An interdepartmental program in European Cultural Studies

Last updated: November 4, 2010 at 3:20 p.m.

Objectives

The European Cultural Studies Program (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.

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 ever-changing 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 school (in history, politics, English, and other fields), 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 the 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, Chair and Undergraduate Advising Head
(German, Russian, and Asian Languages and Literature)

Rudolph Binion
(History)

Dian Fox
(Romance Studies)

Jane Hale
(Romance Studies)

Gila Hayim
(Sociology)

Arthur Holmberg
(Theater Arts)

Edward Kaplan
(Romance Studies)

Jytte Klausen
(Politics)

Richard Lansing
(Romance Studies)

Robin Feuer Miller
(German, Russian, and Asian Languages and Literature)

Paul Morrison
(English and American Literature)

Antony Polonsky
(Near Eastern and Judaic Studies)

Michael Randall
(Romance Studies)

Jerry Samet
(Philosophy)

Nancy Scott
(Fine Arts)

Requirements for the Major

The major consists of ten semester courses (eleven, if the student elects to write a thesis):

A. ECS 100a or 100b (ECS 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 102a through COML 106b. Any COML offering is acceptable, however, 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 and 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 (for example, NEJS, anthropology) 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, Ms. Scott; history, Mr. Binion; philosophy, Mr. Samet; politics, Ms. Klausen; sociology, Ms. Hayim; theater arts, Mr. 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 Academic Services.

Special Note About Courses

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

HECS = Hispanic and European Cultural Studies

IECS = Italian and European Cultural Studies

RECS = Russian and European Cultural Studies

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.
Usually offered every year.
Staff

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

ECS 99d Senior Thesis
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 Proseminar: Modernism
[ hum wi ]
Explores the interrelationship of literature, music, painting, philosophy, and other arts in the era of high modernism. Works by Artaud, Baudelaire, Benjamin, Mann, Mahler, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Kandinsky, Schiele, Beckett, Brecht, Adorno, Sartre, Heidegger, and others. Usually offered every fall semester.
Mr. Dowden

ECS 100b European Cultural Studies Proseminar: Making of European Modernity
[ hum wi ]
Investigates how the paradigm of what we know as modernity came into being. We will look at the works of writers and philosophers such as Descartes, Aquinas, Dante, Ockham, Petrarch, Ficino, Rabelais, and Montaigne. Artwork from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance will be used to understand better what "the modern" means. Usually offered every spring semester.
Mr. Randall

German

GECS 100a German Literature, Music, and Film
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English with readings in English translation.
This seminar offers a basic look into the ways in which German music, literature, and film are intertwined--with one another and with non-German art. Beginning with Mozart's Don Giovanni and Goethe's Faust, students study some of the texts that are basic to both the German and the larger Western tradition. Also includes works by Beethoven, Schiller, Buchner, Kafka, Schoenberg, Mahler, Mann, Rilke, and Celan. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Dowden

GECS 118a Seduction and Enlightenment
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English with readings in English translation.
Explores the dialectic of reason and the irrational from the late eighteenth 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.
Ms. von Mering

GECS 119a From Goethe to Thoman Mann: The Emergence of German National Self-Consciousness
[ hum ]
Explores the emergence of Germanness in nineteenth century works and the parallel rise of the Jew as the German's antithetical doppelganger who can never be "German." Examine works by Goethe, Hoffmann, Kleist, Heine, Buchner, Fontane, Nietzsche, and Mann. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Klingerstein

GECS 130b The Princess and the Golem: Fairy Tales
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English.
An introduction to the genre of fairy tale in German literature, focusing especially on the narratives collected by Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, but also exploring the Kunstmärchen and calendar stories composed by German writers from Romanticism into the twentieth century. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. von Mering

GECS 150a From Rapunzel to Riefenstahl: Real and Imaginary Women in German Culture
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English with readings in English translation.
Exploring German cultural representations of women and real women's responses. From fairy-tale princess to Nazi filmmaker, from eighteenth-century infanticide to twentieth-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.
Ms. von Mering

