An interdepartmental program in European Cultural Studies

Last updated: June 28, 2012 at 4:10 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.

Learning Goals

The guiding premise of European Cultural Studies (ECS) is this: art and literature are not luxury commodities. Rather they are a crucial way of knowing and understanding the world. ECS explores European literature, art, music, architecture, dance, and philosophy beyond and across the boundaries of single nations, languages, and historical periods, always in concert with the historical, political, and social realities that underpin and illuminate any art form. This interdepartmental major offers a way of thinking about literature rather than any specific body of information. The overarching aim of the major is to discover how European cultures have ordered reality in the past and present, how they have made sense of the world morally and aesthetically, and how literature and the arts express, preserve, and embody these understandings. Because ECS embraces the whole of European culture, especially literature, and a great diversity of critical methods for understanding it, no one faculty member could possibly encompass the field of study. Consequently, the interdisciplinary, interdepartmental approach is a highly dynamic and collaborative endeavor that reflects the diverse interests of our students and faculty in the liberal arts. ECS brings together professors and undergraduates from a number of departments in the Humanities and the Social Sciences in a spirit of common inquiry.

The ECS major’s core course, ECS100a, introduces students to the wide range of interdisciplinary approaches possible in the study of liberal arts, and it serves as the point of embarkation for students’ individualized exploration of literature and the other arts from across Europe and from a wide variety of hermeneutic perspectives. The concept of interpretation is central: we all live by the act of interpretation, whether in ordinary daily life or in a seminar setting. ECS100a also focuses on developing the research skills, writing and speaking habits, and the basics of critical interpretation specific to the interdisciplinary study of literature and the arts. The ECS major also encourages the study of literature and culture in languages other than English. Courses are taught by distinguished faculty from across the university at Brandeis but especially in the humanities.

As an interdepartmental major, ECS is inherently critical, multicultural, and interdisciplinary. Its flexible curriculum is designed to serve the interests and needs of a changing student body and to encourage student collaboration at all levels of program planning.

The Major: Students completing the major in ECS will:

1. Achieve a deepened understanding of European civilization and its specific place in the global context;
2. Interpret aspects of literature and the other arts that can or must be studied cross-culturally, such as: form and genre; the movement of beliefs and ideas across boundaries, including through translation; exile arts and literatures; and literary, artistic, and philosophical movements that span multiple cultures, such as Enlightenment, romanticism, modernism and the avant-garde;
3. Develop the habit of independent critique, intellectual self-reliance, and self-confidence from the perspective of a variety of disciplines; 4. Become conversant with the major questions, concepts, theories, traditions, and techniques of humanistic enquiry;
5. Have the opportunity to work closely with faculty and fellow students in small seminars and the opportunity to be mentored on a senior thesis.

Core Skills: ECS majors from will develop the capacity to:

1. perform a strong and revealing close reading of any text (whether image, music, or literary)
2. understand the implications of different interpretive techniques, weighing the benefits against limitations of different methods and strategies;
3. effectively use library and online resources to identify, document, and exploit primary and secondary research materials;
4. construct a rhetorically persuasive argument about literary and artistic problems by identifying and articulating a compelling and productive question about literature and synthesizing relevant critical literature;< br /> 5. recognize the profound difference between knowledge and mere information, to distinguish between human, humane understanding and mere technique.
6. The ultimate aim of humane understanding is emancipation from all forms of falsehood, distortion, and illegitimate authority through the exercise of public, reasoned discourse.

Upon Graduating: A Brandeis student with a ECS major will be prepared to use the knowledge and skills gained from the sustained study of literatures and cultures to pursue professional training and a range of careers that demand a global perspective or a knowledge of and appreciation for diverse cultures, including those in academics, law, government, non-governmental organizations and non-profits, and international business.

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)

Dian Fox (on leave spring 2012)
(Romance Studies)

Jane Hale
(Romance Studies)

Gila Hayim
(Sociology)

Arthur Holmberg
(Theater Arts)

Edward Kaplan
(Romance Studies)

Jytte Klausen
(Politics)

Richard Lansing (on leave academic year 2011-2012)
(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)

Affiliated Faculty (contributing to the curriculum, advising and administration of the department or program)
Jane Hale (Romance Studies)
Robin Feuer Miller (German, Russian, and Asian Languages and Literature)
Michael Randall (Romance Studies)

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

ECS 110a Thinking about Infinity
[ hum ]
Explores the attempts of the finite human mind to think about infinity. Readings in mathematics, history of science, philosophy, literature, and art, including Euclid, Plato, Cantor, Poincaré, Einstein, Pascal, Kant, Hegel, Wordsworth, Shelley, Joyce, Beckett, Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Flesch

Comparative Literature Seminars

COML 100a Comparing Literatures: Theory and Practice
[ hum wi ]
Core course for COML major and minor.
What is common and what is different in literatures of different cultures and times? How do literary ideas move from one culture to another? In this course students read theoretical texts, as well as literary works from around the world. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Powelstock

COML 103b Madness and Folly in Renaissance Literature
[ hum wi ]
A study of the theme of madness and folly as exemplified by the major writers of the Renaissance, including Erasmus, Rabelais, Montaigne, Boccaccio, Ariosto, Shakespeare, Petrarch, and Cervantes. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Lansing

COML 104a Revisions, Rewrites and Remakes: From the Classical Period to the Present
[ hum oc ]
Analyzes canonical works that have been parodied, criticized or happily re-interpreted by later artists. By viewing and listening to these transformations, we come to a deeper understanding of the original artist and also gain insight into the cultures that elicited subsequent changes. Canonical writers include: Sophocles, Shakespeare, Goethe with modern interpretations by Kundera, Beckett, and Anouilh. We will also look at works in the visual and cinematographic arts: "Picasso Looks at Degas" and John Sturges reconsiders Akira Kurosawa's "The Seven Samurai." Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Ratner (Romance Studies)

COML 115b Fictions of Liberty: Europe in a Revolutionary Age
[ hum ]
The "Age of Enlightenment" fostered new notions of human rights that found their tumultuous proving ground in the French Revolution. Through writings from several genres and nations, this course explores some of the political, economic, religious, racial, and sexual "fictions of liberty" that have shaped our own time. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Lanser

COML 117a Magical Realism and Modern Myth
[ hum ]
An exploration of magical realism, as well as the enduring importance of myth, in twentieth and twenty-first century fiction and film from the United States, Latin American, and beyond. authors include Toni Morrison, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Salman Rushdie; films include Wings of Desire and Hero. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Sherman

COML 120b Dangerous Writers and Writers in Danger
[ hum ]
Examines the works of modern, twentieth-century writers from different areas of the world who have suffered exile, imprisonment, or death for their free thinking. Writers include: Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, Wole Soyinka, Gao Xinjan, Breyten Breytenbach, Reynoldo Arenas, and Salman Rushdie. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Ratner

COML 122b Writing Home and Abroad: Literature by Women of Color
[ hum nw ]
Examines literature (prose, poetry, and memoirs) written by women of color across a wide spectrum of geographical and cultural sites. Literature written within the confines of the "home country" in the vernacular, as well as in English in immigrant locales, is read. The intersections of race, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, and class as contained by the larger institutions of government, religion, nationalism, and sectarian politics are examined. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Singh

COML 123a Perfect Love?
[ hum ]
Analyzes how the desire to achieve a "perfect form of love," defined as one that denies the body in favor of a more spiritual attachment, can lead to illness and highly unhealthy behavior in literary texts and modern film. Filmmakers and authors studied include Wang-Kar Wai, Marguerite de Navarre, Boccaccio, Chrétien de Troyes, and Hawthorne. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Randall

COML 135a Before the Law: Justice in Literature and Film
[ hum ]
Examines works of fiction and film as a means of addressing the problem of justice, highlighting by the same token the symbolic fabric of the law and the performative elements of legal institutions. We will focus on cultural expressions from Europe and Latin America that address the problem of the state and its subjects in a context of modernity broadly defined. Usually offered every fourth year.
Mr. Rosenberg

COML 144b The Outsider as Artist and Lover
[ hum ]
Baudelaire, Kierkegaard, Kafka, and Simone Weil exemplify the struggle to achieve meaning through literature, but they believed that art or God required them to renounce love and marriage. Buber's analysis of "dialogue" will clarify the interrelation of creativity, faith, and human intimacy in their short stories, prose poems, essays, and philosophical and autobiographical writings. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Kaplan

COML 146b Classical East Asian Poetics
[ hum nw ]
An introduction to the classical poetic forms of China, Japan, and Korea. Special consideration is paid to issues of canonization, classical theories of literature, and the development of multilingual literary traditions. All readings are in English. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Fraleigh

COML 150b Critique of Erotic Reason
[ hum ]
Explores transformations in erotic sensibilities in the novel from the early nineteenth century to the present. Works by Goethe, Austen, Kierkegaard, Tolstoy, Schopenhauer, Bronte, Chekhov, Garcia-Marquez, Kundera, and Cormac McCarthy. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Dowden

COML 160a Contemporary East European Literature
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English.
Examines works of major East European (Polish, Czech, Russian, and other) authors in the historical context of late Communist and post-Communist experience. Special attention to reading for artistic qualities and engagement of historical and political problems. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Powelstock

COML 165a Reading, Writing, and Teaching across Cultures
[ hum nw wi ]
This is an experiential learning course.
Examines contemporary literary representations of literacy, schooling, and language from a cross-cultural perspective. Students also analyze their own educational trajectories and experiences with writing and reading. Students have the opportunity to work directly on projects in Haiti and Lesotho designed to encourage the development and distribution of picture books for young children in their home languages. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Hale

COML 166b Literacy, Language and Culture
[ hum nw ]
This is an experiential learning course.
Considers emergent literacy in cultures where different languages are spoken at home and school. Students have the opportunity to work directly on projects in Haiti and Lesotho designed to encourage the development and distribution of picture books for young children in their home languages. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Hale

COML 179a Life Stories, Spiritual and Profane
[ hum ]
Examines modern life stories (such as biographies, autobiographies, journals, fiction) concerning personal identity in relation to the search for God, mysticism and anguish, conversion, moral action, and intimate love. Augustine's Confessions and Teresa of Avila's Life provide models for contemprary writers such as Thomas Merton and Dorothy Day. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Kaplan

COML 185a Dickens and Dostoevsky
[ hum ]
Considers such issues as narrative, literary realism, and the manipulation of the grotesque and the sublime in representative works of Dickens and Dostoevsky. Because Dostoevsky was an avid reader of Dickens, class addresses questions of influence, particularly with regard to their shared thematic interests. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Miller

COML 190b Fictional Thinking
[ hum ]
"We can only think, in language, because language is and yet is not our voice," writes Slavoj Zizek. Studies how fictional characters in James, Proust, Woolf and others think before is and for us -- and each other. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Flesch

ENG 40b The Birth of the Short Story: Gods, Ghosts, Lunatics
[ hum wi ]
This is an experiential learning course.
How old is the short story? It may go back to the Stone Age, Aesop's fables, or medieval saints' lives, but some credit Edgar Allan Poe and the Scottish shepherd James Hogg. This class takes an in-depth look at three key centers of the genre: Edinburgh, New York, and Moscow. Authors include Melville, Hawthorne, Dickens, Gogol, and Chekov. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Plotz

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 78b Modernism, Atheism, God
[ hum ]
Explores European and American literature after Nietzche's proclamation, at the end of the 19th century, that God is dead. How does this writing imagine human life and the role of literature in God's absence? How does it imagine afterlives of God, and permutations of the sacred, in a post-religious world? How, or why, to have faith in the possibility of faith in a secular age? What does "the secular" actually mean, and how does it persuade itself that it's different than "the religious". Approaches international modernism as a political and theological debate about materialism and spirituality, finitude and transcendence, reason and salvation. Readings by Kafka, Joyce, Rilke, Faulkner, Eliot, Beckett, Pynchon, and others. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Sherman

ENG 114b Gender and the Rise of the Novel in England and France
[ hum ]
Explores the emergence of the novel as a modern genre in the eighteenth century, asking why the novel arises first in England and France, and what the new genre's preoccupations with women and gender can teach us about European society, culture, and literature. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Lanser

HUM 10a The Western Canon
[ hum ]
May not be taken by students who have taken FYS 18a in prior years.
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

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

Courses in European Literature

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 165a Roman Sex, Violence, and Decadence in Translation
[ hum wi ]
Famous Roman texts (200 BCE-200 CE) are read from social, historical, psychological, literary, and religious viewpoints. The concept of "Roman decadence" is challenged both by the Roman literary accomplishment itself and by its import on subsequent periods. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Koloski-Ostrow

CLAS 166a Medieval Literature: A Millennium of God, Sex, and Death
[ hum wi ]
A survey of medieval Latin literature in translation, beginning with the fourth-century church fathers and ending with the early Renaissance. Includes Augustine, Ambrose, Jerome, Egeria, Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Isidore of Seville, Bede, Alcuin, Einhard, Hroswitha, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Hildegard, Anselm, and others. Usually offered every fourth year.
Ms. Walker

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

CLAS 171a Greek Epic and Athenian Drama
[ hum ]
Surveys Greek epic poetry and the tragic and comic drama produced in the city-state of Athens (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes). The intention is to convey the place of these works in the social, political, religious, and intellectual life of ancient Greece as well as their enduring universality. Usually offered every fourth 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 4a The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century
[ hum ]
1660-1800: The age of reason and contradiction, enlightenment, and xenophobia. Surveys literary, critical, philosophical, political, and life writing, investigating the emergence of a literary public sphere, a national canon, and the first professional women writers. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. King

ENG 5a British Literature in the Age of Darwin and Dickens
[ hum ]
Offers general coverage of the major literary genres in the nineteenth century. The course studies the cultural context forged by the interaction of fiction, prose, and poetry. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Plotz

