The Habsburgs

One of the many important consequences of the First World War was the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the last remnant of the once great Habsburg Empire. We cannot truly understand the history of Europe, indeed of much of the world, from the 15th until the 20th centuries without understanding this remarkable dynastic family.

In a concise, and highly readable history of the Habsburgs, Professor Martyn Rady traces their rise from the late 10th century, when they possessed a few villages in the Upper Rhine, to their becoming the dominant political family of much of western and central Europe, the rulers of the Holy Roman Empire, and in the 16th and 17thcenturies, the rulers of the world’s first truly global empire. At its peak, the Austrian Habsburg lands included, not only Austria, but Hungary, Bohemia, Serbia, Bosnia, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, Milan, Naples, Lombardy-Venetia, Sicily, and Dalmatia (Croatia). And the Spanish Habsburgs ruled Spain, Portugal, the East Indies, territories in Africa, Asia, and Southeast Asia, Malta, Oran and much of South and North America (including Los Angeles, California). 

Through our study of the Habsburgs, we will meet a fascinating cast of characters, and we will delve into many events that changed the course of history, such as the rise and fall of the Holy Roman Empire, the Thirty Years War, the Renaissance, the division of the empire between the Austrian and Spanish Habsburgs, Europe’s struggle against the Ottoman Turks, the exploration of the Americas and Asia by explorers such as Magellan, Pizarro and Cortes, and even World War One.

Although the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 began the slow decline of Habsburg power, the Hapsburgs remained powerful through alliances, marriages, and reforms of governmental institutions within the empire. Our discussions will also include the Habsburg promotion of culture, science, and architecture. From the late-18th century, for example, Vienna, the heart of the Austrian Habsburg empire, was the capital of western music, the home of composers such as Mozart and Beethoven to Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler, Richard Strauss and, of course, Johann Strauss. We will even read about reports of vampirism within the empire, Habsburg in-breeding, and the infamous Habsburg jaw. Our journey through the extensive breadth and depth of this European dynasty promises to be both exciting and illuminating.

Stalin: The Peasant Who Became Dictator

Joseph Stalin was a ruthless despot who could be utterly charming. He was a pragmatic Marxist- Leninist ideologue, and an intuitive geostrategic thinker who nonetheless made some egregious and inexplicable strategic blunders. He inspired his people as a “father figure” while evincing utter disdain for the lives of individual Russians. 

In Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928, the first of a three-volume work, Stephen Kotkin tells “the story of Russia’s power in the world and Stalin’s power in Russia.” Kotkin argues that Stalin was that rare individual whose decisions radically changed history. "More than any other historical figure, even Gandhi or Churchill, a biography of Stalin, as we shall see, comes to approximate a history of the world."

Kotkin places Stalin in a Russian global context, as Russia’s geopolitical position was shaken by the rise of Germany on one side and Japan on the other. This work is not the usual biography; in fact, in the first 300 pages of the book, Stalin only appears periodically as Kotkin describes the structural forces that made Stalin possible. 

As Stalin emerges into leadership in the 1920s, Kotkin portrays him as his contemporaries saw him then: not just as a vindictive man seeking power for its own sake but as an “indomitable communist and leader of inner strength, utterly dedicated to Lenin’s ideas, able to carry the entire apparatus, the country, and the cause of the world revolution on his back.” The crux of Kotkin’s interpretation is found in Stalin’s decision to go for all-out collectivization of peasant agriculture, not compelled by necessity but as a wild gamble on Stalin’s part driven by his ideological conviction that socialism in Russia demanded an end to small-scale peasant farming.

In this SDG, will use Kotkin's first volume to cover the momentous events from the last quarter of the nineteenth century to the end of the first quarter of the twentieth. This is an amazing story and encompasses, as Kotkin suggests, "the history of the world.”

While the core book may appear daunting, it contains nearly 250 pages of notes and an extensive bibliography. Our average weekly reading will be roughly 60 pages a week. Kotkin tells a gripping story in a book that is hard to put down once you start reading it.  

Critical Race Theory

“Critical Race Theory” has become a fixture in the debate over how to teach children about the country’s history and race relations. Since President Trump's 2020 Executive Order on Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping, the term CRT has become a political hot button, even though the original theory had nothing to do with the K-12 education. 

CRT was developed in the 1970s and 80s mostly at Harvard Law School in response to continuing racial discrimination following the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The original scholar of the movement was Derrick Bell. Bell himself won several civil rights cases but observed that even landmark civil rights cases were of limited practical impact to most Blacks. 

Developed as the practice of exploring the role of race and racism (originally against Blacks) in law and society, the original theory's core concept is that race is a social construct and that racism is not merely the product of individual prejudice, but is something embedded in the legal system, social system, and our assumptions. Over the years, this core concept has been expanded to include other minorities.

The objective of this SDG is neither to promote nor attack Critical Race Theory but to understand its relevance and  current concerns about inequality in the United States.

The Theatre of the Absurd

The Theatre of the Absurd is a post–World War II designation for particular plays of absurdist fiction written by a number of primarily European playwrights in the late 1950s. It is also a term for the style of theatre the plays represent. The plays focus largely on ideas of existentialism and express what happens when human existence lacks meaning or purpose and communication breaks down. The structure of the plays is typically a round shape, with the finishing point the same as the starting point. Logical construction and argument give way to irrational and illogical speech and to the ultimate conclusion—silence.

In fact, many of them were labelled as “anti-plays.” In an attempt to clarify and define this radical movement, Martin Esslin coined the term “The Theatre of the Absurd” in his 1960 book of the same name. He defined it as such, because all of the plays emphasized the absurdity of the human condition

In this SDG, we will read 10 plays by 10 playwrights and will dissect the deep meaning of each play by trying to interpret their meaning and their significance in understanding the human condition.

7 Mystery Novels by 6 British Women

Although the British detective first appeared in novels by Wilkie Collins and later, Arthur Conan Doyle, it was brilliant female writers who brought the form well into the 20th century and beyond. 

We begin with 2 of the 4 Queens of the Golden Age of Mystery fiction (between the 2 World Wars,): Dorothy Sayers, and Agatha plus a 3rd wonderful author of the period,  Josephine Tey,  They led the craze for mysteries featuring twisted, ingenious plots, murders most horrible, and cunning imaginative villains.

We will see the form they established and how the genre continued and changed as we look at a novel from 1962 by PD James, followed by 2 novels from the current century. 

The first 6 weeks, each novel is the first in a series featuring a protagonist who goes on to carry multiple subsequent novels. The last week we have a very special novel by Josephine Tey. It was first published in 1951, is 5th in her Alan Grant series, and quite unique in its purpose and structure. It comes last because it is dessert. 

We'll examine how these plots are structured, how they are similar and how different.  We will ask how the notions of gender and class play in them.  We will question why the mystery form has been so consistently popular from its beginnings and how the conventions have changed over time. We will wonder why so many woman were the best writers. Last but not least, we'll have a wonderful time visiting (or revisiting) these novels, all of them fun reads.