University Bulletin (2023-2024)

• Minor

To understand the significance of our beliefs and commitments—even to understand the significance of the questions and problems that beset us—we need to trace their sources and their history. Because ideas are expressed in social and political institutions as well as in philosophical, scientific, religious, and literary works, the program in the history of ideas (HOID) is distinguished by its multidisciplinary approach. Because political structures and institutions are themselves articulated in vigorous intellectual debates, we need to understand the ideas that have formed and that continue to form them. HOID proposes to provide students with the historical background of the issues and values that have shaped their interests. The program is intended to provide students with the skills and the knowledge, the guidance and the freedom to construct a focused and rigorous course of study, one that explores the historical transformation of a set of ideas and institutions across several traditional disciplines.

The History of Ideas minor has students take two different kinds of courses: electives from departments outside their major and 2 interdisciplinary seminars that act as capstones for the program. The electives allow students to exercise independent judgment in putting together a set of courses that pursue common themes within very different interdisciplinary settings. The seminars, in contrast, allow them to pursue intensive study of important issues or intellectual periods. The minor is constructed as an interdisciplinary supplement to students’ majors, one that broadens the range of approaches that students encounter, while still demanding rigorous intellectual engagement with key texts and thinkers. In addition, the History of Ideas Minor contributes to the university’s social justice mission in two ways: 1) intellectually, by deepening our students’ understanding of the nature and sources of our claims about morality and justice; 2) practically, by increasing appreciation and respect for the diverse and ever-changing ways in which these claims have been made over time.

Completing the History of Ideas Minor helps students develop the following core skills:

1. Critical thinking, based on close analysis of texts and comparison of different and changing expressions of ideas.
2. Ability to analyze and write about complex ideas.
3. Ability to read and analyze texts from diverse and unfamiliar traditions.
4. Judgment about how to make the best use of different methodological approaches to the same issue.

Our courses in the minor vary, with students selecting their own electives from a wide range of departmental offerings and with capstone seminars changing each year. The minor does not seek to impart to students a single body of knowledge. All of our courses aim, however, to help students appreciate:

1. The development of ideas over time.
2. The nature and extent of cultural diversity.
3. The sources of familiar and canonical ways of thinking.
4. The diverse and often contingent sources of long established beliefs and commitments.

The History of Ideas minor is especially attractive to students interested in graduate study in History, Philosophy, and other fields in Humanities and Social Sciences. As a result, many of our students go on to earn Ph.Ds and become academics. But it also helps prepare students well for any field, such as law, that requires careful analysis of the meaning and development of written texts.

In order to declare a minor, students should meet with the Director of the program, who will help them to plan a course of study tailored to their intellectual needs while meeting core and elective requirements.

David Katz, Director
(History)

Joel Christensen
(Classical Studies)

Caren Irr
(English)

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

Kate Moran
(Philosophy)

John Plotz
(English)

David Powelstock
German, Russian, and Asian Languages and Literature)

Chandler Rosenberger
(Sociology)

Umrao Sethi
(Philosophy)

Eugene Sheppard
(Near Eastern and Judaic Studies)

Bernard Yack
(Politics)

The minor has three requirements:

1. Two history of ideas seminars. At least two seminars will be offered each year. Topics and faculty for the seminars will change each year. Students should consult the schedule of classes each semester for the specific seminar offerings.
2. Three courses selected in consultation with the HOID Director, at least two of which will be taken in departments or programs beyond the student’s major(s). When joining the program, students will write a brief statement explaining the intellectual relationships that connect the subject matter of these three courses. Only one course from a student’s major—or one from each major, in the case of double majors—may be counted toward the total of five courses required for the minor.
3. Students will present a substantial research paper or project to HOID faculty and students at a spring colloquium. This paper or project may develop out of work done in a history of ideas seminar, but it can also be drawn from independent research, such as a senior thesis or independent study, or from other work that students have done since coming to Brandeis. The colloquium is designed to give students the opportunity to engage with each other about their creative work at Brandeis.
4. No grade below a C- will be given credit toward the minor.
5. No course taken pass/fail may count toward the major requirements.

