Courses of Study
Sections
An interdepartmental program in European Cultural Studies
Last updated: August 15, 2017 at 10:32 a.m.
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.
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, ECS 100a, 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:
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:
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;
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.
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 undergraduate advising head.
Each major will plan a program in consultation with the undergraduate advising head.
(German, Russian, and Asian Languages and Literature)
Gila Hayim
(Sociology)
Arthur Holmberg
(Theater Arts)
Jytte Klausen
(Politics)
Robin Feuer Miller
(German, Russian, and Asian Languages and Literature)
Michael Randall
(Romance Studies)
Jerry Samet
(Philosophy)
Nancy Scott
(Fine Arts)
Eugene Sheppard
(Near Eastern and Judaic Studies)
Affiliated Faculty (contributing to the curriculum, advising and administration of the department or program)
Robin Feuer Miller (German, Russian, and Asian Languages and Literature)
Michael Randall (Romance Studies)
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 undergraduate advising head, 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 undergraduate advising head. 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.
G. No course with a final grade below C+ can count toward fulfilling the major requirements in European Cultural Studies.
H. No course taken pass/fail may count toward the major requirements.
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 undergraduate advising head and the Office of Academic Services.
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:
GECS = German and European Cultural Studies
HECS = Hispanic and European Cultural Studies
RECS = Russian and European Cultural Studies
(1-99) Primarily for Undergraduate Students
ECS
98a
Independent Study
May be taken only by majors with the written permission of the ECS program undergraduate advising head.
Usually offered every year.
Staff
ECS
98b
Independent Study
May be taken only by majors with the written permission of the ECS program undergraduate advising head.
Usually offered every year.
Staff
ECS
99d
Senior Thesis
Independent research under the supervision of the thesis director. Usually offered every year.
Staff
HUM/UWS
1a
Tragedy: Love and Death in the Creative Imagination
[
hum
uws
]
Enrollment limited to Humanities Fellows.
How do you turn catastrophe into art - and why? This first-year seminar in the humanities addresses such elemental questions, especially those centering on love and death. How does literature catch hold of catastrophic experiences and make them intelligible or even beautiful? Should misery even be beautiful? By exploring the tragic tradition in literature across many eras, cultures, genres, and languages, this course looks for basic patterns. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Burt and Mr. Dowden
(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
Comparative Literature Seminars
COML
100a
Introduction to Global Literature
[
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.
Staff
COML
123a
Perfect Love?
[
hum
]
The conflict between "perfect” and carnal love has inspired artistic works from the Middle Ages through the present. This course studies how perfect love runs afoul of more human desires in works by authors, composers, and film makers like Chrétien de Troye, Marguerite de Navarre, Hawthorne, Monteverdi, di Sica, and Wan Kar Wai. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Randall
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
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/ENG
148a
Fiction of the Second World War
[
hum
wi
]
Studies novels of the Second World War from Great Britain, France, Germany, the United States, the Soviet Union, Hungary and Japan (all readings in English). Usually offered every fourth year.
Mr. Burt
COML/HUM
21a
Renaissance Literary Masterpieces
[
hum
]
Introduces students to some of the greatest works written in Europe during the Renaissance. Readings will include works by Dante, Petrarch, Michelangelo, Luther, Erasmus, Spenser, Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, Rabelais, and Cervantes. All readings will be in English. Usually taught every third year.
Ms. Targoff
ENG
40b
The Birth of the Short Story: Gods, Ghosts, Lunatics
[
hum
]
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
40bj
The Birth of the Short Story
[
hum
wi
]
How did the genre of the short story emerge and what distinctive work has it performed in its long and protean history? What unique publication and reading practices have been a part of this history? And why does the short story still matter? With a focus on nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers such as Irving, Poe, Hawthorne, Twain, Chekhov, Mansfield, Hemingway, O’Connor, García Márquez, Johnson, Wallace, and Moore, we will work through the techniques and craft that have defined the short story tradition. And we will consider recent experiments in short stories, mapping where the genre is going next. Offered as part of JBS program.
Mr. Sherman
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 U.S. literature after Nietzsche'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 "religion"? 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
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.
