University Bulletin (2019-2020)

• Major (BA)

European Cultural Studies welcomes all members of the student body who have an interest in Europe, its literary and cultural history, and its international context. ECS explores, from a global perspective, literary and other traditions of cultural production, particular music, visual arts, history, philosophy, and film. The program of study is to be arranged in consultation with the major’s co-ordinator or any professor on its advisory committee. Majors may ask for guidance in the selection of elective courses with related content or approach within their chosen disciplines.

The European Cultural Studies is multidisciplinary with faculty holding appointments in various departments. The major brings together scholars and scholarship from various disciplines to explore the literatures, cultures, histories and societies of Europe from a transnational perspective. Course offerings range especially across the fields of literature, history, philosophy, music, and politics. The ECS major is not only multidisciplinary, but also interdisciplinary, comparative, and cross-cultural. The disciplines are integrated by themes and methods that underscore the uniqueness of the major:

• ECS focuses on European literatures, cultures, and intellectual traditions. Students with a wide range of interests use this major to inquire into the various literary and cultural traditions that have decisively influenced creative work in the modern world in Europe but beyond Europe also.
• ECS courses offer a comparative but also non-Eurocentric approach to the interpretations and understandings of the experiences of European peoples of the wider global context of international literatures, social, economic, and political systems.
• We teach students to notice the striking and world-shaping features not only of literary works, but also of the music, history, and concrete reality that surround us.
• ECS study broadens and deepens the reach of traditional disciplines and so offers Brandeis undergraduates a humanistic education in which the knowledge of the presence, roles, cultural contributions of the European imagination — for both good and ill — come into focus.
• Those who choose to become ECS majors acquire analytic skills and habits off critical thinking that will serve them well in many contexts of post-University life.

The panoply of ECS course offerings affirms the intellectual importance of research. In sharing the University’s commitment to academic excellence in the liberal arts, the ECS major provides students with the requisite tools to comprehend, analyze, and evaluate events and phenomena that structure the experiences and possibilities in a world that has been shaped by the presence and influence of Europe.

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.

Knowledge

Students completing a major in European Cultural Studies will come away with a critical understanding of:

1. Literary and cultural life across varied geographical, historical, racial, ethnic, and art traditions in Europe;
2. The story of the diversity European culture and the varied struggles for social, political, and economic change;
3. The contributions of European art and philosophy in the development of the cultural, social, political and global interdependence;
4. How cultural differences help determine wider political, economic, and social institutions;
5. Develop a sharpened sensitivity to cultural difference, and broaden their understanding of the linguistic, cultural, and political complexities of the European world;
6. How to think independently and critically about arguments using tools of analysis to evaluate evidence;
7. Crucial issues, concepts, theories, and research methods used in interdisciplinary, comparative, and cross-cultural study.

Skills

ECS emphasizes core skills in close reading, critical thinking, and effective argumentation. ECS majors will be trained and prepared to:

1. Conduct scholarly, professional, and original research applying interdisciplinary, comparative, and cross-cultural research methods;
2. Generate, as well as articulate orally and in writing, a coherent narrative about cultural history, the arts, literatures, and societies of European provenance;
3. Situate texts, images, documents, traditions, ideas, and relevant data in productive intellectual contexts;
4. Evaluate information critically with particular attention to examining and analyzing new areas of research

Upon Graduating

A Brandeis student with a major in ECS will be prepared to:

1. Pursue graduate study and a scholarly career in humanistic learning;
2. Pursue professional training in a variety of careers including healthcare, social work, government, international organizations, business, journalism, law, education, entertainment, and non-profit organizations in and outside the United States of America.

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

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

Each major will plan a program in consultation with the undergraduate advising head.

