As fascism was rising in Europe in the 1930s, French writers, artists, and intellectuals expressed their opposition to this threat both in action, coalescing around militant groups with overt political positions, and in their work. This antifascist cultural mobilization was siphoned into the resistance during WWII. This highly interdisciplinary course explores works of literature, art, cinema, and photography that fought fascism before and during the war in France. Works will be situated within their historical context and framed by theory. The course will be complemented with a trip to France during spring break.

An overview of European history since the French Revolution, taking as its major theme the changing role of Europe in the world. It looks at the global legacies of the French and Russian revolutions, and how the Industrial Revolution augmented the power of European states, sometimes through formal and sometimes informal imperialism. How did ideologies like nationalism, liberalism, communism and fascism emerge from European origins and how were they transformed? How differently did Europeans experience the two phases of globalization in the 19th and 20th centuries? Biographies are used as a way of approaching the problem of structural change.