GECS 155a Modern German Jewish History
[ hum ]
Course to be taught at Brandeis summer program in Berlin.
Study of Germany and the European Jews from the period of emancipation in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century to the present. Examines the role of German Jews in German politics, economic life, and culture; the rise of anti-Semitism in the nineteenth century; the Nazi government's anti-Jewish policies to the postwar period. Usually offered every year.
Ms. von Mering

GECS 160a In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Global Encounters
[ hum ]
Traces the experience of German exiles in different parts of the world. Addresses issues of identity, linguistic displacement, problems of integration, (post) colonial encounters, anti-Semitism and xenophobia, nostalgia, and the experience of those who eventually returned to Germany. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. von Mering

GECS 167a German Cinema: Vamps and Angels
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English with readings in English translation.
From silent film to Leni Riefenstahl and Nazi cinema, from postwar cinema in the East and West to new German film after unification, this course traces aesthetic strategies, reflections on history, memory, subjectivity, and political, cultural, and film-historical contexts with an emphasis on gender issues. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. von Mering

GECS 170a Viennese Modernism, 1890-1938
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English with readings in English translation.
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.
Mr. Dowden

GECS 180b European Modernism and the German Novel
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English with readings in English translation.
A study of selected novelists writing after Nietzsche and before the end of World War II. Explores the culture, concept, and development of European modernism in works by Broch, Canetti, Döblin, Jünger, Kafka, Mann, Musil, Rilke, and Roth. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Dowden

GECS 182a Franz Kafka
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English.
A detailed exploration of Kafka's works, life, and thought. Emphasis is given to his place in the larger scheme of literary modernism. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Dowden

GECS 185b Contemporary German Fiction
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English with readings in English translation.
Explores the postmodernist rejection of the German tradition in fiction after World War II, a multifaceted 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.
Mr. Dowden

GECS 186b German Opera and Pathology
[ hum ]
Conducted in English. No prior knowledge of music or opera is required.
Examines a number of German operas and explores their relationship to discussions about disease and degeneracy, including sexology and psychoanalysis, and to the modernist aesthetics of Central Europe. What is it about opera that lends itself to representations of "evil," illness, and excess? Works by Wagner, Richard Strauss, Schoenberg, Hindemith, Berg, Freud, Kleist, Hofmannsthal. Special one-time offering, spring 2009.
Ms. Duncan

GECS 187b Seeking Justice: Jews and Germans
[ hum ]
Since WWII the relationship between Jews and Germans has been defined by the Holocaust. How could a modern civilized nation like Germany perpetrate the Nazi crimes? What led to the Nazi regime and how have Jews and Germans tried to overcome a history of injustice since 1945? We will investigate the past two hundred years of this relationship by looking at some of the most influential texts and films that address the question of seeking justice. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. von Mering

GECS 190b German Masterworks
[ hum ]
Offers students the opportunity to immerse themselves in the intensely detailed study of a single masterpiece of pivotal importance. Any one of the following works, but only one, is selected for study in a given semester: Goethe's Faust (parts I and II); Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra; Kafka's Castle; Musil's Man Without Qualities; Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus; Walter Benjamin's Origin of German Tragic Drama; Celan's Sprachgitter. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Dowden

Italian

IECS 140a Dante's Divine Comedy
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English with readings in English
translation.
A close study of Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso as a symbolic vision of reality reflecting the culture and the political, philosophical, and theological thought of the Middle Ages. Readings to include the Vita Nuova, the Aeneid (Bk. 6), and selections from the Bible, Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, and St. Thomas' Summa Theologicae. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Lansing

Russian

RECS 130a The Russian Novel
[ hum wi ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English. Students may choose to do readings either in English translation or in Russian.
A comprehensive survey of the major writers and themes of the nineteenth century including Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, and others. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Miller

RECS 131a The Twentieth-Century Russian Novel
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English. Students may choose to do readings either in English translation or in Russian.
An introduction to the major novels of the modernist, Soviet, and post-Soviet eras, including the emigration, such as those by Sologub, Bely, Olesha, Bulgakov, Pasternak, Nabokov, Solzhenitsyn, Erofeev, and Pelevin. Also includes some short stories. Usually offered every fourth year.
Mr. Powelstock

