Provisional University Bulletin (2026-2027)

• Major (BA)

The interdisciplinary study of communication and media focuses on theories and practices of communication, encompassing various aspects of message creation, form and content, technologies and channels of delivery, reception and interpretation, and their larger impact on society and culture. The major provides students with a critical understanding of verbal and embodied interpersonal communication as well as the social and cultural context of mass and socially mediated communication.

Undergraduate work in Communication and Media Studies prepares students to pursue graduate studies or careers in an array of fields, including the arts and entertainment industries, marketing and public relations, and advocacy and policy work.

Students who major in Communication and Media Studies examine the wide range of communicative frameworks through which humans express and exchange ideas, emotions, opinions, and styles. Students combine an exploration of  the cultural, institutional, economic, and political aspects of these frameworks with training in various methods and technologies of communication, which may include language, performance, and print, visual, audio, filmic, broadcast, or social media.

Knowledge

Students completing the Communication and Media Studies major will gain knowledge and understanding of:

• Major scholarly approaches to the analysis of interpersonal communication and mass and socially mediated communication, as well as communication by way of a range of additional mediating forms including text, embodied performance, television/film, music, and an array of digital platforms and venues.
• How institutional and political factors shape communication and media.
• How communication and media practices differ according to historical, geographic, and social contexts.
• How communication practices and technologies affect individuals, societies, political arrangements, and aesthetic forms.
• How communicative practices are shaped by and help to shape social roles and identities.

Skills

Students completing the Communication and Media Studies major will develop:

• Select communication skills from an array of options, including written, performance, visual, or digital skills, and/or select technical, creative, journalistic, or marketing skills utilized by communicators in professional settings.
• Research skills using methods in communication and media analysis selected from an array of disciplinary approaches.
• A capacity to employ critical thinking and analysis to communicative and media practices.

Social Justice

By examining the cultural, legal, and economic contexts of communication, the Communication and Media Studies major reveals how access to communication is both shaped and constrained by the structures in which it operates. When these structures are unjust, the means through which we communicate can reflect and reinforce that injustice. When the content transmitted through any given medium is unjust, its proliferation can augment human conflict and suffering. A major in COMMS helps students to see the complex relationships between our communicative practices and sociocultural and political contexts. In so doing, it better equips students to recognize when and how our communicative practices are being used to affect positive social change, and when and how they are being used to sustain an unjust status quo.  

Upon Graduating

A Brandeis student with a Communication and Media Studies major will be prepared to:

1. Pursue graduate studies in a wide range of professional programs or academic programs in the social sciences and humanities.
2. Pursue careers in an array of fields, including arts and entertainment, marketing and public relations, and advocacy and policy work.

Students can meet with the Communication and Media Studies Undergraduate Advising Head to declare their major at any point prior to the beginning of their eighth semester. Students are encouraged to take ANTH 26a early in their undergraduate career. Beyond completing major requirements, COMMS students are not required to follow a given track, but students desiring greater specialization may find it useful to consult the list of thematic clusters for guidance when selecting electives.

Laura Miller, Undergraduate Advising Head
Professor of Sociology

Patricia Alvarez Astacio
Assistant Professor of Anthropology

Cameron Anderson
Barbara and Malcolm L. Sherman Associate Professor of Theater Arts 

Maura Jane Farrelly
Professor of American Studies

Bradford Garvey
Assistant Professor of Music and Ethnomusicology

Janet McIntosh
Professor of Anthropology 

Avinash Singh
Assistant Professor of International and Global Studies and History

Erin Vicente
Associate Professor of Practice, School of Business and Economics

Students must complete nine semester courses, which include the following:

A. ANTH 26a and SOC 146a.

B. At least one course drawn from the Application sub-area.

C. At least three courses drawn from the Critique and Analysis sub-area.

D. Three additional COMMS electives.

E. Foundational Literacies: As part of completing the COMMS major, students who matriculated prior to fall 2026 must:

• Fulfill the writing intensive requirement by successfully completing any WI-designated course in the arts, humanities, or social sciences.

• Fulfill the oral communication requirement by successfully completing any OC-designated course in the arts, humanities, or social sciences.

