Monsters Masses Modernity

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

The modern world ushered in by the French Revolution provoked both optimism and pessimism about the future of Western civilization. This course will look at the pessimistic reaction, especially as it relates to the development of mass society and how it manifested itself in fantasies of uncontrollable monsters such as those in Frankenstein and Dracula, in the dystopic science fiction of H.G. Wells, fears of social degeneracy, and the radical ideologies of Fascism and Nazism. The time period covered will be 1789 to the outbreak of World War II.