RECS 134b Chekhov
[ hum wi ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English. Students may choose to do readings either in English translation or in Russian.
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 second year.
Ms. Miller

RECS 135a The Short Story in Russia
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English. Students may choose to do readings either in English translation or in Russian.
Focuses on the great tradition of the short story as practiced by Russian and Russian Jewish writers and the connection and divisions among them. This genre invites extreme stylistic and narrative experimentation ranging from the comic to the tragic, as well as being a vehicle for striking expressions of complex social, philosophical, and religious themes. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Miller

RECS 137a Women in Russian Literature
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English. Students may choose to do readings either in English translation or in Russian.
Examines questions of female representation and identity and of female authorship. Readings include portrayals of women by men and women authors. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

RECS 146a Dostoevsky: Gods and Monsters
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English. Students may choose to do readings either in English translation or in Russian.
A comprehensive survey of Dostoevsky's life and works, with special emphasis on the major novels. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Miller

RECS 147b Tolstoy: Freedom, Chance, and Necessity
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English. Students may choose to do readings either in English translation or in Russian.
Studies the major short stories and novels of Leo Tolstoy against the backdrop of nineteenth-century history and with reference to twentieth-century critical theory. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Miller

RECS 148a Russian Drama: Text and Performance
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English. Students may choose to do readings either in English translation or in Russian.
Examines the rich tradition of Russian drama and theater. Readings include masterpieces of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including those by Chekhov, Pushkin, Gogol, Ostrovsky, Mayakovsky, Erdman, and others. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Powelstock

RECS 149b Russian Modernism in: Culture and Arts
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English. Students may choose to do readings either in English translation or in Russian.
An interdisciplinary immersion in the period, emphasizing the connections between historical and artistic trends and employing prominent theories of culture. Focuses on major figures, works, and events in film, literature, the performing and visual arts, and political, philosophical, and religious thought. Usually offered every fourth year.
Mr. Powelstock

RECS 150a Russian and Soviet Cinema
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English. Readings in English.
Examines the Russian/Soviet cinematic tradition from the silent era to today, with special attention to cultural context and visual elements. Film masterpieces directed by Bauer, Eisenstein, Vertov, Parajanov, Tarkovsky, Mikhalkov, and others. Weekly screenings. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Powelstock

RECS 154a The Art of Vladimir Nabokov
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English. Readings in English.
A concentrated study of Vladimir Nabokov, the most noted Russian author living in emigration and one of the most influential novelists of the twentieth century. Focuses on the major Russian- and English-language novels. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Powelstock

Spanish

HECS 150a Golden Age Drama and Society
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English with readings in English translation.
Major works, comic and tragic, of Spain's seventeenth-century dramatists. Texts may include 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.
Ms. Fox

HECS 169a Travel Writing and the Americas: Columbus's Legacy
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English with readings in English translation.
Following the arrival of Columbus, the continent later known as America engaged with other continents in a mutual process of cultural, historical, geographical, and economic representation. The development of some of those representations is explored, beginning with travel writing and ending with recent images of the encounter. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

Cross-Listed in European Cultural Studies

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.

CLAS 100a Survey of Greek History: Bronze Age to 323 BCE
[ hum ]
Surveys the political and social development of the Greek city-states from Bronze Age origins to the death of Alexander. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Walker

CLAS 134b The Art and Archaeology of Ancient Rome
[ ca hum ]
This is an experiential learning course. Surveys the art and architecture of the ancient Romans from the eighth century BCE to the end of the empire in Sicily, mainland Italy (with focus on Rome, Ostia, Pompeii, and Herculaneum), and in the Roman provinces. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Koloski-Ostrow