• Fulfill the digital literacy requirement by successfully completing any DL-designated course in the arts, humanities, or social sciences.

F. All Brandeis courses used to fulfill the requirements of the COMMS major must be taken for a letter grade (not pass/fail) and must be C- or above.

G. No more than two courses can be double-counted towards the FTIM major/minor or JOUR minor.

H. With approval of the COMMS Undergraduate Advising Head, up to two courses from study abroad may count toward major requirements.

I. To write an optional senior honors thesis, a student must have a 3.5 overall GPA and a 3.75 GPA in their COMMS major. Honors candidates are required to take COMM 99a and 99b (Senior Research) in addition to the nine COMMS courses.

Students who desire greater specialization in an area of study are encouraged to consult the COMMS major’s thematic clusters when planning their courses.

FA 15b 4D: Body, Space, Time, Relation
[ ca ]

Introduces experiential, intermedia art forms incorporating practices from sculpture, installation, video, sound, performance, and digital media. Students will be encouraged to construct objects or environments that exist within, or provide the container for, time-based projects. The Body will be approached as a subject of theoretical discourse as well as a lived experience –experience that is always situated in particular physical space, changing within unfolding time, and in relation to other bodies and objects. The sensory, affective experiences of the body will be emphasized, particularly those outside of traditional visual art forms–touch, smell, sound, taste and proprioception. Students will play with interactive modes of presentation, ephemeral art, and relational aesthetics. Technical instruction will include 3D making, sound/video editing, and spatial installation practices. An art historical survey of intermedia praxis will span from 1960s Fluxus Art to our contemporary moment. Relevant inspirations from outside the artworld canon will pull from the realms of science, music, dance, film, theater, literature, poetry, cultural studies and pop culture. This course nurtures an interdisciplinary lab environment where students participate collaboratively in activities and experiments during class time. Usually offered every third year.

ANTH 26a Communication and Media
[ dl ss ]

A wide-ranging exploration of the human communicative capacity, starting with verbal and visual communicative modalities and culminating in the study of communication through mass and social media. Usually offered every second year.

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.

ANTH 130a Filming Culture: Ethnographic and Documentary Filmmaking
[ djw dl nw ss ]

Introduces the history, theory and production of ethnographic and documentary filmmaking. This course traces how ethnographic and culturally-inflected filmmakers have sought to depict cultural difference, social organization, and lived experiences. Students will learn the basics of non-fiction film production. Usually offered every second year.

BUS 47a Business Communication
[ oc ss wi ]

Prerequisite: BUS 6a and BUS 10a. Enrollment limited to Business Majors.

Success in today's competitive corporate world stems from an individual's strong communication skills. As a future professional, you will be asked to organize, develop, and deliver concise presentations and write business specific that meet a range target audiences' needs in a variety of business contexts. This course will help you prepare and develop your written, oral, visual, and digital communication skills, as well as your critical and analytical thinking skills. Emphasis will focus on real business cases, my personal business experiences, and communication styles and techniques represented in the business community. By the end of this class, you will understand how to communicate professionally using various business communication techniques and applications based on the audience you are communicating with and in what context through practice and feedback from both professor and peers will be an important part of this course. Usually offered every year.

BUS 153a Marketing Research
[ ss ]

Prerequisite: BUS 152a.

Marketing research is critical to business success in today's information economy. We will learn quantitative marketing research models and techniques for analyzing consumer behavior and marketing information. Topics include marketing segmentation, targeted promotion strategies, brand positioning, new produce design, and customer profitability. Usually offered every year.

COSI 116a Information Visualization

Prerequisite: COSI 12b. Only MS4 students without COSI 12b can register with approval of the instructor.

Introduces foundational principles, methods, and techniques of visualization to enable creation of effective visual representations of information. Covers the design and evaluation of novel visual encodings for diverse and heterogeneous data, including numerical, ordinal, nominal, and temporal data, network data, and multimedia data. Provides an overview of relevant principles of human vision, perception, and psychology related to the derivation of insights from visual analysis. Create visualizations in Tableau, Python, and JavaScript. Requires programming in Python, JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. Requires extensive writing including documentation, explanations, and discussions of findings from data analyses. Students will choose from datasets across diverse topics such as climate science, sustainability, urban planning, and healthcare data to develop their own visual analyses. Students will analyze data in groups and present their findings both in slide-form and in a writeup that will be publishable in an online setting. Usually offered every year.

