Images clockwise from top left: 1. RIRA bombing in Omagh, August 1998; 2. PIRA bombing of Bishopsgate, April 1993; 3. PIRA's UVIED attach on Ian Gow MP, 1990; and 4. PIRA bombing of Bishopsgate, April 1993. (Image courtesy of the United Kingdom Security Service, MI5.) (Crown Copyright Material. Used with permission.)
Instructor(s)
Prof. Charity Scribner
MIT Course Number
21G.061
As Taught In
Spring 2004
Level
Undergraduate
Translated Versions
Course Description
Course Features
Course Description
This interdisciplinary course surveys modern European culture to disclose the alignment of literature, opposition, and revolution. Reaching back to the foundational representations of anarchism in nineteenth-century Europe (Kleist, Conrad) the curriculum extends through the literary and media representations of militant organizations in the 1970s and 80s (Italy's Red Brigade, Germany's Red Army Faction, and the Real Irish Republican Army). In the middle of the term students will have the opportunity to hear a lecture by Margarethe von Trotta, one of the most important filmmakers who has worked on terrorism. The course concludes with a critical examination of the ways that certain segments of European popular media have returned to the "radical chic" that many perceive to have exhausted itself more than two decades ago.