armstron@grinnell.edu

COURSE DESCRIPTION

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Spring 2001
Film Festival

This course will examine and analyze a number of major works from several countries of Central and Eastern Europe (former-Yugoslavia, Poland, former-Czechoslovakia). 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: 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 may be problematic).

Some 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--especially the horrendous events of the last century?
• How does ART help people--both on an individual and a societal level--to survive from day to day, or over longer periods of time?
• What role does art play in US society, and in your own approach to reality, self, others?