Mar 29, 2024  
2016-2017 
    
2016-2017 [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

GER 361 - Vienna 1900 - Now


Instructor
Ellis

This course-which is taught in German-will focus on Austrian cultural productions such as literature, visual art, and film since 1900, examining these works in the context of Austria’s tumultuous 20th-century history and in relation to more recent political developments. We will study how Austrian artists have responded to and intervened in key historical and political debates regarding the dissolution of the multiethnic Austro-Hungarian Empire, the social democratic interwar period, Austria’s absorption into the Third Reich, questions of memory, guilt, and national identity after the Second World War, and contemporary issues of immigration, asylum, and the rise of the political far right. Special attention will be given to Vienna, Austria’s political and cultural capital, beginning with the modernist art that flourished there at the turn of the 20th century. Objects of study will include paintings by Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele, architecture by Otto Wagner and Adolf Loos, performance art by Christoph Schlingensief and Elfriede Jelinek, literary texts by Arthur Schnitzler, Ingeborg Bachmann, and Thomas Bernhard, and films by Anja Salomonowitz, and Ulrich Seidl. All readings, class discussions, and writing assignments will be in German.
 
Pending funding, students in the course will be able to apply to participate in an interdisciplinary study trip to Vienna in late May, which will also include students from Professor Ceka’s POL 242: West European Politics.

Satisfies the Liberal Studies distribution requirement.

Prerequisites & Notes
German 260 or permission of the instructor.

(Spring)