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Tuition:
Professor Kosta repeats her popular course from 2015 with a few variations:
Germany’s Weimar Republic (1919-1933) rose out of the ashes of World War I to become both an immensely creative and fraught period of the twentieth century. The exciting capital Berlin, a laboratory of modernity, was the center of radical experimentation in the visual and performing arts, in mass entertainment and theater, and in literature and architecture. While the cultural stage was vibrant and intoxicating, the shell shock of World War I, the demands of the Versailles Treaty, economic instability, social upheaval, and political turmoil also haunted the celebrated roaring twenties. To explore the rich landscape of the 1920s, this seminar examines the avant-garde movements Expressionism and Dada along with the vast social changes and technological developments exemplified in Lang’s film Metropolis and Brecht’s theater. Still relevant today, this period continues to fascinate us.
The movie The Blue Angel will be screened in the classroom on February 12, 2018.
Required Reading:
Brecht, Bertold. A Man’s A Man: Early Plays by Bertolt Brecht. Ed. Eric Bentley. Grove Press, New York. Paperback. 2007. ISBN-13: 9780802131591.
Recommended Reading:
The Weimar Republic Sourcebook. Edited by Anton Kaes, Martin Jay and Edward Dimendberg. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. ISBN-13: 978-0520067752.