Stephen Dowden, Chair and Undergraduate Advising Head
(German, Russian, and Asian Languages and Literature)

Jytte Klausen
(Politics)

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

Michael Randall
(Romance Studies)

Laura Quinney
(English)

Nancy Scott
(Fine Arts)

Eugene Sheppard
(Near Eastern and Judaic Studies)

Govind Sreenivasan
(History)

Palle Yourgrau
(Philosophy)

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

1. ECS 100a or 100b (ECS Proseminar), to be completed, if possible, no later than the junior year.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. Foundational Literacies: As part of completing the European Cultural Studies major, students must:
   • Fulfill the writing intensive requirement by successfully completing: ECS 45a.
   • Fulfill the oral communication requirement by successfully completing: ECS 100a, or any ECS elective course approved for OC.
   • Fulfill the digital literacy requirement by successfully completing: ECS 100a, or any ECS elective course approved for DL.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. No course with a final grade below C+ can count toward fulfilling the major requirements in European Cultural Studies.
9. 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

RECS = Russian and European Cultural Studies

ECS 45a Writing Intensive Practicum
[ wi ]
Corequisite: ECS 100a or ECS 100b. Yields half-course credit. Fulfills the writing intensive requirement for European Cultural Studies majors under the Brandeis Core.
Usually offered every spring.
Stephen Dowden

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.
John Burt and Stephen Dowden

HUM/UWS 2a Crime and Punishment: Justice and Criminality from Plato to Serial
[ hum uws ]
Enrollment limited to Humanities Fellows. Formerly offered as COML/HOI 103a.
Examines concepts of criminality, justice, and punishment in Western humanist traditions. We will trace conversations about jurisprudence in literature, philosophy, political theory, and legal studies. Topics include democracy and the origins of justice, narrating criminality, and the aesthetic force mobilized by criminal trials. This course also involves observing local courtroom proceedings and doing research in historical archives about significant criminal prosecutions. Usually offered every year.
Eugene Sheppard and David Sherman

HUM/UWS 3a Drawing upon Literature
[ hum uws ]
Enrollment limited to Humanities Fellows. Studio fee: $75 per semester. Formerly offered as FA/RECS 118b.
An interdisciplinary team-taught course bringing together the practice of studio art and the study of literature. Students use Russian fiction and poetry (and some critical theory) as source material for the creation of visual images: drawings in various media, watercolors, prints, and photographs. The nature of narrative, as it crosses disciplines, will be a focus of our curriculum. We will read works of fiction by such writers as Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Babel and Nabokov to consider the role of artists as major literary characters, and how works of art function as iconography. Usually offered every year.
Susan Lichtman and Robin Feuer Miller

ECS 100a European Cultural Studies Proseminar: Modernism
[ dl hum oc 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.
Stephen 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.
Michael Randall

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

COML 100a Introduction to Global Literature
[ dl hum oc ]
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 117a Magical Realism and Modern Myth
[ hum ]
An exploration of magical realism, as well as the enduring importance of myth, in twentieth and twenty-first century fiction and film from Columbia, India, Nigeria, the United States, England, and elsewhere. Authors include Ben Okri, Toni Morrison, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Salman Rushdie; films include Pan's Labyrinth and Beasts of the Southern Wild. Usually offered every second year.
David Sherman

COML 120a Disordered Loves and Howling Passion: European Romanticism
[ hum ]
Introduces European Romanticism from a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective. This course integrates literature, painting, music, and philosophy. Works by Beethoven, Hölderlin, Schubert, Delacroix, Wordsworth, Mary Shelly, Verdi, Schlegel, Kant, Claude David and others. Usually offered every second year.
Stephen Dowden

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

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 Wong Karwai. Usually offered every second year.
Michael 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.
Matthew 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.
Stephen 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.
Robin Feuer 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, and Japan (all readings in English). Usually offered every fourth year.
John 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.
Ramie Targoff

COML/REC 136a All in the Family: Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and the English Novel
[ hum ]
Selected novels and writings of Austen, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Woolf will be read to trace both the evolution of the novel and the meanings, contexts and depictions of the family. The family novel encompasses such larger questions as how we regard the pain of others and how we define community. Usually offered every second year.
Robin Feuer Miller

