Fall 2014
HIST 258: 20th Century World to Midcentury
Topic: World War I and the Making of the Global 20th Century
Instructors: Professors Tamara Chaplin & Peter Fritzsche
Lecture meets MW 11:00-11:50, 213 Gregory Hall, Section: AL1, CRN: 63168 (discussion section also required)
Course Description:
“You will be home before the leaves have fallen from the trees.” –Kaiser Wilhelm II to German soldiers, August 1914.
This year, 2014, marks the hundredth anniversary of the onset of World War I. Lasting from 1914 to 1918 and known as “The Great War” to those unaware that more carnage would soon blight the history of the twentieth century, World War I stands as the first incarnation in human history of modern industrial warfare on a truly global scale. This bloody conflict permanently recast the ways in which nations and peoples have considered, experienced and commemorated not just military conflict, but both Western and global culture, society, industry, politics and economics writ large. Our class, which will be team-taught by Professors Tamara Chaplin and Peter Fritzsche, attempts to come to grips with World War I’s astonishing historical legacy. Our canvas is broad: we will not only learn about the chronology of the war–from its origins and military operations, to its political ramifications (including the demise of imperial empires and the rise of Soviet socialist communism), to competing experiences of battlefront and home front (with their technological and industrial innovations–including such diverse aspects as aerial and trench warfare, the use of gas and chemical weapons, food rationing, war bonds and the feminization of the workforce), but we will also study the war’s psychological and embodied effects (shell-shock, trauma, amputation, prosthetics, plastic surgery and disability) as well as the artistic and cultural attempts to acknowledge, represent and memorialize its devastation (in poetry, art, music, dance, theatre, film and literature). Our sources will be equally varied; we will read history, fiction and memoir, examine newspaper coverage, cartoons, propaganda posters, photographs and film and analyze geographic, architectural and cartographic evidence of World War I’s destruction and commemoration. We also hope to think hard together about how this history has shaped our present concerns, from our attitudes towards such issues as terrorism and human rights, to our understandings of masculinity, sexuality and gender, to our ideas about peace-making, revolution, religion and global apocalypse. To aid us in our work, our class will benefit from a series of guest lectures and presentations from specialists in other disciplinary fields. If you are interested in exploring the ways in which modern warfare continues to shape the world in which we live, this class is for you.
Meets with CWL 199, Section: AL1, CRN: 63420; FR 199, Section: AL1, CRN: 63407; GER 199, Section: AL1, CRN: 63414.
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