Instructor: Professor A.B. McKillop
Contact: Email: brian.mckillop@carleton.ca. Inquiries are welcomed.
Assessment: one review essay and a final examination. Details provided during the first class
Description: This illustrated lecture course deals with thought, culture, and events in Europe during the twentieth century, and is intended for students regardless of disciplinary background, especially in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Journalism.
The course begins with an overview of intellectual and cultural dynamics in fin de siècle Europe as the twentieth century looms. Nietzsche and Freud become harbingers of new and unsettling aspects of modern thought and culture, including the place of reason, irrationality, and the unconscious. Social theorists in the early twentieth century probe the role of intellect and intuition in modern life.
Art and music reflect new and revolutionary developments. In Art, post-impressionism and expressionism are explored from Seurat to Brecht. Music is seen to reflect “climates of emotion” of the new century in Europe. Sustained attention is devoted to the causes, course, and post-war impact of the Great War (1914-1918), and the mixture of disillusionment and irrational expression it produced. The pre-war origins and the post-war manifestations of modernism are explored.
Attention is also given to the rise of extremist ideologies dominant between the Russian Revolution (1917) and the Second World War (1939-45). These include Marxist-Leninism, and Stalinism; the totalitarian state; Italian fascism under Mussolini; Hitler and Nazism, obsessed with power and race; the influence of Wagner and Nietzsche on Hitler and the Nazis, leading to the Holocaust; the cultural meaning of the Holocaust.
Aspects of postwar thought and culture considered include Jean-Paul Sartre and Existentialism; American “Exceptionalism” as a national myth, with linkages to Cold War ideology and consensus; European intellectual preoccupations with issues of language, structure, and agency; forms of disenchantment with Enlightenment values and tradition; postmodernism and the enigmatic nature of modernity at the end of the twentieth century.
Aims: To provide informative and insightful perspectives on major ideas and events, primarily in Europe, during the twentieth century.
Format: Two weekly lectures, each of one and a half hours.
Textbooks: To be announced during the first class in September.