A graduate program in Cultural Production

Last updated: August 28, 2009 at 11:15 a.m.

Objectives

The graduate program in cultural production, leading to the MA degree, provides students with theoretical perspectives and practical experience for analyzing the dynamic intersections of art, imagination, technology, politics, and public spheres. The courses in the program investigate how historical, expressive, and aesthetic representations are generated, circulated, and interpreted in both local and global contexts. Incorporating humanistic, artistic, and social scientific perspectives, the program permits students to explore their varied interests in, such topics as, ethnic festivals, verbal arts, social memory, aesthetic creativity, museum exhibitions, public history, cultural heritage, historical preservation, archival documentation, digital technologies, and visual media. In addition to mastering analytical and comparative skills necessary for the study of cultural forms and their public spheres, students gain practical expertise, through credit-earning internships, in developing and coordinating cultural productions ranging from museum installations and heritage festivals to civic memorials and historical archives.
Students may complete the program’s degree requirements of eight courses in two semesters; however, it is expected that many students will enroll part-time, while keeping jobs at local-area institutions and organizations. Enrollment will also be open on a course-by-course basis for interested professionals or professionals-in-training.

How to Be Admitted to the Graduate Program

The general requirements for admission to the Graduate School, given in an earlier section of this Bulletin, apply to candidates for admission to this area of study. Candidates must also submit a personal statement that discusses their reasons for applying for this MA, and their academic training, career objectives, relevant experience, and current institutional affiliation (if any). A writing sample or creative portfolio, as well as two letters of recommendation, are also required. Students are encouraged, though not required, to visit the campus and to talk to the director and other members of the faculty committee.

Faculty Executive Committee

Mark Auslander, Director
(Anthropology)

Thomas King
(English and American Literature)

Ellen Smith
(Near Eastern and Judaic Studies)

Andreas Teuber
(Philosophy)

Faculty

Mark Auslander, Director
(Anthropology)

Aliyyah Abdur-Rahman
(English and American Literature)

Mary Baine Campbell
(English and American Literature)

Cynthia Cohen
(Coexistence and Conflict)

Judith Eissenberg
(Music)

Tory Fair
(Fine Arts)

Jane Hale
(Romance Studies)

Paul Jankowski
(History)

Peter Kalb
(Fine Arts)

Allan Keiler
(Music)

Thomas King
(English and American Literature)

Anne Koloski-Ostrow
(Classical Studies)

James Mandrell
(Romance Studies)

Charles McClendon
(Fine Arts)

Laura J. Miller
(Sociology)

Richard Parmentier
(Anthropology)

John Plotz
(English and American Literature)

Jonathan Sarna
(Hornstein Jewish Professional Leadership Program; Near Eastern and Judaic Studies)

Ellen Schattschneider
(Anthropology)

Nancy Scott
(Fine Arts)

Harleen Singh
(German, Russian, and Asian Languages and Literature; Women’s and Gender Studies)

Ellen Smith
(Near Eastern and Judaic Studies)

Faith Smith
(English and American Literature; African and Afro-American Studies)

Andreas Teuber
(Philosophy)

Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts

Program of Study

This graduate program involves a minimum of one academic year in residence at Brandeis in which students complete eight semester courses, including an internship course and a master’s research paper course.

In consultation with the director, each entering student selects an area of concentration from one of the following three clusters:

Cluster 1: Performance: Object/Body/Place
Courses in performance theory, theater, discursive practice, embodiment, mythopoesis, adornment, and the city as lived text.

Cluster 2: Visuality: Image/Media/Signs
Courses in comparative experiences of vision, cinema, television, digital and other new media, Internet studies, materiality, photography, advertising, and mass communications. 

Cluster 3: Memory: Museums/Preservation/Archives
Courses in historical consciousness, the politics and poetics of museums and memorials, traumatic memory, historical methods, artifact conservation, documentation, and archival practice.