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.
John Plotz

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

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

ENG 121a Sex and Culture
[ hum ]
An exploration of the virtually unlimited explanatory power attributed to sexuality in the modern world. "Texts" include examples from literature, film, television, pornography, sexology, and theory. Usually offered every second year.
Paul Morrison

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

HUM 10a The Western Canon
[ hum ]
May not be taken by students who have taken FYS 18a in prior years.
Foundational texts of the Western canon: the Bible, Homer, Vergil, and Dante. Thematic emphases and supplementary texts vary from year to year.
Staff

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.
Curt Woolhiser

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.
Ann O. Koloski-Ostrow

CLAS 170a Classical Mythology
[ hum ]
An introduction to Greek and Roman mythology. Considers ancient song cultures, and the relationship between myth, drama, and religion. Also explores visual representations of myth. Usually offered every second year.
Joel 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, and Japan (all readings in English). Usually offered every fourth year.
John 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.
John Plotz

ENG 32b Chaucer I
[ hum ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took ENG 132b in prior years.
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 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.
William Flesch or Ramie 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.
John Plotz

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 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.
Ramie Targoff

ENG 75b The Victorian Novel: Secrets, Lies, and Monsters
[ hum ]
The rhetorical strategies, themes, and objectives of Victorian realism. Texts may include Eliot's Middlemarch, Thackeray's Vanity Fair, Brontë's Villette, Gaskell's Mary Barton, Dickens' Bleak House, and Trollope's The Prime Minister. Usually offered every fourth year.
John Plotz

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

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

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.
John Plotz

ENG 111b Postcolonial Theory
[ hum ]
Introduces students to key concepts in postcolonial theory. Traces the consequences of European colonialism for politics, culture and literature around the world, situates these within ongoing contemporary debates, and considers the usefulness of postcolonial theory for understanding the world today. Usually offered every third year.
Ulka Anjaria

ENG 123a Violence and the Body in Early Modern Drama
[ dl hum ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took ENG 23a in prior years.
Explores early modern understandings of the body, with particular attention to gender, sexuality, race, and nation. Considers the role of violence in determining who counts as fully human, who can be reduced to a body, and whose bodies can be severed from citizenship, recognition, and value. Explores as well the claims of the body and voice to memorialization and belonging, and the evidence of actors' bodies on the stage. Usually offered every third year.
Thomas King

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

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

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.
David Sherman

ENG 133a Advanced Shakespeare
[ hum wi ]
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.
William Flesch and Thomas King

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.
Laura Quinney

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

ENG 152b Arthurian Literature
[ dl 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 165b Victorian Poetry and Its Readers
[ hum ]
Studies how poetry was written and read during the last time poetry held a prominent role in England's public life. The course centers on Tennyson's career as poet laureate, but also gives full attention to Robert Browning's work. The course also surveys the work of E. B. Browning, the Pre-Raphaelites, and others, and concludes with the poetry of Hardy and of the early Yeats. Usually offered every fourth year.
Staff

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

FREN 110a Cultural Representations
[ fl hum oc ]
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.
Clémentine Fauré-Bellaïche, Hollie Harder, or Michael Randall

FREN 111a The Republic
[ fl hum oc ]
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.
Michael Randall

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.
Martine 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 texts today and in the past with special emphasis on historical and cultural aspects. Readings include Edward Louis, En finir avec Eddie Bellegueule; Duras, L’amant; excerpts from Rousseau and Beauvoir and films like l'Esquive et La loi du marché (on working class and minority conceptions of gender). Usually offered every fourth year.
Martine Voiret

