Mayterm 2011
Course Information
Travel Itinerary
We will leave the USA on 11 May and arrive in Brussels International Airport on the morning of 12 May. After traveling to Ypres, we will begin our investigations of the battlefields, cemeteries and museums in and around the Ypres Salient, an area that experienced continuous warfare from 1914 to 1918. Our accommodations are being provided by Talbot House, a “soldiers’ house” in Poperinge (http://www.talbothouse.be/en/).
After leaving the Salient, our next stop is the small town of Arras, where extensive tunnels have been recently opened to the public (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-534236/Inside-amazing-cave-city-housed-25-000-Allied-troops-German-noses-WWI.html). From there we will finish our inspection of the western front by visiting the the significant battle sites of the Somme and then the fortresses of Verdun.
Now we leap forward in time to 1945, to the end of the Second World War. After renting bicycles in the small town of Fulda, we will be introduced to the Cold War by riding a small sections of the Iron Curtain Trail, a bike path sponsored by the EU that runs the entire length of the old Iron Curtain (http://www.ironcurtaintrail.eu/en/index.html). A good description of our planned route can be found in a New York Times article from July 2009 (http://travel.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/travel/26iron.html?ref=travel).
Finally, we will depart from Frankfurt International Airport on 22 May.
NOTE: You will be booking your own flight from your departure city in the USA to Brussels, and then returning to that USA city from Frankfurt.
Academic Itinerary
Our formal academic work now shifts into high gear. So far, the course has emphasized experience and intensive discussion over reading, research and reflection. Now, using Synapse as a platform, we will communicate with each other over the next two months about our common reading, and students will submit formal papers on set topics. In addition, a large research component will allow students to focus on one particular topic of interest, and the course assumes summer access to a good library. So far, here is a list of resources we will be assigning (subject to change):
Required Books:
Norman Stone, World War One: A Short History, 2010, ISBN 978-0465019182
Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning, 1995,
ISBN 978-0-521-63988-0
John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War, 2005, ISBN 978-0-141-02532-2
Ernest May, ed., American Cold War Strategy: Interpreting NSC 68, 1993, ISBN 0-312-06637-6
Paul Berman, Power and the Idealists, 2005, ISBN 978-0-393-33021-2
Required Videos (available in libraries or in Google Video)
The Great War and the Shaping of the Twentieth Century, ed. Jay Winter, 1998; or The First World War: The Complete Series, ed. Hew Strachan, 2005
CNN, Cold War. Television documentary, ed. John Lewis Gaddis, 1998
Costs
The exact cost is still being determined. The approximate cost is between $1500 and $2000, plus airfare. The price will cover all transportation, accommodations, entrance fees, rentals, and some meals. Precise information will be available by December.
