HIST 242 - Twentieth Century Europe

Does each century have a “spirit of the age”? What do the trenches of the First World War, the gas chambers of the Holocaust, the communist experiment, and psychoanalysis reveal about the “spirit” of the twentieth century? This course surveys the history of twentieth-century Europe from three chronologically overlapping vantage points: “the age of catastrophe,” “the age of secular ideological extremes,” and “the limits of secularism.” The events and developments examined in this course are chosen to reflect these concerns. In addition to mastering the main events and developments that have defined the twentieth century, we will seek to answer the question, In what ways are we heirs of the legacy of the twentieth-century Europe as seen from each of these vantage points?

Credits: 4
Terms Offered: As Needed