University Bulletin 2002-03: European Cultural Studies

University Bulletin 2002-03 University Bulletin 2002-03: European Cultural Studies

An interdepartmental program
European Cultural Studies

Courses of Study:
Major (B.A.)

Program website: http://www.brandeis.edu/departments/ecs/

Objectives

European Cultural Studies (ECS) offers students the opportunity to study English and continental literature in translation in conjunction with one or more related disciplines: fine arts, history, music, philosophy, politics, sociology, and theater arts.

Students will be able to count appropriate courses taken in clusters toward the ECS major.

ECS is for those students who feel intellectually adventurous, who want to explore the interrelationships of literature with various other disciplines in order to gain a broader perspective of what constitutes "culture." With the advent of an everchanging Europe, students in ECS will be better prepared, in all areas, to keep abreast with current and future events.

Many of our students spend some time abroad to get a feel for the cultures in which they are most interested. ECS majors have gone on to graduate schools (in history, politics, English, and other fields), have entered law school, business school, and advanced programs in international studies.

How to Become a Major

It is highly advisable that students make a decision no later than the middle of their sophomore year in order to take full advantage of the ECS major.

Normally, students will choose to focus on either the early period (from the Middle Ages to the mid-1700s) or the modern period (from mid-1700s to the present day). Variations within the scheme can be worked out with the coordinator.

Each major will plan a program in consultation with the coordinator.

Committee

Stephen Dowden, Coordinator and Undergraduate Advising Head
(Germanic and Slavic Languages)

Rudolph Binion
(History)

Dian Fox
(Spanish)

Jane Hale
(French)

Gila Hayim
(Sociology)

Arthur Holmberg
(Theater Arts)

Edward Kaplan
(Romance and Comparative Literature)

Jytte Klausen
(Politics)

Richard Lansing
(Italian)

Robin Feuer Miller
(German and Slavic Languages)

Paul Morrison
(English and American Literature)

Jessie Ann Owens
(Music)

Antony Polonsky
(Near Eastern and Judaic Studies)

Jerry Samet
(Philosophy)

Nancy Scott
(Fine Arts)

Requirements for Major

The major consists of 10 semester courses (11 if the student elects to write a thesis).

A. ECS 100a (The Proseminar), to be completed, if possible, no later than the junior year.

B. Two comparative literature seminars, or HUM 10a (The Western Canon) and one comparative literature seminar. The student is particularly encouraged to select this second course from COML 102 through COML 106. However, any COML offering is acceptable, as long as its subject matter is European and it is otherwise relevant to the student's program.

C. Three courses in European literature. The six European literatures offered are English, French, German, Italian, Russian, and Spanish. The foreign literature courses listed below have been specifically designed for use in the ECS curriculum and are taught in translation. Courses in English literature may be used to fulfill this requirement. For courses in comparative literature consult the appropriate section of this Bulletin.

D. Three courses selected from the following seven related disciplines: fine arts, history, history of ideas, music, philosophy, politics, sociology, and theater arts. In consultation with the coordinator, students may be able to use courses from additional departments (e.g., NEJS, anthropology, etc.) so long as such courses are appropriate to the student's program in ECS.

E. Students who elect to write a Senior Thesis will enroll in ECS 99d. Before enrolling, students should consult with the coordinator. An appropriate GPA is required to undertake the writing of a thesis. Honors are awarded on the basis of cumulative GPA in the major and the grade on the honors thesis.

F. All seniors not enrolling in ECS 99d (that is, not electing to write a Senior Thesis) have a choice of electing one additional course in any of the three segments of the major: either an additional course in comparative literature, or an additional course in any of the six European literatures, or an additional course in any of the seven related areas.

Special Notes Relating to Undergraduates

Courses in the seven related disciplines are generally available for ECS majors. Any questions should be addressed directly to the appropriate representative of the department (fine arts, Professor Scott; history, Professor Binion; music, Professor Owens; philosophy, Professor Samet; politics, Professor Klausen; sociology, Professor Hayim; theater arts, Professor Holmberg).

ECS majors are encouraged to pursue study abroad, either in England or on the continent. Credit will be applied for appropriate equivalent courses. Interested students should consult with the coordinator and the Office of Undergraduate Academic Affairs.

