Life During Wartime: Theory and Sources from the Twentieth Century

This course asks how we are to understand war as everyday experience, and what separates war from, or connects it to, the other great movements of mass social and political disruption that the twentieth century has seen. The first part of the semester will examine different frameworks scholars and thinkers have proposed for understanding war as modern experience (militarization, trauma, collective memory, states of exception, etc.) In the second part we will investigate the uses and limitations of specific types of primary sources, drawn from China's war with Japan. Students will choose their own topics for final projects.