GER 348 - Visions of Modernity: Science, Media and Magic in Europe, 1770-1910

Thanks to simultaneous innovations in science, technology, and stagecraft, Europeans of the long 19th century could scarcely believe their eyes and ears. Between the 1770s, when Franz Mesmer introduced urban publics throughout Europe to the idea of an unseeable energy that connected all organic beings, and the early 20th century, when early filmmakers brought illusions to life, Europeans created and confronted new technologies that raised questions about the boundaries between life and death, the real and the imagined, the seen and the unseen. European publics explored how new and emerging technologies and modes of communication and representation, including photography, electricity, the telegraph, and film, might provide access to deeper understandings of reality or access to new realities. Automata simulated human behaviors while emerging industrial machinery replaced human labor; photographs seemed to capture ghosts while telegraphs created language from a distant and unseen source. Meanwhile, mediums conjured spirits to enable conversations with the dead; illusionists dazzled audiences with spectacles that defied human reason; sites of religious apparitions at Lourdes and Marpingen became spaces of tourism, mass culture, and faithful devotion. With a focus on France and Germany, this class will bring together the history of science and technology, the history of religion, film and media studies, and literary criticism to explore cultural conditions in which these intersecting phenomena emerged and to better understand the relationship between magic, illusionism, spiritualism, and science in nineteenth-century European popular culture. Conducted in English. Students taking the course for German literature credit will meet in extra sessions.

Unit(s): 1
Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
Prerequisite(s): For German credit: GER 212 or equivalent

For Literature or History credit: HUM 110
Instructional Method: Conference
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Cross-listing(s): LIT 348 , HIST 398
Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):

Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a non-English language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a non-English language, or works of the visual or performing arts).