HISTORY 767

STUDIES IN MILITARY HISTORY

Winter Quarter 1998

Memory, Myth, and Imagination in the Two World Wars

Preliminary Syllabus

Still Under Construction

I welcome suggestions for supplementary readings!


Prof. Mark Grimsley
363 Dulles Hall
Tel. 292-1855
E-mail:grimsley.1@osu.edu


This is a graduate readings course focusing on the ways in which human beings have attempted to make moral sense of two calamitous conflicts that took the lives, respectively, of 10,000,000 and 50,000,000 of their fellows..

Enrollment

All students must be officially enrolled in the course by the end of the second full week of the quarter. No requests to add the course will be approved by the department chair after that time. Enrolling officially and on time is solely the responsibility of each student.

Requirements

Two six-page book reviews; one 10-to-12 page review essay based on the required and supplementary readings (as well as readings you may discover on your own).

Book Review 1 (25% of course grade) is due January 23.
Book Review 2 (25% of course grade) is due February 12
Comparative Review Essay (50% of course grade) is due March 17.
Papers are due in class on the date specified. Late papers will be penalized a full letter grade for every day they are overdue. No "Incompletes" for the course will be granted.

The Readings

Week 1. The Coming of the First World War

The Great Adventure : Male Desire and the Coming of World War I
by Michael C.C. Adams
List: $9.25
Hardcover
Published by Indiana Univ Pr
Publication date: October 1990
ISBN: 025330136X

Carl Jung, "The Spiritual Problem of Modern Man," in Joseph Campbell (ed.), The Portable Jung (Penguin, 1974): 456-479.

Photocopy distributed prior to first meeting.

Supplementary Reading

Gail Bederman, Manliness & Civilization : A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917
C.S. Forrester, The General
Peter Gay, The Cultivation of Hatred
Michael Howard, War and the Liberal Conscience
Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa : White Man's Conquest of the Dark Continent from 1876 to 1912

Selected Poetry of Rupert Brooke


Week 2. The Great War and Modern Memory

The Great War and Modern Memory
by Paul Fussell
List: $13.95
1 Edition
Paperback
Published by Oxford Univ Pr (Trade)
Publication date: November 1, 1989
ISBN: 0195021711

Supplementary Reading

Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning : The Great War in European Cultural History

Selected Poetry of Wilfrid Owen

Counterattack and Other Poems by Siegfried Sassoon

The Old Huntsman and Other Poems by Siegfried Sassoon

Visit Trenches on the Web

Week 3. The End of Edwardian Optimism


Good-Bye to All That
by Robert Graves
List: $12.00
2nd revised Edition
Paperback, 347 pages
Published by Anchor
Publication date: November 7, 1957
ISBN: 0385093306

C.S. Forester, The General

Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

Dalton Trumbo, Johnny Got His Gun



Week 4. Catastrophe

Strange Defeat : A Statement of Evidence Written in 1940
by Marc Leopold Benjamin Bloch
List: $9.95
Paperback
Published by W W Norton & Co
Publication date: February 1, 1968
ISBN: 039300371X

Supplementary Reading

Henri Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome : History and Memory in France Since 1944

Antoine De Saint-Exupery, Flight to Arras

Eugen Weber, The Hollow Years : France in the 1930's




Week 5. Meaning out of Nihilism

Man's Search for Meaning : An Introduction to Logotherapy
by Viktor E. Frankl
List: $11.00
3rd Edition
Paperback, 189 pages
Published by Simon & Schuster (Paper)
Publication date: October 1, 1984
ISBN: 0671244221

Anne Frank, The Diary of Anne Frank

Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz

Elie Weisel, Night

Elie Weisel, Dawn


Week 6. The Good War?

Doing Battle : The Making of a Skeptic
by Paul Fussell
List: $24.95
1 Edition
Hardcover
Published by Little Brown & Company
Publication date: October 1, 1996
ISBN: 0316297178

Supplementary Reading

J. Glenn Gray, The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle

Gerald F. Linderman, The World Within War : America's Combat Experience in World War II

Studs Terkel, The Good War


Week 7. "Can-Do" Death

The Rise of American Air Power : The Creation of Armageddon
by Michael S. Sherry
List: $21.00
Reprint Edition
Paperback
Published by Yale Univ Pr
Publication date: February 1, 1989
ISBN: 0300044143

Supplementary Reading

Conrad C. Crane, Bombs, Cities, and Civilians : American Airpower Strategy in World War II



Week 8. American Bug Hunt

With the Old Breed : At Peleliu and Okinawa
by Eugene B. Sledge
List: $13.95
Reprint Edition
Paperback, 326 pages
Published by Oxford Univ Pr (Trade)
Publication date: September 1, 1990
ISBN: 0195067142

On Killing : The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society

by Dave Grossman

List: $14.95

Paperback

Published by Little Brown & Co (Pap)

Publication date: November 1, 1996

ISBN: 0316330116

Supplementary Reading

William Manchester, Goodbye, Darkness



Week 9. Race, Ideology, and the Culture of Modern Combat

American Samurai : Myth, Imagination, and the Conduct of Battle in the First Marine Division, 1941-1951
by Craig M. Cameron
List: $34.95
Our Price: $34.95
Hardcover, 297 pages
Published by Cambridge Univ Pr (Trd)
Publication date: February 1994
ISBN: 0521441684


Hitler's Army : Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich
by Omer Bartov
List: $11.95
Reprint Edition
Paperback
Published by Oxford Univ Pr (Trade)
Publication date: November 1, 1992
ISBN: 0195079035

Supplementary Reading

Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men : Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland

Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking : The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II

John W. Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War



Week 10. Celebrating the Sacrifice

Starship Troopers
by Robert A. Heinlein
List: $6.50
Mass Market Paperback, 272 pages
Published by Ace Books
Publication date: November 1, 1987
ISBN: 0441783589

Supplementary Reading

Ross S. Carter, Those Devils in Baggy Pants

Martin Dibner, The Admiral

Joe Haldeman, The Forever War (Starship Troopers goes to Vietnam)

MacKinlay Kantor, Glory for Me

Herman Wouk, The Winds of War



Week 11. Unstuck in Time

Slaughterhouse Five or the Children's Crusade : A Duty Dance With Death
by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
List: $6.99
Reissue Edition
Mass Market Paperback
Published by Dell Pub Co
Publication date: December 1, 1991
ISBN: 0440180295

Supplementary Reading

Joseph Heller, Catch 22

Norman Mailer, The Naked and the Dead


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