CLAS 135a The Silk Road: China Looks West, the Mediterranean Looks East
[ hum nw ]
This course is an introduction to the Silk Road and its role as a facilitator of cross-cultural contacts. It covers a wide variety of topics ranging from trade and politics to religion and language to art and archaeology. In addition to the ancient Chinese, the Romans, and Greeks, we also consider the Mongols, Arabs, and Persians. Special one-time offering, spring 2011.
Mr. Koh

CLAS 151a Greece, Rome, Myth, and the Movies
[ hum ]
Explore classical mythology through several key texts to demonstrate the strong connections between antiquity and out own society, especially as revealed in an array of modern cinematic experiments. Charts the transformation of these myths for our own cultural needs. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Koloski-Ostrow

CLAS 170a Classical Mythology
[ hum ]
An introduction to Greek and Roman mythology. Considers ancient song cultures, and the relationship between myth, drama, and religion. Also explores visual representations of myth. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Muellner

ENG 1a Introduction to Literary Studies
[ hum wi ]
This course is designed to introduce students to basic skills and concepts needed for the study of Anglophone literature and culture. These include skills in close reading; identification and differentiation of major literary styles and periods; knowledge of basic critical terms; definition of genres. Usually offered every semester.
Staff

ENG 11a Introduction to Literary Method
[ hum ]
The course's purpose is to train students in the critical reading of literary texts. There will be frequent assignments of writing that involve literary analysis. Multiple sections. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

ENG 17b Poetry and Social Crisis: Twentieth-Century British Poetry
[ hum ]
An exploration of poetry in times of extreme social change, world war, and mass culture in Britain and the Commonwealth. Hardy, Yeats, Eliot, Larkin, Owen, Heaney, Walcott, Hill, LK Johnson, and others. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Sherman

ENG 18a Irish Literature, from the Peasantry to the Pogues
[ hum ]
Explores Irish poetry, fiction, drama, and film in English. Begins with the tradition's roots among subjugated peasants and Anglo-Irish aristocracy and ends in the modern post-colonial state. Authors include Swift, Yeats, Wilde, Bowen, Joyce, O'Brien, and Heaney. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Plotz

ENG 45b Romanticism: Gods, Nature, Lonliness, Dreams
[ hum ]
Surveys Romantic-period literature covering novels, poetry and non-fiction prose. Novels: Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights. Poetry and non-fiction prose by Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Byron, Keats, Burke, Wollstonecraft, Hazlitt and DeQuincey. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Quinney

ENG 50a Love Poetry from Sappho to Neruda
[ hum ]
This course explores the relationship between love and poetry. Starts with the ancient Greek poet Sappho and proceeds through the centuries, reading lyrics by Catullus, Ovid, Propertius, Petrarch, Dante, Shakespeare, Donne, Rossetti, and others. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Targoff

ENG 64b From Libertinism to Sensibility: Pleasure and the Theater, 1660-1800
[ hum wi ]
Investigates the exchange between performance texts and contemporaneous discussions of class, nationality, and political party. Emphasizes the emergence of modern gender and sexual roles and the impact of the first professional women actors. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. King

ENG 68a The Political Novel
[ hum wi ]
How do novels change and how are they changed by politics? From the satires of Eastern Europe (Kafka and Milan Kundera, Koestler's Darkness at Noon) to fiery American calls to action on racial issues (Uncle Tom's Cabin and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man); from utopia to postcolonial disaster (Things Fall Apart). Film screenings included. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Plotz

ENG 73a Witchcraft and Magic in the Renaissance
[ hum ]
Focuses on the representation of witches, wizards, devils, and magicians in texts by Shakespeare, Marlow, and others. Historical accounts of witchcraft trials in England and Scotland are read and several films dramatizing these trials are viewed. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Targoff

ENG 78a Virginia Woolf
[ hum ]
An immersion in Woolf's astonishing body of writing. How did her fiction and non-fiction re-imagine the self in the changing social worlds of the early twentieth century? How did her experiments with narrative open new understandings of gender, sexuality, war, the knowing subject, the dimensions of space and time> A chronological survey of her diverse forms of writing that energized, all at once, modernist aesthetics, feminist politics, and philosophical speculation. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Sherman

