106-074 Modernism, Fascism, Communism

Credit Points

HECS Band

Coordinator

Prerequisites

Usually admission to the Postgraduate Diploma or Fourth Year Honours in English, see Honours entry.

Semester

Subject Description

This subject is an examination of how modernist artistic doctrines and practices developed in the context of demands for a politically engaged art in the Inter-war period in Europe. The subject investigates the relationship between modernist aesthetics and the projects of cultural revolution associated with socialism and fascism; the political and aesthetic debates surrounding the reception of modernist art by the Nazi and Communist parties; and the ways in which certain canonical modernist writers and film-makers have been positioned by contemporary criticism in relation to the ideologies of fascism and communism.