ENG 11a Close Reading: Theory and Practice
[ hum ]
Examines the theory, practice, technique, and method of close literary reading, with scrupulous attention to a variety of literary texts to ask not only what but also how they mean, and what justifies our thinking that they mean these things. Usually offered every third 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 third 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 third year.
Mr. Plotz

ENG 18b Writing the Holocaust
[ hum wi ]
Examines fiction, poetry, memoir, diaries, letters, testimonials, interviews, and historical records; explores written representations of the Holocaust. Considers the role second, third, and fourth generation responses to the Holocaust, including the responses of students, who will write their own post-Holocaust narratives. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Skorczewski

ENG 23a Remembering and Dismembering: Staging the Body in Early Modern England
[ hum ]
Seventeenth-century London performance investigated through the domains of its production--the court, the city, and the emerging "town," center of a new leisure class. Drama, masques, and music drama studied as modes of representation negotiating class mobility, changing concepts of state authority and personal identity, and shifts in gender and sexual relations. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. King

ENG 33a Shakespeare
[ hum ]
A survey of Shakespeare as a dramatist. From nine to twelve plays will be read, representing all periods of Shakespeare's dramatic career. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Flesch or Ms. Targoff

ENG 40b The Birth of the Short Story: Gods, Ghosts, Lunatics
[ hum wi ]
This is an experiential learning course.
How old is the short story? It may go back to the Stone Age, Aesop's fables, or medieval saints' lives, but some credit Edgar Allan Poe and the Scottish shepherd James Hogg. This class takes an in-depth look at three key centers of the genre: Edinburgh, New York, and Moscow. Authors include Melville, Hawthorne, Dickens, Gogol, and Chekov. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Plotz

ENG 43a Major English Authors, Chaucer to Milton
[ hum ]
A survey of major English authors from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance, including Chaucer, Wyatt, Spencer, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Sidney, Donne, Herbert, Marvell, Milton. No prior experience in medieval or Renaissance literature is required. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Targoff

ENG 45b Romanticism: Gods, Nature, Loneliness, 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 third 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 57a Modern British and Irish Fiction
[ hum ]
Twentieth-century British and Irish fiction in its worldwide context. Begins with the modernism of Woolf, Beckett, and O'Brien; usually includes Iris Murdoch, Caryl Phillips, Commonwealth writers Salman Rushdie, George Lamming, Peter Carey, and Kazuo Ishiguro. Includes comparisons with contemporary British films such as Trainspotting and My Beautiful Laundrette. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Plotz

ENG 63a Renaissance Poetry
[ hum ]
Examines lyric and narrative poetry by Wyatt, Surrey, Marlowe, Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare, Jonson, Donne, and Herbert. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Flesch or 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 75b The Victorian Novel: Secrets, Lies, and Monsters
[ hum ]
The rhetorical strategies, themes, and objectives of Victorian realism. Texts may include Eliot's Middlemarch, Thackeray's Vanity Fair, Brontë's Villette, Gaskell's Mary Barton, Dickens' Bleak House, and Trollope's The Prime Minister. Usually offered every fourth year.
Mr. Plotz

ENG 78b Modernism, Atheism, God
[ hum ]
Explores European and American literature after Nietzche's proclamation, at the end of the 19th century, that God is dead. How does this writing imagine human life and the role of literature in God's absence? How does it imagine afterlives of God, and permutations of the sacred, in a post-religious world? How, or why, to have faith in the possibility of faith in a secular age? What does "the secular" actually mean, and how does it persuade itself that it's different than "the religious". Approaches international modernism as a political and theological debate about materialism and spirituality, finitude and transcendence, reason and salvation. Readings by Kafka, Joyce, Rilke, Faulkner, Eliot, Beckett, Pynchon, and others. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Sherman

ENG 80b The Tale
[ hum wi ]
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 88b Contemporary British Literature
[ hum ]
British fiction, poetry, drama, and film since WWII that tackles the changing politics of empire, sexuality, and social class, especially. A close look at the weird pleasure of British humor, includes Jean Rhys, Philip Larkin, Martin Amis, Angela Carter, Harold Pinter, and Monty Python's Flying Circus. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Sherman

ENG 103a Exploring the Self in Seventeenth-Century Poetry
[ hum ]
Examines the poetry of Donne and his contemporaries, including George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, and Andrew Marvell. These "metaphysical poets" will be read alongside critical accounts by Samuel Johnson, T. S. Eliot, and others. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Targoff

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 105b The English Novel, Jane Austen to Thomas Hardy
[ hum wi ]
Focuses on Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and Joseph Conrad. Explores the relationship between the novel, the era's most popular culture, and our own popular culture. It examines desire, concealment, sex, and romance, as well as the role that literature plays in creating and upsetting communities, defining racial and ethnic categories. Film screenings. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Plotz

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 114b Gender and the Rise of the Novel in England and France
[ hum ]
Explores the emergence of the novel as a modern genre in the eighteenth century, asking why the novel arises first in England and France, and what the new genre's preoccupations with women and gender can teach us about European society, culture, and literature. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Lanser

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 123b English Literature in the Age of Shakespeare
[ hum ]
An exploration of the literary world in which Shakespeare lived and wrote. Readings include poems by Spenser, Sidney, and Donne; plays by Marlowe and Jonson; essays by Montaigne and Bacon, as well as a few works by Shakespeare. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Targoff

ENG 125a Romanticism I: Blake, Wordsworth, and Coleridge
[ hum ]
Examines the major poetry and some prose by the first generation of English Romantic poets who may be said to have defined Romanticism and set the tone for the last two centuries of English literature. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Burt or Ms. Quinney

ENG 125b Romanticism II: Byron, Shelley, and Keats
[ hum ]
The "younger generation" of Romantic poets. Byron, Shelley, and Keats continue and react against poetic, political, and philosophical preoccupations and positions of their immediate elders. Examines their major works, as well as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Burt, Mr. Flesch, or Ms. Quinney

ENG 128a Alternative Worlds: Modern Utopian Texts
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: ENG 1a or 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 third year.
Ms. Campbell

ENG 132b Chaucer I
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: ENG 1a or ENG 10a or ENG 11a.
In addition to reading Chaucer's major work The Canterbury Tales in Middle English, pays special attention to situating the Tales in relation to linguistic, literary, and social developments of the later Middle Ages. No previous knowledge of Middle English required. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Campbell

ENG 133a Advanced Shakespeare
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: ENG 33a or equivalent.
An intensive analysis of a single play or a small number of Shakespeare's plays. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Flesch

ENG 137a Postimperial Fictions
[ hum ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took ENG 37a in prior years.
In what ways, and for what purposes, has postcolonial Britain sought imaginatively to recreate its imperial past? Discusses recent literary and cinematic representations of empire, in which critique, fascination, and nostalgia are, often problematically, blended. Authors include Paul Scott, Rushdie, Ishiguro, and Zadie Smith. Usually offered every fourth year.
Staff

ENG 143a Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama
[ hum ]
A study of the revenge tradition in the work of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. The problem of blood revenge will be looked at as a historical phenomenon in Renaissance society and as a social threat transformed into art in such dramatists as Shakespeare, Marlowe, Kyd, Marston, Tourneur, Chapman, and Webster. Usually offered every fourth year.
Staff

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 145b Jane Austen: Gender, Art, and History
[ hum wi ]
Explores Austen's writings from multiple perspectives, with particular attention to the historical and aesthetic dimensions of her work. Considers divergent interpretations of her novels and the impact of gender, not only on her novels but on their reception. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Lanser

ENG 152b Arthurian Literature
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: ENG 1a, ENG 10a, HUM 10a or ENG 11a.
A survey of (mostly) medieval treatments of the legendary material associated with King Arthur and his court, in several genres: bardic poetry, history, romance, prose narrative. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Campbell

ENG 161b The Death and Life of the Subject
[ hum ]
Studies the disintegration of the unified self in modern philosophy, literature and critical theory, primarily of the twentieth century. Topics include empiricist, existential and psychoanalytic accounts of the self. Literary works by Woolf, Proust, Beckett, Blanchot and Duras. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Quinney

ENG 165b Victorian Poetry and Its Readers
[ hum ]
Studies how poetry was written and read during the last time poetry held a prominent role in England's public life. The course centers on Tennyson's career as poet laureate, but also gives full attention to Robert Browning's work. The course also surveys the work of E. B. Browning, the Pre-Raphaelites, and others, and concludes with the poetry of Hardy and of the early Yeats. Usually offered every fourth year.
Staff

ENG 171a The History of Literary Criticism: From Plato to Postmodernism
[ hum wi ]
Explores major documents in the history of criticism from Plato to the present. Texts will be read as representative moments in the history of criticism and as documents of self-sufficient literary and intellectual interest. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Morrison or Ms. Quinney

ENG 173a Spenser and Milton
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: ENG 10a, 11a, or HUM 10a (may be taken concurrently) or by permission of the instructor.
A course on poetic authority: the poetry of authority and the authority of poetry. Spenser and Milton will be treated individually, but the era they bound will be examined in terms of the tensions within and between their works. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Flesch

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

FREN 110a Cultural Representations
[ fl hum wi ]
Prerequisite: FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.
Examines how alienation, which is often understood as exemplifying western modernity, manifests itself in literary works and films from throughout the Francophone world and French history. We will look at authors such as Assia Djebar, Cheikh Hamidou Kane, Mohammed Dib, Albert Camus, Joachim Du Bellay, Pierre Corneille, and Molière. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Randall

FREN 111a The Republic
[ fl hum wi ]
Prerequisite: FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.
The "Republic" analyzes how the republican ideal of the citizen devoid of religious, ethnic, or gender identity has fared in different Francophone political milieux. Course involves understanding how political institutions such as constitutions, parliaments, and court systems interact with reality of modern societies in which religious, ethnic, and gender identities play important roles. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Randall

FREN 113a Great French Novels
[ fl hum wi ]
Prerequisite: FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.
Power, passion, and creativity in the French novel. Major novels of the nineteenth and early twentieth 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, and the creative process. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Kaplan

FREN 114b Quest for the Absolute
[ fl hum ]
Prerequisite: FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.
Imagination, the drug experience, even madness can convey absolute meaning. We read creative journeys in prose and poetry by Balzac, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Maria Krysinska, Senghor, Bonnefoy to explore topics of good and evil; racial and gender identity; love and intimacy; spiritual faith. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Kaplan

FREN 120a The Middle Ages: Before France Was France
[ fl hum ]
Prerequisite: FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.
Before the creation of the French nation-state in the sixteenth century, what we know as France today was a tapestry of feudal and postfeudal states. Modern students often find medieval culture much more exotic than many modern foreign cultures. We will try to understand and appreciate the alterity of the Middle Ages in works such as eleventh-century hagiographies, the Romance of the Rose, the knightly romances of Chrétien de Troyes, the poetry of the troubadours, Christine de Pizan, and François Villon. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Randall

FREN 122b The Renaissance: When France Became France
[ fl hum wi ]
Prerequisite: FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.
At a moment when the modern nation-state is perhaps coming to an end in supranational institutions like the European Union, it is important to look at how that nation-state came into being in the sixteenth century. During a time of both political and religious turmoil and intense artistic creation, writers of the Renaissance created works that helped define us as both public and private individuals. Works studied include Rabelais' Gargantua, Montaigne's Essays, Marguerite de Navarre's Heptameron, as well as the poetry of Ronsard, du Bellay, and Louise Labé. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Randall

FREN 130a Heart and Mind in French Classicism
[ fl hum ]
Prerequisite: FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.
An examination of the combat of heart, mind, and social convention in seventeenth-century masterpieces—Molière’s comedies, Corneille and Racine’s tragedies, Pascal’s Pensées, and the psychological novel La princesse de Clèves. Topics include the conflict of love and duty, social class, skepticism and religious faith, gender roles. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Kaplan

FREN 131a Orientalism and Literature
[ fl hum wi ]
Prerequisite: FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.
An examination of how French literature has often represented the "Orient" or "the East," in particular North Africa, parts of the Middle East and Southeast Asia, as its opposite, its imaginary "other." Will also look at how some twentieth-century writers of North-African backgrounds have reacted to these misrepresentations. The course includes paintings, film, and readings in many different genres (novels, travel literature, etc.). Usually offered every fourth year.
Ms. Voiret

FREN 133b Visions of Change in the Enlightenment
[ fl hum ]
Prerequisite: FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.
Studies philosophers of the Enlightenment such as Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Diderot. They defined a new framework for thinking about human civilization and progress based on reason and knowledge. Longstanding notions of the universal relevance and truth of their ideas are challenged by our awareness of the diversity of cultures in the emerging global order. Usually offered every fourth year.
Ms. Voiret

FREN 134b Masculine/Feminine
[ fl hum ]
Prerequisite: FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.
Examines diverse representations of masculinity and femininity in French literature with special focus on historical and cultural aspects. Readings include: Racine, Andromaque; Rousseau, Emile; Stendahl, Le Rouge et le Noir; Duras, L'Amant; and articles from Beauvoir and Badinter. Usually offered every fourth year.
Ms. Voiret

FREN 135a Rebellion Against Romanticism
[ fl hum wi ]
Prerequisite: FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.
Liberation and selfhood in nineteenth-century France: short stories, novels, poetry, and theater. Topics include love and intimacy, the struggle for identity, gender roles, myth and folklore, religion and secularization. Authors may include Lamartine, Hugo, Desbordes-Valmore, Musset, Nerval, Sand, and Balzac. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Kaplan