HOID 98a Independent Study

Usually offered every year.
Staff

ENG 176b Jane Austen and George Eliot: Novel Genius
[ hum wi ]

Explores the novels of England's most inventive and surprising worldbuilders, Jane Austen and George Eliot. Their experiments in depicting unexpected aspects of reality unsettled their era's ideas about gender and class and the hidden workings of inequality. How did their innovative ways of depicting subjectivity, the passage of time, and the relationship between the ideal and the actual shape Modernist fiction, as well as the narrative arts of our own day, from film to television and beyond? Usually offered every third year.
John Plotz

HIST 173a What's the Big Ideas? People and Concepts You Should Know About from Darwin to Derrida
[ ss ]

The history of ideas stands at the intersection of several disciplines: philosophy, literature, religion and history. Beliefs and their expression drive action in the real world, and grasping how they connect sparks an intellectual excitement that can literally be life-enhancing. Usually offered every third year.
David S. Katz

HIST 188b The Varieties of Religious Experience, 1350-1900
[ ss ]

How do you talk about religion after Darwin, when science has replaced religion as the authoritative discourse, but most people everywhere adhere to some sort of religious belief? By reading together The Varieties of Religious experience (1902) by William James. Usually offered every third year.
David S. Katz

NEJS 141b Human Rights: Law, Politics, Theology
[ hum ]

How did human rights work arise in recent decades, and why only then? Is it a new sort of religion? What critical thinking will help this vast work of advocacy, international law, democratization and humanitarianism alleviate human suffering? Usually offered every second year.
Yehudah Mirsky

NEJS 193a Pirates, Mystics and Scholars: Travel Literature from the Islamic World
[ hum ]

Studies medieval and early modern travelogues from the Islamic world in English translation. These works provide us with a candid view of the Muslim Mediterranean including things like urban topography, social life, orthodox and subversive religious practices, status of minorities, conditions and limits of hospitality and so on. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

AAAS 115a Introduction to African History
[ djw nw ss ]

Explores the history of African societies from their earliest beginnings to the present era. Topics include African participation in antiquity as well as early Christianity and preindustrial political, economic, and cultural developments. Usually offered every year.
Carina Ray

AAAS 168b The Black Intellectual Tradition
[ ss wi ]

Prerequisite: Sophomore standing.

Introduces broad historical themes, issues and debates that constitute the black intellectual tradition. Examines the works of male and female black intellectuals from slavery to present. Will explore issues of freedom, citizenship, uplift, gender, and race consciousness. Usually offered every second year.
Chad Williams

AAAS/ENG 141b Critical Race Theory
[ hum ]

Traces an intellectual and political history of critical race theory that begins in law classrooms in the 1980s and continues in the 21st century activist strategies of Black Lives Matter movement. We proceed by reading defining theoretical texts alongside African American literature of the 20th and 21st centuries. Usually offered every third year.
Staff

AAAS/WGS 136a Black Feminist Thought
[ deis-us oc ss ]

Formerly offered as AAAS 136a.

Critical examination of the historical, political, economic, and ideological factors that have shaped the lives of African-American women in the United States. Analyzing foundation theoretical texts, fiction, and film over two centuries, this class seeks to understand black women's writing and political activism in the U.S. Usually offered every second year.
Shoniqua Roach

AMST/ENG 167b Writing the Nation: James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Toni Morrison
[ deis-us hum ]

May not be taken for credit by students who took ENG 57b in prior years.