Students take eight semester courses, including:

A. CP 201a (Making Culture: Theory and Practice)

B. CP 202b (Internship in Cultural Production)

C. CP 203a (Directed Research in Cultural Production for MA Students)

D. Two courses in the student’s concentration cluster, one of which is identified as a core course in that cluster.

E. Two elective courses, one from each of the other two clusters.

F. One additional course from the program’s electives or another Brandeis course approved by the director.

Residence Requirement
The residence requirement for this program is one year of full-time study.

Language Requirement
There is no foreign language requirement for the master's degree.

Master's Thesis
Under exceptional circumstances, a student may petition to the director of the program for permission to write a master's thesis (in contrast to the normally expected master's paper.) It is expected that the thesis will be in the seventy-five to one hundred page range; the thesis must involve independent research and represent an original scholarly contribution. A two- to three-page written proposal to write a thesis, signed by the student's adviser, should be submitted to the director within the first four weeks of the semester in which the student intends to graduate. The completed thesis will be evaluated by two faculty members, selected by the director in consultation with the student. The master’s thesis must be deposited electronically to the Robert D. Farber University Archives at Brandeis.

Final Project
A student normally writes a master's research paper. The master’s research paper must involve substantial research by the student and should be thirty-five to forty-five pages long. The paper should be of professional quality. The paper may have been written previously for a Brandeis cultural production course; normally students will undertake substantial revisions on the paper before it is approved. The paper must be submitted to, and approved by, the student’s MA adviser and one other faculty member (to be agreed upon by the advisor and the student.) Students who wish to graduate in May must submit a credible draft of the paper by April 1, so that a revised version can be submitted by May 1. Once approved, the final version of the master’s research paper must be submitted (two copies) to the cultural production program office by the date specified in the current academic calendar.  

Under exceptional circumstances, a student may petition to the director of the program for permission to write a master's thesis or develop a creative capstone project (in contrast to the normally expected master's paper.) It is expected that the thesis will be in the seventy-five to one hundred page range; the thesis must involve independent research and represent an original scholarly contribution.  

The capstone project is an original piece of work other than an academic paper. It might be an art installation or art show, a museum exhibition, a website, a work of performing art, or a comparable creative contribution. Each creative capstone project must represent the original work of a single individual student; collaborative capstone projects will not be authorized.  A two- to three-page written proposal to write a thesis or develop a creative capstone project, signed by the student's adviser, should be submitted to the director two weeks before the end of classes during the semester before the semester in which the student intends to graduate. The director and a faculty review committee will determine whether or not to grant the petition; in some cases, substantial revisions to the written proposal will be required before reconsideration of the petition. In the case of creative capstone projects, the student is expected to document in detail his or her entire creative process;  the documented materials, constituting a "creative capstone portfolio" are to be submitted to the faculty reviewers by the announced deadline. The completed thesis will be evaluated by two faculty members, selected by the director in consultation with the student. The student is responsible for submitting an electronic copy of the thesis, in accordance with university regulations. A final creative capstone project, including the submitted portfolio, will be evaluated by the program director, the student's advisor, and one additional Cultural Production faculty member. 

The program will hold a one hour defense of each student's final master's project (an MA paper, MA thesis, or creative capstone project) open to faculty and graduate students in the program.  The defenses are normally held during the final week of classes in the semester in which the student graduates. 

Courses of Instruction

(200 and above) Primarily for Graduate Students

CP 201a Making Culture: Theory and Practice
Examines theories of mass, public, popular, and elite culture. Surveys the social dynamics of remembrance, visuality, and performance. Discusses how culture forms emerge in "high" and "low" contexts, from media conglomerates and major museums to "outsider" artists, indigenous communities, and street performers. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Auslander

CP 202b Internship in Cultural Production
Interning in a cultural institution (such as a museum, heritage site, or national park), the student participates in the development of a specific project or cultural production, such as an exhibition or public program. Students write a report on their experiences and give a presentation on their internship work at an annual workshop/conference. We anticipate the development of summer practicum or internship courses on museums and cultural production to be held alternately in South Africa, Mississippi, and Scotland. Usually offered every semester.
Mr. Auslander

