundred-year period beginning with the first global conflict and ending with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In the first unit, we will focus on the fiction, memoir, graphic narratives, and film inspired by wars in which the United States was directly involved, discussing methods for the representation of violence and examining the development of the American perception of these conflicts.
The second unit will develop knowledge of the other conflicts that characterized the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, including decolonization, Israel and Palestine, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Iranian Revolution. We will use texts from these conflicts to broaden our understanding of the role of the representation of war in literature, and to question how these representations respond to changing cultural expectations.
In this class, we will seek to trace the representation of the conflicts in the hundred-year period beginning with the first global conflict and ending with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
- What is the purpose of the representation of war? How does the depiction of one conflict shape our expectations about others?
- How does a specific spatial context affect war and its representation? How can we use geography to understand the representation of a conflict?
- How can we place wars into conversation with culture? What is the use of music and other media in understanding clashes?
- What is the genre of “war literature”? What is the meaning of the term “war”?
- How can the portrayal of war in an “age of extremes” be an ethical project? What is our role as readers and citizens in the context of a hundred years of conflict?
In the first unit, we will focus on the fiction, memoir, graphic narratives, and film inspired by wars in which the United States was directly involved, discussing methods for the representation of violence and examining the development of the American perception of these conflicts.
The second unit will develop knowledge of the other conflicts that characterized the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, including decolonization, Israel and Palestine, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Iranian Revolution. We will use texts from these conflicts to broaden our understanding of the role of the representation of war in literature, and to question how these representations respond to changing cultural expectations.