FREN 142b City and the Book
[ fl hum wi ]
Prerequisite: FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.
Analyzes the symbolic appearance of the city in French literature and film from the Middle Ages to the present day. The representation of the city in literature and film is contextualized in theoretical writings of urbanists and philosophers. Literary texts include medieval fabliaux, Pantagruel (Rabelais) and Nana (Zola) as well as theoretical texts by Descartes, Ledoux, Le Corbusier, Salvador Dalí, and Paul Virillo. Usually offered every second year.
Michael Randall

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.
Michael 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.
Sabine von Mering

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

GECS 185b Con-Artists, Anti-Semites, and Music Lovers: Modern German Fiction
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English with readings in English translation.
Is art an elevated swindle? What is the relation of aesthetic pleasure to racism, misogyny, and xenophobia? This course explores German narrative since 1955. It focuses on this tension between art and reality, beginning with Thomas Mann’s con-artist Felix Krull. Includes Gregor von Rezzori’s Memoirs of an Anti-Semite, Elfriede Jelinek’s Piano Teacher. Also works by Thomas Bernhard, W.G. Sebald, Olga Grjasnowa, Wolfgang Koeppen, and Günter Grass. Usually offered every two years.
Stephen 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.
Kathrin 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.
Stephen Dowden and Kathrin Seidl

GER 110a Goethe und seine Zeit
[ fl hum ]
Prerequisite: GER 30a. Conducted in German.
This upper-language course uses Goethe's dramatic, lyric, and prose works to introduce students to the literary periods of the enlightenment, Sturm-und-Drang, German Classicism, and Romanticism. We will read Iphigenie, Werther, Faust I, and a selection of Goethe’s famous poetry. 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.
Stephen Dowden

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.
James Mandrell

HISP 150a Staging Early Modern Spain: Drama and Society
[ fl hum ]
Prerequisite: HISP 109b or HISP 111b, or permission of the instructor.
Explores social class, gender, and violence in seventeenth-century Spanish dramas that deal with seduction, cross-dressing, revolution, and wife-murder. Authors to be studied include Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Alarcón, Tirso de Molina, and Calderón. Usually offered every second year.
James Mandrell

HISP 170a Topics in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Spanish Literature
[ fl hum wi ]
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.
James Mandrell

HIST 170a Italian Films, Italian Histories
[ dl 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.
Alice 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.
Mark Hulliung

ITAL 106a Storia e storie d’Italia: Advanced Italian through Narrative, Film, and Other Media
[ fl hum oc ]
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.
Aims to prepare students for upper-level courses and to advance language fluency through the practice of all language skills at different ranges of advanced proficiency, grammatical structures, and vocabulary. This course offers a close study and analysis of representative Italian literary texts and films to further improve proficiency in Italian through analytical, interpretive, and presentational activities. 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.
Silvia Monteleone

ITAL 110a Introduction to Italian Literature: Love, Intrigues and Politics from Dante to Goldoni
[ fl hum oc ]
Prerequisite: ITAL 105a or 106a or permission of the instructor.
Surveys the masterpieces of Italian literature from Dante to Goldoni’s stage. Students will explore different themes such as love, conflict, and politics in Italian early masterpieces by analyzing and comparing genres, historical periods, and schools of thought. Since Oral communication skills are the core of methodology and pedagogy for Italian 110, students will work on primary texts through dynamic and guided discussions, interpretative textual analysis, and different styles of presentations. Usually offered every second year.
Paola Servino

ITAL 120b Modern Italian Literature: From Page to the Screen
[ fl hum ]
Prerequisite: ITAL 105a or 106a or permission of the instructor.
Focuses on the literature of twentieth-century writers such as Sciascia, Lampedusa, and Calvino, as well as contemporary writers, such as Maraini, Baricco, Tamaro, and Ammaniti with emphasis on the theme of historical, individual, and familial identity within the context of traumatic socio-economic upheaval and transformative cultural events in the Italian society. Several films based on these works will also be examined, with emphasis on an analysis of cinematic innovation and interpretation from the examined texts. Usually offered every second year.
Paola Servino