FREN 137a Literary Responses to Mass Violence
[ fl hum ]
Prerequisite: FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.
Studies writers’ responses to humanitarian and political crises of the past hundred years, e.g., Camus’ La peste, Duras’ Hiroshima mon amour, Beckett’s Catastrophe, Diop’s Murambi, Sijie’s Balzac et la petite tailleuse chinoise, and Laferrière’s Tout bouge autour de moi. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Hale

FREN 142b City and the Book
[ fl 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 representation of the city in literature and film is contextualized in theoretical writings of urbanists and philosophers. Literary texts include medieval fabliaux, Pantagruel (Rabelais) and Nana (Zola) as well as theoretical texts by Descartes, Ledoux, Le Corbusier, Salvador Dalí, and Paul Virillo. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Randall

FREN 143a Existentialism: Identity and Commitment
[ fl hum wi ]
Prerequisite: FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.
Sartre and Camus are known as the founders of French existentialism, a philosophy of the absurd, loneliness, freedom, and responsibility. Novels, plays, and essays are read on moral commitment and on black, Jewish, female identities in light of war, colonialism, and the Holocaust. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Kaplan

FREN 145a Baudelaire and his World: Evil, Beauty, Finitude
[ fl hum wi ]
Prerequisite: FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.
The life and works of Baudelaire, germinal figure of a European literary and cultural revolution, including Les Fleurs du Mal, prose poems, and critical essays. Topics: sex and love, painting, music, laughter, the drug experience, good and evil, the city, and modernity. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Kaplan

FREN 147a Jewish Identities in France since 1945
[ fl hum wi ]
Prerequisite: FREN 106b 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

FREN 155b Contemporary Theater: Literature or Performance?
[ fl hum ]
This is an experiential learning course. Prerequisite: FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.
Reading and in-class performance of plays ranging from Jarry’s Ubu roi and Beckett’s Godot to more traditional texts by Sartre and Giraudoux. Concludes with Yasmina Reza’s Le Dieu du carnage. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Hale

FREN 186b Literature and Politics
[ fl hum ]
Prerequisite: FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.
We will be interested in how the literary is political and the political literary. We will organize the class around the relationship of the individual and the community. Texts include: Montaigne’s Essais, Corneille’s Horace, Genet’s Les nègres, Arendt’s What is Politics?, Dumont’s Essays on Individualism, Fanon’s Peau noire, masques blancs. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Randall

FREN 190b Advanced Seminar
[ hum ]
May be repeated for credit with permission. Refer to the University Writing section of this Bulletin for information regarding applicability to the writing-intensive requirement. Offered as needed.
Staff

FYS 1b Jewish Literatures in Eastern Europe
[ hum ]
The emergence of a modern literary consciousness was one of the results of the breakup of traditional Jewish society. Examines some of the leading Jewish writers in Eastern Europe who wrote in Hebrew, Yiddish, Polish, or Russian.
Mr. Polonsky (Near Eastern and Judaic Studies)

GECS 100a German Literature, Music, and Film
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English with readings in English translation. This is an experiential learning course.
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 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 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

GER 103a Contemporary German Media and Society
[ fl hum oc ]
Prerequisite: GER 30a.
Investigates the cultural history of Germany since reunification through a variety of print and electronic media, including the newspaper, radio, television, film, video, and the internet. In project-oriented segments designed to expand reading, writing, speaking and listening competencies, students explore and analyze the social, cultural, political, and economic issues concerning today's Germany. Conducted in German.
Ms. Duncan

GER 104a Let's Talk! Shall We?
[ fl hum oc ]
Prerequisite: GER 30a.
Designed to focus on fostering students' oral skills. Numerous mock situations and roleplaying exercises provide students with the opportunity to develop and polish oral competency in the German language. Various mock social gatherings like student outings and parties, festive family events, romantic dates, academic and professional interview situations offer the know-how for interns to be successful and gain the most out of their experience abroad, travel and restaurant "language," and also a certain amount of business German. All this and more are practiced in this course. Usually offered every year.
Staff

GER 105a Learning Language through Literature/Learning Literature through Language
[ fl hum wi ]
Prerequisite: GER 30a or the equivalent.
Provides broad introduction to contemporary German literature while further enhancing various language skills through reading, writing, student presentations, class discussion, and partner and group activities. Covers the entire twentieth century, examining ways in which literature reflects culture, history, and politics, and vice versa. Focuses on a significant expansion of vocabulary as well as ironing out some subtle grammar traps. Students' writing skills improve by means of numerous creative writing assignments. Speaking skills are challenged in every class, as the course is designed as an interactive language/literature course. Usually offered every year.
Staff

GER 109b Meisterwerke Deutscher Kurzprosa
[ hum ]
Conducted in German.
Tailored to suit the needs of advanced intermediate students, this course explores in detail several short prose masterworks by writers including Martin Buber, Franz Kafka, Friedrich Nietzsche, Thomas Mann, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Arthur Schnitzler. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Dowden

GER 110a Goethe
[ hum ]
Intensive study of many of Goethe's dramatic, lyric, and prose works, including Goetz, Werther, Faust I, and a comprehensive selection of poetry. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. von Mering

GER 120a German Enlightenment and Classicism
[ fl hum ]
Prerequisites: GER 39a, A- or better in GER 30a, or the equivalent.
Careful reading and discussion (in German) of some of the most moving dramatic scenes and lyrical poems written by Lessing, Klopstock, Lenz, Goethe, Schiller, Hölderlin, and others will provide an overview of those fertile literary and intellectual movements--enlightenment, storm and stress, and idealism--that eventually culminated in German classicism. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. von Mering

GER 121a Der Eros und das Wort: Lyrik, Prosa, Drama
[ hum ]
Focuses on the prose, poetry, and drama of love in German literature since Goethe. Workes by Goethe, Kleist, Novalis, Tieck, Rilke, Hofmannsthal, Schnitzler, Treichel, and others. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Dowden

GER 140a Bertolt Brecht und das Theater des 20.Jahrhunderts
[ fl hum ]
Prerequisite: GER 103a or equivalent. Conducted in German.
Examines the role of theater and drama as "moral institution" and entertainment. How does theater hold postwar Germans accountable for remembering the past and promoting social justice? Students will also work collaboratively on a performance project. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. von Mering

GER 145a Berlin in Literature/Literature in Berlin
[ hum ]
Prerequisites: GER 103a, 104a, or 105a. Course to be taught at Brandeis summer program in Berlin.
Berlin as the covert capital of the twentieth century and newly revitalized modern metropolis has served as background to many literary masterpieces. Follows the life and work of Berlin authors, both male and female, including site visits. Usually offered every summer.
Ms. Opitz-Weimars

GER 181a Franz Kafka's Erzählungen
[ fl hum ]
Prerequisites: GER 105a is recommended.
A detailed exploration of Kafka's works, life, and thought. Emphasis will be given to his place in the larger scheme of literary modernism. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Dowden

HECS 150a Staging Early Modern Spain: Drama and Society
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English with readings in English translation.
Explores readings and representations of seventeenth-century Spanish drama in social and political contexts. Special attention to gender and violence in texts dealing with seduction, cross-dressing, revolution, and wife-murder, by writers such as Cervantes, Lope, Caro, and Calderón. 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

HISP 110a Medieval and Early Modern Spanish Literature: Gender, Class, Religion, Power
[ fl hum ]
Prerequisite: HISP 106b, or HISP 108a, or permission of the instructor.
Was el Cid a political animal? How do women, Jews, and Muslims fare in classical Spanish literature? Study of major works, authors, and social issues from the Middle Ages to the end of the seventeenth century. Texts covered range from lyric love poetry and the epic Cantar del Cid to Cervantes and masterpieces of Spanish Golden Age theater. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Fox

HISP 120b Don Quijote
[ fl hum ]
Prerequisite: HISP 109b, or HISP 110a, or HISP 111b, or permission of the instructor.
A reading for fun and critical insight into what is often called "the first modern novel." Discusses some reasons for its reputation as a major influence on fiction and films throughout the Western world. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Fox

HISP 121b Teatro Español: Lope y Lorca
[ fl hum ]
Prerequisite: HISP 109b, or HISP 110a, or HISP 111b, or permission of the instructor.
Examines drama of Federico García Lorca (1898-1936) in the context of that of Lope de Vega (1561-1635), considering theories of theater, gender, and sexuality. Both writers were renowned during their lifetimes and mythicized afterwards for their art and their remarkable personal lives. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Fox

HISP 125b Literary Women in Early Modern Spain
[ fl hum ]
Prerequisite: HISP 109b, or HISP 110a, or HISP 111b, or permission of the instructor.
Examines works by and about women in early modern Spain, with particular attention to engagements with and subversions of patriarchal culture in theater, prose, and poetry. Writers include Caro, Zayas, Cervantes, and Tirso de Molina. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Fox

HISP 170a Topics in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Spanish Literature
[ fl hum ]
Prerequisite: HISP 109b, or HISP 110a, or HISP 111b, or permission of the instructor. Course may be repeated for credit.
Topics will vary from year to year, but might include Spanish Enlightenment and romanticism: costumbrismo, Romantic drama, Bécquer, Galdós (the novelas contemporáneas), or eighteenth- and nineteenth-century poetry of the sublime. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Mandrell

HISP 185b España 20XX
[ fl hum ]
Prerequisites: HISP 109b, HISP 110a, HISP 111b, or permission of the instructor.
Looks at cultural production and its context in Spain for an entire calendar year. The goal is to familiarize students with what has been read and watched in Spain most recently and to understand it in terms of contemporary politics and society. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Mandrell

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

HIST 192b Romantic and Existentialist Political Thought
[ ss ]
Readings from Camus, Sartre, Beckett, and others. Examination and criticism of romantic and existentialist theories of politics. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Hulliung

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

ITAL 106a Advanced Readings in Italian
[ fl hum ]
Prerequisite: ITAL 30a, ITAL 105a, or the equivalent. Students enrolling for the first time in an Italian Studies course at Brandeis should refer to www.brandeis.edu/registrar/newstudent/testing.html#italtest.
Close study and analysis of representative works of Italian literature (prose, poetry, drama and film) and culture (art, history, music, cinema, politics) with special emphasis on works by women designed to enhance the student's reading skills. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Servino or Staff

ITAL 110a Introduction to Italian Literature
[ fl hum ]
Prerequisite: ITAL 30a, 105a, 106a, or the equivalent.
Surveys the masterpieces of Italian literature from Dante to the present. It is designed to introduce the student to the major authors and literary periods, styles, and genres and present an overview of the history of the literature. Conducted in Italian. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Servino

ITAL 120b Modern Italian Literature
[ fl hum ]
Prerequisite: ITAL 30a, 105a, 106a, or the equivalent.
Focuses on the literature of twentieth-century writers such as Sciascia, Lampedusa, Calvino, and Moravia as well as contemporary writers, such as Baricco, Tamaro, Mazzantini, and Giordano with emphasis on the theme of historical, individual, and familial identity within the context of traumatic socio-economic upheaval and transformative cultural events. Several films based on these works will also be examined, with emphasis on an analysis of cinematic innovation. Conducted in Italian. Usually offered every other year.
Ms. Servino

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

POL 195b Shakespeare and the Politics of Leadership
[ ss ]
Shakespeare as sources for understanding selected work of the role of leaders and followers, elites and masses, class and ethnicity, social change, the relations between disparate social orders, and societies ins transition. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Levin

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

RECS/THA 166a Chekhov's Stories on Stage
[ ca hum ]
Examines Chekhov's stories and plays as models of their genres. Students will explore these forms and ways of adapting a story or group of stories into drama. Each student will create a dramatic adaptation. Some of these will be staged for class presentation. Usually offered every fourth year.
Ms. Miller and Ms. Morrison

RUS 153a Russian Poetry and Prose in Russian: Undergraduate Seminar
[ fl hum ]
Prerequisite: RUS 29b, RUS 40b or RUS 50b with a grade of C- or higher, or the equivalent as determined by placement examination. Taught in Russian.
An undergraduate seminar focusing on the advanced study of Russian literataure in the original Russian and development of Russian oral and written language skills needed to analyze and discuss poetry. Includes a selection of the very best Russian poetry and prose of the nineteenth century. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Powelstock

THA 76a British, Irish, and Postcolonial Theater
[ ca wi ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took THA 106a in prior years.
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

ECS Related Electives

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 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 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

ANTH 115b Borderlands: Space, Place, and Landscape
[ ss ]
Studies human behavior framed by and creating the spaces and landscapes in which we live. This seminar examines archaeological and ethnographic understandings of the relationships between culture, space, and landscapes with a particular focus on the political and social dynamics of borderlands. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Golden

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 127a Medicine, Body, and Culture
[ nw ss ]
Examines main areas of inquiry in medical anthropology, including medicine as a sociocultural construct, political and economic dimensions of suffering and health, patients and healers in comparative medical systems, and the medical construction of men's and women's bodies. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Lamb or Ms. Hannig

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 139b Language, Ethnicity, and Nationalism
[ ss ]
It is often assumed that language differences divide people, while a common language unites them. To what extent is this true? Taking cross-cultural and historical approaches, we examine the role of language in creating concepts of tribe, ethnicity, and nation. Explores what kinds of social groupings these terms might label, some ideologies connected with their use, and their relationship with communication systems. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. McIntosh

ANTH 144a The Anthropology of Gender
[ nw ss wi ]
Examines gender constructs, sexuality, and cultural systems from a comparative perspective. Topics include the division of labor, rituals of masculinity and femininity, the vexing question of the universality of women's subordination, cross-cultural perspectives on same-sex sexualities and transsexuality, the impact of globalization on systems, and the history of feminist anthropology. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Lamb or Ms. Schattschneider

