LIT 321 : Literature of Dissent

This class examines the evolution and disintegration of literary dissent in the twentieth-century Europe. We begin by surveying the three forces responsible for the emergence of dissent: the ideology of communism; totalitarianism as the governmental form; and socialist realism as the literary canon. The conceptual backbone of the class is the contrast between individual acts of dissent and the dissident movement. While the individual acts of dissent proceed from rejection or disagreement with the regime, the dissident movement was born out of seduction and subsequent disillusionment in the very idea of the communist state. In the final segment of the class, the students will inquire into the legacy of dissident thought through class presentation and discussion. Readings include texts by H. Arendt, K. Marx, F. Furet, C. Lefort, M. Bulgakov, A. Platonov, Abram Tertz-A. Syniavsky, Solzhenitsyn, Milosz, Havel and others. We will also study films by Alexander Medvedkin, Chris Marker, and Sergei Eisenstein.