Fall 2005

HIS 350L • Minorities in Eastern Europe-W

Course Description

This undergraduate seminar, with an emphasis on reading and discussion, focuses on the various minority questions of Eastern Europe in historical perspective. The course will begin with an examination of the East European peoples as minorities within the multi-national Habsburg, Ottoman, and (to a lesser extent) Russian empires and the breakdown of these polities in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. More time will be devoted to the post-World War I multi-national experiments -- Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia -- and the place of minorities in the independent states of Eastern Europe in the twentieth century. In particular we will discuss Jews, Gypsies, Germans, Hungarians, Macedonians, Albanians, Turks, Bosnian Muslims and their relations to the various majority groups within East European States in the interwar, World War II, Communist, and to a lesser extent, post-Communist periods. We will also look at Serbo-Croat and Czecho-Slovak relations and the break down of these ethno-national relationships in the 1980s.

Grading Policy

Grades will be based on participation that is both expected and required, and 7 3-4 page review papers on the week(s) of your choice. The Grades will be broken down in the following way: Participation (30%), Papers (10% each).

Texts

E. Mendelsohn, The Jews of East Central Europe Between the World Wars. H. Kovaly, Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague 1941-1968. A. de Zayas, A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans. I. Fonseca, Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey

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