History

Through guided reading of some of the masterpieces of modern Chinese literature, this course examines the history of modern Chinese literature and analyzes literary works within the framework of literary history.

Over thirty years after German reunification, this course revisits the period in which two German states existed, examining the fraught and complicated, but nonetheless deeply symbiotic, relationship they had with each other. How did two German states come into being in the first place? How did they develop, both separately and in parallel, and how did they determine each other’s history? Some of the debates the course engages with include: to what extent did the Federal Republic inherit the political, social, economic, and cultural mantle of Hitler’s Third Reich? Was there any choice but to reintegrate former Nazis into West German public life? Was the GDR a totalitarian state, exercising complete control over its citizens’ lives? Did the Berlin Wall have any advantages? How were immigrants and foreigners treated in the two German states? Finally, from the vantage point of the 2020s, the course considers whether one can now speak of a unified German nation, in which the historical divisions between east and west have been overcome.

This course offers a study of the origin and characteristics of cultural studies. Topics include: the Birmingham School and the beginning of cultural studies; the cultural criticism of the Frankfurt School; influences of semiotics and structuralism on cultural analysis; poststructuralist perspective; the culture wars and the perspective of cultural studies.