Writers in Exile: Addressing Fascism in America

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Having fled Nazi Germany, Ernst Bloch wrote of fascism: “The masks of the Ku Klux Klan were thus the first fascist uniform.” He was among many diverse writers in exile to be reminded of the political and social formations s/he was seeking to escape, from Bertolt Brecht to Thomas Mann, the erstwhile White House guest and bourgeois advocate of American democracy, who eventually aroused the suspicions of the FBI and came to view in Cold War politics tendencies towards a “fascist dictatorship.” In this course, we will closely read texts that emerged from German exiles with a view to their implications regarding fascism and America.