Courses of Instruction

(1-99) Primarily for Undergraduate Students

ECS 98a Independent Study
May be taken only by majors with the written permission of the ECS program coordinator. Signature of the instructor required.
Usually offered every year.
Staff

ECS 98b Independent Study
May be taken only by majors with the written permission of the ECS program coordinator. Signature of the instructor required.
Usually offered every year.
Staff

ECS 99d Senior Thesis
Signature of the instructor required.
This course is independent research under the supervision of the thesis director. Usually offered every year.
Staff

(100-199) For Both Undergraduate and Graduate Students

ECS 100a European Cultural Studies: The Proseminar
[ hum ]
Enrollment limited to 18. Refer to the University Writing section of this Bulletin for information regarding applicability to the writing intensive requirement.

The theme for fall 2002: Modernism.

The theme for spring 2003: Making Modernity.

May be repeated for credit with the permission of the ECS coordinator. Usually offered every year. Will be offered in the fall of 2002 and the spring of 2003.
Mr. Dowden (fall)
Mr. Randall (spring)

European Literature

The following courses are appropriate for the ECS major and his or her respective foreign literature majors: French, German, Russian, and Spanish. The course abbreviations have the following values:

FECS = French and European Cultural Studies

GECS = German and European Cultural Studies

IECS = Italian and European Cultural Studies

RECS = Russian and European Cultural Studies

SECS = Spanish and European Cultural Studies

French

FECS 134a Women and Moralists in the Ancien Régime
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English with readings in English translation.
Examines women's part in changing the literary, artistic, intellectual, and political culture of the 17th- and 18th-century French monarchy. Topics include salons and social mobility, learned ladies and renegade nuns, science and morality, and subverting authority. Usually offered every second year. Last offered in the spring of 2002.
Ms. Harth

FECS 145a Topics in French Fiction in Translation
[ wi hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English with readings in English translation.
Power, Passion, Creativity in the French Novel. Major novels of the 19th and 20th centuries by Balzac, Stendhal, George Sand, Flaubert, Zola, and Proust reflect France's social and political upheavals. Topics include psychological analysis, revolution and class conflicts, male and female relationships, the creative process. Usually offered every second year. Last offered in the spring of 2001.
Mr. Kaplan

FECS 157a Topics in French Film
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English with readings in English translation. May be repeated for credit with special permission.
The topic for 2001-02: The New Wave. From the 1950s on, the innovations of the French New Wave have influenced film in France and abroad. Filmakers to be studies include Godard, Chabrol, Melville, Rivette, Rohmer, Truffaut, and Varda. Usually offered every third year. Last offered in the fall of 2001.
Ms. Harth

FECS 182b French Literature and Painting
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English with readings in English translation.
Explores the interrelations between French painting and literature through selected texts and corresponding visual images of the 19th and 20th centuries. Topics include Romanticism, Realism, Symbolism, Surrealism, Cubism. Usually offered every fourth year. Last offered in the spring of 1998.
Ms. Hale

German

GECS 118a The German Tradition I: Lessing to Nietzsche
(formerly GECS 108a)
[ hum ]
Conducted in English. This course may not be repeated for credit by students who have taken GECS 108a in previous years.
Explores the dialectic of reason and the irrational from the late 18th century in Germany and Austria until their collapse in World War I. Works by Beethoven, Kant, Mendelssohn, Goethe, Lessing, Mozart, Heine, Novalis, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Thomas Mann, and others. Usually offered every third year. Last offered in the fall of 2000.
Ms. von Mering

GECS 119b The German Tradition II: Nietzsche to Postmodern
(formerly 109b)
[ hum ]
Conducted in English. This course may not be repeated for credit by students who have taken GECS 109b in previous years.
Explores the dialectic of reason and the irrational from the late 19th century in Germany and Austria to the present. Works by Adorno, Benjamin, Brecht, Celan, Habermas, Heidegger, Jünger, Kiefer, Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Nietzsche, Schoenberg, Spengler, and Expressionist painting and film. Usually offered every second year. Last offered in the spring of 2001.
Mr. Dowden

GECS 150a From Rapunzel to Riefenstahl: Real and Imaginary Women in German Culture
[ hum ]
Conducted in English.
Exploring German cultural representations of women and real women's responses. From fairy-tale princess to Nazi filmmaker, from 18th-century infanticide to 20th-century femme fatale, from beautiful soul to feminist dramatist, from revolutionary to minority writer. Readings include major literary works, feminist criticism, and film. Usually offered every third year. Will be offered in the fall of 2002.
Ms. von Mering

