Final Version will be made available on the first day of class. It is the students responsibility to note any changes to this version posted on December 21, 2009 HIST436 - Section 002 Winter 2010 W 2:35-5:25 EDU 624

TOPICS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY:

FIN-DE-SICLE: THE CULTURE OF MODERNITY AND MODERNISM

Instructor: Judith Szapor Office: Leacock 831 Phone: 514-398-2396 E-mail: judith.szapor@mcgill.ca Office hours: Tuesday 1:00-3:00 COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course will focus on the social and cultural experience of modernity and the history of early Modernism in Europe during the two decades preceding WWI. The course will survey the rise of early Modernism in the arts and social thought in the context of the urbanization and social modernization of selected European cities, including Paris, Vienna, Berlin and Budapest. It will explore the dynamics of urbanization, bourgeois society, art production and consumption, progressive and anti-liberal politics, and the declining faith in progress, characteristics of fin-de-sicle Europe still resonating today. COURSE ORGANIZATION: The course is organized around weekly topics, indicated in the course outline below. Readings for each week should be completed by the date indicated. Most of the topics will be introduced in a short lecture, followed by class discussion and student presentations. Web links, news items and short articles of interest will be posted on WebCT; please also check the course web site for announcements on a regular basis. COURSE REQUIREMENTS: READINGS: The following two books are available at Paragraphe bookstore (2220 McGill College, ph: 514-845-5811): Carl E. Schorske, Fin-de-Sicle Vienna; Politics and Culture (New York: Vintage, 1981); Eugen Weber, France, Fin-de-Sicle (Belknap Press of Cambridge University Press, 1986). The course pack (see table of contents attached to this syllabus) and copies of Peter Hank, The Garden and the Workshop (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998) can be purchased at Copie Nova (1015 Sherbrooke St. W.). With the exception of the course reader, all the readings are on reserve at the Redpath Library. The weekly readings are listed in the course outline below and are to be completed by the date indicated. GRADE BREAKDOWN: Reading responses: 2x10% Participation: 30% Final essay: 30% Outline and annotated bibliography: 10% Oral presentation of essay topic 10%

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DESCRIPTION OF ASSIGNMENTS: Reading responses on any two of weekly readings, with the exception of weeks 6 and 12, are due at the beginning of the corresponding class: 2x10%. The assignment should be 4-5 pages long (double-space typed pages, approx. 1500 words) and provide comments on any TWO of the weekly readings listed above. The first of these assignments is due no later than week 7 (Feb 17) and the second no later than week 11 (March 24). The participation mark - 30% - will reflect attendance as well as demonstrated completion of the weekly readings and participation in class discussions. Research essay - 30% - 12-15 pages or approx. 5,000 words, without the notes and bibliography, due date during regular exam period - TBA). We will discuss possible essay topics throughout the semester. Proposal and annotated bibliography of the essay - 10%, - due in class of March 24. In a paragraph provide a brief outline of your topic and a research question or thesis argument. Provide at least 8 scholarly sources, some of which should be journal articles. In a short paragraph, explain the usefulness and relevance of each of your sources to the topic. Oral presentation of essay - 10% - in last three classes. In 10 minutes, introduce and describe the significance of your topic, present your sources and your preliminary thesis argument. This assignment should provide an opportunity for an ongoing discussion of the pitfalls of researching and writing a research essay. Prepare a page-long handout with a brief outline and a list of your sources (this can be a short version of your proposal and bibliography) for the class and feel free to bring some of your sources or provide a visual illustration if applicable. Policies regarding written assignments: Late submission of assignments will be penalized with 5% for each weekday missed. Please submit all written assignments in hard copy, typed double space, following the Chicago Manual of Style. In accord with McGill Universitys Charter of Students Rights, students in this course have the right to submit in English or in French any written work that is to be graded. McGill University values academic integrity. Therefore all students must understand the meaning and consequences of cheating, plagiarism and other academic offences under the Code of Student Conduct and Disciplinary Procedures (see www.mcgill.ca/integrity for more information). L'universit McGill attache une haute importance lhonntet acadmique. Il incombe par consquent tous les tudiants de comprendre ce que l'on entend par tricherie, plagiat et autres infractions acadmiques, ainsi que les consquences que peuvent avoir de telles actions, selon le Code de conduite de l'tudiant et des procdures disciplinaires (pour de plus amples renseignements, veuillez consulter le site www.mcgill.ca/integrity).

