The Great War

Ian Isherwood, Gettysburg College

One hundred years ago Europe’s Great Powers went to war.  The resulting conflict forever altered the nations that fed its human destruction.  The First World War’s impact went far beyond the battlefields of Europe and its legacy is deeply felt to the present day.  This course examines the First World War’s history, cultural legacy, and memory from 1914 to the present.  It does so through both traditional study of the causes, conduct, and consequences of the war, but also, through investigating the Great War as a cultural experience. Students will learn not only the history of the war itself, but how the war changed people, how it challenged and altered notions of national identity, how its legacies changed over time.  Through detailed study of the war’s history, its cultural production, and its variable memory, students will understand not only the history of a conflict important in world history, but gain lenses for understanding war that go far beyond the years 1914-1918.