NEJS 183b Global Jewish Literature
[ hum wi ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took NEJS 171a in prior years.
Introduces important works of modern Jewish literature, graphic fiction, and film. Taking a comparative approach, it addresses major themes in contemporary Jewish culture, interrogates the "Jewishness" of the works and considers issues of language, poetics, and culture significant to Jewish identity. Usually offered every second year.
Ellen Kellman

PHIL 146a Idea of God
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: PHIL 1a, PHIL 35a, PHIL 37a or PHIL 66b or permission of the instructor.
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.
Palle Yourgrau

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.
Martin Levin

RECS 130a The Great 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.
Robin Feuer 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.
David Powelstock

RECS 135a Russian Short Fictions: The Art of Narrative
[ hum oc ]
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 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.
Robin Feuer Miller

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.
David 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.
Curt Woolhiser

RECS/THA 140a Russian Theater: Stanislavsky to Present
[ ca djw hum wi ]
Throughout its history, Russian theatre has tried to communicate truthfully in a mostly repressive society. This course introduces students to the achievements of theatre artists from Stanislavsky through Post-Modernism. We will examine the work of groundbreaking directors like Meyerhold, Vakhtangov, and Lyubimov. We will read and analyze representative works of major modern and contemporary playwrights. The course load consists of readings, discussions, papers and in-class projects. Usually offered every second year.
Dmitry Troyanovsky

RECS/THA 148a Russian Drama: Text and Performance
[ hum oc ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English. Students may choose to do readings either in English translation or in Russian. Formerly offered as RECS 148a.
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.
David Powelstock

RUS 153a Advanced Russian Language through 19th Century Literature
[ dl fl hum ]
Prerequisite: RUS 29b or RUS 40b 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.
Irina Dubinina

THA 76a British, Irish, and Postcolonial Theater
[ ca wi ]
An exploration of the playwrights, political struggles, and aesthetic movements that shaped the evolution of British, Irish, and post-colonial drama in the twentieth century. Attention paid to race, class, gender, sexuality, and theater in performance. Playwrights include: Shaw, Yeats, Synge, O'Casey, Orton, and Churchill. Usually offered every second year.
Arthur Holmberg

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.
Charles Golden

ANTH 127a Medicine, Body, and Culture
[ djw 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.
Sarah Lamb or Anita Hannig

ANTH 130b Visuality and Culture
[ dl 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.
Patricia Alvarez or Ellen Schattschneider

ANTH 144a The Anthropology of Gender
[ djw 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.
Anita Hannig, Sarah Lamb, Keridwen Luis, or Ellen Schattschneider

ANTH 153a Writing Systems and Scribal Traditions
[ 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.
Javier 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.
Janet McIntosh

ANTH 156a Power and Violence: The Anthropology of Political Systems
[ deis-us 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.
Elizabeth 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.
Ellen Schattschneider

ANTH 184b Cross-Cultural Art and Aesthetics
[ nw ss ]
A cross-cultural and diachronic exploration of art, focusing on the communicative aspects of visual aesthetics. The survey takes a broad view of how human societies deploy images 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.
Javier 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.
Janet McIntosh

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.
Cheryl 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.
Cheryl 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.
Cheryl 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.
Ann O. Koloski-Ostrow or Staff

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.
Ann O. Koloski-Ostrow or Staff

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.
Ann O. Koloski-Ostrow or Staff

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.
Ann O. Koloski-Ostrow

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.
Ramie Targoff

ENG 84a Nostalgia, Clutter, and Decay: Marking Time in the Enlightenment
[ hum ]
Offers undergraduates the opportunity to consider the many ways of knowing time as presented in various eighteenth-century English texts. We will consider multiple literary forms—poetry, novel, the familiar letter, philosophical essay—for their ability to provide compelling examinations into how historical and literary subjects mark time, and how that epistemology connects to issues of historiography and nationalism. Special one-time offering, spring 2019.
Sarabeth Grant