Staff
HUM
10a
The Western Canon
[
hum
]
May not be taken by students who have taken ENG 10a or 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
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
RECS
161b
Slavic Folklore and Myth: Epic Heroes, Lucky Fools, Iron-Toothed Witches and the Undead
[
hum
]
Explores the magical and mysterious world of Russian and Slavic folklore, including folk mythology and demonology, seasonal rituals and folk magic, proverbs and riddles, folk tales and oral epic poetry. Coursework will consist of readings, discussions, papers, and projects. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Woolhiser
Courses in European Literature
CLAS
151a
Greece, Rome, Myth, and the Movies
[
hum
]
Explores classical mythology through several key texts to demonstrate the strong connections between antiquity and our 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. Christensen
COML/ENG
148a
Fiction of the Second World War
[
hum
wi
]
Studies novels of the Second World War from Great Britain, France, Germany, the United States, the Soviet Union, Hungary and Japan (all readings in English). Usually offered every fourth year.
Mr. Burt
ENG
1a
Introduction to Literary Studies
[
hum
]
This course is designed to introduce students to basic skills and concepts needed for the study of Anglophone literature and culture. These include skills in close reading; identification and differentiation of major literary styles and periods; knowledge of basic critical terms; definition of genres. Usually offered every semester.
Staff
ENG
11a
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
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
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
]
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
40bj
The Birth of the Short Story
[
hum
wi
]
How did the genre of the short story emerge and what distinctive work has it performed in its long and protean history? What unique publication and reading practices have been a part of this history? And why does the short story still matter? With a focus on nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers such as Irving, Poe, Hawthorne, Twain, Chekhov, Mansfield, Hemingway, O’Connor, García Márquez, Johnson, Wallace, and Moore, we will work through the techniques and craft that have defined the short story tradition. And we will consider recent experiments in short stories, mapping where the genre is going next. Offered as part of JBS program.
Mr. Sherman
ENG
43a
Pilgrims, Queens, and the Garden: English Literature from Chaucer to Milton
[
hum
]
Beginning with Chaucer’s pilgrims in the Canterbury Tales and ending with Milton’s Garden of Eden in Paradise Lost, this course explores the works of some of the major British authors from the late fourteenth to the mid-seventeenth century. From wandering pilgrims and powerful queens to fruitful gardens, this course surveys early modern English culture via its poetry and prose. Our course may include the works of authors such as Margery Kempe, Thomas Wyatt, Edmund Spenser, Philip Sidney, Queen Elizabeth I, William Shakespeare, Mary Wroth, John Donne, Amelia Lanyer, and George Herbert. Usually offered every third year.
Staff
ENG
45b
Romanticism: Gods, Nature, Loneliness, Dreams
[
hum
]
A study of Romantic poetry, from love lyrics to ballads about the supernatural to philosophical meditations on self and soul. Authors include: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, Keats and Shelley. 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
64b
From Libertinism to Sensibility: Pleasure and the Theater, 1660-1800
[
hum
]
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
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 U.S. literature after Nietzsche'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 "religion"? 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.
Staff
ENG
105b
After Jane Austen: Sex, Death, and Fiction
[
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.
Staff
ENG
111aj
Narrative Theory
[
hum
]
Explores fundamental concepts in narrative theory and narratology, from Aristotle until today. We will consider the formal features of plots, characters, and narrative discourse. And we will read theoretical accounts of the role that narrative plays in personal identity, community belonging, moral judgment, historical knowledge, and political authority. As a prominent body of scholarship within literary studies, narrative theory offers insights into a fundamental way in which we organize our experiences and make sense of our world. Offered as part of JBS program.
Mr. Sherman
ENG
111b
Postcolonial Theory
[
hum
]
Seminar in postcolonial theory with relevant background texts, with an emphasis on the specificity of its theoretical claims. Readings from Spivak, Said, Bhabha, Appiah, Mudimbe, Marx, Lenin, Freud, Derrida, Césaire, and Fanon, among others. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Anjaria
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
]
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.
