HIST 349: World War II in China

The Second World War loomed over the lives of Europeans long after the violence ceased. The course starts with the investigation of the history of postwar Europe amid the rubble of devastated landscapes, displaced populations and shattered psyches. The war left legacies of division that surfaced in fierce debates — and festered beneath deafening silences — about wartime deeds. These fractures spread and deepened with conflicts such as the Cold War and clashes over the future of European empires. Yet the war also prompted a search for new consensus, at the national level through the restructuring of postwar societies into more egalitarian states, and at the European level through the creation of new supranational organizations such as NATO, the Warsaw Pact, and the European Union. This course will examine the push-pull of conflict and consensus in the postwar period. Topics will include the politics of occupation, decolonization, the challenges of developing a European community, the welfare state, war in the Balkans, a rise of new activist movements (feminist, anti-nuclear, environmental, immigrants' rights), terrorism and political violence, multiculturalism, and resurgent nationalism.