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In the event of extraordinary circumstances beyond the Universitys control, the content and/or evaluation scheme in this course is subject to change.

COURSE OUTLINE AND READINGS: Week 1: Jan 6 INTRODUCTION Week 2: Jan 13 MODERNITY AND MODERNISM: DEFINITIONS Readings: W. Everdell, The First Moderns; Profiles in the Origins of Twentieth-Century Thought (University of Chicago Press, 1997), Introduction 1-12; Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts Into Air, 2nd ed. (Penguin, 1988), Preface and Introduction 5-36, George Mosse, The Culture of Western Europe; The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, 3rd edition (Westview Press, 1988), chapter 13: Change in the Public Spirit of Europe, 219-236, Weber, France, Fin-de-Sicle, Chapter 1, 9-26. Week 3: Jan 20 URBANIZATION AND THE MIDDLE CLASS Reading: Peter Hank, The Garden and the Workshop; Essays on the Cultural History of Vienna and Budapest (Princeton University Press, 1998), Chapters 1: Urbanization and Civilization: Vienna and Budapest in the Nineteenth Century, 3-43, Weber, chapter 3: How The Lived and 9: Curists and Tourists (51-82, 177-194), Schorske, chapter 2: The Ringstrasse and Its Critics (25-110 + notes). Week 4: Jan 27 FIN-DE-SIECLE ANXIETIES: RACISM, ANTI-SEMITISM, AND CRIMINALITY Readings: G. Mosse, The Culture of Western Europe, chapter 5: Racism, 85-99, Schorske, Chapter 3: Politics in a New Key, 116-180, Hank, chapter 7 (147-178), Weber, chapters 2, 5 and 6: Transgressions, The Endless Crisis and A Wolf to All, 105-141. Week 5: Feb 3 POPULAR CULTURE Readings: Weber, chapter 8, Theater and 11: Faster, Higher, Stronger,159-176, 213-233, Patrick Brantlinger, Mass Media and Culture in Fin-de-Sicle Europe in Mikulas Teich and Roy Porter (eds.), Fin de Sicle and Its Legacy (Cambridge University Press, 1990), 98-114, Hank, Chapter 6, The Cultural Role of the Vienna-Budapest Operetta, 135-146, William Everdell, The First Moderns (Chicago: 1997), Chapter 13: Edwin S. Porter, Parts at Sixteen per Second, 193-205. Screening: The Lumire Brothers first films Recommended: The movies begin: a treasury of early cinema: PN1995.75 M684 DVD in Redpath Library Week 6: Feb 10 THE CRISIS OF POSITIVISM THE FOREFATHERS OF MODERNISM Readings: F. Nietzsche, Seventy-Five Aphorisms from Five Volumes in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, Walter Kaufmann (transl. and ed.) (The Modern Library, 2000), 145-178, Ernst Behler, Nietzsche in the twentieth century in Bernd Magnus and Kathleen M.