Staff
ENG
131a
Comedy: Literature, Film, and Theory
[
hum
]
Explores comedy as an enigma at the heart of social belonging, psychological coherence, and philosophical speculation. Investigates the strangeness of human laughter. Compares comic literary and film genres in different historical periods as a way to ask: what is the nature of comic pleasure? How does comedy organize desire and make sense of suffering? How are communities regulated by comedy, and how is comedy involved in social freedom? How are basic philosophical questions about minds and bodies illuminated by comedy? Texts by Chaplin, Shakespeare, Monty Python, Swift, Marx Brothers, Aristophanes, Wilde, and others. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Sherman
ENG
132b
Chaucer I
[
hum
]
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.
Staff
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
134b
Subjectivity
[
hum
]
Studies how the experience of subjectivity and selfhood is represented in literature and philosophy of the early modern period, primarily in Britain. Authors include Renaissance lyric poets, Shakespeare, Wordsworth and Blake, with philosophical texts by Descartes, Pascal, Locke, Hume, and Kant. Usually offered third year.
Ms. Quinney
ENG
152b
Arthurian Literature
[
hum
]
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.
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
FREN
110a
Cultural Representations
[
fl
hum
wi
]
Prerequisite: FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.
A foundation course in French and Francophone culture, analyzing texts and other cultural phenomena such as film, painting, music, and politics. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Fauré-Bellaïche, Ms. Harder, or 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
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
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 Eighteenth-Century French Literature
[
fl
hum
]
Prerequisite: FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.
Examines how 18th century French literature generated new frames of thinking and how these visions influenced contemporary values in such areas as religion, politics, society, education, and the family. Readings from Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Diderot. 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 today and in the past with special focus on historical and cultural aspects. Readings include: Beigbeder, 99 francs; Duras, L’amant; Stendahl, Le Rouge et le Noir; excerpts from: Rousseau, Emile; readings from Beauvoir and Badinter; and films like the Esquive (a contemporary banlieue version of an 18th century play). Usually offered every fourth year.
Ms. Voiret
FREN
139b
Proust's Artistic Vision and the Beauty of Ordinary Life
[
fl
hum
wi
]
Prerequisite: FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.
Key readings from Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu engage students in an interdisciplinary exploration of themes (imagination and disappointment, time and memory, jealousy and desire, everyday life and redemption through art) and the author's revolutionary writing techniques. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Harder
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
GECS
130b
The Princess and the Golem: Fairy Tales
[
hum
wi
]
Conducted in English.
Compares Walt Disney’s films with German and other European fairy tales from the nineteenth and twentieth century, focusing on feminist and psychoanalytic readings. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. von Mering
GECS
167a
German Cinema: Vamps and Angels
[
hum
wi
]
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
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
GER
103a
German Culture Through Film
[
fl
hum
oc
]
Prerequisite: GER 30a.
Approaches an understanding of contemporary German culture through film by focusing on one of the most fascinating and turbulent of national cinemas. Landmark films from the 1920s to the present and pertinent essays, articles and studies will provide a historical perspective on decisive social and cultural phenomena. Major themes include Vergangenheitsbewältigung, multi-ethnic societies, terrorism, life in the GDR, and cultural trends at the beginning of the 21st century. Students learn also about the technical side of filmmaking and produce their own short film under professional guidance. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Seidl
GER
105a
Writing on the Wall: Literature, the Arts, and the Fall of the Wall
[
fl
hum
wi
]
Prerequisite: GER 30a or the equivalent.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 drastically changed Germany’s geographical and political landscape. This course focuses on the role of literature, music and the arts in this historical process, and on changes in conceptual frameworks for the perception of borders, language, space and tradition. Students expand their vocabulary, improve their oral/written use of idiomatic German, and hone reading strategies and analytical skills. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Seidl
GER
109b
Meisterwerke Deutscher Kurzprosa
[
fl
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 and Ms. Seidl
GER
120b
Deutsche Mäerchen
[
fl
hum
]
Prerequisite: GER 30a. Conducted in German.
An advanced German language course focused on the fairy tale in German literature, and especially on the narratives collected by Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm. It also explores the Kunstmärchen, and similar stories composed by German writers from Romanticism to the present. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. von Mering
GER
121a
Der Eros und das Wort: Lyrik, Prosa, Drama
[
fl
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
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.
Mr. Mandrell
HISP
120b
Don Quixote
[
hum
]
Taught in English.
