General Outline: 5-Week Summer Session Syllabus
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:
MO - Introduction to the Course:
- logistics, texts, films, requirements
- the question of representation(s)
PART 1: Questions of Theory -- Setting up the Problem
How to Read a Film: The question of point of view
- CLASS DISCUSSION: What does it mean to "remember" a war? How does one represent that war - the question of two memories juxtaposed?
What does a hero look like in each clip? Whose war is it? (One example of WW I heroism)
Example: The Blue Max (U.S. film) (one view of WW I heroism)
PART 2: From World War I (the "War to End all Wars") to WW II (the "Good War") in the European Theater
TU -The "Facts" of the Western War: The End of a Way of Life
(download WW I history ppt; maps ppt; WW II history ppt; maps ppt)
- READ: Goff, Chapters 11, 16, & 17
- REC: Goff, Chapters 3, 7, 8, 10, & 12
- CLASS DISCUSSION: Who are the interest groups involved, and what are their motivations for participation?
How WW I made WW II possible, and what the political stakes were.
- READ: "The Christmas Truce" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_truce
- Bonus on WW I: "Christmas in the Trenches," by John McCutcheon -- MP3 |
Lyrics
- Bonus: "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda," by Eric Bogle -- music
| Waltzing Matilda page |
wiki page
WE - Heroes: Stemming Nazi Aggression (download ppt)
- Bridge at Remagen
- The Longest Day
- Where Eagles Dare
- CLASS DISCUSSION: These three films were made when World War II was still very much alive in the public memory
and the memory of veterans. How do we recognize an American war hero? Clips in class as basis for discussion.
TH - Soldiers as Victims (stereotypes of concentration camp internees) (download ppt)
- Stalag 17
- Hart's War
- CLASS DISCUSSION: These two films both deal 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?
FR - Two Sides of One War: Unwilling Heroes (download ppt)
- 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?
WEEK 2:
PART 3: War in the East: Pearl Harbor and Beyond, The "Yellow Peril"
MO - When the Sleeping Giant Rises (download ppt; maps ppt)
- From Here to Eternity
- Pearl Harbor
- CLASS DISCUSSION: Both these films recreate the bombing at Pearl Harbor, the start of US participation in WWII.
What differences in point of view are there in the attack sequences? What questions do From Here to Eternity and
Pearl Harbor pose about the home FRIont? Is there a critique of the military in each?
- **FILM PRÉCIS 1 DUE
TU - POWs and the Other (download ppt)
- READ: Goff, Chapter 13
- King Rat (British film, based on a novel by James Clavell)
- Bridge on the River Kwai
- CLASS DISCUSSION: The treatment of POWs in the Pacific Theater was used to justify the bombing of Hiroshima.
Do these Allies' films show the same war?
PART 4: Rethinking WW II: Re-Presenting Victims, Not Heroes
WE - Normal People (download ppt)
- Seventh Cross (Hollywood movie made from a leftist German novel of the war era)
- Schindler's List
- CLASS DISCUSSION: How does each film dramatize victims and victimizers? What does each film do to talk about how
"normal people" participate in the war?
TH - FILM SHOWING: EMPIRE OF THE SUN
- Scene Commentary (review for exam): How does the point of view of the camera and music influence us?
What POV does the camera take? What has been done with or to historical details in this representation?
FR - 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?
WEEK 3:
MO - Soldier Victims: Rethinking the War (download ppt)
- The Ogre
- Saving Private Ryan
- CLASS DISCUSSION: These are two films made in the 1990s, one in Germany for an international audience,
and one for the US and world market for Hollywood blockbusters. They shows unheroic soldiers and the insanity of war.
What in each looks like earlier films, and what is new?
PART 5: Aftermath
TU - Still-Open Wounds FRIom Europe (download ppt)
- Open City (Italian film, the first made in Allied Zones)
- Best Years of Our Lives
- White Christmas
- CLASS DISCUSSION: Each of these films has a message of "normalization" required. What does each scene show
about the on-going clean-up of the war? Remember that two are made right when the war ended, and one later.
PART 6. Rewriting the History of WW II: Once Memories dim . . .
WE - "Documenting" the Unthinkable, or What Never Existed (download ppt)
- Mein Krieg (German documentary)
- The Wonderful Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl
- CLASS DISCUSSION: How is public memory reworked in each of these films? What audience factors play in?
When does documentary approach mockumentary?
- MIDTERM REVIEW
PART 7. Endgame: After the "Greatest Generation" Passes
TH - When the Details are gone: Two "Memorials" to War (download ppt)
- Stalingrad (German film)
- Enemy at the Gate (European movie with US star)
- CLASS DISCUSSION: Both films are 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?
FR - MIDTERM EXAM
WEEK 4:
MO - The "Facts" of the "Cold War" after WW I: From Russia through the "Korean Police Action" (download history ppt;
maps ppt)
- READ: Goff, Chapters 20, 22, 27 (pages 410-415 & 420-425) & 28
- REC.: Goff, Chapters 26 & 29
TU - Governments gone mad: Wars that aren't wars (download ppt)
- Manchurian Candidate
- M*A*S*H
- CLASS DISCUSSION: Manchurian Candidate was so threatening it was essentially supporessed; M*A*S*H
was about Korea, but made after Vietnam. How did the Cold War function at home (remember "duck and cover"),
and how did these movies intervene?
WE - Spy versus Spy: Manufacturing Threat (download ppt)
- From Russia with Love ("Bond, James Bond")
- Dr. Strangelove (Kubrick Classic!)
- CLASS DISCUSSION: Both deal with saving the world From "the threat." What does each film, its super-heroes and super-villains,
tell us?
PART 8. Vietnam: The Dirty War
TH - Homefront: Vietnam and the Protests (download ppt)
- Born on the Fourth of July
- CLASS DISCUSSION: How to speak to a divided nation about Vietnam.
- **FILM PRÉCIS 2 DUE
FR - FILM SHOWING: Berkeley in the 60s
WEEK 5:
MO - War and Its Victims: Soldiers in Vietnam (download ppt)
- Full Metal Jacket
- Apocalypse Now
- CLASS DISCUSSION: These 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.
PART 9: Be all that you can be: The New Armed Forces
TU - US as the World's Policemen (Mideast and AFRIica) (downoad ppt)
- Black Hawk Down
- READ: Goff, Chapters 15 & 24
- REC.: Chapter 25
- CLASS DISCUSSION: What is the new army? What differences emerge in representing soldiers From the time of WW II and Vietnam?
Compare the representations of the battle scenes.
WE - "An Army of One" (downoad ppt on films; ppt on history;
maps ppt)
- Top Gun
- Wag the Dog
- READ: Goff, Chapter 31
- CLASS DISCUSSION: Who is the new hero? Compare the films to armed forces recruitment today, and to earlier hero representations.
TH - Where the Real Wars Are: Media Realities (downoad ppt)
- Three Kings
- Jarhead
- CLASS DISCUSSION: In these three films, the Gulf wars are used as excuses for other deeds to be done.
What do you see in the visual grammar of each?
FR - Closing discussion
FINAL EXAM: at UT-scheduled time and place -- see semester's announcement