Brutal Humanism in Postwar Austria: Bernhard, Jelinek, Haneke, Seidl

This seminar focuses on four postwar Austrian writers and filmmakers whose work is often described as brutal, even excessively so. Yet behind the cruelty and violence stands an unflinching commitment to unmasking the vulnerability of human existence and the unrelenting search for dignity, meaning, and connection. We will spend approximately three weeks on each figure and read works of literary theory, film theory, cultural studies, and affect theory alongside fiction and film. Primary readings in German; secondary readings in German and English; discussions in English. Students without German reading knowledge may read the primary sources in translation.