- Ability to place questions of resistance and dissent within diverse cultural, socio-political, and historical contexts;

- Expansion of repertoire of 20th century European and North-American literature, film, and theory;

- Connect the issues of dissent embodied in literary texts to related questions in fields outside literature;

- Speak and write critically about dissent as it is related to aesthetics and politics, both at a general theoretical level and with reference to specific examples. 

The relationship between art and politics is inextricably bound up with questions of domination and dissent. The autonomy of the work of art is measured in its ability to criticize the established order, even in the face of censorship and political and legal repercussions. In this course we will explore a range of literary and theoretical works, all of which are centrally concerned with the possibility or impossibility of resistance to state power and cultural hegemony. The course will look at acts of dissent in the context of the dominant geo-political moments of the 20th and 21st centuries, from the Third Reich to the Cold War, to late capitalism and the War on Terror. We will focus on the following questions: What is the relationship between dissident literature/art and other forms of political resistance? Can art bring about political change? What is the relationship between dissent, creativity, and innovation? What forms can dissent assume after the collapse of communism? How can we think of citizenship in terms of authorship?