New Course in European History
Spring 2013
The term “Central Europe” refers as much to a cultural project and a set of political ideologies as an actual region that can be pinpointed on a map of the world. The partitions of Poland in the late 18th century and the definitive dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 opened a Pandora’s Box of imperial expansionism and national realignments that left a substantial portion of the European continent caught--as the inhabitants of that area understood it—between a modernizing “West” and an autocratic, if not outright feudal, “East.” This state of affairs survived the collapse of dynastic empires in 1918, taking on a different form under the Soviet Union’s influence until 1991. Indeed, many commentators argue that the idea of “Central Europe” is still relevant today, both within the European Union and in the dealings between EU member-states and countries like Ukraine and the former Yugoslav states.
This course will explore the history of Central Europe as both a region and an idea, tracing two stories in parallel: 1) the entangled history of Austrians, Czechs, Germans, Hungarians, Jews, Lithuanians, Poles, Slovaks, and Ukrainians; and 2) the many attempts by writers and scholars of these various nationalities to “imagine” their own versions of Central Europe. Authors covered in this course will include--among many others--Yuri Andrukhovych, Sigmund Freud, Günter Grass, Milan Kundera, and Czesław Miłosz.
This is a lecture course that will meet twice a week while incorporating a significant amount of time for discussion. Expect a reading load of approximately 150-200 pages per week. Required assignments (in addition to reading and participation) will include a take-home midterm, an in-class final, three 3-page papers on the readings, and a map quiz.