Don Quixote is: a) a compendium of prior literary genres; b) the first modern novel; c) a funny book; d) a deep meditation on the human condition; e) the best novel ever written; f) all of the above. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Mandrell
HISP
170a
Topics in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Spanish Literature
[
fl
hum
]
Prerequisite: HISP 109b or HISP 111b, or permission of the instructor. Course may be repeated for credit.
Topics will vary from year to year, but might include eighteenth- and nineteenth-century theater, fictions of the body, and realist representations of gender. 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
ITAL
106a
Advanced Italian through Narrative, Film, and Other Media
[
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 Italian texts (prose, poetry, drama) and culture. Each year, emphasis will be given to a specific theme, such as women writers and Italian history through short stories. Reading and listening activities followed by in-class discussions and presentations are designed to strengthen communication and reading skills. Usually offered every fall.
Ms. Monteleone
ITAL
110a
Introduction to Italian Literature
[
fl
hum
]
Prerequisite: ITAL 105a or 106a or permission of the instructor.
Surveys the masterpieces of Italian literature from Dante to 1700. 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. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Servino
ITAL
120b
Modern Italian Literature
[
fl
hum
]
Prerequisite: ITAL 105a or 106a or permission of the instructor.
Focuses on the literature of twentieth-century writers such as Sciascia, Lampedusa, Calvino, and Moravia as well as contemporary writers, such as Baricco, Tamaro, Calvino, 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. Usually offered every other year.
Ms. Servino
PHIL
146a
Idea of God
[
hum
]
Prerequisite: PHIL 1a, PHIL 35a, PHIL 37a or PHIL 66b.
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
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
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. May also include 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
Russian Short Fictions: The Art of Narrative
[
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
146a
Creative Genius: The Case of Dostoevsky
[
hum
]
Open to all students. Conducted in English. Students may choose to do readings either in English translation or in Russian.
Close readings of selected short works as well as three exciting, yet disturbing novels which have had an indelible influence generally on the novel as a genre and on succeeding generations of writers, readers, and thinkers: Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, and The Brothers Karamazov. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Miller
RECS
147b
Tolstoy and the Contrariness of Desire
[
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
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
161b
Slavic Folklore and Myth: Epic Heroes, Lucky Fools, Iron-Toothed Witches and the Undead
[
hum
]
Explores the magical and mysterious world of Russian and Slavic folklore, including folk mythology and demonology, seasonal rituals and folk magic, proverbs and riddles, folk tales and oral epic poetry. Coursework will consist of readings, discussions, papers, and projects. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Woolhiser
RUS
153a
Advanced Russian Language through 19th Century Literature
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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 for heritage and advanced students of Russian. Focus on the study of 19th-century Russian literature in the original and development of Russian oral and written skills needed for the close reading and discussion of literature. Usually offered every fourth year.
Ms. Dubinina
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
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
]
Introduces students to the study of visual, aural, and artistic media through an ethnographic lens. Course combines written and creative assignments to understand how culture shapes how we make meaning out of images and develop media literacy. Topics include ethnographic/documentary film, advertising, popular culture, viral videos and special effects, photography, art worlds, and the technological development of scientific images. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Alvarez Astacio and 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
]
This course offers a 2-credit optional Experiential Learning practicum.
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. Hannig, 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
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nw
ss
]
Explores the ways in which writing has been conceptualized in social anthropology, linguistics and archaeology. A comparative study of various forms of visual communication, both non-glottic and glottic systems, is undertaken to better understand the nature of pristine and contemporary phonetic scripts around the world and to consider alternative models to explain their origin, prestige, and obsolescence. The course pays particular attention to 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
]
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
]
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
]
Topics vary from year to year and the course may be repeated for credit. Topics include daily life in ancient Rome; Greek and Roman technology and art; Rome, City of Marble; 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 or Mr. Koh
CLAS
150b
Pompeii: Life in the Shadow of Vesuvius
[
ca
hum
]
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
CLAS
187a
Art, Archaeology, and Society in the Holy Land
[
hum
]
Surveys the archaeological and social history of the southern Levant from the emergence of complex societies in the Chalcolithic to the hegenomy of the Romans, emphasizing developments after the Early Bronze Age such as the rise and fall of the Iron Age biblical states. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Koh
COML/HUM
21a
Renaissance Literary Masterpieces
[
hum
]
Introduces students to some of the greatest works written in Europe during the Renaissance. Readings will include works by Dante, Petrarch, Michelangelo, Luther, Erasmus, Spenser, Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, Rabelais, and Cervantes. All readings will be in English. Usually taught every third year.
