Villanova University

HIS 8274-01: Twentieth Century Europe

Spring 2007, T 7:30-9:30 pm, Bartley 1067

Dr. Paul Steege STAUG 428 x9-6963 paul.steege@villanova.edu http://www.homepage.villanova.edu/paul.steege/		Office hours: T 2:30-3:30 pm R 10:15-11:15 am or by appointment
Course Objectives:	This course aims to introduce graduate students to a variety of issues in and methodological approaches to the history of twentieth century Europe. It is not meant to be a survey of the century's history but rather an examination of a number of interrelated topics linked to the question: where is modern Europe. This is not simply question of geographic location (although that is part of it) but also of constructed meanings. Is modern Europe civilized or barbaric? Exclusive or inclusive? Progressive or stagnant? Using a variety of sources, we will try to explore the contradictory experiences of Europe’s twentieth century. This seminar is set up to focus on the assigned readings, to read and discuss them carefully, and to put them at the center of the course’s written work.
Required Books:	Bauman, Zygmunt. Modernity and the Holocaust. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993. Cooke, Paul. Representing East Germany since Unification: From Colonization to Nostalgia. New York: Berg, 2005. de Grazia, Victoria. Irresistible Empire: America's Advance Through Twentieth-Century Europe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006. Eksteins, Modris. Rites of Spring: the Great War and the birth of the modern age. Boston and New York: Mariner Books, 2000. Feinberg, Melissa. Elusive Equality: Gender, Citizenship, and the Limits of Democracy in Czechoslovakia, 1918–1950. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006. Hull, Isabel. Absolute Destruction: . Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005. Mazower, Mark. Dark Continent: Europe's twentieth century. New York: Vintage Books, 2000. Ross, Kristin. Fast cars, clean bodies: decolonization and the reordering of French culture. Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 1999. Schorske, Carl E. Fin-de-siècle Vienna: politics and culture. New York: Vintage Books, 1981. Yurchak, Alexei. Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005.
Assignments and Grading:	Seminar Participation (20% of final grade): A graduate seminar is only as good as its participants’ commitment to engaged discussion. Regular, engaged participation in class discussions is simply assumed. This does not mean that I anticipate that you will all have “the answer.” A graduate seminar is a collaborative undertaking, in which we propose, examine, and critique ideas. While our discussions must retain respect for each other and our divergent opinions, they will also allow for (and demand) rigorous, critical examination of what people have to say. Two (2) Review essays 1) 1000-word review of assigned reading (10% of final grade). The essay is due at the beginning of class on the date for which the reading is assigned. Each review should assess the argument that the book’s author is trying to make and the evidence provided to support that argument. Discuss this success/failure of this effort in the context of the issues being explored in this course. You will have an opportunity to sign up for a choice of books/writing slots before our second meeting. 2) 1500-word review of outside reading of your choice (20% of final grade). A list of suggested book titles accompanies each assigned reading. Other titles must first be approved by the instructor. Reviews of books on pre-1945 subjects are due Tuesday, February 27. Reviews of books dealing with post-1945 subjects are due Tuesday, April 10. Review Schedule 15-20 page Extended Review essay (50% of final grade): Using the materials assigned for this course, write an extended review essay of Victoria de Grazia’s recent book, Irresistible Empire. This review should demonstrate both your ability to carefully and critically read and evaluate de Grazia’s book but also make clear your facility with the concepts, arguments, and issues raised over the course of the semester. More details will be available in an online guide. According to the recently established History Department grading rubric for graduate course, a grade of “A” is granted for performance that is: exceptional; well beyond mastery and individual insights; originality; polished prose; consistent, substantive participation and intellectual leadership Additional grading criteria are available here.
Academic Integrity:	Plagiarism or cheating on any coursework will not be tolerated. Any case of academic fraud (copying of another student’s work, illicit use of notes on an exam, undocumented use of an outside source, etc.) will automatically result in a failing grade for the course and the submission of an academic integrity report to the university. If you have any questions about documenting sources or what constitutes academic fraud, please speak to me or consult the student handbook. We will discuss this in detail during the first weeks of the course.
Disabilities:	Students with disabilities who may need academic accommodations are encouraged to discuss options with me after class or during my office hours during the first two weeks of class. More information about documenting or addressing learning disabilities is available from Nancy Mott, Director of the Office of Learning Services (tel. x9-5636 or e-mail nancy.mott@villanova.edu) or from that office’s web site.