FA 30a History of Art I: From Antiquity to the Middle Ages
[ ca ]
Surveys the artistic and architectural traditions of the peoples of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East from prehistory to the end of the Middle Ages with an emphasis on their cultural context, meaning and stylistic characteristics. Usually offered every year.
Charles 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.
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.
Peter Kalb, Nancy Scott, or Jonathan Unglaub

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.
Charles 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.
Jonathan 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.
Jonathan Unglaub

FA 47b Renaissance Art in Northern Europe
[ ca ]
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.
Jonathan 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
Jonathan 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.
Nancy Scott

FA 58a Politics on a Pedestal: Statues, Sculpture, Monuments
[ ca ]
Recent controversies and demonstrations at the sites of Confederate monuments highlight the power that politics has often exercised creating statues or memorials when shaping the public sphere. This course charts the many functions of sculpture, from recent controversies, to great masters such as Rodin, and on to street art, graffiti on the last remnants of the Berlin Wall. We analyze the history and symbolic role of monuments, memorials and installations in contemporary times. Usually offered every third year.
Nancy 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.
Peter Kalb

FA 61a History of Photography
[ ca ]
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.
Peter Kalb

FA 62a Art since 1945
[ ca ]
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.
Peter 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.
Gannit Ankori

FA 80a Modern Architecture
[ ca ]
Explores major architectural developments from the19th to the 21st century. While tracing major stylistic developments and new building types that have characterized "modernism" in architecture, the course also studies new forms of global dominance (via colonialism), expression of new sovereignties around the world (via the nationalist movements) and the creation of the new spaces of capitalism and consumption (the highway, the mall, the suburb, etc.) Usually offered every year.
Muna Guvenc

FA 86b Museum Studies
[ ca dl ]
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.
Nancy Scott

FA 141b The Formation of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Art
[ ca ]
Explores the origins and development of the synagogue, church and mosque and related arts in the first millennium CE and their ramifications for subsequent centuries to the present day. Emphasis on the debate among these three great religions about the proper form and function of art and architecture. Usually offered every third year.
Charles McClendon

FA 143a The Art and Peoples of the British Isles: Antiquity and the Middle Ages
[ ca ]
Surveys the art and architecture of the many peoples who inhabited England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales over the first 1,500 years of the common era, with a particular concern for the distinct nature of different cultural traditions and their synthesis that created a unique artistic legacy. Usually offered every fourth year.
Charles 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.
Charles McClendon

FA 149a The Age of Rubens, Rembrandt and Vermeer
[ ca wi ]
Explores the major figures of seventeenth-century painting in the Netherlands and Flanders: Rubens, Van Dyck, Rembrandt, and Vermeer. During this time, the ideal of Renaissance painter/courtier gives way to the birth of the modern artist in an open market, revolutionizing the subjects, themes, and styles of painting. Usually offered every second year.
Jonathan Unglaub

FA 155a Impressionism: Avant-Garde Rebellion in Context
[ ca wi ]
Focuses on major 19th century artists in France, from the innovation of Edouard Manet to the formation of the group called the Impressionists. Study of the series of independent exhibitions, mounted between 1874 - 1886, and organized by the unlikely allies Edgar Degas and Claude Monet, including women artists Morisot and Cassatt. Also analysis of the influence of Japanese art from abroad, and the new 'objective' style, shaped in part by the invention of photography, will be a focus. The next generation - Cézanne, Gauguin, Seurat, and Van Gogh - develop stylistic ideas out of Impressionism, and re-shape its aims. Usually offered every third year.
Nancy Scott

