Overview
The seminar will first focus on the development of political as well as of religious movements in the revolutionary contexts of the early 19th century. It will then concentrate on the controversial construction of national identities and on the role of memory culture. Regarding the turn of the 20th century, experiences and perceptions of crisis, décadence and war constitute the main fields of interest. Fears of a nuclear war, the cultural transformations of the 1960s and 1970s, and the new politicisation of society regarding issues such as the ‘Third World‘, questions of human rights and the environment in an increasingly globalised world are the focal points of the module’s perspective on the second half of the 20th century.
