GERST 6515 - Culture of Weimar and Nazi Germany

Fall. 4 credits. Student option grading.

Anchor course. Taught in English.

P. McBride.

This anchor course focuses on major developments in the literature and culture of the German-speaking countries during the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich. Topics to be discussed include the relationship between high-modernism, the avant-garde, and diverse forms of artistic engagement within the context of mass culture and mass politics; the articulation of gender, class, and racialized dimensions in cultural production and reception; and the challenge to traditional notions of authorship, representation, mimesis, and textuality mounted by the proliferation of text- and image-based mass media. Individual works will be drawn primarily from literature and drama, with a special emphasis placed on key concepts that helped define artistic production at this time (Expressionism, Dada, New Objectivity, Constructivism, montage, reportage, epic theater, etc.).