An in-depth study of three major American authors of the twentieth century. Highlights the contributions of each author to the American literary canon and to its diversity. Explores how these novelists narrate cross-racial, cross-gendered, cross-regional, and cross-cultural contact and conflict in the United States. Usually offered every third year.
Staff

COML 123a Perfect Love?
[ hum ]

The conflict between "perfect' and carnal love has inspired artistic works from the Middle Ages through the present. This course studies how perfect love runs afoul of more human desires in works by authors, composers, and film makers like Chrétien de Troye, Marguerite de Navarre, Hawthorne, Monteverdi, di Sica, and Wong Karwai. Usually offered every second year.
Michael Randall

COML/ENG 141b Literature and Time
[ hum ]

Explores the human experience of temporality and reflection upon it. Themes covered by this course include: memory, nostalgia, anxiety, ethics, eternity, and time travel. Usually offered every third year.
Laura Quinney

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

ECS 100a European Cultural Studies Proseminar: Modernism
[ dl hum oc ]

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

ENG 1a Introduction to Literary Studies
[ hum wi ]

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

ENG 38a Fantasy Worlds: From Lilliput and Middle Earth to LARPs
[ hum ]

Fantasy is as old as Gilgamesh, as new as Harry Potter; appealing to both young and old readers as few other genres do. We explore its historical roots in satires like Gulliver's Travels, its modern rebirth in Narnia, Middle Earth, Le Guin's Earthsea, as well as on film. Also explores recent participatory fantasy realms, including online gaming and live action role-playing. Usually offered every third 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 52a Refugee Stories, Refugee Lives
[ deis-us djw dl hum nw oc ]

Examines the functions of storytelling in the refugee crisis. Its main objective is to further students' understanding of the political dimensions of storytelling. The course explores how reworking of reality enable people to question State and social structures. Usually offered every third year.
Emilie Diouf

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 146a Reading the American Revolution
[ dl hum ]

Explores the role of emerging literary forms and media in catalyzing, shaping, and remembering the American Revolution. Covers revolutionary pamphlets, oratory, the constitutional ratification debates, seduction novels, poetry, and plays. Includes authors Foster, Franklin, Jefferson, Paine, Publius, Tyler, and Wheatley. Usually offered every third year.
Jerome Tharaud

ENG 151a Queer Studies
[ hum ]

Recommended preparation: An introductory course in gender/sexuality and/or a course in critical theory.

Historical, literary, and theoretical perspectives on the construction and performance of queer subjectivities. How do queer bodies and queer representations challenge heteronormativity? How might we imagine public spaces and queer citizenship? Usually offered every second year.
Thomas King

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

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 139a Bad Girls and Boys: Du mauvais genre
[ fl hum ]

Prerequisite: FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.

Through a selection of literary texts, articles, images and films, students will explore how works from the Middle Ages to present day depict male and female figures in the French and Francophone world who have failed to conform to expectations of their gender. Usually offered every second year.
Hollie Harder

FREN 150b French Detective Novels: Major Questions for a Minor Genre?
[ fl hum ]

Prerequisite: FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.

Examines how French and Francophone detective novels take on big questions such as the origin of evil and how do you know what you know. Authors include Fred Vargas, Simenon, Driss Chraibi, Moussa Konate. Usually offered every second year.
Michael Randall

FREN 151b Francophone Identities in a Global World: An Introduction to Francophone Literature
[ fl hum wi ]

Prerequisite: FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.

Introduces Francophone literature and film, retracing, through the works of great contemporary Francophone writers and directors, the evolution of the Francophone world, from the colonial struggles to the transcultural and transnational trajectories of our global era. Usually offered every second year.
Clémentine Fauré-Bellaïche

FREN 186b Literature and Politics
[ fl hum wi ]

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

GRK 115b Ancient Greek Drama and Comedy
[ fl hum ]

The plays of Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Euripides, and Sophocles, in Greek. A different playwright is studied each year. See Schedule of Classes for current topic. Usually offered every fourth year.
Staff

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 150b Reading the Writing of European History
[ ss ]

Is history a science or an art, just another form of literature? Whether history repeats itself, historians do repeat each other, as we see by reading selections from famous and forgotten historians addressing these questions over the past 250 years. Usually offered every third year.
David Katz

HIST 152b The European Occult Tradition, 1200-2021
[ ss ]

