Humanities Arts Cultural Stu 0173 - Cult. in Resist.: East Europe

How can culture resist in the political realm? How do you make your screams and sardonic laughter heard? The overarching framework of our course will be the dynamic of authority and resistance in the modern and contemporary era. In the course of the twentieth century, the countries of east-central and eastern Europe experienced monarchical rule, democracy, Nazism, and communism. How and why do given groups attempt to assert their authority? Why, when, and by what means do others resist? We will look at various literary and cinematic texts from Russia, Poland and the Czech Republic aiming to decipher various scenarios and textologies of the cultural resistance to power.

Culture, Humanities, and Languages Multiple Cultural Perspectives Authors include: Jaroslav Hasek, Bruno Schulz, Milan Kundera, Bohumil Hrabal, Václav Havel, Wislawa Szymborska, Zbigniew Herbert, Czeslaw Milosz, Osip Mandelshtam, Anna Akhmatova, Daniil Kharms, Josef Brodsky, Andjei Waida, Andrey Tarkovsky.