G364

Course description - German Exile Literature & Film

"This flight, this exile from our native tongue - that is the worst."
-Helene Thimig

In this course we will primarily discuss works by authors who were
forced to go into exile during the Third Reich for political or
religious reasons in order to avoid censorship, persecution, and, in
most cases, death at the hands of the Nazis. We will also deal with
filmmakers and actors who followed this trajectory. The class will
focus on a variety of genres, from novels to poetry, from dramas to
short stories, from crime fiction to children's books. The exiles
whose work we tend to know best are those who came to our country -
Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill, etc. - but this class will
additionally expose students to those who escaped Germany for other
destinations such as Switzerland, Scandinavia, the Soviet Union,
Palestine, Great Britain, and South America.

While some exile authors and filmmakers chose to deal mostly with
themes of escape and anti-fascist resistance, others tended to retreat
to memories of pre-war/pre¬dictatorship settings and escapist
plotlines. Still others elected to immerse themselves in the everyday
realities or even the legends of their host countries. The
reading/viewing list is designed to allow us to explore a broad range
oIf6pics and work out our own answers to questions such as: How do we
define exile literature and film? How are themes such as homesickness,
criticism of the home country, the novelty of life in the host
country, the experience of fleeing, and the economic and emotional
hardships of exile depicted in the works? How receptive are the
various host countries to the presence and works of the German exiles?
What strategies (like humor, imagery, juxtaposition, allegory, etc.)
are used to represent oppositions like aversion vs. nostalgia, danger
vs. safety, guilt vs. relief, and foreign vs. familiar.

We tend not to give much thought to the hardships faced by various
artist-exiles beyond the point of his or her escape from Nazi Germany
or the countries it occupied. The aim of this course is to help fill
this gap and to challenge assumptions we - and even experts in the
field of exile studies - make.


Course Requirements
Participation: 10%
Daily Reading/Viewing Journal (min. 1 page per class, due at end of
each week): 25% 2 Comparative Papers (7-10 pages each): 40%
Final Exam: 25%