Ms. Targoff
FA
30a
History of Art I: From Antiquity to the Middle Ages
[
ca
]
Open to all students; first-year students and sophomores are encouraged to enroll.
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. Kalb, Ms. Scott, or Mr. Unglaub
FA
32b
Survey of Western Architecture
[
ca
]
Especially recommended for first-year students, sophomores, and Fine Arts majors.
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, with an emphasis on case studies of major monuments. Usually offered every third 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 45a 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 Art and Architecture in Italy
[
ca
]
Examines the artistic spectacle of Papal Rome, focusing on the works and legacy of Caravaggio and Bernini as the prevailing artistic forces, with major contributions by the Carracci, Poussin, Borromini, and Cortona. Apart from Rome and the patronage strategies of successive Popes, we will consider artistic and architectural production in such diverse centers as Venice, Naples, Bologna, and Turin. Usually offered every third year
Mr. Unglaub
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
]
Studies sculpture, structure, site: three-dimensional art in the public realm. This course charts the development of sculpture in 19th century practice to 20th century abstraction; considers the rise of installation art, with attention to monuments and memorials of contemporary times. 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
]
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
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 year.
Staff
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
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
]
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 third year.
Ms. Scott
FA
158b
20th Century Painting in France: Picasso and Matisse
[
ca
]
Examines the roots of major 20th century tendencies in art: the development of Cubism by Pablo Picasso and his circle; the color revolution of Fauvism, initiated by Henri Matisse. Topics include examination of the artists, poets, and collectors associated with both Picasso and Matisse, the modernist innovation of the arts in Paris, and the period of Surrealism up to World War II. Usually offered every third 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.
Staff
FA
191b
Studies in Renaissance and Baroque Art
[
ca
wi
]
Preference 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, and Ms. Scott
FA
193a
Studies in Modern and Contemporary Architecture
[
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.
Staff
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
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. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Decter (Near Eastern and Judaic Studies)
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)
[
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
130b
Crime and Punishment in U.S. History
[
ss
]
May not be taken for credit by students who took FYS 32b in prior years.
The United States incarcerates more of its people per capita than any other nation on the planet. How did this come to be? This course examines how Americans have defined, represented, and punished crime, from the birth of the penitentiary to the present day. We will discuss an eclectic mix of historical texts and genres — criminal codes, trial records, true-crime journalism, historical studies, social theory, urban sociology, and films. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Willrich
HIST
131a
Hitler's Europe in Film
[
ss
wi
]
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
137b
World War I
[
ss
wi
]
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
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
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
HOID
102b
Knowledge and Power
[
hum
]
What is the relationship between knowledge and power? Using the work of Michel Foucault as a foundation, this course will explore the interweaving effects of power and knowledge in institutions and their systems of thought. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Gamsby
LING
120b
Syntactic Theory
[
ss
wi
]
Prerequisite: LING 100a is recommended but not required. Four class hours per week.
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.
Ms. Goldberg
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 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
]
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 second 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
]
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 second year.
Ms. Malamud or Mr. Plaster
MUS
1a
Exploring Western Music
[
ca
]
Does not meet requirements for the major or minor in music.
A general introduction to the materials and forms of music, and a study of western 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.
Ms. Desmond
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
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.
Staff
MUS
52a
The World of Opera: Music and Drama
[
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
56b
Romanticism in Music: Breakdowns, Breakups, and Beauty
[
ca
]
Intended for non-majors. Music majors and minors and any students who have taken MUS 101a,b must obtain permission from the instructor.
Considers musical expressions of psychological breakdowns, fragmented breakups, and experimental forms of beauty. Connects nineteenth century music with specific paintings, poems, and political events. Charts the towering influence of Romanticism on 20th and 21st century artists. Usually offered every fourth year.
Staff
NEJS
37a
The Destruction of European Jewry
[
hum
]
Open to all students. May not be taken for credit by students who took NEJS 137a in prior years.