Is the universe alive? Yes...according to the European occult tradition, a coherent intellectual stream that has roots in religion, philosophy and history and the more supernatural elements of conventional religion, such as providence, prophecy and messianism. Usually offered every third year.
David Katz

HIST 172b Historicizing the Black Radical Tradition
[ djw ss ]

Introduces students to the many ways that people and scholars of African descent have historically struggled against racial oppression by formulating theories, philosophies, and practices of liberation rooted in their experiences and understandings of labor, capitalism, and modernity. Usually offered every second year.
Gregory Childs

HIST 173a What's the Big Ideas? People and Concepts You Should Know About from Darwin to Derrida
[ ss ]

The history of ideas stands at the intersection of several disciplines: philosophy, literature, religion and history. Beliefs and their expression drive action in the real world, and grasping how they connect sparks an intellectual excitement that can literally be life-enhancing. Usually offered every third year.
David S. Katz

HIST 181b Red Flags/Black Flags: Marxism vs. Anarchism, 1845-1968
[ ss ]

From Marx's first major book in 1845 to the French upheavals of 1968, the history of left-wing politics and ideas. The struggles between Marxist orthodoxy and anarchist-inspired, left Marxist alternatives. Usually offered every third year.
Staff

HIST 188b The Varieties of Religious Experience, 1350-1900
[ ss ]

How do you talk about religion after Darwin, when science has replaced religion as the authoritative discourse, but most people everywhere adhere to some sort of religious belief? By reading together The Varieties of Religious experience (1902) by William James. Usually offered every third year.
David S. Katz

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.
Staff

HIST 195a American Political Thought: From the Revolution to the Civil War
[ ss ]

Antebellum America as seen in the writings of Paine, Jefferson, Adams, the Federalists and Antifederalists, the Federalists and Republicans, the Whigs and the Jacksonians, the advocates and opponents of slavery, and the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

HIST 196a American Political Thought: From the 1950s to the Present
[ ss ]

Covers the New Left of the 1960s, its rejection of the outlook of the 1950s, the efforts of liberals to save the New Left agenda in the New Politics of the 1970s, and the reaction against the New Left in the neoconservative movement. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

HIST/SOC 170b Gender and Sexuality in South Asia
[ djw nw ss ]

Prerequisite: Sophomore standing or permission of the instructor.

Explores historical and contemporary debates about gender and sexuality in South Asia; revisits concepts of "woman," "sex," "femininity," "home," "family," "community," "nation," "reform," "protection," and "civilization" across the colonial and postcolonial periods. Usually offered every second year.
Hannah Muller and Gowri Vijayakumar

HUM 1a Tragedy: Love and Death in the Creative Imagination
[ hum ]

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

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

JAPN 145a The World of Classical Japanese Literature
[ djw hum nw ]

A survey of some of the most important works of Japanese literature from its origins to the late sixteenth century, including a wide range of genres: fiction, essays, travelogues, poetry, and drama. All readings are in English. Usually offered every third year.
Matthew Fraleigh

MUS 1a Exploring Music
[ ca ]

Does not meet requirements for the major or minor in music.

A general introduction to the materials and forms of music and their role in human social life with examples drawn from around the world. Training in analytical listening, based on selected listening assignments. Open to non-majors who are assumed to have little or no previous knowledge of music. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

MUS 56b Romanticism in European Music and Literature: Breakups, Breakdowns, and Beauty
[ ca oc ]

Open to Music majors and non-majors.