ANTH 145a Anthropology of the Body
[ ss ]
Explores a range of theories that use the body to understand society, culture, and gender. Topics include how social values and hierarchies are written in, on, and through the body; the relationship between body and gender identity; and experiences and images of the body cross-culturally. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Lamb or Ms. Schattschneider

ANTH 153a Writing Systems and Scribal Traditions
[ nw ss ]
Compares graphic forms of communication, ranging from semasiographic to alphabetic systems, from archaeological and ethnographic perspectives. Explores the social functions of early writing systems, the linkage of literacy and political power, and the production of historical memory. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Urcid

ANTH 155b Psychological Anthropology
[ ss ]
An examination of the relationship between sociocultural systems and individual psychological processes with a critical evaluation of selected theories and studies bearing on this problem. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. McIntosh

ANTH 156a Power and Violence: The Anthropology of Political Systems
[ nw ss ]
Political orders are established and maintained by varying combinations of overt violence and the more subtle workings of ideas. The course examines the relationship of coercion and consensus, and forms of resistance, in historical and contemporary settings. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Ferry

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.
Staff

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 and objects 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. Urcid

ANTH 186b Linguistic Anthropology
[ ss ]
Advanced topics in linguistic anthropology, including the study of linguistic meaning in context, pragmatics, the construction of social relationships through language, language and authority, language and religion, and linguistic ideologies. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. McIntosh or Mr. Parmentier

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 115b Topics in Greek and Roman History
[ hum wi ]
Topics vary from year to year and the course may be repeated for credit with permission of the instructor. Topics include the Age of Alexander the Great, the Age of Pericles, the Greekness of Alexander, and Imperialism in Antiquity. See the Schedule of Classes for the current topic. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Walker

CLAS 120a Age of Caesar
[ hum wi ]
The life and times of Gaius Julius Caesar (100-44 BCE) viewed through primary texts in a variety of genres: from Caesar himself to contemporaries Cicero and Catullus and biographers Plutarch and Suetonius. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Walker

CLAS 133a The Art and Archaeology of Ancient Greece
[ ca hum ]
This is an experiential learning course.
Surveys the main forms and styles of Greek art and architecture from the Bronze Age through the Hellenistic period in mainland Greece and on the islands of the Aegean. Archaeological remains and ancient literary evidence help explore the relationships between culture, the visual arts, and society. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Koh

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 145b Topics in Greek and Roman Art and Archaeology
[ ca hum ]
This is an experiential learning course.
Topics vary from year to year and the course may be repeated for credit. Topics include 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

CLAS 150b Pompeii: Life in the Shadow of Vesuvius
[ ca hum ]
This is an experiential learning course.
Examines Pompeii and Herculaneum, buried by Vesuvius in 79 CE, using the ancient cities' art, architecture, and wall writings to understand the social, political, economic, and religious realities of Roman life on the Bay of Naples, especially in the first century CE. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Koloski-Ostrow

ENG 51a Trauma and Memory in the Literary Imagination
[ hum wi ]
Examines the work of writers who have borne witness to traumatic events from war and genocide to family violence and interracial conflict. In addition to first-person accounts that narrate extreme experience, readings include critical studies in the meaning of trauma and its representations. Studies the ways trauma is figured in Holocaust literature, memoirs about the family, a novel about the legacy of slavery, and in individually chosen texts. The study ends with a unit on witnessing today's traumas, from 9/11 to Hurricane Katrina, and the role of visual documents in the process of bearing witness to extreme experiences.
Ms. Skorczewski

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 third year.
Mr. Sherman

FA 30a History of Art I: From Antiquity to the Middle Ages
[ ca ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took FA 17a in prior years.
A survey of major styles in architecture, sculpture, and painting from prehistoric times to the Gothic cathedral. Usually offered every year.
Mr. McClendon

FA 30b History of Art II: From the Renaissance to the Modern Age
[ ca ]
Open to all students; first-year students and sophomores are encouraged to enroll. May not be taken for credit by students who took FA 18b in prior years.
A study of the major styles in architecture, painting, and sculpture of the West from the Renaissance to the early twentieth century. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Unglaub

FA 32b Survey of Western Architecture
[ ca ]
Especially recommended for first-year students, sophomores, and fine arts majors. May not be taken for credit by students who took FA 21b in prior years.
A historical survey of Western architecture from prehistoric times to the present. Traces the various stages of architectural development in Europe and America in a chronological format. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Grigor

FA 41a Art and the Origins of Europe
[ ca ]
Architecture, sculpture, and painting in eastern and western Europe from the decline of the Roman Empire to the Crusades. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. McClendon

FA 42b The Age of Cathedrals
[ ca ]
Architecture, sculpture, and painting (including stained glass) in Western Europe from the twelfth to the fifteenth century, with particular attention to the great churches of medieval France. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. McClendon

FA 45b Art of the Early Renaissance in Italy
[ ca ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took FA 51a in prior years.
Examines major painters, sculptors, and architects in Florence, Rome, and Venice from Giotto to Bellini (1290-1500). Important themes include the revival of Antiquity, the visual arts and the culture of Humanism, the Rise of the Medici, art and the ideal of the Republic, the development of art theory and criticism, Naturalism and the Sacred image, and the relation of artists and patrons during times of crisis (black death, Pazzi Conspiracy, and Savonarola). Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Unglaub

FA 46b High and Late Renaissance in Italy
[ ca ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took FA 58b in prior years.
Examines the major works of art produced in Italy in the sixteenth century. It focuses on the principal centers of Florence, Rome, and Venice. The foremost artists of the age, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Titian, receive in-depth coverage. The course also considers the social institutions, ecclesiastical, courtly and civic, that furnished the patronage opportunities and promoted the ideas that occasioned, even demanded, new artistic forms of grace and harmony, energy and torsion. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Unglaub

FA 47b Renaissance Art in Northern Europe
[ ca ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took FA 54b in prior years.
A survey of the art of the Netherlands, Germany, and France in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Cultural developments such as the invention of printing, the Protestant Reformation, and the practices of alchemy and witchcraft will be considered through the work of major artists. Usually offered every fourth year.
Mr. Unglaub

FA 48a Baroque in Italy and Spain
[ ca ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took FA 60a in prior years.
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 55a Nineteenth-Century European Painting and Sculpture
[ ca ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took FA 170b in prior years.
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 57a Paris/New York: Revolutions of Modernism
[ ca ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took FA 70a in prior years.
A chronological survey of painting and sculpture from the French Revolution
to the emergence of Pop Art and Minimalism. Principal periods: Manet and the
impressionists, Picasso and Cubism, Matisse, expressionism, Dada and Surrealism, abstract expressionism and Pop avant-garde in America. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Scott

FA 58a Modern Sculpture As Public Art
[ ca ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took FA 172a in prior years.
Focuses on multiple definitions of three-dimensional art in the public realm, from statue to structure. This course charts the development of sculpture for nineteenth-century practice, (Rodin) to abstraction (Brancusi, Calder), and considers the conceptual and installation art projects of contemporary times (Oldenburg, Maya Lin, Shimon Attie, Sarah Sze). Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Scott

FA 59a Modern Art and Modern Culture
[ ca ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took FA 71a in prior years.
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 second year.
Mr. Kalb

FA 61a History of Photography
[ ca ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took FA 76b in prior years.
The history of photography from its invention in 1839 to the present, with an emphasis on developments in America. Photography is studied as a documentary and an artistic medium. Topics include Alfred Stieglitz and the photo-secession, Depression-era documentary, Robert Frank and street photography, and postmodern photography. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Kalb

FA 62a Art since 1945
[ ca ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took FA 74a in prior years.
Survey of developments in painting and sculpture since World War II. Consideration of major trends of the period, including abstract expressionism, pop art, minimalism, color field painting, and realism. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Kalb

FA 69b Inventing Tradition: Women as Artists, Women as Art
[ ca ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took FA 61b in prior years.
Provides an art-historical overview and a feminist critique of gender and representation followed by select case studies of the art and life of women artists. Examples include non-Western art. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Ankori

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 80a Modern Architecture
[ ca ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took FA 122a in prior years.
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 86b Museum Studies
[ ca ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took FA 85b in prior years.
An experiential learning seminar focused on the art object in the context of the museum; the history of museums (architecture, educational mission, curatorial presentation); museum ethics and provenance studies; new theories of museums and their expanded role in the community. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Scott

FA 88b Lives of the Artists
[ ca ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took FA 19b in prior years.
Integrates the study of works of art with the literature of artists' lives, which serves as the foundation to understanding the genesis of human creativity. Diverse historical periods and varying levels of fame will be reflected in the choice of artists to be studied. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Scott

FA 141b The Formation of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Art
[ ca ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took FA 40b in prior years.
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 143a The Art of Medieval England
[ ca ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took FA 43a in prior years.
A survey of art and architecture from the end of the Roman Empire to the Renaissance. Particular concern for the synthesis of native and foreign cultures and their artistic styles, resulting from the barbarian invasions, the Norman conquest, and political rivalry with France. Usually offered every fourth year.
Mr. McClendon

FA 145a St. Peter's and the Vatican
[ ca ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took FA 45a in prior years.
The history, growth, and development of Christendom's most famous shrine, with particular concern for the relationship between the design and decoration of the Renaissance/baroque church and palace complex and their early Christian and medieval predecessors. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. McClendon

FA 149a The Age of Rubens and Rembrandt
[ ca wi ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took FA 63a in prior years.
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 155a Impressionism: Avant-Garde Rebellion in Context
[ ca wi ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took FA 171a in prior years.
Focuses on the major artists from the period 1863 - 1886, from the time of Manet and the Salon des Refusés through the eight group exhibitions of Monet, Renoir, Degas, Cézanne, Pissarro, Morisot, and Cassatt and company. The antithesis of impressionism, its academic rivals, the backdrop of the sociopolitical context, the Second Empire, and the Third Republic will be provided, as well as the roots of the movement's dissolution. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Scott

FA 156b Postimpressionism and Symbolism, 1880-1910
[ ca wi ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took FA 174b in prior years.
The course curriculum covers postimpressionist artists Seurat, Cézanne, Van Gogh, and Gauguin, and more broadly, symbolist trends, expressionism, and art nouveau at the end of the nineteenth century. These trends are followed through chronologically to the early twentieth century in the art of Matisse and the fauves, and in German expressionism. Usually offered every fourth year.
Ms. Scott

FA 158b Picasso and Matisse
[ ca ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took FA 173b in prior years.
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 180a Contemporary Architecture
[ ca ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took FA 121a in prior years.
A study of stylistic and technological developments in post-World War II architecture. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Grigor

FA 188b Twentieth-Century European Art and Architecture in Berlin
[ ca ]
Course to be taught at Brandeis summer program in Berlin. May not be taken for credit by students who took FA 177b in prior years.
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 191b Studies in Renaissance and Baroque Art
[ ca wi ]
Open to Fine Arts majors and minors, Italian Studies minors, and Medieval and Renaissance minors only. Topics may vary from year to year; the course may be repeated for credit as topics change.
Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Unglaub

FA 192a Studies in Modern and Contemporary 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 193a Studies in Modern and Contemporary Architechture
[ ca ]
Topics may vary from year to year; the course may be repeated for credit with permission of the instructor.
Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Grigor

FA 199a Methods and Approaches in the History of Art
[ ca wi ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took FA 197b in prior years.
Explores various ways of analyzing works of art and provides an overview of the historical development of the discipline. Designed specifically for junior and senior art history majors. Usually offered every year.
Mr. McClendon

FILM 100a Introduction to the Moving Image
[ 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, television and interactive media. Usually offered every year.
Staff

FYS 8a Metamorphosis
[ hum wi ]
Examines how literature responds, internally and externally, to the challenge that change poses for the individual and society. Metamorphosis, the transformation of one object into another, is the primary focus within each text studied, but considerable time is also spent in determining how each text relates to the others with which it shares characters, plots, and themes. As multiple versions of a few particular stories are read, only students with a tolerance for repetition and an appreciation for variation should consider enrolling.
Ms. Walker (Classical Studies)

FYS 9a The Wandering Hero in Ancient Literature
[ hum ]
Focuses on the Epic of Gilgamesh. Examines such issues as friendship, social responsibility, the meaning of life, mortality and immortality, the difference between the human and the divine. Texts are read from Mesopotamia, Greece, Israel, and Canaan, which intersect literally and thematically with the epic, such as The Odyssey, Genesis, Aqhat, Ecclesiastes, and selected Sumerian narratives.
Mr. Abusch (Near Eastern and Judaic Studies)

FYS 9b Going to Hell: Journeys to the Underworld
[ hum ]
Why does the theme of a living being, either divine or human, going to visit the world of the dead occur in several cultures? This seminar explores connections to the meaning of life and justice within the specific cultures engendering each text.
Ms. Walker (Classical Studies)

FYS 12a The "I" in the Storm: Writers Respond to Totalitarianism
[ hum oc ]
Each of us grapples with issues of freedom and social conformity as we struggle to develop and define our identity. This struggle is even more complex for artists and writers living under totalitarian regimes. This seminar examines essays, novels (including graphic novels), and memoirs by twentieth- and twenty-first-century writers that portray the experience of individuals under totalitarianism. What special moral challenges do they face? How do these works explore strength and weakness in the human spirit?
Ms. Kellman (Near Eastern and Judaic Studies)

FYS 17a Through a Gendered Lens: Women and Men in Modern Jewish Culture
[ hum ]
Gender roles are changing rapidly in modern Jewish society. Engages students in an interdisciplinary investigation of the roots of these changes. Examines male and female roles in pre-modern European Jewish culture and the transformations in gender relations, education, family, and religious life that took place during the Haskalah (Enlightenment) Movement of the nineteenth century and up to the start of the Holocaust. Readings are drawn from fiction, poetry, and autobiography originally written in Yiddish and Hebrew and from recent studies in cultural history.
Ms. Kellman (Near Eastern and Judaic Studies)