Why and how did European Jews become victims of genocide? A systematic examination of the planning and implementation of Nazi Germany’s “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” and the Jewish and general responses to it. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Jockusch
NEJS
110b
Readings in the Hebrew Bible
[
hum
]
Prerequisites: NEJS 10a or 40-level HBRW course or permission of the instructor. May be repeated for credit.
A close reading of selected biblical texts. Topics may vary from year to year. Recent topics have included readings in the prophets. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Abusch 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.
Ms. Vayntrub
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 in Biblical Narrative
[
hum
]
Prerequisite: HBRW 122a or b, NEJS 10a, or permission of the instructor.
A study of narratives in the Hebrew Bible that feature ritual motifs, with attention to ritual theory, literary, and historical-critical analysis. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Wright
NEJS
115b
Gender, Sexuality and the Bible
[
hum
]
Open to all students.
The Bible’s depiction of gender, relationships, and social values in narrative, poetry, and law. Topics include the legal status of women, masculinity, prostitution, and how particular readings of the biblical text have shaped modern ideas about gender and sexuality. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Vayntrub
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.
Staff
NEJS
121b
Biblical Poetry
[
hum
]
Prerequisite: NEJS 10a or a strong knowledge of biblical Hebrew.
Overview of biblical poetry, its major genre categories, and the various ways biblical scholarship has understood this mode of discourse. Texts read in Hebrew with attention to grammar, poetic structure, and translation. Biblical genres will be contextualized within broader ancient Near Eastern literary traditions. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Vayntrub
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.
Staff
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.
Introduces the New Testament and related early Christian literature as sources for the history and theology of the early church. Focus on exegetical methods, literary genres, and relationship to Judaism and the Roman world. Usually offered every second 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 focus on the literature it produced. Music, criticism, journalism, drama, film, and painting are also studied. Usually offered every third 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
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 or Mr. Sheppard
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.
Ms. Freeze
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
154a
World Without God: Secularization and its Discontents
[
hum
]
What is secularization and its relation to the political? What does it mean to describe the modern world as wholly secular or independent of any prior religious foundations of beliefs? Do all major political concepts remain translations of religious ones? This advanced undergraduate course surveys various debates concerning the historical process and philosophical-political significance of secularization, most especially the secularization of political norms and political theology. 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
158b
Yiddish Literature and the Modern Jewish Revolution
[
hum
wi
]
Students with reading knowledge of Yiddish may elect to read the original texts.
Surveys and analyzes Yiddish fiction, poetry, and drama of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Readings include several works of the classic Yiddish writers, but the primary focus is on works by succeeding generations of modernist writers. Taught in English using texts in translation. Weekly additional section for students with advanced reading knowledge of Yiddish who elect to read some texts in the original. 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
]
Reading and analysis of the major works of fiction and drama by the best Yiddish writers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with a focus on the role of literature in reconfiguring Jewish gender identities. Taught in English using texts in translation. Weekly additional section for students with advanced reading knowledge of Yiddish who elect to read some texts in the original. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Kellman
NEJS
177a
The Holocaust in Israeli and Jewish Literature
[
hum
]
Taught in English.
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. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Szobel
NEJS
181a
Jews on Screen: From "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 Islamic teachings and its global impact. Usually offered every second year.
Staff
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
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
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 Hayek, including debates on justice and individualism. Usually offered every fourth 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, Ms. Moran or Mr. Greenberg
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 third year.
Mr. Yourgrau
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 or Ms. Moran
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. Moran or 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.
Mr. Marušić or Ms. Moran
PHIL
110a
Meaning in Life and Why It Matters
[
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. May be repeated for credit.
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.
Staff
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
[
hum
ss
]
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
119a
Human Rights
[
hum
wi
]
May not be taken for credit by students who took PHIL 19a in prior years.
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
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 or Mr. Greenberg
PHIL
123a
Existentialism
[
hum
]
May not be taken for credit by students who took PHIL 78a in prior years.
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. Marušić
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 third year.
Mr. Greenberg
PHIL
131a
Philosophy of Mind
[
hum
wi
]
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, PHIL 35a, PHIL 37a or PHIL 66b.
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 year.