Romantic art abounds in depictions of hallucinators, madwomen, obsessives, and other individuals whose thoughts and behaviors deviate sharply from societal norms. This semester, we'll seek to understand the cultural and historical significance of the ways in which late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century music and literature portray exceptional emotional, mental, and physiological states. We'll investigate the connections among madness, genius, physical illness, and the supernatural in the Romantic imagination, and also think about the artistic techniques contemporary writers and composers used to represent 'extreme' psychology. Our approach to this material will be comparative rather than strictly historical: we'll look at works written in different countries and different time periods within the period, grouped together by theme. Usually offered every third year.
Emily Frey

NEJS 26b Jewish Environmental Ethics
[ djw hum ]

Explores the ways in which Jewish ethics can inform contemporary discussion of environmental issues, teaches how to read texts from a regularly distant and unfamiliar past in light of burning questions today, and in so doing offers an overview of Jewish Ethics as a whole. The readings will be a mix of primary sources (e.g., Bible, philosophers), and secondary readings by contemporary scholars and thinkers. Among the contemporary issues we will deal with are the consumption, biodiversity, animals, environmental justice, and how we can hopefully add Jewish ideas and historical experience to our toolkit. Usually offered every second year.

Yehudah Mirsky

NEJS 104b Islam: Civilization and Institutions
[ hum nw ]

Provides a disciplined study of Islamic civilization from its origins to the modern period. Approaches the study from a humanities perspective. Topics covered will include the Qur'an, tradition, law, theology, politics, Islam and other religions, modern developments, and women in Islam. Usually offered every year.
Carl El-Tobgui

NEJS 123b Gender, Species, and Ethnicity in Early Judaism
[ djw hum oc ]

Being "human" is defined by distinguishing between and ordering different beings according to race, gender, disability and species. This privileges some in society while diminishing the value of others. This course introduces the main texts of rabbinic literature around fundamental questions of what is a legal "person" and what is not. Usually offered every year.
Lynn Kaye

NEJS 125a Just Communities and Neighborhoods in Talmudic Literature
[ hum ]

Prerequisite: Any 30-level Hebrew course or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.

Talmudic texts debate how to create communities led by trustworthy people with fair relations between neighbors. Class includes in-depth textual analysis and introduces contemporary Talmudic studies from multiple perspectives. This course traces how the Babylonia Talmud featured legal reasoning and storytelling to address issues of contested space and authority in a community committed to justice. Usually offered every year.
Lynn Kaye

NEJS 141b Human Rights: Law, Politics, Theology
[ hum ]

How did human rights work arise in recent decades, and why only then? Is it a new sort of religion? What critical thinking will help this vast work of advocacy, international law, democratization and humanitarianism alleviate human suffering? Usually offered every second year.
Yehudah Mirsky

NEJS 155a Maimonides: A Jewish Thinker in the Islamic World
[ hum ]

A study of the life, world, and thought of Moses Maimonides, the most significant Jewish intellectual of the Islamic world. This course traces his intellectual output in philosophy and Judaism, from its beginning in Islamic Spain to the mature works produced in Morocco and Egypt, in the context of the Arabic-Islamic milieu. Half of the course is dedicated to studying his Guide of the Perplexed, a Judeo-Arabic work that engages the demands of revealed religion and philosophical rationalism. Usually offered every third year.
Jonathan Decter

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 162b It Couldn't Happen Here: American Antisemitism in Historical Perspective
[ hum ]

A close examination of three American anti-Semitic episodes: U.S. Grant's expulsion of the Jews during the Civil War, the Leo Frank case, and the publication of Henry Ford's The International Jew. What do these episodes teach us about anti-semitic prejudice, about Jews, and about America as a whole? Usually offered every second year.
Jonathan Sarna

NEJS 169b From Sunday Schools to Birthright: History of American Jewish Education
[ hum ]

Empowers students to articulate a reality-based, transformative vision of Jewish education that is grounded in an appreciation for the history and sociology of American Jewish education. It will familiarize students with and contextualize the present Jewish educational landscape, through the use of historical case studies and current research, encouraging students to view the field from an evolutionary perspective. The seminar will address Jewish education in all its forms, including formal and informal settings (e.g., schools, camps, youth groups, educational tourism). Usually offered every third year
Jonathan Krasner

NEJS 191b The World to Come: Jewish Messianism from Antiquity to Zionism
[ hum ]