CP 203a Directed Research in Cultural Production for MA Students
Independent research on a topic approved by the director and mentored by the student's adviser, leading to a written master's paper. Usually offered every semester.
Staff

CP 207b The Practice of Cultural Production: Museum Education
Open to undergraduate students with signature of cultural production program director.
Current issues in museum education. Emphasis on hands-on participation and direct interaction with working professionals from art, history, and science museums. Usually offered every third year.
Staff

CP 220a Readings in Advanced Museum Studies
Usually offered every semester.
Mr. Auslander and Ms. Smith

CP 298a Independent Study
Staff

CP 301a Readings in Cultural Production
Mr. Auslander

Cluster 1: Performance: Core Courses

ANTH 105a Myth and Ritual
[ nw ss ]
Studies myth and ritual as two interlocking modes of cultural symbolism. Evaluates theoretical approaches to myth by looking at creation and political myths. Examines performative, processual, and spatial models of ritual analysis through study of initiation, sacrifice, and funerals. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Schattschneider

ANTH 114b Verbal Art and Cultural Performance
[ ss ]
Cross-cultural and interdisciplinary study of genres of verbal art and oral performance. Complex social uses of verbal arts in festival, drama, ritual, dance, carnival, and spectacle. Difficulty of reconstructing original context of narrative, oratory, poetry, and epic. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Parmentier

ENG 151b Theater/Theory: Investigating Performance
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: A course in dramatic literature and familiarity with theatrical production.
The theater, etymologically, is a place for viewing. Theory, etymologically, begins with a spectator and a viewing. Reading theories of theater and performance against paradigmatic dramatic texts and documents of social performance, speculation, and spectatorship are reviewed. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. King

ENG 181a Making Sex, Performing Gender
[ hum wi ]
Prerequisite: An introductory course in gender/sexuality and/or a course in critical theory.
Gender and sexuality studied as sets of performed traits and cues for interactions among social actors. Readings explore the possibility that differently organized gender and sexual practices are possible for men and women. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. King

THA 130a Suzuki
[ ca nw pe-1 ]
Prerequisite: THA 2a or permission of the instructor. Counts as one activity course toward the physical education requirement. Undergraduates may repeat this course twice for credit, once with each instructor.
Developed by the Japanese theater artist Tadashi Suzuki, the Suzuki method of acting training develops physical strength, stamina, and agility while engaging the imagination and will of the actor. Through a series of walks, statues, and marches, students are taught to breathe and move from the core of their bodies. This training allows students to act from physical impulse, resulting in a deep and personal experience of language and the world of play. Usually offered every semester.
Mr. Hill and Ms. Krstansky

Cluster 1: Performance: Elective Courses

ANTH 112a African Art and Aesthetics
[ ca nw ss ]
The visual arts and aesthetics of sub-Saharan Africa and the African Diaspora, with attention to the spiritual, social, and cultural dimensions of art and performance. Special emphasis on the historical dynamism and cultural creativity of "tradition-based" and contemporary African artists. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Auslander

ANTH 115b Space and Landscape
[ ss ]
Human behavior is framed by and creates the spaces and landscapes in which we live. This seminar examines archaeological and ethnographic understandings of the relationships between culture, space, and landscapes through readings and technologies of spatial analysis such as GIS. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Golden

ANTH 182b Engaged Anthropology
[ ss ]
Examine the historical, theoretical foundations and practical dimensions of socially-engaged and "applied" anthropology; structural relations between academic anthropology, international development and social activism; and ethics in "action anthropology." In a hands-on component, students in this course collectively partner with a community organization. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Auslander

CLAS 145b Topics in Greek and Roman Art and Archaeology
[ ca hum ]
Topics vary from year to year and the course may be repeated for credit. Topics include women, gender, and sexuality in Greek and Roman text and art; daily life in ancient Rome; ancient technology; and Athens and the golden age of Greece. See Schedule of Classes for the current topic and description. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Koloski-Ostrow

