RES 291.01: Perspectives in Twentieth-Century Central and Eastern European Literature
Grinnell College
Spring, 2004
MWF 11:00-11:50; Mears Cottage 115

armstron@grinnell.edu

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Spring 2004
Film Festival

Central and Eastern European Research Portal

Last updated:
8-jan-04

This course will examine and analyze a number of major works from several countries of Central and Eastern Europe (former-Yugoslavia, Poland, former-Czechoslovakia). Given the fact that this is a vast and diverse region, our readings will not be comprehensive. We will, however, seek to determine general themes in the various texts (broadly defined) under consideration.

We will devote our attention to how writers, artists, poets and others attempt to understand and respond to cataclysmic events and issues in specific countries, and in the region in general: ethnic conflict, war, genocide, revolution, totalitarianism and political repression, clashes of religion and culture, and quests for (self-)identity.

We will also try to understand what makes a writer Central/Eastern European, or, to look at it another way, what features of the works in question distinguish them as belonging to a Central/Eastern European tradition (a concept that in itself is problematic).

A few questions we might ask as a preliminary to our study (and you may think of more):

• How are people's lives, histories, feelings, sense of identity, etc. reflected in and affected by literature and other cultural texts?
  
  
• How does ART--literature, music, the fine arts, film, and other "texts"--serve to witness, record, and interpret the many aspects of the times?
  
  
• How is ART deployed as a humane response to inhumanity? How effective, how meaningful can a poem, a novel, a song, a film be in the face of such horrendous events such as the Holocaust? Are we to understand literally Theodore Adorno's famous proposition that "to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric"?
  

Course Grading System

You will receive a grade roughly based on the following breakdown of your activities in the course:

Formal Writing Assignments: 70% (20/20/30)

Discussion Board Participation: 15%

In-class participation: 15%