Between 1896 and 1989, Central and Eastern Europe experienced two world wars, at least three major revolutions, and radical industrial and environmental dislocations. The region witnessed everything from the birth of its modern culture to the creation of new post-World War I nation-states, to the Holocaust, to massive forced population shifts, to the creation of the communist Eastern Bloc, to the popular overthrow of Communism in 1989. Radical regimes on the right and left brought incredible change, quashed hopes, and produced both progress and suffering of unprecedented proportion. This course will examine life in late-19th and 20th century Habsburg Europe and its successor states of Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. It will do so comparatively, highlighting themes of nation-creation, everyday life, social transition, war, revolution, and ethnic cleansing.
