Key facts

Details for course being taught in current academic year
Level 2  -  18 credits  -  spring and summer terms

E-learning links

Study Direct: V1328 (09/10)

Resources

Timetable Link

Course description

Course outline

1929 marks the year of the stock market crash and the further de-stabilisation of the already fragile Weimar Republic. But it is also the year of the publication of Alfred Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz, one of the great works of modernist literature. This course looks at the history, politics, art and philosophy of the Weimar Republic (1918-1933). In addition to reading excerpts from Berlin Alexanderplatz and Christopher Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin, particular attention will be paid to the innovative cinema of Fritz Lang, F.W. Murnau, Bertolt Brecht and Leni Riefenstahl, developments in German expressionist painting during this time, and Bauhaus architecture as well. We will also be reading some of the seminal political and philosophical works of the period in the writings of Carl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin and Martin Heidegger. Students will thus be presented with a multi-disciplinary look at some of the most important political and artistic experiments in the twentieth century, and will acquire invaluable background knowledge about the collapse of Weimar and the rise of National Socialism.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the course, a successful student should be able to:
1) understand a historical moment by reference to the particular context in which it occurred;
2) communicate the importance of locality in history, and the specificity of particular historical events;
3) supply evidence of these skills in essays that distil information provided in course lectures and for class discussion;
4) undertake a sustained argument largely based on secondary sources but also using a limited amount of primary material.

Assessments

Resit mode of assessment

Timing

Submission deadlines may vary for different types of assignment/groups of students.

Weighting

Coursework components (if listed) total 100% of the overall coursework weighting value.

Teaching methods

How to read the week pattern

The numbers indicate the weeks of the term and how many events take place each week.

Contact details

Dr Darrow Schecter

Assess convenor, Convenor
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/history/profile2356.html

Dr Lucy Robinson

Assess convenor
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/history/profile22808.html