COML 163a Mediums and Messages
[ hum ]
How do human beings and human bodies participate in expressive communication technology, digital or otherwise? This course looks at examples of technological mediation in history, literature, art, science, and pseudo-science. Readings include works by Pynchon, Plato, Poe, Butler, Borges, Tiptree, Bioy-Casares, Kafka, and Villiers de L'Isle-Adam. Special one-time offering, fall 2009.
Ms. Swanstrom

ENG 144b The Body as Text
[ hum wi ]
How are our bodies the material for our presentations of self and our interactions with others? Examines contemporary theories and histories of the body against literary, philosophical, political, and performance texts of the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. King

ENG 177b American Popular Music and Contemporary Fiction
[ hum ]
Explores writing by novelists, journalists, and historians who react to the global spread of American popular music (mainly "rock"). Themes include race relations, technology, sound effects, the mystique of the star, and the globalization of the music industry. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Irr

ENG 280a Making It Real: Tactics of Discourse
An investigation of the discursive realization of bodies and agents. Queries representational practices as modes of agency, problematizing identity and differences, and negotiating hegemony. Our lenses: performance and cultural studies, visual studies, literature and theory, and historiography. Usually offered every fourth year.
Mr. King

FREN 142b City and the Book
[ hum wi ]
Prerequisite: FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.
Analyzes the symbolic appearance of the city in French literature and film from the Middle Ages to the present day. The symbolic representation of the city in literature and film will be contextualized in theoretical writings by urbanists and philosophers. The symbolic and theoretical depictions of the city will be used to understand the culture in which they were produced. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Randall

HIST 140a A History of Fashion in Europe
[ ss wi ]
Looks at costume, trade in garments, and clothing consumption in Europe from 1600 to 1950. Topics include sumptuous fashion, class and gender distinctions in wardrobe, and the rise of department stores. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Kelikian

MUS 209a Seminar in Psychoanalysis and Biography: The Psychoanalytic Study of the Artist
The foundations of psychoanalytic theory in its contribution to the understanding of the artist. Topics include the relation of the artist to his work as seen from the perspective of psychoanalysis and creativity and the creative process. In addition to the pioneering work of Freud, Rank, and Kris, more contemporary issues in psychoanalytic theory, for example, ego psychology, are explored. The possible directions of applied psychoanalysis for musicology are considered. Usually offered every fourth year.
Mr. Keiler

NEJS 161b Representations of the Middle Eastern City in Literature, Art, and Architecture
[ hum nw ]
The city is an artifact housing a community of anonymous persons, one that has carried great creative and destructive potential across the ages. Works of the imagination--in literature, theology, and architecture--expose unquantifiable dimensions of that potential. Examines ten such works with a view to what the city has been, is today, and can become. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Makiya

Cluster 2: Visuality: Core Courses

AMST 130b Television and American Culture
[ ss ]
An interdisciplinary course with three main lines of discussion and investigation: an aesthetic inquiry into the meaning of television style and genre; a historical consideration of the medium and its role in American life; and a technological study of televisual communication. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Doherty

ANTH 126b Symbol, Meaning, and Reality: Explorations in Cultural Semiotics
[ ss ]
Provides a historical survey of the development of theories of signs and symbols; comparison of Peircean and Saussurean foundations of modern semiotics; the structure of cultural codes (language, art, and music); and the possibility of cross-cultural typologies. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Parmentier

ANTH 130b Visuality and Culture
[ ss ]
Explores the nature of the visual image in sociocultural theory and in ethnographic representation. Topics include the history of ethnographic film, development of indigenous arts, visuality in popular culture and mass consumption, and film in postcolonial representation. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Schattschneider

ANTH 184b Cross-Cultural Art and Aesthetics
[ nw ss ]
A cross-cultural and diachronic exploration of art, focusing on the communicative aspects of visual aesthetics. The survey takes a broad view of how human societies deploy images to foster identities, lure into consumption, generate political propaganda, engage in ritual, render sacred propositions tangible, and chart the character of the cosmos. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Auslander or Mr. Urcid

