Semester:
Offered:
Instructor: Matthew Sohm
Meeting time: Wednesday, 12:45-2:45 pm
Outsiders, newcomers, and minorities played a central role in shaping contemporary Europe. In this seminar, we will embrace the perspectives of people who moved or were forced to move to, from, and around Europe since the end of World War Two, with a focus on questions of migration after the Cold War. We will begin by investigating the dislocation and mass population movements that occurred in the aftermath of war and at the end of empire. We will then consider how race and religion were used as instruments of exclusion, and as nativist political tools, in the 1970s and 1980s. The second half of the course will examine immigrant life in Europe in the 1990s and 2000s, before concluding with a deep dive into the ongoing global migration crisis. Throughout the course, we’ll look for connections between the history of postwar Europe and present-day debates surrounding immigration, race, religion, and national belonging. We will access this history through fiction, poetry, memoirs, diaries, film, and music.