Messianism is an important component in Jewish history. This course examines the messianic idea as a religious, political, and sociological phenomenon in modern Jewish history. Examining how the messianic narrative entered Jewish political discourse enables a critical discussion of its role in Zionist activities as an example of continuity or discontinuity with an older tradition. Usually offered every year.
Alexander Kaye

NEJS 192b Power, Morality and Identity: Jewish Political Thought
[ hum ]

Though Jews were stateless for centuries, they had many political institutions and thought deeply about basic questions of politics, authority, ethics and power. In modernity, the age of emancipation, revolution, democracy, nationalism, Holocaust and Zionism, those ideas and institutions were put to new, shattering tests. All readings are in English with a HEBREW option for those who would like. Usually offered every second year.
Yehudah Mirsky

NEJS 193a Pirates, Mystics and Scholars: Travel Literature from the Islamic World
[ hum ]

Studies medieval and early modern travelogues from the Islamic world in English translation. These works provide us with a candid view of the Muslim Mediterranean including things like urban topography, social life, orthodox and subversive religious practices, status of minorities, conditions and limits of hospitality and so on. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

PHIL 21a Environmental Ethics
[ hum ]

Explores the ethical dimensions of human relationships to the natural world. Looks at environmental ethical theories such as deep ecology and eco-feminism and discusses the ethics of specific environmental issues such as wilderness preservation and climate change. Usually offered every third year.
Kate Moran

PHIL 107b Kant's Moral Theory
[ dl 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 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.
Kate Moran

PHIL 114b Topics in Ethical Theory
[ hum ]

Topics vary each year. May be repeated for credit.

Usually offered every year.
Staff

PHIL 123a Existentialism
[ hum ]

To a considerable extent, the “quasi-worship” of Science (the capital “S” signifying science as ideology) replaced the worship of God that held sway for millennia, until Nietzsche announced in the nineteenth century the “death of God.” Unlike religion, however, Science offers no guidance for our day to day lives, no consolation for the bitterness of life and the somber death knell of our mortality. Nature abhors a vacuum, however, and the vacuum left by the “death of God” was filled by a movement that arose from the ashes of WWII in France and Germany, inspired by earlier thinkers like Pascal, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche, that became known as existentialism. Leading figures included Martin Heidegger, Albert Camus, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Existentialism circled around a common set of ideas: existence vs. essence; radical human freedom vs. mere unfree, already determinate “things”; being vs. “nothingness”; what it means to live in an “absurd” universe; and “the time of life" vs. the (“timeless”) time proposed (seemingly) by modern physics. In this class we will study, critically, these seminal thinkers, from Pascal to Sartre, as well as contemporary philosophers like Thomas Nagel. Usually offered every second year.

Palle Yourgrau

PHIL 123b Neuroethics
[ hum ]

Focuses on the philosophical and ethical implications that arise from advances in neuroscience. We will investigate questions like: What are the evolutionary origins of moral judgment? Does evolutionary theory shed light on morality? Do our moral motivations derive from reason or pre-reflective intuition? Do psychopaths have moral responsibility? Do we have free will? Is there an obligation to enhance ourselves? Should drugs be used to enhance mental functioning? Is it moral to grow human organs in animals for purposes of transplantation? Usually offered every third year.
Staff

PHIL 146a Idea of God
[ hum ]

Engages in a philosophical investigation not of religion as an institution but of the very idea of God, comparing and contrasting the ancient Greek idea of God as found in religion and philosophy with the Biblical conception, i.e., comparing Athens to Jerusalem. 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 167a Hegel: Self-Consciousness and Freedom in the Phenomenology of Spirit
[ hum ]

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's Critique of Pure Reason
[ hum oc ]

Prerequisite: PHIL 1a or permission from 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

POL 10a Introduction to Political Theory
[ ss ]

Open to first-year students.

