COML0478 - Banned Books: Writing Against Censorship

This course offers a broad survey of banned, censored, suppressed, and silenced literature in Eastern Europe and the USSR during the 20th century. While the totalitarian political regimes of the 20th century sought to control the public sphere and regulate artistic production, their efforts were never entirely successful. Inevitably, works appeared that either sought to directly challenge and confront ideology, “slipped through the cracks” and were banned or censored retroactively, or seemed palatable enough to censors but proved provocative to perceptive readers skilled in reading “between the lines.”
We will read and discuss banned, problematic, and controversial works written during the 20th century in contexts of political unfreedom, as we seek answers to a number of questions about the interconnection between the political and the aesthetic, such as: Do works banned for political reasons also pose aesthetic challenges to tyranny? Does suspect politics entail suspect aesthetics, or vice versa? Can radical aesthetics arise from ostensibly conformist politics? How does Sir Isaiah Berlin’s distinction between positive and negative liberty help us navigate the murky waters of art under despotism? Readings will include works by Hrabal, Kiš, Kross, Kundera, Shalamov, Voznesenskaia, Yohansen, and others.