Mr. Greenberg or Ms. Marušić
PHIL
135a
Theory of Knowledge
[
hum
]
Prerequisite: PHIL 1a, PHIL 35a, PHIL 37a or PHIL 66b.
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. Marušić
PHIL
136a
Personal Identity
[
hum
]
Prerequisite: PHIL 1a, PHIL 35a, PHIL 37a or PHIL 66b.
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
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
144a
Philosophical Problems of Space and Time
[
hum
]
Prerequisite: PHIL 1a, PHIL 35a, PHIL 37a or PHIL 66b.
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 year.
Mr. Hirsch or Mr. Yourgrau
PHIL
145b
Topics in the Philosophy of Language
[
hum
]
Prerequisite: PHIL 1a, PHIL 35a, PHIL 37a or PHIL 66b.
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 year.
Mr. Hirsch or Mr. Yourgrau
PHIL
146a
Idea of God
[
hum
]
Prerequisite: PHIL 1a, PHIL 35a, PHIL 37a or PHIL 66b.
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
150b
Topics in Epistemology and Metaphysics
[
hum
]
Prerequisite: PHIL 1a, PHIL 35a, PHIL 37a or PHIL 66b.
Topics vary each year; course may be repeated for credit. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Berger, Mr. Hirsch, or Mr. Marušić
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
167a
Hegel: Self-Consciousness and Freedom in the Phenomenology of Spirit
[
hum
]
Prerequisite: PHIL 1a or equivalent.
Offers a close reading of Hegel and pays special attention to his analyses of the changing patterns of understanding and self-understanding and the way in which he opens up these transformations for the reader to experience. In his modern paradigm, the Subject and the Object of thought necessarily affect one another's potential, essence, and fate. And through a rational comprehension of role of Spirit (Geist) in thought and the world, we can see how they become inextricably bound together. Indeed, for Hegel, the dialectic between subject and object provides the very ground for the self-aware and free subject to participate in modern life. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Sheppard
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 or Ms. Moran
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
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 or Ms Marušić
PHIL
181a
Gazing into the Abyss: Schopenhauer and Nietzsche
[
hum
]
Examines two philosophers whose subversive ideas and brilliant prose have stirred the deepest human anxieties and hopes for our kind's relationship to nature, values, aesthetics, religion, law, and society. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Sherman
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
156b
European Culture & Politics
[
ss
]
The comparative politics of Western Europe. Focuses on the development of political parties and social movements in Britain, France, and Germany--particularly since 1945--to determine how they affect policies and the citizenry's participation in modern democracies. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Klausen
POL
186b
Classical Political Thought
[
hum
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, Hayek, Macintyre, and Strauss. 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
RECS
161b
Slavic Folklore and Myth: Epic Heroes, Lucky Fools, Iron-Toothed Witches and the Undead
[
hum
]
Explores the magical and mysterious world of Russian and Slavic folklore, including folk mythology and demonology, seasonal rituals and folk magic, proverbs and riddles, folk tales and oral epic poetry. Coursework will consist of readings, discussions, papers, and projects. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Woolhiser
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
Religion, Ethnicity, and Nationalism
[
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, India, 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 or Ms. Clendenon
SOC
136b
Historical and Comparative Sociology
[
ss
]
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 Race, Gender, and Class
[
oc
ss
]
Examines race, class and gender as critical dimensions of social difference that organize social systems. Uses a variety of media to analyze how race, class and gender as axes of identity and inequality (re)create forms of domination and subordination in schools, labor markets, families, and the criminal justice system. Usually offered every third year. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Wallace
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
wi
]
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
The Sociology of Information: Politics, Power, and Property
[
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.
Ms. Vijayakumar
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
169b
Issues in Sexuality
[
oc
ss
]
Not open to first-year undergraduate students. This course counts toward the completion of the joint MA degree in Sociology & Women's, Gender, and Sexuality 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 or Ms. Smollin
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. Troyanovsky
WMGS
5a
Women, Genders, and Sexualities
[
ss
]
This interdisciplinary course introduces central concepts and topics in the field of women's, gender, and sexuality studies. Explores the position of women and other genders 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 and sexuality intersect with many other vectors of identity and circumstance in forming human affairs. Usually offered every fall.
Ms. Freeze, Ms. Lamb, or Ms. Singh