General Outline: MWF Syllabus, Long Semester
The syllabus here is the GENERAL class syllabus. The version you receive in class will have the due dates and assignments that pertain to
YOUR class semester.
All readings are from Richard Goff, Walter G. Moss, Janice Terry, Jiu-Hwa Upshur, and Michael Schroeder,
The Twentieth Century and Beyond: A Global History, 7th ed. (NY: McGraw-Hill. 2007; ISBN-10: 0-07-320692-X; ISBN-13: 978-0073206929).
"REC" = readings that will help you make sense of the wars, but are not compulsory.
WEEK 1:
WED - Introduction to the Course:
- logistics, texts, films, requirements
- the question of representation
PART 1: Questions of Theory -- Setting up the problem
FRI - How to Read a Film: The question of point of view
- CLASS DISCUSSION: how to remember a war, how to represent a war -- the question of two memories juxtaposed
- CLASS EXAMPLE: The Blue Max (U.S. film) (one view of WW I heroism)
WEEK 2:
PART 2: World War I: The "War to End all Wars" (The Anti-War War?)
MON - The "Facts" of the Western War: The End of a Way of Life
(download history ppt; maps ppt)
- READ: Goff, Chapters 7 & 8
- REC: Goff, Chapters 1, 2, & 3
- CLASS DISCUSSION: Who are the interest groups involved, and what are their motivations for participation?
WED - The Aftermath: Early Memories of the Western War
FRI - Three Representations of Heroism, 1 & 2 (download ppt)
- Grand Illusion (French)
- All Quiet on the Western Front (U.S. Film, German anti-war source)
- CLASS DISCUSSION: You'll see one clip from each film. What does a hero look like in each, and whose war is it?
Come into class with ideas about what perspective on the war each country would have.
WEEK 3:
MON - Three Representations of Heroism, 3
- Gallipoli (Australian)
- CLASS DISCUSSION: Compare "Gallipoli," a modern film on WW I, with its older mates. Compare images of heroes,
class and ethnic situations, etc.
PART 3: World War II : "The Good War" in the European Theater . . .
WED - The War in Europe: Facts of the War (download history ppt;
maps ppt)
- READ: Goff, Chapter 11, 12, 16 & 17
- REC: Chapters 9 & 10
- CLASS DISCUSSION: How World War I made World War II possible.
FRI - Heroes: Stemming Nazi Aggression, 1 (download ppt)
- The Longest Day
- CLASS DISCUSSION: This is the first of three films that were made when World War II was still a very live memory.
How do we recognize an American war hero? Clips in class as basis for discussion.
WEEK 4:
MON - Heroes: Stemming Nazi Aggression, 2 & 3 (download ppt)
- Bridge at Remagen
- Where Eagles Dare
- CLASS DISCUSSION: These two films take the live memory of Longest Day, and begin to extend it.
How do we recognize an American war hero? What changes are there, as the 1960s approach?
- **WORLD WAR I QUIZ CLOSED
WED - Soldiers as Victims (stereotypes of concentration camps, I) (download ppt)
- Stalag 17
- CLASS DISCUSSION: This is the first of two films both dealing with US soldiers held as POWs (prisoners of war) in Europe.
Stalag 17 was made when the memory of WWII was fresh; Hart's War, long after.
Can concentration or POW camps be represented metaphors?
FRI - Soldiers as Victims (stereotypes of concentration camps, II)
- Hart's War
- CLASS DISCUSSION: Compare this 1990s film with Stalag 17. What's different, and why?
- **FILM PRÉCIS 1 DUE
WEEK 5:
MON - Two Sides of One War: Unwilling Heroes (download ppt)
- READ: Goff, Chapter 18
- Das Boot (German film)
- U-571
- CLASS DISCUSSION: Submarine crews are in a different kind of war. What differences are there in stereotypes of various services?
PART 3a: . . in the East: Pearl Harbor and Beyond, The "Yellow Peril"
WED - When the Sleeping Giant Rises, I (download ppt; maps ppt)
- From Here to Eternity
- CLASS DISCUSSION: This is the first of two films recreating the bombing at Pearl Harbor, the start of US participation in WW II.
