Literature and contemporary culture are not merely sources of entertainment and decoration. From Shakespeare to Salman Rushdie and Orhan Pamuk, literature has played a powerful part within society. It has been censored and sponsored, used as propaganda and for protest. This course gives students the opportunity to study in detail and in depth the ways in which society and its forms of expression are linked. The inscription of historical memory and the traumatic experience in literary texts, films or paintings is another theme discussed extensively in this course. It also examines some forms of literary ‘resistance’ in authoritarian and fascist regimes. The course aims at familiarizing students with current academic debates on the inscription of Ideology in the text and the Arts.