culture, society, and war in twentieth century europe syllabus and lucento... · 1 culture,...

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)

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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



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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



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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



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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

http://www.unknown.nu/futurism/war.html



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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)



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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)



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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



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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



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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



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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

http://www.artmargins.com/index.php/archive/363-after-stalins-death-modernism-in-central-europe-in-the-late-1950s





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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)



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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,



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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.



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8. Special Equipment and Software Support (if required)

a. Projector needed for PowerPoint presentations.

culture, society, and war in twentieth century europe syllabus and lucento... · 1 culture,...

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