FA 102a American Avant-Garde Film and Video
[ ca ]
Prerequisite: FILM 100a.
The tradition of independent film and video art in the United States from 1920 to the present. Artists include Maya Deren, Stan Brakhage, Bill Viola, and Yvonne Rainer. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

FILM 100a Introduction to the Moving Image
[ ca hum ]
An interdisciplinary course surveying the history of moving image media from 1895 to the present, from the earliest silent cinema to the age of the 500-channel cable television. Open to all undergraduates as an elective, it is the introductory course for the major and minor in film and visual media studies. Usually offered every year.
Staff

JOUR 103b Advertising and the Media
[ ss ]
Combines a historical and contemporary analysis of advertising's role in developing and sustaining consumer culture in America with a practical analysis of the relationship between advertising and the news media in the United States. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Farrelly

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

SOC 120b Globalization and the Media
[ ss ]
Investigates the phenomenon of globalization as it relates to mass media. Topics addressed include the growth of transnational media organizations, the creation of audiences that transcend territorial groupings, the hybridization of cultural styles, and the consequences for local identities. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Miller

SOC 146a Mass Communication Theory
[ ss ]
An examination of key theories in mass communication, including mass culture, hegemony, the production of culture, and resistance. Themes discussed include the nature of media effects, the role of the audience, and the extent of diversity in the mass media. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Miller

Cluster 2: Visuality: Elective Courses

ANTH 128a Meaning and Material Culture
[ ss ]
Investigates the relationship between cultural meaning and material objects. Central objects are emblems of social identity (fabric, houses, monuments), objectifications of value (money, valuables, commodities), and aesthetic representations (images, icons, statues). Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Parmentier or Mr. Urcid

ENG 101b Media Theory
[ hum ]
How has the Internet changed the practice of writing? How can writing map cyberspace? What happens to the personnel of writing (author, reader, publisher) in context of cybernetics? Immerses students in critical and utopian theories of cyber textuality. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Irr

ENG 280a Making It Real: Tactics of Discourse
An investigation of the discursive realization of bodies and agents. Queries representational practices as modes of agency, problematizing identity and differences, and negotiating hegemony. Our lenses: performance and cultural studies, visual studies, literature and theory, and historiography. Usually offered every fourth year.
Mr. King

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 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

HISP 195a Latinos in the United States: Perspectives from Literature, Film, and Performance
[ hum ]
Open to all students; conducted in English.
Comparative overview of Latino literature and film in the United States. Particular attention paid to how race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, and concepts of "nation" become intertwined within texts. Topics include: explorations of language, autobiography and memory, and intertexuality. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Reyes

SOC 221b Sociology of Culture
Surveys theoretical perspectives and substantive concerns in sociological studies of culture. Examines debates regarding how to define and study culture, and considers the ways in which culture is related to power, stratification, integration, identity, and social change. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Miller

THA 155a Icons of Masculinity
[ ca ]
Using icons from movies, fiction, theater, and television who represent manhood, this course explores how American men have defined and performed their masculinity. Various archetypes, including the cowboy, the gangster, the rogue cop, the athlete, the buddy, the lover, and Woody Allen are examined. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Holmberg

Cluster 3: Memory:Core Courses

ANTH 108b History, Time, and Tradition
[ ss ]
Explores topics relating to the historical dimension of societies in cross-cultural and interdisciplinary perspectives: the cultural construction of the past, temporal and calendrical systems, the invention of tradition, ethnohistorical narrative, cultural memory and forgetting, historical monuments, and museums. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Parmentier

ANTH 159a Museums and Public Memory
[ ss ]
Explores the social and political organization of public memory, including museums, cultural villages, and memorial sites. Who has the right to determine the content and form of such institutions? Working with local community members, students will develop a collaborative exhibition project. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Auslander

