Courses at CU

SUMMER 2012 COURSE DESCRIPTIONS

Students may enroll in up to four courses. All courses are worth three U.S. credits and meet three times per week. Courses are offered in history, politics, language, art and culture, film and literature.

ART AND CULTURE

ART 301 Czech and European Art and Architecture
The course gives a general overview of the Fine Arts development in Europe with a special focus
on Central Europe and monuments of Prague. The instructor presents a few particular pieces of art
that represent well the epoque or style. We analyze the details, historical context, iconography and
formal qualities that represent the individual style. By detailed information on a particular piece,
the student receives a good insight to the History of Fine Arts as an academic discipline. The facts
on important artists and movements are selective. They illustrate typical features of a certain time
period. The first half of the lecture is usually held in the classroom. Students get information on a
certain problem or epoque. The second half of the lecture is usually spent on the field trip, or in
some of the numerous collections of Fine Arts in Prague.

Students are motivated to apply their knowledge – e.g. date the piece, describe the iconography,
discover important details. They sometimes guess the original purpose of the object; recognize its
modifications and later additions.

The course covers the Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque times, up to Modernism and the
Contemporary art scene. Special attention will be paid to the unique characteristics and
developments of art (e.g. Prague Castle, Baroque churches, Czech cubism) and to the most glorious
periods in the history of Czech Lands (era of Charles IV, Rudolf II). The course deals with these
topics.

FILM

F 360 Hollywood and Europe
What have been the relationships between Hollywood and Europe? How has Hollywood attempted to do business in and with Europe? How has Hollywood attempted to make film appealing and relative to Europeans? How does what we see on screen reflect these efforts? How has Hollywood portrayed Europe on-screen? How have powerful elites viewed Hollywood, its product and its values? How have European film industries engaged with the aesthetic and thematic terrain of Hollywood films? In what ways have European audiences engaged with Hollywood? It is questions such as these that will be addressed in Hollywood and Europe, a module offering insight into the ways in which Hollywood has functioned as a transnational institution in terms of its historical relationships to Europe, notably the shifting contours of the Eastern and Central part of the continent. Respecting Hollywood’s multifaceted character as a border-crossing economic, political, social, cultural, and aesthetic institution, the module encourages students to position the analysis of popular mainstream film texts within the range of contexts in which they have operated. Accordingly, a case study approach will be employed that will see students consider the roles Hollywood has played in, and towards, Europe at different historical junctures at the levels of production, distribution, exhibition, reception, and consumption. Key debates relating to conglomeration, Americanization, globalization, the national, cultural imperialism, and appropriation will be engaged by way of topics such as genre, stars, and marketing; documents such as State Dept memos, movie trailers, and popular press coverage, and films such as Notting Hill (1999), The Bourne Identity (2002), and Taken (2009).

HISTORY

HIST 305 Modern Central European and German History
The course will focus on the history of the entity known as “Mitteleuropa” in the last two hundred years, the different definitions and ideological uses of this concept and the analysis of its moving boundaries, sometimes including Germany, sometimes not. The aim of the course is to achieve an understanding of the history of the different national entities that now constitute Germany, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia and of their complex interaction.

LITERATURE

LIT 314 Reading Prague: Literature-Architecture-Cultural History
The course will survey Prague’s history, focusing on the lives and aspirations of its multinational inhabitants as they metamorphosed in the course of the last twelve centuries.

It proposes to read the city as a text and to treat literature and architecture as both expressions and symptoms of its evolution. Throughout the course, literature and architecture will be explored through a critical reading of the motivations, techniques and achievements which are at play therein.

The aim of this course is to introduce the students to selected works of modern Czech fiction within the frame of Czech history and architecture of the city of Prague.

POLITICS

POL 316 Modern Czech Politics across Various Political Regimes
The transformation of Czechoslovakia (and later of the Czech Republic) from a communist satellite state into a European Union member state is an exciting story, but it is also an intellectual challenge. It encompassed a profound change of political, social, cultural and economic structures while at the same time meant a radical change in people’s lives. Without understanding some deeper historical conditions of this transformation this intellectual challenge cannot probably be met. The course will start with a short introduction to Czech pre-communist politics and regimes. Then a survey of communist rule follows, concentrating on the role of the party, propaganda and political life, looking also at the daily life under communism. Next two radical political changes will be discussed: The Velvet Revolution of 1989 and the “Velvet Divorce” of 1992-1993; these will be taken as models of change with much larger implications for the whole Central and Eastern Europe. The focus will be on the discussion of key political institutions and parties in comparative perspective.