Topic/Reading Schedule
Our first two seminars will discuss Mark Mazower’s history of twentieth century Europe. Beginning in week three, the assigned books will be read in the following (roughly chronological) order. The precise schedule will depend on the course of our discussion, although in most instances we will spend one week on each text. Any additional readings will be announced in class and posted to the online version of the syllabus. Each of the assigned text is accompanied by a list of supplemental readings, from which you may draw your outside reading for your second review essay. They should be taken as suggestions (somewhat at random) and by no means an exhaustive list.
Carl Schorske, Fin-de-siècle Vienna
	Fritzsche, Peter. Reading Berlin 1900. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996. Gay, Peter. Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider. New York: W. W. Norton, 2001. Stern, Fritz. The Politics of Cultural Despair: A study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974.
Isabel Hull, Absolute Destruction
	Horne, John and Alan Kramer. German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. Liulevicius, Vejas Gabriel. War Land on the Eastern Front: Culture, National Identity, and German Occupation in World War I. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Naimark, Norman. Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. Weitz, Eric D. A Century of Genocide: Utopias of Race and Nation. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003.
Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring
	Fussell, Paul. The Great War and Modern Memory. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Healy, Maureen. Vienna and the Fall of the Habsburg Empire: Total War and Everyday Life in World War I. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pick, Daniel. War Machine: The Rationalisation of Slaughter in the Modern Age. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.
Melissa Feinberg, Elusive Equality
	Heineman, Elizabeth. What Difference Does a Husband Make: Women and Marital Status in Nazi and Postwar Germany. University of California Press, 1999. King, Jeremy. Budweisers into Czechs and Germans:A Local History of Bohemian Politics, 1848-1948. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. Nolan, Mary. Visions of Modernity: Amerian Business and the Modernization of Germany. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Peukert, Detlev J. K. The Weimar Republic:The Crisis of Classical Modernity. Trans. Richard Deveson. New York: Hill and Wang, 1989. Swett, Pamela. Neighbors and Enemies : The Culture of Radicalism in Berlin, 1929-1933. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust
	Bartov, Omer. Murder in our Midst: The Holocaust, Industrial Killing, and Representation. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Bergerson, Andrew Stuart. Ordinary Germans in Extraordinary Times: the Nazi Revolution in Hildesheim. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004. Gross, Jan T. Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.
Kristin Ross, Fast Cars, Clean Bodies
	Betts, Paul. The Authority of Everyday Objects: A Cultural History of West German Industrial Design. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. Connelly, Matthew. A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria’s Fight for Independence and the Origins of the Post-Cold War Era. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Shepard ,Todd. The Invention of Decolonization: The Algerian War and the Remaking of France. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006. Pells, Richard. Not Like Us: How Europeans have loved, hated, and transformed American culture since World War II. New York: Basic Books, 1997. Wagnleitner, Reinhold. Coca-Colonization and the Cold War: The Culutral Mission of the United States in Austria After the Second World War. Trans. Diana M.Wolf. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1994.
Alexei Yurchak, Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More
	Fitzpatrick, Sheila. Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Hessler, Julie. A Social History of Soviet Trade: Trade Policy, Retail Practice, and Consumption, 1917-1953. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. Drakulić, Slavenka. How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed. New York: Harper, 1993.
Paul Cooke, Representing East Germany since Reunification
	Maier, Charles S. Dissolution: the Crisis of Communism and the End of East Germany. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997. Garton Ash, Timothy. History of the Present: Dispatches from Europe in the 1990s. New York: Vintage, 1999. Landsman, Mark. Dictatorship and Demand The Politics of Consumerism in East Germany. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005. McAdams, A. James. Judging the Past in Unified Germany. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Assignment Schedule
Tue., Jan. 16	Introduction: the twentieth century
Tue., Jan 23	A half-century of violence? Reading: Mazower, pp. ix-211
Tue., Jan. 30	A half-century of peace? Reading: Mazower, pp. 212-403
Tue., Feb. 27	DUE: Outside book review: pre-1945 subjects
Mar. 5-9	No class—Spring break
Tue., Apr. 10	DUE: Outside book review: post-1945 subjects
Tue., Apr. 24	No class—final paper preparation
Tue., May 1	Final Discussion: de Grazia's Irresistible Empire Extended Review essay DUE