ANTH 207b Trauma: Theory and Experience
Explores the intellectual history of the concept of trauma and considers the salience of the concept for contemporary social and cultural theory and for research on the aftermath of mass violence, state terror, genocide, and torture. Offered every fourth year.
Ms. Schattschneider

HIST 204b Writing History
This course may not be repeated for credit by students who have taken HIST 188a in previous years.
This reading seminar and writing workshop explores the changing nature of the historian's craft in an age when notions like "objectivity," authors' control over texts, even the possibility of verifiable truth have come under attack. Explores theoretical writings on postmodern narrative, but focuses mainly on practice: reading and writing history that engages these concerns. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Kamensky

NEJS 181b Film and the Holocaust
[ hum ]
Open to all students.
Examines the medium of film, propaganda, documentary, and narrative fiction relevant to the history of the Holocaust. The use of film to shape, justify, document, interpret, and imagine the Holocaust. Beginning with the films produced by the Third Reich, the course includes films produced immediately after the events, as well as contemporary feature films. The focus will be how the film medium, as a medium, works to (re)present meaning(s). Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Rivo

Cluster 3: Memory: Elective Courses

AMST 144b Signs of Imagination: Gender and Race in Mass Media
[ ss ]
Examines how men and women are represented and represent themselves in American popular culture. Discusses the cultural contexts of the terms "femininity" and "masculinity" and various examples of the visibility and marketability of these terms today. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Davé

ANTH 175b Space, Memory, History
[ ss ]
Explores the geography of public memory and commemoration--the ways in which discourse of the past is constructed socially and expressed materially in the landscape in the form of spatial commemorations such as public memorials, historical sites, and street names that tell history "on the ground." Examines how such sites of memory reflect and expose for study social tensions, political realities, and cultural values. Special one-time offering, spring 2010.
Mr. Azaryahu

ANTH 176b Mythic Tel Aviv
[ ss ]
Examines the cultural history of Tel Aviv by exploring the mythical dimensions and texture of the city. Combining historical and cultural analysis, the course explores the different myths that have been part of the vernacular and perception of the city. Although focusing on Tel Aviv, the course in many ways examines the broader complex stories of Israeli nationalism, identity, urbanism and place--illuminating important dimensions of Israeli society, culture and history. Exposes students to the questions, methods and perspectives of cultural geography. Special one-time offering, spring 2010.
Mr. Azaryahu

COEX 250a The Arts of Building Peace
How can music, theater, poetry, literature, and visual arts contribute to community development, coexistence, and nonviolent social change? In the aftermath of violence, how can artists help communities reconcile? Students explore these questions through interviews, case studies, and projects. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Cohen

ED 158b Looking with the Learner: Practice and Inquiry
Does not satisfy a school distribution requirement--for education studies core course credit only. Lab fee: $40.
Inquiry and exploration in the visual arts have the capacity to develop the creative problem solving essential to both teaching and learning. Students will work in different media, examine interpretations of art, reflect in journals, and teach children about contemporary art. Students will complete a twelve-hour practicum as part of this course. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Dash

ENG 111b Postcolonial Theory
[ hum ]
Seminar in postcolonial theory with relevant background texts, with an emphasis on the specificity of its theoretical claims. Readings from Spivak, Said, Bhabha, Appiah, Mudimbe, Marx, Lenin, Freud, Derrida, Césaire, and Fanon, among others. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

ENG 123a Dream Visions: Genre, History, and the Mysterious
[ hum ]
A study of the mysterious function of imaginary dreams in medieval and Renaissance writing, along with actual dream dictionaries and dream transcriptions of the period. Visions of Hell, prophetic dreams, apocalypse, Chaucer, Dante, Shakespeare, Nashe, and others. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Campbell

ENG 127b Migrating Bodies, Migrating Texts
[ hum ]
Beginning with the region's representation as a tabula rasa, examines the textual and visual constructions of the Caribbean as colony, homeland, backyard, paradise, and Babylon, and how the region's migrations have prompted ideas about evolution, hedonism, imperialism, nationalism, and diaspora. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Smith

