Critical Social Inquiry 0139 - Coffeehouses, Catastrophe, and Culture: East Central Europe in a Century of Upheaval

Why study three countries about which you know little and may not be able to find on a map? In less than a century, Bohemia (now Czech Republic), Hungary, and Poland, which began as provinces of multiethnic empires, experienced independence, Nazi occupation, communist dictatorship, and independence again, as members of NATO and the European Union. These regions, with their dynamic population mixture of Germans, Slavs, Magyars, and Jews, embodied the tension between nationalism and cosmopolitanism, tolerance and intolerance, the persistence of tradition and the exuberance of modernity-issues relevant to many fields in the social sciences and humanities. We will explore the ways that culture shaped and expressed the history of East Central Europe, as well as the role of historical memory in the present. The course provides ideal preparation for our summer program in Prague and Krakow Keywords:Europe, culture, history, communism, nationalism

Students should expect to spend 8 hours weekly on work and preparation outside of class time