FYS 25a The Artist Behind their Work
[ ca ]
No previous painting or drawing experience required.
Appreciates through understanding the artists lives and experiences behind his/her work. Each student gains deeper appreciation for their chosen artist’s painting process, style and artistic content through the execution/replication of a chosen artist’s work.
Mr. Moody (Theater Arts)

FYS 25b Trials of Truth, Power, and Justice
[ hum ]
Engages questions of truth, power, and justice in trials seen in literature, philosophy, history, journalism, political propaganda, and film. Trials purport to assess and adjudicate conflicting claims of truth and falsehood, guilt and innocence, within the constraints of formal principles and according to the dictates of established procedure.
Mr. Sheppard (Near Eastern and Judaic Studies)

FYS 32b Crime and Punishment in History
[ ss ]
This seminar aims to help first-year students sharpen their skills in critical reading, thinking, writing, and oral expression — vital tools of a liberal arts education and a rich intellectual life. Our common substantive project will be to develop an informed historical perspective on crime and punishment. Immersing ourselves in an eclectic mix of texts and genres — criminal codes, pardon tales, trial records, political essays, memoirs, true-crime journalism, history books, urban sociology, novels, and films — we will examine how Western Europeans and Americans of different eras have defined, represented, and punished crime.
Mr. Willrich (History)

FYS 36b Drama and Social Issues
[ hum ]
What are the values and purposes of drama? What drama can tell us about violence and sexuality, about political relationships, and about ourselves is explored through plays by writers from Sophocles to Calderón to Dorfman.
Ms. Fox (Romance Studies)

FYS 53a Between Conflict and Cooperation: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Medieval Spain
[ hum ]
An examination of social and intellectual interaction among the three religious communities of medieval Spain, focusing on literature, philosophy, and religion (including mysticism). Will study how the interaction of the three faiths helped produce a unique culture.
Mr. Decter (Near Eastern and Judaic Studies)

FYS 53b Common Questions, Different Answers: The Bible and Near Eastern Literature
[ hum ]
Archaeological and textual finds of the last one and a half centuries have radically changed how we read the Bible. We now have thousands of previously unknown texts from all over the Near East that provide a new framework for interpretation. Near Eastern literature asks many of the same questions as the Bible. How are the answers the texts give similar to or different from one another?
Mr. Wright (Near Eastern and Judaic Studies)

FYS 68b The Art of Living
[ hum wi ]
What do we want from life? How do consciousness and imagination help and hinder us along our journeys? This seminar examines literary and philosophical texts that challenge received ideas about how the mind and life intertwine, such as Plato's Symposium, the Tao Te Ching, Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, Nabokov's Lolita, and others.
Mr. Powelstock (German, Russian, and Asian Languages and Literature)

FYS 70a Desires and Awakenings: The Search for Identity in Modern Drama
[ ca ]
Engage in the search for personal, social, and national identity through great dramatic literature of the modern era. Theater is a mirror through which we can see ourselves and our world. These classic works, reflecting the ideas of the pioneering playwrights who created them, have shaped not only the nature of theatre and art, but thought and behavior in the last 100 years. Discussions will focus on the plays as literature, history, psychology, and performance while examining their relevance in today¿s society and our lives. Explores a range of topics including family, religion, politics, economics, race, gender, death, sexuality, cultural assimilation, and the concept of "modernity."
Mr. Edmiston (Theater Arts)

FYS 76a Law and the Search for Authority
[ ss ]
Examines how societies seek to justify their basic legal rules. Readings drawn from political, historical, and philosophical works that search for ultimate legal principles in written constitutions, totalitarian authority, custom and tradition, or the fallible capacities of human reason.
Mr. Gaskins (American Studies)

FYS 83b Science in Art
[ sn ]
How do we know whether that painting or that sculpture is "genuine"? Usually, it's because we take the word of the museum or the art dealer. But many works of art are discredited every day as new methods are applied to determine the "fine structure" of a particular artifact. Art objects are looked at critically, from the point of view of the conservator, who has to determine a piece's value before it is bought or displayed.
Ms. Ringe (Chemistry/Biochemistry)

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

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 110a The Civilization of the Early Middle Ages
[ ss ]
Survey of medieval history from the fall of Rome to the year 1000. Topics include the barbarian invasions, the Byzantine Empire, the Dark Ages, the Carolingian Empire, feudalism, manorialism, and the Vikings. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Kapelle

HIST 110b The Civilization of the High and Late Middle Ages
[ ss ]
Survey of European history from 1000 to 1450. Topics include the Crusades, the birth of towns, the creation of kingdoms, the papacy, the peasantry, the universities, the Black Death, and the Hundred Years' War. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Kapelle

HIST 112b The Crusades and the Expansion of Medieval Europe
[ ss ]
Survey of the relationships between medieval Europe and neighboring cultures, beginning with the decline of Byzantium. Topics include a detailed look at the Crusades, the Spanish reconquista, the Crusader kingdoms, economic growth, and the foundations of imperialism. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Kapelle

HIST 113a English Medieval History
[ ss ]
Survey of English history from the Anglo-Saxon invasions to the fifteenth century. Topics include the heroic age, the Viking invasions, and development of the English kingdom from the Norman conquest through the Hundred Years' War. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Kapelle

HIST 120a Britain in the Later Middle Ages
[ ss ]
Exploration of the critical changes in government and society in the British Isles from the late fourteenth to the sixteenth century. Topics include the Black Death, the lordship of Ireland, the Hundred Years' War, the Scottish War of Independence, economic change, the Tudors, and the Reformation. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Kapelle

HIST 121a Breaking the Rules: Deviance and Nonconformity in Premodern Europe
[ ss wi ]
Explores the ways in which "deviant" behavior was defined and punished by some, but also justified and even celebrated by others in premodern Europe. Topics include vagrancy, popular uprisings, witchcraft, religious heresy, and the status of women. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Sreenivasan

HIST 123a The Renaissance
[ ss ]
Culture, society, and economy in the Italian city-state (with particular attention to Florence) from feudalism to the rise of the modern state. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Kapelle

HIST 126a Early Modern Europe (1500-1700)
[ qr ss ]
Survey of politics, ideas, and society in Western Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Focuses on the changing relationship between the emerging modern state and its subjects. Topics include the development of ideologies of resistance and conformity, regional loyalties and the problems of empire, changing technologies of war and repression, and the social foundations of order and disorder. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Sreenivasan

HIST 127b Household and Family in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (1300-1800)
[ qr ss ]
An examination of the fundamental building block of premodern European society. Topics include the demographic structures, economic foundations, and governing ideologies that sustained the household, as well as the repercussions of failure or refusal to live according to "normal" forms. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Sreenivasan

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 133a Politics of the Enlightenment
[ ss ]
Examines the Enlightenment as a source of the intellectual world we live in today. Examination of some of the political, philosophical, and scientific writings of the philosophers. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Hulliung

HIST 133b Rights and Revolutions: History of Natural Rights
[ ss wi ]
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

HIST 134b Nineteenth-Century Europe: Nationalism, Imperialism, Socialism (1850-1919)
[ ss ]
The world of nation-states; urbanization and mature industrial societies; science and culture; attacks on liberal civilization; socialism, collectivism, and imperialism; domestic tensions and world politics. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

HIST 135a Monarchies and Republics: Early Modern Political Thought
[ ss ]
An examination of early modern European political thought. Texts include plays, pamphlets, and political treatises. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Hulliung

HIST 137b World War I
[ ss ]
Examines the opening global conflict of the twentieth century. Topics include the destruction of the old European order, the origins of total war, the cultural and social crisis it provoked, and the long-term consequences for Europe and the world. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Jankowski

HIST 139b Fascism East and West
[ ss ]
A comparative analysis of dictatorship in Europe, Japan, and Latin America during the twentieth century. Topical emphasis on the social origins, mass culture, and political organization of authoritarian regimes. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Kelikian

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

HIST 142a Crime, Deviance, and Confinement in Modern Europe
[ ss wi ]
Examines the crisis of law and order in old regime states and explores the prison and asylum systems that emerged in modern Europe. Surveys psychiatry and forensic science from the Napoleonic period until World War II. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Kelikian

HIST 145a War in European History
[ ss ]
Introduces students to the changing nature of war and warfare in European history since the Middle Ages. Explores the reciprocal influence of armies and societies and the ways in which wars reflect the cultures of the polities waging them. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Jankowski

LING 120b Syntactic Theory
[ ss ]
Prerequisite: LING 100a is recommended but not required.
An introduction to the process of syntactic analysis, to generative syntactic theory, and to many major syntactic phenomena of English and other languages, including the clausal architecture, the lexicon, and various types of syntactic movement. Usually offered every year.
Staff

LING 125b Linguistic Typology
[ ss ]
Prerequisite: LING 100a or permission of the instructor.
Focuses on linguistic typology, in which the languages of the world are classified in terms of their common grammatical features rather than by genetic relationships. Includes study of language universals: traits and implicational relationships which hold in (nearly) every language. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Goldberg

LING 130a Formal Semantics: Truth, Meaning, and Language
[ hum qr ss ]
Prerequisite: LING 100a or permission of the instructor. LING 8b or LING 120b recommended.
Explores the semantic structure of language in terms of the current linguistic theory of model-theoretic semantics. Topics include the nature of word meanings, categorization, compositionality, and plurals and mass terms. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Malamud

LING 140a Architecture of Conversation: Discourse and Pragmatics
[ oc ss ]
This is an experiential learning course. Prerequisite: LING 100a or permission of the instructor.
Assuming a theory of sentence-level linguistic competence, what phenomena are still to be accounted for in the explication of language knowledge? The class explores topics in language use in context, including anaphora, deixis, implicature, speech acts, information packaging, and pragmatics of dialogue. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Malamud

LING 190b Topics in Linguistics
[ ss ]
See the schedule of classes for topic and prerequisite(s). Maybe repeated for credit with permission of the instructor.
Advanced topics in linguistics, varying by year. Usually offered every year.
Staff

LING 197a Language Acquisition and Development
[ oc ss ]
This is an experiential learning course. Prerequisite: LING 100a or permission of the instructor.
The central problem of language acquisition is to explain what makes this formidable task possible. Theories of language acquisition are studied, and conclusions are based on recent research in the development of syntax, semantics, and phonology. The overall goal is to arrive at a coherent picture of the language learning process. Usually offered every third year.
Staff

MUS 1a Introduction to Music
[ ca ]
A general introduction to the materials and forms of music, and a study of musical literature. Training in analytical listening, based on selected listening assignments. Open to non-majors who are assumed to have little or no previous knowledge of music. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

MUS 2a The Western Tradition as Seen through Chamber Music
[ ca ]
The focus will be on the string quartet and music for strings and keyboard. Key works from the baroque period through recent music will be performed, examined, and placed in cultural context. Composers represented will include Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and Ives. Usually offered every fourth year.
Lydian String Quartet and 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 44a Mozart
[ ca wi ]
Open to music majors and non-majors.
Examines the life and works of W. A. Mozart and traces his development as a composer from his tours of Europe as a child prodigy through his last works in Vienna. Various compositions will be studied, some in greater detail. Usually offered every fourth year.
Staff

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 51b The Symphony
[ ca ]
Open to music majors and non-majors.
Examines a major genre of Western classical music: the symphony. By analyzing representative masterpieces, students acquire an understanding of the development of musical style in the classic, romantic, and modern periods. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

MUS 52a Opera
[ ca ]
Open to music majors and non-majors.
Surveys the history of opera from its emergence around 1600 to the present day. In addition to tracing musical changes, the social, cultural, and intellectual trends that influenced (and were shaped by) these changes are also considered. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

MUS 53a Music for the Ballet
[ ca ]
Open to music majors and non-majors.
Focuses on a series of masterpieces in the ballet repertoire from the romantic era to around 1970. Emphasizes ballet schools and styles, including the music of composers such as Tchaikovsky, Debussy, Stravinsky, Ravel, Prokofiev, Copland, Chopin, and Schumann, and choreographers such as Bournonville, Petipa, Ivanov, Nijinsky, Balanchine, and Graham. Usually offered every fourth year.
Mr. Chafe

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

MUS 150a Women and Music, Past and Present: Style, Identity, Culture
[ ca ]
Examines the interaction between gender and culture in shaping music and musical life. Topics will vary; refer to the Schedule of Classes. Usually offered every fourth year.
Staff

MUS 182b Advanced Music Seminar
[ ca ]
Prerequisites: MUS 101b and MUS 102b. Primarily intended for music majors and minors in the junior or senior year.
Historical and/or analytical and interpretive approaches to the study of selected musical masterworks. Typical topics: the Brahms string quartets; the operas of Verdi and Wagner; Bach cantatas; the nineteenth-century German lied; Haydn symphonies; Stravinsky ballets; Schoenberg operas. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

MUS 183b Music in European Culture 1400-1600
[ ca ]
Prerequisites: MUS 101a and b, one music history course (MUS 131a – 135a), and experience with early music; open to other students by permission of the instructor.
This advanced seminar, designed for music majors in their junior or senior year and for students enrolled in MERL, explores the place of music in European culture between 1400 and 1600. Taking as its point of departure a group of representative compositions, it considers questions such as the role of music in society, the impact of religious reformations, the significance of music printing in the transmission of music, and problems in performance practice. Usually offered every fourth year.
Staff

NEJS 8a The Bible in Its Near Eastern Context
[ hum ]
All texts are read in English.
A study of the Bible in light of recently discovered Near Eastern texts that have changed how the Bible is interpreted and read. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Wright