ENG 80b The Tale
[ hum ]
The oral form of the story; also a non-realist modern literary genre. Students study and create myths, ballads, folktales, ritual drama, and ethnographic approaches to the transmission of tales, including Genesis, Metamorphosis, fairy tales, pre-Columbian myths, Poe, Angela Carter. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Campbell

ENG 83b The Symphony of Health: Medicine, Music and early Modern Bodies
[ hum ]
Cosmos and body were once thought made of earth, air, fire, and water and structured by music. We explore how such a body might experience such a world through classical philosophy, kabbalah, medicine, Hildegard v.Bingen, Chaucer, Arabic, and Renaissance music. Special one-time offering, spring 2011.
Mr. Albin

ENG 104a Eighteenth-Century British Poetry, from Dryden to Blake
[ hum ]
The major British poets of the eighteenth century, from Dryden to Blake, with an emphasis on the expressive experiments in form and content which set the terms and showed the possibilities available to all subsequent English poetry. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Flesch

ENG 111a How Fiction Works: Narrative in Theory and Practice
[ hum ]
We will explore the forms and functions of fictional narrative, emphasizing the workings of plot, narration, character, time and point of view, and studying the variety of effects produced by the diverse, historically shifting practices of short stories and novels. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Lanser

ENG 148b Me, Myself, and I: The Theme of Self-Conflict
[ hum ]
Study of the images of inner division in literary and philosophical texts, from ancient to modern. Readings include: Plato, Gnostics, Augustine, Rousseau, Wordsworth, Shelley, Yeats, Freud, and Lacan. Special one-time offering, spring 2009.
Ms. Quinney

ENG/HIST 118b London from Restoration to Regency: People, Culture, City
[ hum ss ]
Sponsored by the Mandel Center for the Humanities as part of its thematic focus on 'The Human and the Inhuman'.
Explores the history and culture of London from the Great Plague of 1665 to the onset of the industrial age. Topics include the natural and built environments, the city's changing population, and its literary, visual, and musical cultures. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Kamensky and Ms. Lanser

FA 17a History of Art I: From Antiquity to the Middle Ages
[ ca ]
A survey of major styles in architecture, sculpture, and painting from prehistoric times to the Gothic cathedral. Usually offered every year.
Mr. McClendon

FA 40b The Formation of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Art
[ ca ]
The origins and development of the synagogue, church, mosque, and related arts in the first millennium CE. Emphasis on the debate among these three great religions about the proper form and function of art and architecture. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. McClendon

FA 51a Art of the Early Renaissance in Italy
[ ca ]
Major painters, sculptors, and architects in Rome, Florence, and Venice from Masaccio to Leonardo da Vinci. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Unglaub

FA 58b High and Late Renaissance in Italy
[ ca ]
A study of sixteenth-century painting, sculpture, and architecture from Leonardo da Vinci to Tintoretto. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Unglaub

FA 60a Baroque in Italy and Spain
[ ca ]
The artistic spectacle of papal Rome and Hapsburg Spain is explored. The works of Caravaggio, Bernini, and Velazquez capture the contradictions of the age: sensuality/spirituality, ecstasy/piety, degradation/deliverance, realism/idealism, exuberance/restraint, and statecraft/propaganda. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Unglaub

FA 61b Inventing Tradition: Women as Artists, Women as Art
[ ca ]
The role of women in the history of art, as creators of art, and as the subject of it. Issues of gender and representation will be discussed, using the lives and art of women from the Renaissance to contemporary periods. Usually offered every fourth year.
Ms. Ankori

FA 63a The Age of Rubens and Rembrandt
[ ca wi ]
Explores the major figures of seventeenth-century painting in the Netherlands and Flanders: Rubens, Van Dyck, Rembrandt, and Vermeer. During this time, the ideal of Renaissance painter/courtier gives way to the birth of the modern artist in an open market, revolutionizing the subjects, themes, and styles of painting. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Unglaub

FA 70a Paris/New York: Revolutions of Modernism
[ ca ]
A chronological survey of painting and sculpture from the French Revolution to World War II. Emphasis on the rise of modernism with Manet and the impressionists, Picasso and the language of cubism, and the abstract expressionist generation in America. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Scott

