Course description
Course description
The MA Culture and Dictatorship pathway offers students with a first degree in a modern European language or languages the opportunity to explore in detail the literature and culture associated with the experience of dictatorship in the twentieth century. This may take the form of examining the interface between culture and politics within a specifically German (Third Reich, GDR), Italian (Fascist), or Russian (Soviet Union) context, or, where appropriate, from an explicitly comparative, cross-cultural perspective. Through the examination of a range of historically specific examples, the MA explores the following common core of theoretical concerns: the dynamics of cultural policy and artistic practice; shortfalls between regime claims and outcomes; mediated representations of official ideology, aesthetics, and discourse; patterns of cultural assent and dissent. It provides a thorough grounding in critical theoretical approaches common to literary and cultural studies, and makes students conversant with the methods of scholarly research in the humanities, and with the resources necessary for that research.
Module details
Compulsory course units include: Critical Theory and Research Methods. Optional course units available typically include:
-Trauma and Memory in 20th Century French Life Writing
-Culture and Society in Fascist Italy
-Comparative Dictatorship: Theory and Methodology
-Holocaust Representations in Visual Culture
-Soviet Cinema and Society
-The Politics of Culture in the Soviet Union
-Gulag: the Labour Camp Experience in Soviet Literature and Culture
-Language and Totalitarianism in Germany 1933-1989
-Cultural Politics and Artistic Practice in the Third Reich
-Cultural Politics and Artistic Practice in the GDR