NEJS 35a History of the Jews from 1492 to the Present
[ hum ss ]
Open to all students.
Main trends and events in the legal, economic, social, cultural, and religious history of the Jewish people in the context of the general background, with emphasis on major areas of Jewish settlement. Usually offered every year.
Staff

NEJS 110b Readings in the Hebrew Bible
[ hum ]
Prerequisites: NEJS 10a or 40-level HBRW course or permission of the instructor.
A close reading of selected biblical texts. Topics may vary from year to year and the course may be repeated for credit. Recent topics have included readings in the prophets. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Abusch, Mr. Brettler or Mr. Wright

NEJS 111a The Hebrew Bible/Old Testament
[ hum wi ]
Open to all students.
A survey of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). Biblical books will be examined from various perspectives and compared to other ancient Near Eastern compositions. No knowledge of Hebrew is presumed. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Brettler

NEJS 112a The Book of Genesis
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: HBRW 122a or b, NEJS 10a, or permission of the instructor.
An in-depth study of the Hebrew text of Genesis, with particular attention to the meaning, documentary sources, and Near Eastern background of the accounts of creation and origins of human civilization in chapters one to eleven, and of the patriarchal narratives, especially those about Abraham. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Abusch

NEJS 114b Ritual and Cult in the Bible
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: HBRW 122a or b, NEJS 10a, or permission of the instructor.
A study of ritual and cultic texts of the Bible in Hebrew and their rites and phenomena with historical-critical, Near Eastern-environmental, social-scientific, and literary analysis. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Wright

NEJS 115a The Book of Deuteronomy
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: NEJS 10a or a strong knowledge of biblical Hebrew.
A close examination of the prose and poetry of the Hebrew text of Deuteronomy with special attention to its religious, legal, and compositional features. Traditions found in the Book of Deuteronomy will be compared with their counterparts elsewhere in the Torah. The place of the Book of Deuteronomy in the history of the religion of Israel will be considered. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Brettler

NEJS 115b Gender and the Bible
[ hum ]
Open to all students.
The Hebrew Bible, a complex work, reflects a wide range of attitudes toward gender. This course examines these attitudes as they are reflected in issues such as the legal status of women, women in myths, leadership, prostitution, masculinity, and the gender of ancient Israel's deity. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Brettler

NEJS 116a Ancient Near Eastern Religion and Mythology
[ hum nw ]
Open to all students.
An introduction to the religion, mythology, and thought of the ancient Near East. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Abusch

NEJS 119a The Torah: Composition and Interpretation
[ hum wi ]
Prerequisite: NEJS 10a or equivalent.
Explores Hebrew texts in the Torah or Pentateuch, examining their nature as collections of distinct documents or sources, many of which have a long prehistory, as well as the implications of this compositional model for their interpretation. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Brettler

NEJS 121b Biblical Poetry: Love and Death
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: NEJS 10a or a strong knowledge of biblical Hebrew.
A close reading of biblical poetic texts, with a consideration of what makes these texts poetic. Texts will be chosen primarily from Song of Songs, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Job. Topics will vary from year to year and the course may be repeated for credit. Refer to Schedule of Classes for current topic. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Brettler

NEJS 122b Biblical Narrative Texts: The Historical Tradition
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: NEJS 10a or a strong knowledge of biblical Hebrew.
A close reading of a variety of biblical "historical" texts from Deuteronomy, Judges, Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles. The basic tools for biblical research and the literary study of the Bible will be explored. The newer methods of analyzing biblical "historical" texts will be discussed. Topics vary from year to year and this course may be repeated for credit. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Brettler

NEJS 128a Introduction to Christianity
[ hum ]
Open to all students.
An introduction to Christian beliefs, liturgy, and history. Surveys the largest world religion: from Ethiopian to Korean Christianity, from black theology to the Christian right. Analyzes Christian debates about God, Christ, and human beings. Studies differences among Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Brooten

NEJS 130a The New Testament: A Historical Introduction
[ hum ]
Open to all students.
A study of the main parts of the New Testament, with emphasis on the contents of the books and the historical development of early Christianity. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Brooten

NEJS 130b Ancient Greek-Speaking Judaism and Christianity
[ hum ]
Reading and interpretation of Greek Jewish and Christian texts that help us to understand the interrelationships between these two groups, as well as what separated them from each other. Greek track available for those with background in Greek. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Brooten

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 134b Yiddish Culture in the Modern World
[ hum ]
An examination of the rise of modern Yiddish secular culture in Eastern Europe and North America with a particular focus on the literature it produced. Music, criticism, journalism, drama, film, and painting are also studied. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Kellman

NEJS 135a The Modern Jewish Experience
[ hum ]
Themes include Enlightenment, Hasidism, emancipation, Jewish identity in the modern world (acculturation and assimilation), development of dominant nationalism in Judaism, Zionism, European Jewry between the world wars, Holocaust, the creation of the State of Israel, and contemporary Jewish life in America, Israel, and Europe. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Freeze or Mr. Sheppard

NEJS 136b History and Culture of the Jews in East-Central Europe, 1914 to the Present
[ hum ]
An examination of the history of the Jews in the countries of East-Central Europe (Poland, the Soviet Union and its successor states, Lithuania, Hungary, Romania, and Czechoslovakia) from the outbreak of World War I until the present day. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Polonsky

NEJS 137a The Destruction of European Jewry
[ hum ]
Open to all students.
Why did the Jews become the subject of genocidal hatred? A systematic examination of the anti-Jewish genocide planned and executed by Nazi Germany and the Jewish and general responses to it. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Polonsky

NEJS 137b A History of the Jews in Warsaw, Lodz, Vilna, and Odessa
[ hum ss ]
Examines the history of the four largest Jewish communities in the Russian Empire from the earliest settlement through the Holocaust to the present, comparing internal organization, different political and cultural allegiances, and relations with the majority population. Usually offered every fourth year.
Mr. Polonsky

NEJS 138a Genocide and Mass Killing in the Twentieth Century
[ hum ]
Prerequisites: Basic knowledge of twentieth-century world history is preferable.
An interdisciplinary seminar examining history and sociology of the internationally punishable crime of genocide, with the focus on theory, prevention, and punishment of genocide. Case studies include Armenians in Ottoman Turkey, Stalin's Russia, the Holocaust, Cambodia, Bosnia, and Rwanda. Usually offered every fourth year.
Mr. Polonsky

NEJS 139a Philosophers, Poets, and Mystics: Jewish Intellectuals in the Middle Ages
[ hum ]
Addresses Jewish culture during the medieval period in the Christian and Islamic worlds. Focus on Ashkenazic and Sephardic intellectual culture. Other topics include communal organization, the influence of Islamic and Christian intellectual culture. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Decter

NEJS 140a Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages
[ hum ss wi ]
Surveys Jewish political, social and intellectual history in the domains of Islam and Christianity from the rise of Islam (622) to the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain (1492) and Portugal (1497). Topics include the legal status of Jews, Jewish communal organization, persecution and response, inter-religious polemics, conversion, the origins of anti-Judaism, and trends in Jewish law, philosophy, literature, and mysticism. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Decter

NEJS 140b Early Modern Jewish History
[ hum ]
Examines Jewish history and culture in early modern Europe: mass conversions on the Iberian peninsula, migrations, reconversions back to Judaism, the printing revolution, the Reformation and Counter Reformation, ghettos, gender, family, everyday life, material culture, communal structure, rabbinical culture, mysticism, magic, science, messianic movements, Hasidism, mercantilism, and early modern challenges to Judaism.
Ms. Freeze

NEJS 141a Russian Jews in the Twentieth Century
[ hum ]
Examines Russian Jewish history from 1917 to the present. Focuses on the tsarist legacy, Russian Revolution, the creation of a new socialist society, development of Yiddish culture, the "Great Turn" under Stalin, Holocaust, post war Judaism, anti-Semitism, emigration, and current events. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Freeze

NEJS 142a Modern History of East European Jewry
[ hum ]
A comprehensive survey of the history (economic, sociopolitical, and religious) of the Jewish communities in Eastern Europe from the middle of the eighteenth century until World War II, with emphasis placed on the Jews of Poland and Russia. Usually offered every fourth year.
Mr. Polonsky

NEJS 142b Secular Jews: Lives and Choices from 1750 to the Present
[ hum ]
A survey of the lives of Jews who since 1750 have seen their identity in new ways, either as individuals without religious faith but still identified as Jews or as adherents of ideologies which provided alternative definitions of Jewish identity. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Polonsky

NEJS 148b Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Jews and Christians: Sources and Interpretations
[ hum ]
Introduction to the classical Jewish and Christian sources on same-sex love and on gender ambiguity and to a variety of current interpretations of them, to the evidence for same-sex love and gender fluidity among Jews and Christians through the centuries, and to current religious and public policy debates about same-sex love and gender identity and expression. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Brooten

NEJS 149a The Jews of Muslim and Christian Spain
[ hum ]
A survey of Jewish political, intellectual, and social history in the Islamic and Christian spheres from the beginnings of Jewish life in Spain until the expulsion in 1492. Students develop skills in reading historical, literary, and philosophical texts. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Decter

NEJS 150b History of Poland since 1750
[ hum ]
May only count toward the NEJS major or minor with the written permission of the instructor.
Surveys the history of Poland from the middle of the eighteenth century to the recent changes since 1989. Emphasizes the specific character of the Polish lands as a borderland and as a multi-religious and multi-ethnic area. Usually offered every fourth year.
Mr. Polonsky

NEJS 151a Jewish Life in Weimar Berlin, Wartime England, and the Postwar United States
[ hum ss ]
Prerequisite: Reading comprehension of modern Hebrew as determined by the instructor.
An examination of key issues, including rites of passage, life-cycle events in pre-World War I Eastern Europe; the growth of Nazism; Holocaust; Zionism, Palestine Mandate and the State of Israel; Hebrew culture in the Diaspora; and the early days of Brandeis University, based on typed Hebrew letters written between 1919 and 1967. Usually offered every third year.
Staff

NEJS 152a From Inquisition to Holocaust
[ hum ]
Examines the Iberian Inquisition in its religious, social, and economic context as a manifestation of religious anti-Judaism that culminated in the concept of purity of blood. Traces the emergence of modern racial anti-Semitism which culminated in the Holocaust, and contemplates the similarities and differences between it and medieval anti-Judaism. Usually offered every second year.
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 157b Jewish Thought in the Islamic World
[ hum ]
A survey of Jewish thought produced in the Islamic world and its influence on later Jewish philosophers. Thinkers include Saadiah Gaon, Judah Halevi, Moses Maimonides, Gersonides, and Spinoza. Topics include reason and revelation, divine attribute theory, providence, ultimate human felicity, and the role of philosophy in biblical exegesis, Halakhah, and poetry. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Decter

NEJS 158b Yiddish Literature and the Modern Jewish Revolution
[ hum wi ]
Students with reading knowledge of Yiddish may elect to read the original texts.
Introduces students to Yiddish fiction, poetry, and drama created in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Eastern Europe and the Americas. Readings include a sampling of works by classic Yiddish writers, but focus primarily on fiction, poetry, and drama by writers of succeeding generations. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Kellman

NEJS 159a Modern Jewish Philosophy
[ hum ]
Surveys the contours of modern Jewish philosophy by engaging some of its most important themes and voices. Competing Jewish inflections of and responses to rationalism, romanticism, idealism, existentialism, and nihilism. This provides the conceptual road signs of the course as we traverse the winding byways of Jewish philosophy from Baruch Spinoza to Emanuel Levinas. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Sheppard

NEJS 159b Classic Yiddish Fiction
[ hum wi ]
May not be repeated for credit by students who have taken NEJS 75b in previous years.
An introduction to the major works of fiction by the three classic Yiddish writers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Taught in English using texts in translation. Students with knowledge of Yiddish may elect to read the original texts. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Kellman

NEJS 160b German-Jewish Thought
[ hum ]
Traces the development of German thought from the late eighteenth to the twentieth century. Engages a number of seminal thinkers and their understandings of the challenges posed by the shaping forces of the modern German-Jewish experience: enlightenment, Jewish Reform movement, liberalism, and capitalism, among others. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Sheppard

NEJS 167a Twentieth-Century Jewish Immigration to the United States
[ hum ss ]
Open to all students.
A historical survey of twentieth-century Jewish immigration to the United States, including East European, Sephardic, Cuban, Persian, Mizrahi, and Soviet Jewish immigrations. Regular readings will be supplemented by primary sources, immigrant fiction, and film. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Sarna

NEJS 167b Jewish Women and Gender in Europe
[ hum ]
Examines Jewish women's experiences from antiquity to World War II through the lens of gender. Themes include the construction of gender roles and hierarchies in the family, religion, economic life, and the public arena; sexuality; sociability and education-primarily in Europe. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Freeze

NEJS 175a Jews and Gender in Eastern Europe: Tradition and Transformation
[ hum ]
Examines gender roles in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Eastern European Jewish culture, with a focus on transformation in gender relations, education, and religious practices. Readings are drawn from Yiddish prose, poetry, and memoir literature, with secondary sources in cultural history. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Kellman

NEJS 175b Responses to the Holocaust in Literature
[ hum ]
The Holocaust has generated a rich and varied body of literary representations of this crucial event in modern history. This course studies significant examples of such representations, dwelling on their historical, cultural, and psychological aspects. The aesthetic and moral problems of representation are raised in each case. Authors examined include Wiesel, Levi, Appelfeld, Spiegelman, Celan, and Pagis. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Sheppard

NEJS 177a The Holocaust in Israeli and Jewish Literature
[ hum ]
A broad survey of Holocaust writings in Modern Jewish literature. Examines the psychological, social, moral, and aesthetic challenges involved in representing the Holocaust in Israeli, American, and European context through literary texts, theoretical research, works of art, and film. Taught in English. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Szobel