FA 71a Modern Art and Modern Culture
[ ca ]
A thematic study of modernism in twentieth-century painting and sculpture, emphasizing three trends: primitivism, spiritualism, and the redefinition of reality. Individual artists and art movements will be examined in the context of literature, politics, and aesthetic theory. Artists include Picasso, Matisse, Kandinsky, and Duchamp. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Kalb

FA 79a Modernism Elsewhere
[ ca nw ]
Explores major architectural developments from the late 19th to the 21st century outside the West. While focused on the territories between the India Subcontinent and North Africa, it examines Western colonial politics of center-periphery in creating architectural forms, discourses, and practices in the postcolonial world. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Grigor

FA 118b Drawing upon Literature
[ ca hum ]
Prerequisite: A studio art course taught at Brandeis. Studio fee: $75 per semester.
An interdisciplinary team-taught course bringing together the practice of studio art and the study of literature. Students use Russian fiction and poetry (and some critical theory) as source material for the creation of visual images: drawings in various media, watercolors, prints, and photographs. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Lichtman and Ms. Miller

FA 122a Modern Architecture
[ ca ]
Explores major architectural developments from the 19th and to the 21st century. While tracing European and American movements, links are made to the architectural implications of Western ambitions worldwide and the role architecture played in the politics of colonialism. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Grigor

FA 170b Nineteenth-Century European Painting and Sculpture
[ ca ]
A survey of movements in painting and sculpture from the French Revolution through the periods of romanticism, realism, and impressionism. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Scott

FA 173b Picasso and Matisse
[ ca ]
Examines the major contributions of all periods of Picasso's career, with special focus on the development of Cubism, counterbalanced with the color expression of Matisse and the Fauves. The larger circle of artists, poets, and patrons associated with both these masters--from Juan Gris, Fernand Leger, and especially Georges Braque, to Gertrude Stein and Guillaume Apollinaire--forms the core subject matter. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Scott

FA 177b Twentieth-Century European Art and Architecture in Berlin
[ ca ]
Course to be taught at Brandeis summer program in Berlin.
Survey and analysis of the most important trends in twentieth-century German and European art and architecture with an emphasis on the modernist period. Presented within their respective historical contexts with special emphasis on the role of Berlin. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

FA 192a Studies in Modern Art
[ ca ]
Topics may vary from year to year; the course may be repeated for credit.
Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Ankori, Mr. Kalb, or Ms. Scott

FA 197b Methods and Approaches in the History of Art
[ ca wi ]
Usually offered every year.
Mr. McClendon

FREN 147a Jewish Identities in France since 1945
[ hum wi ]
Prerequisite: FREN 106 or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.
After the Holocaust, French thinkers such as Sartre, Levinas, and Memmi provided a foundation for reconstructing Jewish life. Topics include assimilation, Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews, Muslim, black, and Jewish identity, the role of women, secularism, ethics, and religious faith. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Kaplan.

HIST 52b Europe from 1789 to the Present
[ ss ]
Analytical introduction to modern European history considering such issues as the French Revolution, economic and social modernization and the Industrial Revolution, the evolution of modern nationalism, imperialism and socialism, development of the world market, imperialism, diplomacy and war in the twentieth century, Bolshevism and the decline of liberalism, modern totalitarianism, World War II, decolonization, the Cold War, the revival of Europe, and the revolutions of 1989. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Jankowski

HIST 103a Roman History to 455 CE
[ hum ss ]
Survey of Roman history from the early republic through the decline of the empire. Covers the political history of the Roman state and the major social, economic, and religious changes of the period. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Kapelle

HIST 122a Madness and Medicine in the Modern Age
[ ss ]
Explores the evolution of Western concepts of insanity and medicine from the 18th century to the present. Includes developments in psychiatry, sociology of science, medicine and cultural history as well as recent interest in questions of gender and race. Special one-time offering, spring 2011.
Mr. Wirth