GECS 167a German Cinema
[ hum ]
Conducted in English. This course may not be repeated for credit by students who have taken GECS 165a in fall of 2001.
From silent film to Leni Riefenstahl and Nazi cinema, from post-war cinema in East and West to New German film after unification, this course traces aesthetic strategies, reflections on history, memory, subjectivity, political, cultural, and film-historical contexts. Usually offered every second year. Will be offered in the fall of 2003.
Ms. Von Mering

GECS 170a Viennese Modernism 1890-1938
[ hum ]
Conducted in English. Enrollment limited to 20.
An interdisciplinary exploration of cultural and intellectual life in Vienna from the end of the Habsburg era to the rise of Nazism: film, music, painting, theater, fiction, philosophy, psychology, and physics. Works by Berg, Broch, Canetti, Freud, Hofmannsthal, Klimt, Kraus, Mach, Mahler, Musil, Schoenberg, Webern, Wittgenstein, and others. Usually offered every fourth year. Last offered in the fall of 2001.
Mr. Dowden

GECS 180b European Modernism and the German Novel
[ hum ]
Conducted in English.
A study of selected novelists writing after Nietzsche and before the end of World War II. This course will explore the culture, concept, and the development of European modernism in works by Broch, Canetti, Döblin, Jünger, Kafka, Mann, Musil, Rilke, and Roth. Usually offered every second year. Last offered in the spring of 2002.
Mr. Dowden

GECS 185b German Fiction after 1945
[ hum ]
Explores the postmodernist rejection of the German tradition in fiction after the Second World War, a many-facetted confrontation with German history and organized amnesia that has continued into the present. Works by Koeppen, Grass, Johnson, Bernhard, Handke, Bachmann, Seghers, Treichel, Sebald, and others. Usually offered every year. Will be offered in the spring of 2003.
Mr. Dowden

Italian

IECS 135a Shifting Grounds: Social Change in Italian Fiction and Film
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English with readings in English translation.
Charts various aspects of social change in Italian society and culture through close readings and discussions of literary and cinematic texts by Manzoni, Verga, Pirandello Silone, Morante, Calvino, Rossellini, de Sica, Fellini, Pasolini, and Bertolucci, among others. Usually offered every fourth year. Last offered in the spring of 1999.
Mr. Mandrell

IECS 140a Dante's Divine Comedy
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English with readings in English translation.
A close study of the entire poem--Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso--as a symbolic vision of reality reflecting the culture and thought--political, philosophical, theological--of the Middle Ages. Readings will include two minor works, the Vita Nuova and World Government. Usually offered every second year. Last offered in the fall of 2001.
Mr. Lansing

IECS 150a Jewish Identity and Italian Culture
[ hum ]
Aims to discuss Jewish identity in contemporary Italian culture and provide an overview of the formation and transformation of the Jewish Italian community. Students read prose, poetry, essays, and articles, as well as view films that address issues of religious and national identity. Authors include Giorgio Bassani, Primo Levi, Rosetta Loy, among others. Special one-time offering. Will be offered in the spring of 2003.
Mr. Parussa

Russian
RECS 130a Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English with readings in Russian and in English translation.
A comprehensive survey of the major writers and themes of the 19th century including Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, and others. Usually offered every second year. Last offered in the fall of 2001.

Staff

RECS 131a Twentieth-Century Russian Literature
[ hum ]
A comprehensive survey of the major works and authors of the Soviet and post-soviet eras. Readings include works by Bulgakov, Pasternak, Akhmatova, Solzhenitsyn, and Terts. The final portion of the course considers literature emerging in the post-Soviet era. Usually offered every second year. Will be offered in the fall of 2002.
Mr. Swensen

RECS 134b Chekhov
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English with readings in Russian and in English translation.
Offers a detailed investigation of the evolution of Chekhov's art, emphasizing the thematic and structural aspects of Chekhov's works. Attention paid to methods of characterization, use of detail, narrative technique, and the roles into which he casts his audience. Usually offered every third year. Last offered in the fall of 2000.
Ms. Miller

RECS 135a The Short Story in Russia
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English with readings in Russian and in English translation.
Focuses on the great tradition of the short story in Russia. This genre has always invited stylistic and narrative experimentation, as well as being a vehicle for the striking, if brief expression of complex social, religious, and philosophical themes. Usually offered every second year. Will be offered in the fall of 2002.
Ms. Miller