ENG 128a Alternative Worlds: Modern Utopian Texts
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: ENG 11a.
British, European, and American works depicting alternate, often "better" worlds, including More's Utopia, Margaret Cavendish's The Blazing World, Voltaire's Candide, Casanova's Icosameron, selections from Charles Fourier, Alexander Bogdanov's Red Star, Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis: Dawn, Wolfgang Becker's Goodbye Lenin! Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Campbell

ENG 147b South African Literature and Apartheid
[ hum ]
Survey of South African literature, its engagement with apartheid and its aftermath: fiction, drama, poetry. Authors may include Paton, Millin, Louw, Gordimer, Fugard, Head, Serote, Sepamla, Matshoba, Coetzee, and Wilcomb. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

ENG 211a Psychoanalytic Theory
A basic grounding in psychoanalytic theory, and its influences on critical theory. Texts by Freud, Lacan, Klein, Derrida, Fanon, and others. Topics include mourning, trauma, and the ethics and politics of the globalization of psychoanalysis. Usually offered every third year.
Staff

ENG 237a Reading the Black Transnation
Fiction, theory, film of what is variously termed the African Diaspora or the Black Atlantic. Acquaints students with major and lesser-known figures, concepts, and strategies. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Smith

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

HIST 169a Thought and Culture in Modern America
[ ss wi ]
Developments in American philosophy, literature, art, and political theory examined in the context of socioeconomic change. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Engerman

HIST 170a Italian Films, Italian Histories
[ ss wi ]
Explores the relationship between Italian history and Italian film from unification to 1975. Topics include socialism, fascism, the deportation of Jews, the Resistance, the Mafia, and the emergence of an American-style star fixation in the 1960s. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Kelikian

JAPN 130a The Literature of Multicultural Japan
[ hum nw ]
"Multicultural" may not be an adjective that many associate with Japan, but as we will find in this class, Japan's modern literary and cinematic tradition is rich with works by and about resident Koreans, Ainu, Okinawans, outcasts, and sexual and other marginalized minorities. Why then does the image of a monocultural Japan remain so resilient? Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Fraleigh

NEJS 133a Art, Artifacts, and History: The Material Culture of Modern Jews
[ hum ]
An interpretive, bibliographic, and hands-on study of the material (nontextual) culture of American and European Jews since 1600 taught in a comparative cultural context. Analyzes how objects, architecture, visual images, bodies, museums, and memorials can help us understand and interpret social, cultural, and religious history. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Smith

NEJS 184a Introduction to Jewish Museum Studies
[ hum ]
Using readings, case studies, field trips, and class discussions, this course gives students introductory theoretical, historical, bibliographic, and hands-on skills for interpreting and producing exhibitions, museums, and historic sites in American, Europe, and Israel. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Smith

NEJS 190a Describing Cruelty
[ hum wi ]
Grapples with the difficult subject of cruelty. Focus is on political or public cruelty in the non-Western world. The method is comparative and involves critical examination of the intellectual, visual, and literary works that engage in the phenomenon. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Makiya

NEJS 291a History and Memory in the Middle East
Prerequisite: NEJS 185a or the equivalent.
Explores some of the ways in which Middle Eastern writers (Arabs and Israelis) have treated major episodes and foundation myths in the twentieth century. Our focus will be on the development of collective memories and the appearance of revisionist studies that challenge earlier accounts of history. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

SAS 140a We Who Are at Home Everywhere: Narratives from the South Asian Diaspora
[ hum ]
Looks at narratives from various locations of the South Asian Diaspora, while paying close attention to the emergence of an immigrant South Asian public culture. Examines novels, poetry, short stories, film, and music in order to further an understanding of South Asian immigrant culture. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Singh

SOC 148b Sociology of Information
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Examines the claim that information is a key political and economic resource in contemporary society. Considers who has access to information, and how it is used for economic gain, interpersonal advantage, and social control. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Miller