HIST 131a Hitler's Europe in Film
[ ss ]
Takes a critical look as how Hitler's Europe has been represented and misrepresented since its time by documentary and entertainment films of different countries beginning with Germany itself. Movies, individual reports, discussions, and a littler reading. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Kelikian

HIST 132a European Thought and Culture: Marlowe to Mill
[ ss ]
Main themes and issues, modes and moods, in philosophy and the sciences, literature and the arts, from the skeptical crisis of the late sixteenth century to the Romantic upheaval of the early nineteenth century. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Binion

HIST 132b European Thought and Culture since Darwin
[ ss ]
Main themes and issues, modes and moods, in philosophy and the sciences, literature and the arts, from mid-nineteenth-century realism to late twentieth-century unrealism. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Binion

HIST 133b Rights and Revolutions: History of Natural Rights
[ ss ]
An examination of the doctrine of national rights, its significance in the contemporary world, its historical development, and its role in revolutionary politics. The English and French Declarations of 1689, 1776, and 1789 will be compared and contrasted. Usually offered every second or third year.
Mr. Hulliung

HUM 10a The Western Canon
[ hum ]
Foundational texts of the Western canon: the Bible, Homer, Vergil, and Dante. Thematic emphases and supplementary texts vary from year to year.
Staff

HUM 125a Topics in the Humanities
[ hum ]
An interdisciplinary seminar on a topic of major significance in the humanities; the course content and instructor vary from year to year; may be repeated for credit, with instructor's permission. Usually offered every third year.
Staff

MUS 42a The Music of Johann Sebastian Bach
[ ca ]
Open to music majors and non-majors.
The originality and magnitude of Bach's achievement will be measured in reference to the musical and cultural traditions he inherited. Representative works for each genre will be discussed to uncover the elements of Bach's individual style and the nature of his genius. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Chafe

MUS 45a Beethoven
[ ca ]
Open to music majors and non-majors.
A study of the most influential musician in the history of Western civilization. Although attention is given to his place in society, emphasis falls on an examination of representative works drawn from the symphonies, concertos, chamber music, and solo piano works. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Keiler

MUS 56b Romanticism and Music
[ ca ]
Open to music majors and non-majors.
The expressive and stylistic dimensions of romanticism as a musical movement in the nineteenth century. Topics include Wagnerian music drama, the relation of poetry to music in the works of Schumann, Berlioz, and Liszt, and roots of romanticism in Beethoven's music as well as its aftermath and flowering in the twentieth century. Usually offered every fourth year.
Mr. Chafe

MUS 57a Music and Culture: From Romanticism to the Modern Era
[ ca ]
Open to music majors and non-majors.
Beginning with a consideration of the meaning of romanticism and its manifestation in the styles of several major composers, the course will center on the various composers and aesthetic movements of the period before World War I. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Chafe

MUS 65a Music, the Arts, and Ideas in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna
[ ca ]
Open to music majors and non-majors.
An exploration of the shift from romanticism to modernism in the culture of fin-de-siècle Vienna. Particular attention given to developments in music (Mahler, Schoenberg, Berg), art (Klimt, Schiele, Kokoschka), literature (Kraus, Schnitzler), and the accompanying social and political conditions (rising anti-Semitism).
Staff

NEJS 154a World Without God: Theories of Secularization
[ hum ]
What is secularization? What does it mean to describe the modern world as wholly secular or independent of any prior religious foundations of beliefs? Is modern political identical intelligible apart from religion? Or does politics remain a translation of religious concepts and is all politics therefore a mode of political theology? This advanced undergraduate course surveys various debates concerning the historical process and philosophical-political significance of secularization, most especially the secularization of political norms. Concentrates on the history of European thought from the 17th century to the 20th century, with special reference to the encounter between Judaism and Christianity and modes of modern rationalist criticism. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Sheppard

NEJS 171a Modern Jewish Literatures: Text, Image and Context
[ hum wi ]
Introduces important works of modern Jewish literature and film. Taking a comparative approach, it addresses major themes in contemporary Jewish culture, interrogates the "Jewishness" of the works and considers issues of language, poetics, and culture significant to Jewish identity. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Kellman