RECS 137a Women in Russian Literature
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English with readings in Russian and in English translation.
Examines questions of female representation and identity, and of female authorship. Readings include portrayals of women by male and female authors. Usually offered every second year. Last offered in the spring of 2002.
Ms. Miller

RECS 143b History of Russian and Soviet Film
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English with readings in Russian and in English translation.
A history of the development of Russian/Soviet film from the 1890s to the present. The course is conducted as a lecture course, but with considerable emphasis on the viewing and critique of many of the films discussed, in whole, or in some instances in part. Usually offered every third year. Last offered in the spring of 1999.
Ms. Miller

RECS 146a Dostoevsky
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English with readings in Russian and in English translation.
A comprehensive survey of Dostoevsky's life and works, with special emphasis on the major novels. Usually offered every third year. Last offered in the spring of 1999.
Ms. Miller

RECS 147b Tolstoy
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English with readings in Russian and in English translation.
Studies the major short stories and novels of Leo Tolstoy against the backdrop of 19th-century history and with reference to 20th-century critical theory. Usually offered every second year. Last offered in the fall of 2000.
Mr. Swensen

RECS 148a Russian Drama
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English with readings in Russian and in English translation. This course may not be repeated for credit by students who have taken RUS 148a and RUS 148b in previous years.
Examines the rich tradition of Russian drama and theater. Readings will include works from the 19th and 20th centuries with concentrated study of Chekhov and works by Pushkin, Gogol, Gorky, Mayakovsky, and others. Usually offered every second year. Last offered in the fall of 2001.
Mr. Swensen

RECS 149b Russian Literature, Art, Film, and Theater 1900-30
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English with readings in Russian and in English translation.
Focuses on the three decades from 1900 to 1930 and their various artistic movements as reflected in literature, painting, and theater. Explores the interrelationships between artistic movements and the political scene. Usually offered every second year. Last offered in the spring of 2002.
Staff

RECS 154a Nabokov
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English with readings in Russian and in English translation.
A concentrated study of Vladimir Nabokov, the most noted Russian author living in emigration and one of the most influential novelists of the 20th century. Study focuses on the novels, but readings will also include lectures and autobiography. Usually offered every second year. Last offered in the spring of 2001.
Mr. Swensen

RECS 155a From Witches to Wood Spirits: Russian Culture to 1800
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English with readings in Russian and in English translation.
Explores the relationship of culture to society and religion in Russia through the 18th century. Examines the interactions of diverse forms of artistic expression, presenting examples from visual art, music, architecture, and popular culture, giving special attention to Russia's rich folk heritage. Usually offered every second year. Will be offered in the fall of 2002.
Ms. Chevalier

Spanish

SECS 150a Golden Age Drama and Society
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English with readings in English translation.
The major works, comic and tragic, of Spain's 17th-century dramatists. We will consider Cervantes's brief witty farces; Tirso's creation of the "Don Juan" myth; Lope's palace and "peasant honor" plays; and Calderón's Baroque masterpieces, which culminate Spain's Golden Age. Usually offered every second year. Last offered in the spring of 2001.
Ms. Fox

SECS 169a Travel Writing and the Americas: Columbus's Legacy
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English with readings in English translation.
The course's purpose is to familiarize the student with the vicissitudes of the figure of Christopher Columbus, in literature, selected historiographical works, and those texts that have come down to us as his. Usually offered every third year. Last offered in the fall of 2000.
Ms. Pérez

A Selected List of Courses

For comparative literature, consult the comparative literature offerings in this Bulletin; for English literature, consult the offerings under the Department of English and American Literature.

The following courses from the various departments associated with ECS represent, in most instances, a mere selection from among the total courses in that department that "count" toward the completion of the ECS major. For full descriptions consult the appropriate department. Be sure to consult the offerings under the Department of Theater Arts for ECS courses although they are not cross-listed. Check with the coordinator for a listing.

Fine Arts

FA 58b
High and Late Renaissance in Italy

FA 60a
Baroque in Italy and Spain

FA 70a
Paris/New York: Revolutions of Modernism

FA 71a
Modern Art and Modern Culture

FA 170b
Nineteenth-Century European Painting and Sculpture

History

HIST 52b
Europe from 1789 to the Present

HIST 132a
European Thought and Culture: Marlowe to Mill

HIST 132b
European Thought and Culture since Darwin

History of Ideas

HOID 101a
Thinking About Ethics with Socraties