20th Century Eastern & Western Europe Through Masterpieces of Lit and Film

Catalog description

This course will explore life in 20th-century Eastern and Western Europe through masterpieces of literature and film. Students will read and discuss novels by Erich Maria Remarque, Stefan Zweig, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and other notable European writers, as well as watch and analyze documentaries and feature films created by some American and mainly European directors, covering major movements in cinema development such as Soviet Montage, Italian Neorealism, the French New Wave, and Eastern European cinema's political allegories, many of which were made chronologically close to the events they depict. Exploring how life is represented in 20th-century literature and film will help students gain insight into the turbulent social and cultural history of Eastern and Western Europe, understand the developments that shaped people's mentality, appreciate the diversity of cultural experiences across Europe, and see how daily lives have been influenced over time by political regimes and ideology.