War and Society in the 20th Century: World War I

Undergraduate credit

This class will examine the causes, developments, and consequences of World War I, the event that according to many historians inaugurated the twentieth century and the era we are still living in. We will approach the history of this conflict from many perspectives. We will not only rely on the tools of military and political history, but also on those of literary criticism, art and music history, and historical ethnography, to investigate how ordinary people, on and off the fronts, made sense of what in retrospect seem like impossible challenges and traumas. We will look at the ways the war was experienced, debated, and remembered in a variety of different social and geographical contexts, from the European capitals to the increasingly restless colonial world.