2020-21 Academic Catalog

To feel secure and accepted by society are essential human needs. However, even a cursory look at the 20th century shows how often and unexpectedly the lives of individuals were profoundly disrupted and crushed by the forces of nature and history. Security and social acceptance are fragile gifts of history. If so, what freedom and meaning, if at all, are to be found in living a displaced life, against and through the destructive tidal waves of history? The course tries to answer this question through an engagement with the memoirs and writings of Stefan Zweig, Edward Said, Norman Manea, Mikhail Bulgakov, Karl Ove Knausgaard, and James Baldwin.