War in Film & Literature

Catalog description

How do film and literature shape our understanding of the upheavals of war? How do ordinary soldiers? perspectives differ from those of political and military leaders? What mythologies are created around war, and how have different writers and filmmakers promoted or challenged them? How have artists tried to represent the powerful psychological effects of war trauma? This interdisciplinary course uses movies, fiction, poetry, and memoirs to explore these and other questions. Particular wars to be studied include WWI, WWII and the Holocaust, the Cold War, the Algerian revolution, Vietnam, Israel?s war in Lebanon, and the Iraq and Afghan wars. Films include Full Metal Jacket, The Hurt Locker, Dr. Strangelove, Three Kings, and The Battle of Algiers. Authors include American writers such as Tim O?Brien and European ones such as Primo Levi and Erich Maria Remarque.