GERST 4550

The "European Civil War": Violence, Politics and Culture in Europe (1914-1945)

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2014-2015.

At the end of the Great War, Europe became the realm of a new relationship among violence, culture, and politics. From 1914-1945, the continent witnessed an extraordinary entanglement of inter-state wars, revolutions and counter-revolutions, civil wars and genocides.  Originating as a classical inter-state conflict, the Great War led to a Weltanschaungskrieg. In spite of its highly controversial uses, the concept of "European Civil War" is probably the must useful in order to sum up such an "age of  extremes" in which wars have no rules: they become wars against civilians, politics makes groups into implacable enemies and an endemic violence deeply reshaped both cultures and collective imagination. This course will analyze some features of this cataclysmic time by engaging political theory, cultural and intellectual history.

View Enrollment Information