51³ÉÈËÁÔÆæ

Course Description

Summary

In this course we will examine contemporary literature and cinema from Eastern Europe from the Cold War to the present, exposing the intricacies of daily life in a region where the past is always present. The cinematic and literary texts will be drawn from the former East Bloc nations and their successor states in post-Communist Europe, including iconoclastic writers and film directors such as Milan Kundera, Dubravka Ugresic, Grzegorz Wroblewski, Jasmila Zbanic, and the 2009 Nobel Prize recipient Herta Mller. We will also consider the critical responses of writers such as the Ukrainian poet Serhiy Zhadan and the Russian novelist Vladimir Sorokin to the geopolitical ambitions of Vladimir Putin's Russia.