PHIL 113b Aesthetics: Painting, Photography, and Film
[ ca hum wi ]
Explores representation in painting, photography, and film by studying painters Rembrandt, Velázquez, and Vermeer, as well as later works by Manet, Degas, Cézanne, and Picasso; photographers Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Edward Weston, Walker Evans, Alfred Stieglitz, and Diane Arbus; and filmmakers Renoir and Hitchcock. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Teuber

PHIL 161a Plato
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: PHIL 1a or permission of the instructor.
An introduction to Plato's thought through an intensive reading of several major dialogues. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Yourgrau

PHIL 166a David Hume
[ hum ]
An in-depth examination on the philosophical ideas of the eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher David Hume, covering his views in metaphysics and epistemology, his philosophy of mind, his moral and political philosophy, and his philosophy of religion. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Marusic

PHIL 179a God, Man, and World: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: One course in philosophy.
The subject of this course is Rationalism, the seventeenth-century European philosophical movement that maintains the supremacy of "pure reason" as a means of obtaining substantial truths about the world. This course analyzes key writings of the three most influential rationalist thinkers of this period, attempting to elucidate several themes that not only characterize these writers as rationalists, but which continue to inspire philosophers and others who attempt to come to terms with the nature of the world and human existence. Students will read substantial portions of historically significant original works are, dissect and criticize them, consider some of the respected secondary literature, and also consider their relevance to contemporary philosophy. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Samet

PHIL 238a Metaphysics
May not be repeated for credit by students who have taken PHIL 138a in previous years.
Metaphysics is an attempt to describe in a general way the nature of reality and how people fit into the scheme of things. Topics vary from year to year but may include truth, ontology, necessity, free will, causality, temporal passage, and identity. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Berger, Mr. Greenberg, or Mr. Hirsch

POL 11b Introduction to Comparative Government: Europe
[ ss ]
Open to first-year students.
Introduction to basic concepts in comparative politics through study of the government and politics of European democracies. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Burg or Ms. Klausen

POL 156b West European Political Systems
[ ss ]
The comparative politics of Western Europe. Focuses on the development of political parties and social movements in Britain, France, and Germany--particularly since 1945--to determine how they affect policies and the citizenry's participation in modern democracies. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Klausen

POL 194a Politics and the Novel
[ ss ]
Selected works of fiction as sources of political ideas and pictures of political and social life. How modern fiction helps us understand social change, societies in transition and decay, revolution, law, bureaucracy, and ethnicity. Authors such as Kafka, Conrad, Borges, Dostoevsky, Ford Madox Ford, Babel, Greene, Malraux, and Carpenter. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Levin

SOC 10b Introduction to Sociological Theory
[ ss ]
Introduces the student to the foundations of sociological and social psychological explanatory systems. Analyzes the major ideas of classical and modern authors and their competing approaches and methodologies--Durkheim, Weber, Mead, Du Bois, Goffman, Marcuse, Haraway, Barrett, Foucault, and others. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Hayim

SOC 141a Marx and Freud
[ ss ]
Examines Marxian and Freudian analyses of human nature, human potential, social stability, conflict, consciousness, social class, and change. Includes attempts to combine the two approaches. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Fellman

SOC 164a Existential Sociology
[ ss ]
Introduces existential themes in relation to the discipline of sociology and social psychology and evaluates selected theories on human nature, identity and interaction, individual freedom and social ethics, and the existential theory of agency and action. De Beauvoir, Mead, Sartre, Goffman, Kierkegaard, Elizabeth Beck, Taylor, and others will be considered. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Hayim

THA 106a British, Irish, and Postcolonial Theater
[ ca wi ]
An exploration of the playwrights, political struggles, and aesthetic movements that shaped the evolution of British, Irish, and post-colonial drama in the twentieth century. Attention paid to race, class, gender, sexuality, and theater in performance. Playwrights include: Shaw, Yeats, Synge, O'Casey, Orton, and Churchill. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Holmberg