- Summer 2018
Syllabus Description:
What is a war, and who gets to decide?
This class explores images of war generated by historians, writers, artists, filmmakers, and journalists in order to consider what motivates representations of violence and conflict and how these images shape public and individual consciousness.
We will consider a range of 19th and 20th century wars and the debates that surrounded them in order to explore the difference between experience and remembrance, the role of politics, nationality, and gender in representations of war over time, and the effects of combat on those involved.
Photo of the 2016 performance-art piece "We're Here Because We're Here" by Jeremy Dellar and Rufus Norris. On the 100th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme, volunteers dressed as WWI soldiers appeared in Britain's public spaces to commemorate the dead. Here, they ride London's Tube.
This course carries an Individuals & Societies (I&S) and a Visual, Literary, and Performing Arts (VLPA) credit.