FA 156b Postimpressionism and Symbolism, 1880-1910
[ ca wi ]
Artists Vincent Van Gogh, Gauguin, Seurat and Cézanne, first identified with Post-Impressionism, are contextualized with Toulouse-Lautrec and others who defined the French art world before 1900. Symbolism has its roots in the art work of Redon, Van Gogh and above all Gauguin, here studied in context with poetry and art criticism of the times. The Expressionist move toward an abstract idiom in Norway, Germany and Austria will focus on Edvard Munch and Gustav Klimt. Decorative styles such as Art Nouveau and Jugendstil define the bridge to the 20th century. The course ends with early 20th century masters, Matisse and the Fauves, and finally German Expressionism. Usually offered every fourth year.
Nancy 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.
Nancy Scott

FA 180a Contemporary Architecture
[ ca ]
Presents major innovations and stylistic developments in world architecture
in the aftermath of World War II. Examining the larger social, political and cultural contexts within which architecture operates, the course will trace the diverse positions that characterize the contemporary architecture across the globe. Special attention will be paid to the relationships between theories, debates, and the creative capacity of design and practice in architecture since the mid-twentieth century. Usually offered every second year.
Muna Guvenc

FA 191b Studies in Renaissance and Baroque Art
[ ca oc 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.
Jonathan Unglaub

FA 192a Studies in Modern and Contemporary Art
[ ca oc ]
Topics may vary from year to year; the course may be repeated for credit.
Usually offered every second year.
Gannit Ankori, Peter Kalb, and Nancy Scott

FA 193a Studies in Modern and Contemporary Architecture
[ ca oc ]
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 dl oc wi ]
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.
Charles 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 streaming media. 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

GECS 188b Human/Nature: European Perspectives on Climate Change
[ djw hum oc wi ]
Open to all students.
Introduces European attitudes towards climate change as reflected in policy, literature, film, and art, with a focus on workable future-oriented alternatives to fossil-fueled capitalism. Usually offered every second year.
Sabine 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.
William 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.
William 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.
William 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.
William 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.
William 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.
William Kapelle

HIST 121a Breaking the Rules: Deviance and Nonconformity in Premodern Europe
[ djw 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.
Govind 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.
William Kapelle

HIST 126a Early Modern Europe (1500-1700)
[ oc 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.
Govind Sreenivasan

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.
Alice 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.
Mark 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.
Mark 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.
Paul Jankowski

HIST 140a A History of Fashion in Europe
[ dl 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.
Alice Kelikian

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

IGS 120a Inventing Oneself
[ hum ]
Do our backgrounds determine our lives, or can we transcend such limits to pursue dreams of our own? This class explores themes of liberation in works by French and Francophone writers and filmmakers and the global artistic and social movements they have inspired. All works in English. Usually offered every second year.
Clementine Fauré-Bellaïche

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.
Lotus 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 year.
Lotus 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.
Sophia Malamud

LING 140a Architecture of Conversation: Discourse and Pragmatics
[ dl 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.
Sophia 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
[ dl 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.
Sophia Malamud or Keith 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.
Mark Berger

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

NEJS 37a The Holocaust: 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.
Laura 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.
David Wright or Staff

NEJS 111a The Hebrew Bible/Old Testament
[ hum ]
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.
Staff

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.
Tzvi 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.
David 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.
Staff

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.
Staff

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.
David Wright

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.
Staff

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 ]
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.
Staff

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.
Ellen 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.
Ellen 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.
ChaeRan Freeze or Eugene Sheppard

NEJS 138a Genocide and Mass Killing in the Twentieth Century
[ hum ]
An interdisciplinary seminar examining history and sociology of the internationally punishable crime of genocide, with the focus on theory, prevention, and punishment of genocide. Case studies include Armenians in Ottoman Turkey, Stalin's Russia, the Holocaust, Cambodia, Bosnia, and Rwanda. Usually offered every second year.
Laura Jockusch

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.
Jonathan Decter

NEJS 140b Gender, Ghettos, and the Geographies of Early Modern Jews
[ 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.
ChaeRan Freeze or Eugene 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.
ChaeRan 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.
ChaeRan 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.
Staff

