This course explores, through primary and secondary texts, the literature created during four periods of social suppression and political tyranny: the anti-Catholic persecutions in England at the end of the 16th century, the socialist dictatorship in Mongolia between 1921 and 1990, the National Socialist period in Germany (1933-1945), and the ongoing dictatorship in the Democtratic People’s Republic of Korea.
In addition to thinking about the primary texts in their historical contexts, we will also explore ancillary media - music, film, fine art - to understand the artistic framework in which writers lived and produced their work. Moreover, these various media will offer a chance to think about the fraught and often toxic interaction of politics and creativity in such societies, as well as the process of remembering those who are killed for their art.
The study undertaken in this course falls at the intersection of cultural history, literary studies, and politics, and deals directly with a form of cultural production which at the same time supports and refuses the people’s engagement in social, religious, and political repression.
About Professor Wickhamsmith
Research / Specialization: Mongolian culture and literary history; Tibetan Buddhism; Spiritual Ecology and posthumanism
Books:
- Monograph
Politics and Literature in Mongolia 1921-1948. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020 - Edited Volume
Socialist and Post-Socialist Mongolia: Nation, Identty, and Culture [co-edited with Phillip Marzluf]. Abingdon: Routledge, 2021. - Annotated Translation and Commentary
The Hidden Life of the Sixth Dalai Lama. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2012. - Translations
Suncranes: Modern Mongolian Short Fiction. New York: Columbia University Press, 2021.
Ts.Oidov The End of the Dark Era. Los Angeles: Phoneme Media, 2015.
Education: BA (Hons) King's College, London University (1990)
MA University of Washington, Seattle (2010)
PhD University of Washington, Seattle (2012)