2:30-4:25P     R     BH016

A portion of the above section reserved for majors
Above section meets with WEUR W405 and W605

This course will explore a host of European twentieth-century
conflicts from a variety of perspectives.  The curriculum will be
largely student-driven.  We'll spend the first couple of weeks reading
Eric Hobsbawm's Age of Extremes.  While we do that, students, probably
in small groups and in collaboration with the instructor, will select
and focus on a specific conflict.  These might range in time and space
from the Russo-Japanese War to the trouble in Northern Ireland.  They
will hopefully also include colonial conflicts.  Some may choose to
focus on military issues and others on the social and cultural
ramifications and accompaniments of conflict.  Each group will
generate a bibliography and common reading assignment on their
conflict.  Those assignments will then make up the syllabus, each one
serving as the material for one week's class (at which the group in
question will do the presentation).  The bibliographies will serve as
the basis for the students' final papers.  Students will also file
occasional progress reports and be responsible for a series of brief
quizzes.  This class is meant to appeal to upper-division students in
History (or other departments) as well as MA students in West European
Studies and the Russian and East European Institute.  Grading
standards will be different for UG and MA students.