Examination of classical political texts and modern writings for insights on central problems of political discourse, such as power and authority, human nature, freedom, obligation, justice, and the organization of the state. Usually offered every year.
Bernard Yack or Jeffrey Lenowitz

POL 116b Civil Liberties in America
[ deis-us ss ]

May not be taken for credit by students who successfully completed LGLS 116b or LGLS/POL 116b previously.

The history and politics of civil liberties and civil rights in the United States, with emphasis on the period from World War I to the present. Emphasis on freedom of speech, religion, abortion, privacy, racial discrimination, and affirmative action. Readings from Supreme Court cases and influential works by historians and political philosophers. Usually offered every year.
Jeffrey Lenowitz

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 190b Seminar: Democratic Theory
[ ss ]

Explores in depth the nature, virtues, and limitations of democracy as a way of organizing political affairs. Brings together classic texts, for example, Rousseau's Social Contract, with more recent topical readings on topics like democracy and nationalism. Usually offered every second year.
Jeffrey Lenowitz or Bernard Yack

POL 192b Seminar: Topics in Law and Political Theory
[ ss ]

Prerequisite: Sophomore standing or higher. May be repeated for credit if different topic.

Interplay among law, morality, and political theory. Specific topics vary from year to year. Usually offered every year.
Bernard Yack or Jeffrey Lenowitz

RECS 100a Understanding Russian Culture: Myths and Paradoxes
[ dl hum ]

Open to all students. Conducted in English. Students may choose to do readings either in English translation or in Russian. Satisfies the Proseminar requirement for the Russian Studies major.

Russia has given the world renowned cultural luminaries such as Tolstoy and Tchaikovsky. At the same time, the Russian state—in different historical forms—has a long tradition of censoring, imprisoning, or even murdering artists and intellectuals. One scholar suggests that even as the Russian Empire has violently expanded its boundaries, the state has “colonized” its own people. Paradoxically, this very repression has made culture politically relevant—sometimes reinforcing imperial ideology, sometimes subverting it—and charged it with particular urgency. This course takes us inside the paradox, looking at some of the most important works of modern Russian literature, film, philosophy, visual art, music, theater, opera, and ballet in the context of the country’s troubled history. Usually offered every second year.
David Powelstock

SOC 127a Religion, Ethnicity, and Nationalism
[ nw oc ss ]

Examines three sources of identity that are influential in global affairs: religion, ethnicity and nationalism. Considers theories of the relationship among these identities, especially "secularization theory," then reviews historical examples such as Poland, Iran, India, and Pakistan. Usually offered every second year.
Chandler Rosenberger

SOC 162a Intellectuals and Revolutionary Politics
[ ss ]

Can you change a society by changing its culture? How do writers, painters, and bloggers give their countries new visions of justice -- or even revenge? This class studies the ideas behind revolutions, who creates them, and why. Usually offered every second year.
Chandler Rosenberger

SOC 168a Democracy and Inequality in Global Perspective
[ ss ]

Can democracy survive great inequalities of wealth and status? In authoritarian countries, does inequality inspire revolution or obedience? What role does culture play in determining which inequalities are tolerable and which are not? Cases usually include the United States, India, and China. Usually offered every second year.
Chandler Rosenberger

SOC 200a Contemporary Social Theory

Covers major paradigms in contemporary social analysis ranging from action theory, habitus and field, and ritual theory, to recent models in cultural sociology, the network society and globalization in Europe and the United States. Works by, Bourdieu, Collins, Giddens, Touraine, Foucault, Castells, and others are covered. Usually offered every second year.
Michael Strand

THA 146a Theater and the Holocaust
[ ca djw ]

WGS 105b Feminisms: History, Theory, and Practice
[ deis-us oc ss ]

Prerequisite: Students are encouraged, though not required, to take WGS 5a prior to enrolling in this course.

Examines diverse theories of sex and gender within a multicultural framework, considering historical changes in feminist thought, the theoretical underpinnings of various feminist practices, and the implications of diverse and often conflicting theories for both academic inquiry and social change. Usually offered every year.
ChaeRan Freeze, Keridwen Luis, or Faith Smith