NEJS 150a The Jews in Weimar and Nazi Germany
[ hum ]
Explores the history of the German Jewish community in the years 1918-1945, a period characterized by the dramatic change from the solid social, professional and cultural integration of the Jews into German society to their disfranchisement, discrimination, and ultimate destruction. Usually offered every third year.
Laura Jockusch

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.
Ellen 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.
Eugene 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.
Ellen 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.
Ilana 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.
Sharon 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.
Sharon Rivo

NEJS 186a Introduction to the Qur'an
[ dl 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.
Suleyman Dost

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 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.
Marion Smiley or Kate Moran

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.
Eli Hirsch

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.
Kate 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.
Kate Moran or Marion 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.
Berislav Marušić or Kate 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.
Andreas 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.
Marion 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.
Andreas 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.
Marion Smiley

PHIL 119a Human Rights
[ hum wi ]
Examines international human rights policies and the moral and political issues to which they give rise. Includes civilians' wartime rights, the role of human rights in foreign policy, and the responsibility of individuals and states to alleviate world hunger and famine. Usually offered every second year.
Andreas Teuber

PHIL 120b Radical Social and Political Philosophy
[ hum ]
Explores a variety of works in the field of radical social and political philosophy and concentrates in particular on the early works of Marx, Foucault's theory of power, and contemporary philosophical arguments about racism and gender oppression. Usually offered every second year.
Marion Smiley

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.
Kate Moran

PHIL 123a Existentialism
[ hum oc ]
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.
Berislav Marušić

PHIL 131a Philosophy of Mind
[ hum wi ]
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.
Jerry 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.
Jennifer 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.
Eli Hirsch or Berislav 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.
Eli Hirsch

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.
Jerry 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.
Jerry 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.
Staff

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.
Eli Hirsch

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.
Eli Hirsch or Palle Yourgrau

PHIL 146a Idea of God
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: PHIL 1a, PHIL 35a, PHIL 37a or PHIL 66b or permission of the instructor.
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.
Palle Yourgrau

PHIL 148b Philosophy of the Humanities
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: PHIL 1a, PHIL 35a, PHIL 37a or PHIL 66b.
Explores the nature of the humanities, their methods and goals, with a particular focus on the discipline of history. Is history a "science," and should it be? What is the nature of the claims to knowledge that historians (and other humanists) make? How does one know a narrative? How does one know an interpretation? And what is the role of power in legitimating the claims to knowledge advanced by scholars, teachers, and students of history? Usually offered every fourth year.
Jon Levisohn

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.
Eli Hirsch or Berislav 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.
Palle 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.
Palle Yourgrau

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

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.
Eugene Sheppard

PHIL 168a Kant
[ hum oc ]
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.
Kate 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.
Jerry Samet

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.
Jennifer Marušić or Jerry Samet

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.
William Flesch and Eli Hirsch

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.
Steven Burg

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.
Jytte 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.
Bernard 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.
Bernard 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.
Bernard Yack

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.
Martin 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.
Curt 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.
Gordon Fellman

SOC 117b Sociology of Science, Technology, and Medicine
[ 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.
Sara Shostak

SOC 129a Sociology of Religion
[ deis-us ss ]
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.
Wendy Cadge

SOC 136b Historical and Comparative Sociology
[ dl 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.
Chandler Rosenberger or Karen 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.
Derron 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.
Gordon Fellman

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

SOC 155b Protest, Politics, and Change: Social Movements
[ deis-us ss ]
Introduces major sociological theories about leadership, political context, culture, and identities in social movements in transnational perspective. Examines historical and contemporary cases of social movements through the lenses of race, gender, class, and sexuality. Usually offered every second year.
Gowri 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.
Chandler 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.
Staff

SOC 189a Sociology of Body and Health
[ deis-us 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.
Sara 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.
Arthur 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.
Dmitry Troyanovsky

WMGS 5a Women, Genders, and Sexualities
[ deis-us oc 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.
ChaeRan Freeze, Sarah Lamb, or Harleen Singh