Sections offered SPRING 2023:
#31453 |
HERBERT MARKS |
TuTh 3:00 PM–5:30 PM
|
AC C118 |
CLASS NOTES: COLL (CASE) A&H Breadth of Inquiry credit
Class meets In Person. For more information visit https://covid.iu.edu/learning-modes/index.html
This course will look at modern representations of war and the legacy of war in literature (fiction and memoir), film, music, and the visual arts. Our focus will be World War II, which more than any other event of the last hundred years has shaped the world we live in today, not only politically and morally, but also aesthetically. Our approach will be comparative, as we try to see the war through the eyes of each of the major combatants, the axis powers no less than the allies. Since the subject is vast, we shall group our discussions around a limited number of topics and events, such as the aerial destruction of Dresden and Hiroshima, the role of the partisan resistance in Italy, and the desolation and reconstruction of post-war Japan. To give us a more comprehensive frame of reference, we shall also read a brief history of the war, covering its causes, progress, and aftermath. Major themes will be the ambivalence of memory, and the tension between the limits of art and the demands of testimony.