HIST 0200 - BETWEEN KAFKA AND HITLER: HOW CENTRAL EUROPE SHAPED THE MODERN WORLD

Minimum Credits: 3
Maximum Credits: 3
This course offers an introduction to the historical experience of Central Europe, the most diverse and dynamic region of modern Europe. Close to twenty nations with together more than 200 million people exist today between the rivers Rhine and Dnepr, between the Baltic and the Aegean Seas, from Germany in the west to Estonia in the northeast and Greece in south. Since the 1800s, this region made its mark on the world through an astounding cultural and intellectual creativity. People like Hegel and Marx, Kafka and Freud, Albert Einstein and Marie Curie changed the way we think. Yet 20th-century Central Europe was also a place of unprecedented mass violence and destruction, the main theater of two world wars and the site of the Holocaust. During the Cold War, it became the focal point of a global ideological conflict that divided the world into east and west. Ever since the fall of the Iron Curtain, Central Europe is the place where these divided worlds are growing together again. The study of this region and the socioeconomic and cultural forces that shaped it provides a fascinating lens for a better understanding of the modern world. This includes the fact that many of those who built Pittsburgh came from Central Europe and left their mark in this city. The course serves as core course for the Central European Studies Certificate
Academic Career: Undergraduate
Course Component: Lecture
Grade Component: LG/SNC Elective Basis
Course Attributes: DSAS Geographic Region General Ed. Requirement, DSAS Historical Analysis General Ed. Requirement, Russian & East European Studies, SCI Polymathic Contexts: Global&Cross Cul GE. Req., SCI Polymathic Contexts: Soc/Behav. GE. Req.

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