Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Exploration of the cultural and intellectual accomplishments of a specific city that achieved prominence in a particular time period, and had substantial impact and influence on human civilization. Examines the political, social, religious, and cultural factors that help to explain a city's significance and investigates the achievements of its citizens. May be repeated for credit when a different topic is taught. Breadth-Humanities.

COURSE DETAILS:

“Dancing on the edge of a volcano” is an oft-cited metaphor for the experience of Berliners living through the Weimar Era (1918-33) when the city’s wild spirit of cultural innovation and sexual freedom coincided with the rise of the twentieth century’s most destructive fascist movement. Few episodes of modern history have been more intensely romanticized in popular memory; and no historical parallel is more frequently cited today, in reference to our own political woes.

Students in HUM 340 will explore the realities behind the romance and learn to make rigorous, informed assessments of the purported parallelism. Such retrospective approaches will only engage a little of our attention, however. Chiefly, we’re going to try to understand Weimar Berlin through the historical and contemporaneous influences that acted upon Berliners who were not privileged, as we are, to know the future that awaited them. Our sources will mostly be primary works such as the films, literary productions, parliamentary speeches, popular music, graphic design and fashion of the Weimar Era.

We are going to examine deeply the social and cultural effects of Berlin’s rapid growth (and Germany’s acquisition of a global empire) in the decades leading up to the First World War, and the transformative impact of that War which so discredited Germany’s traditional leaders that a unique opening was created for previously marginalized groups. In the words of one historian, “Weimar Culture was the creation of outsiders” – including queer and trans people, Jews, and immigrants – who were “propelled by history into the inside, for a short, dizzying, fragile moment.”

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

• interpreting different kinds of cultural expression: literary, visual, cinematic, musical and material
• analyzing the cultural interrelations between imperial metropolises and their colonial peripheries
• tracing the course of German history from 1871 to 1945
• understanding the ideological origins of fascism and the social, economic and cultural contexts in which it emerged after the First World War
• relating the emergence of the gay rights movement and modern sexual science to wider currents in German history

Grading

Materials

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