What is different in the picture of the military from the more modern submarine film you saw on Monday?
FRI - When the Sleeping Giant Rises, II
- Pearl Harbor
- CLASS DISCUSSION: What differences in point of view are there in the attack sequences of Pearl Harbor?
What story is this film telling that Eternity doesn't, and vice versa?
WEEK 6:
MON - POWs and the Other, I (download ppt)
- READ: Goff, Chapter 13
- King Rat (British film, based on a novel by James Clavell)
- CLASS DISCUSSION: The treatment of POWs in the Pacific Theater was used to justify the bombing of Hiroshima.
What's different from the German concentration camps?
- **WORLD WAR II QUIZ CLOSED
WED - POWs and the Other, II
- Bridge on the River Kwai
- CLASS DISCUSSION: This is the classic big-budget film on Pacific POWs. What is like or unlike King Rat?
Do these Allies' films show the same war?
- **WORLD WAR II QUIZ CLOSED
PART 4. Aftermath
FRI - Still-Open Wounds from Europe, I (download ppt)
- Open City (Italian film, the first made in Allied Zones)
- Germany Year Zero
- CLASS DISCUSSION: These two films show problems of normalization in Europe. What does each scene show about the on-going
clean-up of the war?
WEEK 7:
MON - Still-Open Wounds from Europe, II
- Best Years of Our Lives
- CLASS DISCUSSION: This film shows us "normalization" in the US. Although award-winning, it was ignored soon after the war.
Why? What happens when heroes come home?
- Review for Midterm
WED - Still-Open Wounds from Europe, III
- White Christmas
- CLASS DISCUSSION: By the time this film was made, the war was receding. Here, we have the veterans' point of view, twenty years later.
What does it say about the memory of "the greatest generation?"
- FInal Questions about Midterm
FRI - Midterm
WEEK 8:
PART 5. Rethinking WW II: Re-Presenting Victims, Not Heroes
MON - Children Victims (download ppt)
- Tin Drum (German film from a novel by Günter Grass)
- Au revoir, les enfants (French film)
- CLASS DISCUSSION: Children are swept up in the wars and forced into lives apart. What do they become? What cases are being made?
WED - Children and Other Normal People . . . (download ppt)
- Seventh Cross (Hollywood movie made from a leftist German novel of the war era)
- Empire of the Sun
- CLASS DISCUSSION: Each film dramatizes victims and victimizers among "normal" people. What is the point of each?
FRI - Normal People . . .
- Schindler's List
- CLASS DISCUSSION: This is Spielberg's movie about the Holocaust. What is he saying about Jewish heritage, victims, and victimizer?
WEEK 9:
MON - Soldier Victims: Rethinking the War (download ppt)
- The Ogre
- Saving Private Ryan
- CLASS DISCUSSION: These are two films made in the 1990s. They show unheroic soldiers and the insanity of war.
What in each looks like earlier films, and what is new?
PART 6. Rewriting the History of WW II: Once Memories dim . . .
WED - "Documenting" the Unthinkable, or What Never Existed (download ppt)
- Mein Krieg (German documentary)
- Max (international art film)
- CLASS DISCUSSION: These are the first two of three films that span the space from documentary to mockumentary
(Max, which completely fictionalizes Hitler's biography). What kinds of memory are reworked in each?
What audience factors play in?
FRI - "Documenting" a Self that Never Existed
- The Wonderful Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl
- CLASS DISCUSSION: Riefenstahl was "Hitler's filmmaker," and a woman who denied complicity in the Nazi state.
How is she "rethinking" the war?
WEEK 10:
PART 7. Endgame: After the "Greatest Generation" Passes
MON - When the Details are gone: Two "Memorials" to War, I (download ppt)
- Stalingrad (German film)
- CLASS DISCUSSION: This is the first of two films about Germany's devastating loss at Stalingrad - with huge casualties on both sides.
What does each do to "package" the war for its respective viewers?