NEJS 179a Jewish Literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: HBRW 40a, NEJS 10a, or equivalent.
An introduction to the Hebrew literature of Spain, Germany, and Italy during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Focus on Sephardic literature and on the continuities and discontinuities of Hebrew belles-lettres, giving attention to the impact of Arabic and European literature on Jewish authors. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Decter

NEJS 180a Love and Passion in Medieval Jewish Literature and Thought
[ hum ]
An exploration of the love theme in Jewish poetry, fiction, exegesis, and philosophical literature, from the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Jewish texts from Palestine, Spain (Sefarad), France, and Italy are compared with texts in Arabic, Spanish, French, and Italian. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Decter

NEJS 181a Jews on Screen: "Cohen's Fire Sale" to the Coen Brothers
[ hum ]
Open to all students.
Survey course focusing on moving images of Jews and Jewish life in fiction and factual films. Includes early Russian and American silents, home movies of European Jews, Yiddish feature films, Israeli cinema, independent films, and Hollywood classics. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Rivo

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

NEJS 186a Introduction to the Qur'an
[ hum nw ]
Traces the history of the Qur'an as text, its exegesis, and its role in inter-religious polemics, law, theology, and politics. Examines the role of the Qur'an in modern Islamic movements. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Lumbard

NEJS 188a The Rise and Decline of the Ottoman Empire, 1300-1800
[ hum nw ss ]
A historical survey of the Middle East from the establishment of the Ottoman Empire as the area's predominant power to 1800. Topics include Ottoman institutions and their transformation, and the Ottoman Empire as a world power. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

NEJS 188b The Destruction of the Ottoman Empire, 1800-1923
[ hum nw ]
Examines the historical processes that led to the destruction of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of new nation-states in the Balkans and the Middle East: nationalism, European imperialism, and Ottoman reform and its ultimate failure. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

PHIL 1a Introduction to Philosophy
[ hum ]
Enrollment varies according to instructor. Refer to the Schedule of Classes each semester for information regarding applicability to the writing-intensive requirement.
A general course presenting the problems of philosophy, especially in the areas of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and social and political philosophy. Texts include works of selected philosophers of various historical periods from antiquity to the present. Usually offered every semester.
Staff

PHIL 12b Social Justice
[ hum wi ]
Looks closely at the idea of social justice and the moral and political issues to which it gives rise. Discussion will include critical analyses of modern conceptions of what constitutes a just society as well as an examination of how these conceptions apply to contemporary issues at the intersection of politics and markets. The course will examine in light of different ways of viewing social justice, the case to be made for and against distributing certain goods and services as the result of free exchange or through markets subject to some degree of public oversight, regulation, planning and control. The course will look at what, if anything, is to be done about, among other things, financial markets, national health care, garbage disposal, funding of the arts, fire departments, auto, gas, and coal emissions, clear cutting, highway construction, zoning laws, food and drugs, patents, public parks and schools, voucher programs, toxic waste, endangered species and the licensing of parents. Discussion will also address the question whether there might be a shared conception of social justice or a balance struck balance between liberty and equality that all reasonable persons could accept. Readings include selections from Locke, Rousseau, Mill, Rawls, Nozick, Walzer, Friedman, Hirschman, MacIntyre, Sandel and others. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Teuber

PHIL 13b The Idea of the Market: Economic Philosophies
[ hum ]
Historical survey of philosophical assumptions in the defense and critique of market capitalism, starting from Adam Smith's views on value, self, and community. Explores philosophical alternatives in Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Dewey, and Nozick, including debates on justice and individualism. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Gaskins

PHIL 17a Introduction to Ethics
[ hum ]
Explores the basic concepts and theories of ethical philosophy. What makes a life good? What are our moral obligations to other people? Applications of ethical philosophy to various concrete questions will be considered. Usually offered every semester.
Ms. Smiley or Ms. Moran

PHIL 19a Human Rights
[ hum wi ]
Examines international human rights policies and the moral and political issues to which they give rise. Includes civilians' wartime rights, the role of human rights in foreign policy, and the responsibility of individuals and states to alleviate world hunger and famine. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Teuber

PHIL 24a Philosophy of Religion
[ hum ]
An introduction to the major philosophical problems of religion. Discusses traditional arguments for and against the existence of God, the nature of faith and mystical experiences, the relation of religion to morality, and puzzles about the concept of God. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Hirsch

PHIL 37a Philosophy of Language
[ hum ]
Theories of meaning, reference, and methodological issues in account of language and translation. Readings from contemporary sources. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Berger or Mr. Yourgrau

PHIL 78a Existentialism
[ hum ]
A study of French existentialist philosophy and its reception, with special attention to the works of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Marusic

PHIL 107b Kant's Moral Theory
[ hum ]
An examination of the main philosophical issues addressed in Kant's Critique of Practical Reason from the perspective of their relation to works specifically belonging to his ethical theory: the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and the Metaphysics of Morals. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Greenberg

PHIL 108a Philosophy and Gender
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: PHIL 1a or PHIL 17a.
Explores the place of gender in the works of particular Western philosophers (e.g., Kant, Hume, and Rousseau) and uses the tools of contemporary analytic philosophy to address questions about gender equality, sexual objectification, and the nature of masculinity. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Smiley

PHIL 109b Ethics and Emotions
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: One course in philosophy.
An examination of the historical and contemporary theories concerning the role that emotions and feeling ought to have in moral judgment and decision-making. Explores contemporary philosophical theories about the relationship between emotion and judgment. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Moran

PHIL 110a The Good Life or How Should One Live?
[ hum wi ]
Much recent philosophy in the English-speaking world has focused on the nature of things and our knowledge and reasoning about such things. But most human mental activity is not theoretical, but practical; less concerned with how the world is than with what is to be done. In the earliest moments of Western philosophy, Socrates distinguished himself by asking, "How should one live?" Increasingly, however, that question and its variants have taken a back seat in philosophy, abandoned to the best-seller lists and to publications produced by recent graduates of assertiveness training workshops. We reclaim these questions and take them up again from within the discipline of philosophy itself. Questions asked include: "How should I live?" "What are the good things in life?" "Does life have meaning?" Readings include Darwin, Nietzsche, Freud, Murdoch, Dennett, Dawkins, Hacking, Nozick, and Nagel. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Teuber

PHIL 111a What Is Justice?
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: One course in philosophy or political theory or permission of the instructor.
What is justice and what does justice require? The course examines theories of justice, both classical and contemporary. Topics include liberty and equality, "who gets what and how much," welfare- and resource-based principles of justice, justice as a virtue, liberalism, multiculturalism, and globalization. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Smiley

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 second year.
Mr. Teuber

PHIL 114b Topics in Ethical Theory
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: PHIL 1a, or PHIL 17a, or PHIL 23b.
Is morality something we have reasons to obey regardless of our interests and desires, or do the reasons grow out of our interests and desires? Is the moral life always a personally satisfying life? Is morality a social invention or is it more deeply rooted in the nature of things? This course will address such questions. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Moran or Ms. Smiley

PHIL 116a Topics in Political Philosophy
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: PHIL 1a, PHIL 17a, or POL 10a.
Explores social contract theories of political obligation, the right to rebel against the state, and the possibility of a global political community. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Smiley

PHIL 118a War and Morality
[ ss ]
Prerequisite: One course in philosophy or POL 10a.
Explores a variety of moral questions associated with both war in general and particular kinds of warfare. How, if at all, does war differ from murder? Under what conditions can a particular war be justified? Where do we draw the line between defensive and offensive actions? Can a just war be restricted morally with respect to its tactics? Is torture ever justified? What is the moral status of "innocents" in arguments about the justifiability of particular modes of warfare? What, if anything, is special about terrorism? How--according to what principles--can we ascribe responsibility for harm in wartime? Does collective responsibility for war crimes make sense? Is pacifism a coherent doctrine? a justifiable practice? Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Smiley

PHIL 120a Utilitarianism
[ hum ]
Explores historical and contemporary versions of utilitarianism. Examines arguments for and against them, as well as looking at the implications of utilitarianism for our own lives. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Hewitt

PHIL 122a History of Ethics
[ hum ]
Explores several major ethical traditions in the history of modern philosophy/ Examines the natural law theories of Hobbes and Grotius; moral sense theory; Kantianism; utilitarianism; and Nietzsche's response to these traditional moral theories. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Moran

PHIL 129a Philosophical Problems
[ hum ]
Open to advanced undergraduates and graduate students.
For students already introduced to philosophy who are interested in examining an array of fundamental philosophical problems in the three main areas of philosophy--epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics and politics--at a more advanced level. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Greenberg

PHIL 131a Philosophy of Mind
[ hum ]
May not be repeated for credit by students who took PHIL 39b in previous years.
Covers the central issue in the philosophy of mind: the mind-body problem. This is the ongoing attempt to understand the relation between our minds -- our thoughts, perceptions, feelings, and so on -- and our bodies. Is the mind just a complex configuration of (neural) matter, or is there something about it that's irreducibly different from every physical thing? Topics include intentionality, consciousness, functionalism, reductionism, and the philosophical implications of recent work in neuroscience, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Samet

PHIL 133a Consciousness, Brain, and Self
[ hum wi ]
Prerequisite: One course in philosophy, psychology, or neuroscience, or permission of the instructor.
Consciousness--sensing, feeling, thinking--is our life. But it's hard to understand how mere "meat puppets" like us could be conscious. Are scientists closing in on a solution? And if they are, what does that say about who we are and how we ought to live? Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Samet

PHIL 134b Philosophy of Perception
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: PHIL 1a or PHIL 66b or one course numbered PHIL 35a through PHIL 38b.
What do we perceive? Do we perceive objects in the world or do we infer on the basis of sensory data that there are such objects? And how do our answers to these questions depend on or shape our metaphysics? Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Marusic

PHIL 135a Theory of Knowledge
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: PHIL 1a or PHIL 66b or one course numbered PHIL 35a through PHIL 38b.
An investigation into the nature, sources, and extent of human knowledge, with emphasis on the problem of justifying our beliefs about the existence and character of the external world. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Greenberg, Mr. Hirsch, or Mr. Marusic

PHIL 136a Personal Identity
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: PHIL 1a or PHIL 66b or one course numbered PHIL 35a through PHIL 38b.
An examination of some major issues involved in the question of personal identity. What am I? What are the conditions of self-identity? How does the identity of the self relate to the identity of a physical object? Is identity an illusion? Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Hirsch or Mr. Greenberg

PHIL 137a Nature or Nurture? The Innateness Controversy
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: One course in philosophy or permission of the instructor.
The question: How much of what we are--what we believe and know, what we think and feel, and how we act--is due to our environment and training and how much is a function of our inherent nature? This interdisciplinary course covers: the main answers in the history of philosophy (from Plato through Logical Positivism); the contemporary philosophical debate on this question; and current scientific research in linguistics, psychology, ethology, artificial intelligence, and evolutionary biology. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Samet

PHIL 140a Logic and Language
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: PHIL 1a, PHIL 6a, or PHIL 106b, or permission of the instructor.
Covers basic problems and puzzles regarding reference and identity-topics that dominate issues in philosophy of language today. Topics include puzzles about belief, necessity, substitutivity of identity statements, and formal semantics for parts of language that includes modal and intensional notions. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Berger or Mr. Yourgrau

PHIL 141b Topics in Philosophy and Cognitive Science
[ hum ss ]
Prerequisite: One course in philosophy.
Explores the various ways in which philosophical ideas are reflected in and illuminate scientific theorizing about the mind and also examines the implications of recent work in the cognitive sciences for traditional philosophical concerns. Topics differ from year to year. Usually offered every fourth year.
Mr. Samet

PHIL 142b The Subjective Point of View
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: PHIL 1a or PHIL 66b or one course numbered PHIL 35a through PHIL 38b.
Explores the relation between the variable and the constant in experience, a relation embraced by what we as subjects bring to our experience, our subjective point of view of the world. Addresses the question of how our experience, with its inherent subjectivity, variable and constant, can provide us with knowledge of reality. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Greenberg

PHIL 143a Consciousness and Self
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: PHIL 1a or PHIL 66b or one course numbered PHIL 35a through PHIL 38b.
The origins of our concept of consciousness can be found among the fundamental ideas of modern philosophy, tied to the concept of self. This connection will be the subject matter of this course. Usually offered every fourth year.
Mr. Greenberg

PHIL 144a Philosophical Problems of Space and Time
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: PHIL 1a or PHIL 66b or one course numbered PHIL 35a through PHIL 38b.
An examination of philosophical problems concerning the concepts of space and time as these arise in contemporary physics, modern logic and metaphysics, as well as in everyday life. Specific topics usually include philosophical aspects of Einstein's theory of relativity, the possibility of "time travel," the distinction between space and time, and McTaggart's famous distinction between the "A-series" and the "B-series" of time. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Berger, Mr. Hirsch, or Mr. Yourgrau

PHIL 145b Topics in the Philosophy of Language
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: PHIL 1a or PHIL 66b or one course numbered PHIL 35a through PHIL 38b.
Topics may vary from year to year and course may be repeated for credit. Topics include the relationship between the language we speak and our view of reality, reference, the sense in which language may structure reality, and formal semantics. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Berger, Mr. Hirsch, or Mr. Yourgrau

PHIL 146a Idea of God
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: PHIL 1a or PHIL 66b or one course numbered PHIL 35a through PHIL 38b.
Engages in a philosophical investigation, not of religion as an institution but of the very idea of God. Studies the distinction between human being and divine being and addresses the issue of the relation of God's essence to his existence. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Yourgrau

