PHL 272Y - Intensive Course Abroad ()

(GEN. ED. #3)

POLAND: THEORIZING COLLECTIVE MEMORY This course explores the formation of community as a continuous revising, contesting, and institutionalizing of cultural memory. Poland is an especially interesting case today, as it undergoes the process of re-imagining itself as both a nation and, in the face of the rapid growth of the Polish diaspora, a culture. Polish identity formation has historically taken place in relation to the presence of Jews and Roma. Since the collapse of Communist rule there has been a blossoming of discourses around the Poland’s Jewish past, the history of anti-Semitism, and the right-wing xenophobia that has emerged in response to the borders opening since 1989. This course investigates the way in which Poles today (in the so-called “new” Poland) are engaged in the process of reforging Polish identity and cultural integrity through a complicated retrieval of the past and encounters with both old and new “Others.” Students will examine how identity is shaped by disputes concerning the Other, as that Other is imagined historically and in cultural artifacts like monuments, museums, literature, and film, in order to map relationships between discourses concerning memory and those concerning democracy, globalization, human rights, distributive justice, capitalism, tolerance, and genocide. The course consists of a seven week preparatory course on Goucher campus and a three week trip to Poland to visit the cities of Warsaw, Łód, and Krakow. Corequisite: PHL 339. Spring, first offered 2012. Grebowicz.

CHINA GATEWAY (1 or 3) A seven-week pre-course will familiarize students with basic Mandrain Chinese and contemporay Chinese culture as well as traveling in Asia (1). This is followed by a three-week intensive course in China in the summer (three credits total). Spring semester, Offered 2010-11 and alternate years. DeCaroli.