- ** GROUP PROJECT POSTING DUE
WED - When the Details are gone: Two "Memorials" to War, II
- Enemy at the Gate (European movie with US star)
- CLASS DISCUSSION: This is an international film based on a Russian version of Stalingrad. What's different from the German version?
What packages it for an international audience?
PART 8. The "Cold War": War as Governmental Lunacy, Spy versus Spy
FRI - The "Facts": From Russia through the "Korean Police Action"
(download history ppt; maps ppt)
- READ: Goff, Chapters 20, 22, & 26
WEEK 11:
MON - Governments gone mad: Wars that aren't wars (download ppt)
- Manchurian Candidate
- CLASS DISCUSSION: Manchurian Candidate was so threatening it was essentially supporessed.
What does it tell us about the Cold War (remember "duck and cover")? What did it do to its audience?
WED - Governments gone mad: The Comic Cold War
- From Russia with Love ("Bond, James Bond")
- M*A*S*H
- CLASS DISCUSSION: The Bond film franchise was situated in the Cold War; M*A*S*H was about Korea, but made after Vietnam.
The two are made for very different audiences. What is each telling us about the threats their audiences lived under? What does each film, its super-heroes and super-villains, tell us?
FRI - Spy versus Spy: Manufacturing Threat (download ppt)
- Dr. Strangelove (US director, but essentially a British/world movie)
- CLASS DISCUSSION: This is the legendary movie about "the bomb" or "the threat." How does the USA come off in its Cold War? Other parties?
WEEK 12:
PART 9. Vietnam: The Dirty War
MON - Asia after WW II
- READ: Goff, Chapters 27, 28, & 29
WED - Homefront: Vietnam and the Protests -- FACT (download ppt)
- Berkeley in the 60s
- CLASS DISCUSSION: How to speak to a divided nation about Vietnam?
- **FILM PRÉCIS 2 DUE
FRI - Homefront: Vietnam and the Protests -- Fiction, I
- Born on the Fourth of July
- CLASS DISCUSSION: How to speak to a divided nation about Vietnam.
- **FILM PRÉCIS 2 DUE
WEEK 13: (+ Thanksgiving
MON - Homefront: Vietnam and the Protests -- Fiction, II
- Full Metal Jacket
- CLASS DISCUSSION: This is the first of two films are about soldiers trapped in the insanity of an unwinnable war;
both are made long after Vietnam. What do they tell the homefront about the war? Who are the "good soldiers" in these films -- compare these representations with older stereotypes.
WED - Homefront: Vietnam and the Protests -- Fiction, III (download ppt)
- Apocalypse Now
- CLASS DISCUSSION: This is the classic film about the madness of Vietnam, and the ultimate anti-war film.
How has the stereotype of the soldier changed?
TH - Thanksgiving
WEEK 14:
PART 10: Be all that you can be: The New Armed Forces
MON - "An Army of One" (downoad ppt on films; ppt on history;
maps ppt)
- READ: Goff, Chapter 31
- Top Gun
- CLASS DISCUSSION: Who is the new hero? Compare the film to armed forces recruitment today, to earlier hero representations,
and to the Vietnam soldier. How is this designed to repair the military after Vietnam?
- **KOREA, VIETNAM, COLD WAR QUIZ CLOSES
WED - US as the World's Policemen (Mideast and Africa)
- READ: Goff, Chapter 15, 24, & 25
- Black Hawk Down
- CLASS DISCUSSION: What is the new army? What differences emerge in representing soldiers from the time of WW II and Vietnam?
FRI - Where the Real Wars Are: Media Realities (downoad ppt)
- Wag the Dog
- CLASS DISCUSSION: This film implicates the media in making wars -- and wars as "politics by other means." Truth or too much?
WEEK 15:
MON - CNN Wars, I (downoad ppt)
- Three Kings
- CLASS DISCUSSION: Is this the new soldier?
WED - CNN Wars, II
- Jarhead
- CLASS DISCUSSION: Is this the new army?
FRI - Closing discussion and final review
**FILM TERMINOLOGY QUIZ CLOSED
FINAL EXAM: at UT-scheduled time and place -- see semester's announcement