PHIL 147a Transcendental Arguments
[ hum oc ]
Prerequisite: PHIL 1a or PHIL 66b or one course numbered PHIL 35a through PHIL 39b.
Transcendental arguments are meant to establish conclusions about the world by reflection on the conditions for the possibility of thought and experience. But can we really conclude how things must be in the world simply by thinking about how we experience things and how we think? Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Marusic

PHIL 148b Philosophy of the Humanities
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: PHIL 1a or PHIL 66b or one course numbered PHIL 35a through PHIL 38b.
Explores the nature of the humanities, their methods and goals, with a particular focus on the discipline of history. Is history a "science," and should it be? What is the nature of the claims to knowledge that historians (and other humanists) make? How does one know a narrative? How does one know an interpretation? And what is the role of power in legitimating the claims to knowledge advanced by scholars, teachers, and students of history? Usually offered every fourth year.
Mr. Levisohn

PHIL 149a Leibniz, Hume, and Kant on Necessity
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: PHIL 1a or a course in the history of modern philosophy or analytic philosophy.
An investigation into the views of three historical philosophers -- Leibniz, Hume, and Kant -- on the concept of necessity, with limited reference to contemporary treatment of the concept by W. V. Quine and early David Kaplan. Related concept of a priori and analyticity are also discussed. Usually offered every fourth year.
Mr. Greenberg

PHIL 150b Topics in Epistemology and Metaphysics
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: PHIL 1a or PHIL 66b, or one courses numbered PHIL 35a through PHIL 38b.
Topics vary each year; course may be repeated for credit. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Berger, Mr. Hirsch, or Mr. Marusic

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 second year.
Mr. Yourgrau

PHIL 162b Aristotle
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: PHIL 1a or permission of the instructor.
An introduction to Aristotle's philosophy through an intensive reading of selected texts. Usually offered every second 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 third year.
Ms. Marusic

PHIL 168a Kant
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: PHIL 1a or permission of the instructor.
An attempt to understand and evaluate the main ideas of the Critique of Pure Reason, the subjectivity of space and time, the nature of consciousness, and the objectivity of the concepts of substance and causality. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Greenberg

PHIL 170a Special Topics in History of Philosophy
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: One course in philosophy.
An advanced seminar focusing on a single philosopher or text, or on the way a number of key figures in the history of philosophy have addressed a philosophical problem or topic. Recent offerings: (1) a close reading of Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy, the essential text of continental rationalism and the foundation stone of modern philosophy, and (2) a close reading of Hume's Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, a central text of eighteenth-century British empiricism. Usually offered every fourth year.
Mr. Samet

PHIL 177b Simone Weil
[ hum ]
Studies the French philosopher Simone Weil, revolutionary and mystic. Is divine perfection reconcilable with human suffering? Weil shook the foundations of Christianity and Judaism attempting to answer this question and this course will rejoin her quest. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Yourgrau

PHIL 178b Major Figures in the Christian Faith
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: PHIL 1a.
Presents the important theological contributions of the major thinkers of the Western Church, covering the modern period. Usually offered every fourth year.
Mr. Yourgrau

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 181a Schopenhauer and Nietzsche: Art and Politics
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: One course in philosophy or European cultural studies.
Examines two philosophers whose subversive ideas and brilliant prose have stirred the deepest human anxieties and hopes for man's relationship to nature, values, aesthetics, religion, law, and society. Their impact on art and politics illustrated through works by Mann and Kafka. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Gaskins

PHIL 182a Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations
[ hum ]
An intensive study of Ludwig Wittgenstein's seminal work, Philosophical Investigations. This course should be of interest to philosophy and literature students who want to learn about this great philosopher's influential views on the nature of language and interpretation. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Flesch and Mr. Hirsch

POL 129a East European Politics
[ ss ]
Politics and society in the post-Communist states of Eastern Europe, drawing general lessons about the relationships among social modernization, nationalism, and democratic transition. Usually offered every fourth year.
Mr. Burg

POL 151a Seminar: Cultural Pluralism and Democratic Governance
[ ss wi ]
Prerequisites: Sophomore or junior class standing and at least two prior politics courses.
How liberal democracies respond to the social and political challenges of linguistic, cultural, religious, racial, and gender differences. Examines legal, political, and normative issues arising out of these differences, and the implications of various responses for the stability of a liberal democratic state. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Burg

POL 153a The New Europe: European Economic and Political Integration
[ ss ]
The institutions and policymaking processes of the European Union (EU). Western European political and economic integration since 1945 and the resurgence of European integration since the mid-1980s. Social policy issues, policy harmonization and economic integration, European citizenship, and the reorientation of national politics in response to community expansion. The future of European unity and national cultures. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

POL 154a Seminar: Citizenship
[ ss ]
Liberal theory presumes the progress of history to be, in the words of John Stuart Mill, a gradual "doing away with privilege." Examines the frontiers of social and political justice through readings drawn from literature, political science, and history. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Klausen

POL 156b European Culture & Politics
[ ss wi ]
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 162b Seminar: Use of Force, Ethical Issues
[ ss ]
Examines when it is legitimate to resort to force (jus ad bellum), and what rules should govern how wars are fought (jus in bello). Explores the Just War tradition of thinking about the jus ad bellum and jus in bello issues, including efforts of military establishments and international lawyers to adapt the tradition to new political circumstances and military capabilities. Usually offered every year.
Staff

POL 163a Seminar: Human Rights and International Relations
[ ss ]
Prerequisite: POL 15a or equivalent.
How human rights issues are affecting and being handled by the nation-state system. Traditional vs. reformist views. Universalism vs. cultural relativism. Contemporary case studies. Usually offered every year.
Staff

POL 175b Global Civil Society
[ ss ]
The role of international organizations in the contemporary global political and economic system, the ways in which they influence or contribute to major international policy issues, and the interactions between international organizations and global civil society. Usually offered every year.
Staff

POL 182a Liberal Political Thought
[ ss ]
An exploration of the history of liberal thought as well as contemporary critics and defenders of liberalism, focusing primarily on American and European authors. Authors may include Locke, Smith, Montesquieu, Mill, Tocqueville, Dewey, Rawls, Hayek, Shklar, MacIntyre, Oakeshott, Sandel, Walzer, and Okin. Usually offered every fourth year.
Staff

POL 186b Classical Political Thought
[ ss ]
Major ancient political philosophers and the meaning and implications of their work for contemporary political issues. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Yack

POL 187b Conservative Political Thought
[ ss ]
Focuses on American and European thinkers, with an emphasis on critics of equality and unlimited commercial and civil liberty. Readings include political philosophy and literature. Authors may include Burke, Oakeshott, Calhoun, Conrad, Tocqueville, Augustine, Nisbett, Strauss, and C. S. Lewis. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Yack

POL 189a Marx, Nietzsche, and Twentieth-Century Radicalism
[ ss ]
Comparison of two powerful and influential critiques of modern politics and society. Explanation of Marx's work, both for its own insights and as a model for radical theorists; and of Nietzsche's work as an alternative conception of radical social criticism. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Yack

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

POL 195b Shakespeare and the Politics of Leadership
[ ss ]
Shakespeare as sources for understanding selected work of the role of leaders and followers, elites and masses, class and ethnicity, social change, the relations between disparate social orders, and societies ins transition. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Levin

PSYC 195a History of Psychology
[ ss ]
Structuralism, Gestalt theory, William James (consciousness), functionalism, behaviorism, learning theories, psychoanalysis, Piaget, cognitive theories, and so on. Recommended for students taking the psychology GRE. Usually offered every semester.
Mr. Wodinsky

SOC 102b Conceptions of the Good Life
[ oc ss ]
May not be repeated for credit by students who took FYS 5b.
Explores competing conceptions of the 'good life' and of 'self actualization' guided by social-psychological modalities of relationships between the individual and the social group: how these modalities vary across different cultural periods in history, and what justifies their claims that one way of life is better than another. Includes the conceptions of the good life as pleasure (Epicurus), as virtuous activity (Aristotle), as integration (Durkheim), as sublimation (Freud), as individuation (Gernsheim), duty (Kant), as self assertion (Nietzsche), and as ethics of responsibility, of passion, of faith and of aesthetics by other thinkers. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Hayim (Sociology)

SOC 115a Masculinities
[ ss ]
Men's experiences of masculinity have only recently emerged as complex and problematic. This course inquires into concepts, literature, and phenomenology of many framings of masculinity. The analytic schemes are historical, sociological, and social-psychological. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Fellman

SOC 117b Sociology of Science, Technology, and Medicine
[ oc ss ]
From the moment we are born, to when we die, our lives are shaped by science, technology, and medicine. This course draws on both historical and contemporary case studies to examine how science and medicine enter into our ideas about who we are as individuals and members of social groups (e.g., gender, race, ethnicity), understandings of health and illness, and ideals regarding what constitutes a good life, and a good death. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Shostak

SOC 127a Gods and Nations: Identity in Global Politics
[ nw ss ]
Examines three sources of identity that are influential in global affairs: religion, ethnicity and nationalism. Considers theories of the relationship among these identities, especially "secularization theory," then reviews historical examples such as Poland, Iran, Iraq, and Pakistan. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Rosenberger

SOC 129a Sociology of Religion
[ ss wi ]
An introduction to the sociological study of religion. Investigates what religion is, how it is influential in contemporary American life, and how the boundaries of public and private religion are constructed and contested. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Cadge

SOC 136b Historical and Comparative Sociology
[ ss ]
Prerequisite: SOC 1a or SOC 3b. Registration priority given to juniors and seniors.
Explores the relationship between sociology and history through examples of scholarship from both disciplines. Using historical studies, the course pays close attention to each author's research strategy. Examines basic research questions, theoretical underpinnings and assumptions, and uses of evidence. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Rosenberger or Ms. Hansen

SOC 138a Sociology of Gender, Race, and Class
[ ss ]
Examines gender as an individual and institutional factor that organizes societies. Uses a variety of media to analyze how gender and race (re)create forms of domination and subordination in labor markets, family structures, realms of cultural presentation (e.g., media), and social movements. Usually offered every third year.
Staff

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 146a Mass Communication Theory
[ ss ]
An examination of key theories in mass communication, including mass culture, hegemony, the production of culture, and public sphere. 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

SOC 148b Sociology of Information
[ ss ]
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

SOC 150b Culture of Consumption
[ ss ]
Examines the historical development and social significance of a culture of consumption. Considers the role of marketing in contemporary society and the expression of consumer culture in various realms of everyday life, including leisure, the family, and education. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Miller

SOC 152a Urban Life and Culture
[ ss ]
An analysis of the social and cultural dimensions of life in urban environments. Examines how various processes, including immigration, deindustrialization, and suburbanization, affect neighborhoods, public spaces, work, shopping, and leisure in the city. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Miller

SOC 155b Protest, Politics, and Change: Social Movements
[ ss ]
Utilizes case studies of actual movements to examine a variety of approaches to contentious politics. Covers collective behavior, resource mobilization, rational choice, and newer interactive models. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Cunningham

SOC 161a Society, State, and Power: The Problem of Democracy
[ ss ]
Examines the ways in which power is exercised in different political regimes and social systems and considers the problem of democracy. The major focus of the course will be present-day advanced industrial societies, with particular consideration of the United States. Usually offered every fourth year.
Mr. Sirianni

SOC 162a Intellectuals and Revolutionary Politics
[ ss ]
Examines the role of intellectuals in modern politics, especially their relationship to nationalism and revolutionary movements. In reading across a range of political revolutions(e.g. in Central Europe, Colonial Africa and Iran), students will have the chance to compare the relative significance of appeals to solidarity based on class, religion, ethnicity, and national identity. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Rosenberger

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. Mead, Sartre, Goffman, Kierkegaard, De Beauvoir, Elizabeth Beck, Taylor, and others will be considered. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Hayim

SOC 169b Issues in Sexuality
[ oc ss ]
This course counts toward the completion of the joint MA degree in sociology & women's and gender studies.
Explores dimensions of human sexuality. This course will take as its central tenet that humans are sexual beings and their sexuality is shaped by gender, class, race, culture, and history. It will explore the contradictory ways of understanding sexual behavior and relationships. The course intends to teach students about the social nature of sexual expression. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Cadge

SOC 189a Sociology of Body and Health
[ ss ]
Explores theoretical considerations of the body as a cultural phenomenon intersecting with health, healing, illness, disease, and medicine. Focuses on how gender, race, class, religion, and other dimensions of social organization shape individual experiences and opportunities for agency and resistance. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Shostak

THA 102b Shakespeare: On Stage and Screen
[ ca ]
Shakespeare wrote his plays to be seen and heard, not read. This course approaches Shakespeare as a man of the theater who thought visually as well as verbally. Explores Shakespeare's scripts in their original theatrical context, subsequent production history, and migration to film. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Holmberg

THA 115b The Avant-Gardes in Performance
[ ca hum ]
Explores the avant-garde movements including symbolism, decadence, futurism, constructivism, Dada, surrealism, expressionism, existentialism, pop art and happenings, performance art, minimalism, and postmodernism as alternative forms of expression that challenge mainstream art. Attention is paid to the interactions among theater, painting, dance, music, and film. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Holmberg

WMGS 5a Women and Gender in Culture and Society
[ ss ]
This interdisciplinary course introduces central concepts and topics in the field of women's and gender studies. Explores the position of women in diverse settings and the impact of gender as a social, cultural, and intellectual category in the United States and around the globe. Asks how gendered institutions, behaviors, and representations have been configured in the past and function in the present, and also examines the ways in which gender intersects with many other vectors of identity and circumstance in forming human affairs. Usually offered every fall and spring.
Ms. Fox, Ms. Freeze, Ms. Lanser, or Ms. Singh