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Higgins (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche (Cambridge University Press, 1996), 281-322, Peter Childs, Modernism (London, New York: Routledge, 2000), 26-71. Week 7: Feb 17 MODERNIST SCENES 1: PARIS AND THE VISUAL REVOLUTION Readings: Weber, chapter 7: The Old Arts and the New, 142-158, Charles Baudelaire, The Salon of 1859: The Modern Public and Photography and The Painter of Modern Life, Maurice Denis, From Gauguin and Van Gogh to Classicism, Roger Fry, The French Post-Impressionists, in F. Frascina and Ch. Harrison (eds.), Modern Art and Modernism; A Critical Anthology (Harper & Row, 1982), 19-21, 23-27, 51-55, 89-91, background: Everdell, The First Moderns, chapters 16 and 20, 241-259, 303-320, on reserve. Week of Feb 24: STUDY BREAK Week 8: March 3 EROS AND CIVILIZATION: FREUD AND HIS LEGACY Readings: Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams and On Dreams in Peter Gay (ed.), The Freud Reader (Norton, 1989), 129-172, Schorske, chapter 4: Politics and Patricide in Freuds Interpretation of Dreams 181-207, Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday; An Autobiography (Cassell, 1987), chapter 3: Eros Matutinus, 61-78. Week 9: March 10 MODERNIST SCENES 2: VIENNA AND BUDAPEST Reading: Schorske, chapter 5: Gustav Klimt: Painting and the Crisis of the Liberal Ego, 208-278, Hank, Chapters 3: The Garden and the Workshop, 63-97 and 7: Social Marginality and Cultural Creativity in Vienna and Budapest (1890-1918), 147-177. Screening: George Steiner, Vienna 1900 Week 10: March 17 FIELD TRIP Week 11: March 24 1913: ANNUS MIRABILIS: PARIS AND BERLIN Readings: Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring; The Great War and the Birth of Modern (Doubleday, 1990), chapters 1: Paris, 10-54 and 2: Berlin, 55-89, Everdell, The First Moderns (Chicago: 1997), chapter 21, 321-345. Outline and annotated bibliography due Oral presentations of research essay Week 12: March 31 THE FUTURE OF MODERNISM: FROM FIN-DE-SICLE TO BAUHAUS AND BEYOND Readings: Peter Gay, Modernism (Norton: 2008), Chapter 6, 281-334, Martin Jay, From Modernism to Post-Modernism in T.C.W. Blanning (ed.), The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern Europe (Oxford University Press, 1996) 255-278. Browse the web site of the Museum of Modern Art: http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/303

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Oral presentations of research essay Week 13: April 7 CONCLUSION Readings: Robert Wohl, Heart of Darkness: Modernism and Its Historians, Journal of Modern History 74 (September 2002), 573-621, online, Scott Spector, Marginalizations; Politics and Culture beyond Fin-de-Sicle Vienna in Steven Beller (ed.), Rethinking Vienna 1900 (Berghahn: 2001), 132-153 and review of readings for Week 2. Oral presentations of research essay

COURSE READER Table of Contents

1/ W. Everdell, The First Moderns; Profiles in the Origins of Twentieth-Century Thought (University of Chicago Press, 1998), Introduction, 1-12 and chapters 13: Edwin S. Porter, Parts at Sixteen per Second, 193-205 and 21: Annus Mirabilis: Vienna, Paris, and St. Petersburg, 1913, 321-345. 2/ Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts Into Air, 2nd ed. (Penguin, 1988), Preface and Introduction 5-36 3/ George Mosse, The Culture of Western Europe; The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, 3rd edition (Westview Press, 1988), Chapters 5: Racism, 85-99 and 13: Change in the Public Spirit of Europe, 219-236. 4/ Patrick Brantlinger, Mass Media and Culture in Fin-de-Sicle Europe in Mikuls Teich and Roy Porter (eds.), Fin de Sicle and Its Legacy (Cambridge University Press, 1990), 98-114. 5/ Friedrich Nietzsche, Seventy-Five Aphorisms from Five Volumes in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, Walter Kaufmann (transl. and ed.) (The Modern Library, 2000), 145-178. 6/ Ernst Behler, Nietzsche in the twentieth century in Bernd Magnus and Kathleen M. Higgins (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche (Cambridge University Press, 1996), 281-322. 7/ Peter Childs, Modernism (Routledge, 2000), Chapter 1: Interpreting and changing, 26-71. 8/ Charles Baudelaire, The Salon of 1859: The Modern Public and Photography and The Painter of Modern Life, Maurice Denis, From Gauguin and Van Gogh to Classicism, Roger Fry, The French Post-Impressionists, in F. Frascina and Ch. Harrison (eds.), Modern Art and Modernism; A Critical Anthology (Harper & Row, 1982), 19-21, 23-27, 51-55, 89-91. 9/ Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams and On Dreams in Peter Gay (ed.), The Freud Reader (Norton, 1989), 129-172.

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10/ Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday; An Autobiography (Cassell, 1987), Chapter 3: Eros Matutinus, 61-78. 11/ Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring; The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age (Doubleday, 1990), chapters 1: Paris, 10-54 and 2: Berlin, 55-89. 12/ Peter Gay, Modernism (Norton, 2008), Chapter 6: Architecture and Design Machinery, a New Factor in Human Affairs, 281-334. 13/ Martin Jay, From Modernism to Post-Modernism in T.C.W. Blanning (ed.), The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern Europe (Oxford University Press, 1996) 255-278.