GER 575 A - 20thC German Studies - 1920s to Today

Campus: Urbana-Champaign

Description:

Seminar in selected genres, themes, or authors of the twentieth century. Course Information: 4 graduate hours. No professional credit. May be repeated in separate semesters to a maximum of 12 hours if topics vary.

Special Instructions:

In this seminar we discuss a wide-ranging archive of post-1989 literature, film, and memorials in order to reexamine the so-called Peaceful Revolution and the interval year of -89-90 which has been largely forgotten. More specifically, we ask what kind of cultural memories of street activism, resistance, and alternative social vision were left behind by the uprising in the GDR. Most scholarship in the last two decades has associated the legacies of 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall and Germany-s reunification, viewing this historical break in terms of trauma, defeat, and takeover. Instead, we take our cue from memory studies which is currently shifting from a focus on violence and trauma to hopeful legacies of social justice and political responsibility. Accordingly, in this course, we will explore how cultural archives (attuned to language, images, and so forth) render the protest memory of 1989. Reading post-1989 literature and film, alongside theory, we also move further bac

Option 1

Course Level: Graduate

Credit: 4

Term(s): Spring