ENG 79a Screenwriting Workshop: Beginning Screenplay
[ dl hum wi ]

Offered exclusively on a credit/no credit basis. May be repeated for credit.

Fundamentals of screenwriting: structure, plot, conflict, character, and dialogue. Students read screenwriting theory, scripts, analyze files, and produce an outline and the first act of an original screenplay. Usually offered every year.

ENG 139a Publishing Workshop: Literary Editing and Publishing
[ dl hum oc ]

Offered exclusively on a credit/no credit basis. This course fulfills a workshop requirement for the Creative Writing major and minor. 

Editing and publishing a literary journal -- either digital, print, or in more experimental forms -- can be an important component of a writer's creative life and sense of literary citizenship. This experiential learning course will engage students with theoretical and historical reading, as well as provide practical hands-on tools for literary publishing. Broadsided Press (www.broadsidedpress.org) will be used as a case study. A group publishing project will be part of the coursework, and this can be tied into journals already being published on campus. By the end of the semester, students will have a fuller sense of the work, mindset, difficulties, strategies, and values of a literary publisher. Usually offered every second year.

ENG 139b Screenwriting Workshop: Intermediate Screenwriting
[ hum oc wi ]

Prerequisites: ENG 79a. Offered exclusively on a credit/no credit basis. May be repeated for credit.

In this writing-intensive course, students build on screenwriting basics and delve more deeply into the creative process. Participants read and critique each other's work, study screenplays and view films, and submit original written material on a biweekly basis. At the conclusion of the course each student will have completed the first draft of a screenplay (100-120 pages). Usually offered every year.

ENG 149b Writing the Horror and Suspense Film
[ hum wi ]

Offered exclusively on a credit/no credit basis. May be repeated for credit.

Combining lectures, workshops, and screenings, this course introduces the principles and craft of screenwriting, specifically in the horror genre. Students develop confidence and critical thinking while honing their storytelling skills.

Class lectures cover the fundamentals of creative screenwriting: characterization, story structure, pacing, plot, and dialogue. Student participation includes discussions of the reading and viewing assignments, writing exercises, and critiques of their classmates’ original material.

Student work is informed by exploring horror films and their enduring appeal, dating from the earliest incarnations of the silent era through contemporary examples from Hollywood, Latin America, Asia, Europe, and the indie film world. This course requires students to complete a polished first act and a detailed eight-to-ten-page outline of their feature-length screenplay. Usually offered every second year.

ENG 159a Screenwriting Workshop: Variations on the Short Film
[ hum wi ]

Offered exclusively on a credit/no credit basis. May be repeated for credit.

Introduces writing and producing of short films for independent production. Topics will include introduction to screenwriting, script format, loglines, pitch pages, beat sheets and outlines, short form structure, and the planning involved in pre-production. Usually offered every year.

FA 8a Introduction to Video Art
[ ca dl ]

Explores producing moving images as fine art. While a basic overview of Adobe Premiere software is offered, emphasis is on conceptual framework and cultivating methodologies that best suit ideas. Students will experiment with materials, modes of production (performance, experimental documentation, appropriation, non-linear narrative), and exhibition (video monitors, projection, theatrical, installation, Internet) in order to consider the effect of these decisions on generating meaning and to better communicate one's statement through the genre. Usually offered every semester.

FA 18a Experimental Threads
[ ca ]

Prerequisite: Instructor permission.

Guides students through spinning, felting, sewing, weaving, mending, and embroidery techniques to promote inventive approaches with fibers across the disciplines of sculpture, textiles, fashion, painting, and book arts. Material possibilities include supple materials that can respond similarly to cloth and fibers such as plastic, rubber, wire, paper, and more. Students refine skills in design, armature making, and various textile practices while exploring materials in a hands-on, lab environment. Experimental Threads is a studio class complemented with historical background, theoretical texts, and autobiographical accounts. Lectures and readings uplift the marginalized histories of textile crafts, domestic labor, and outsider art. Visits to the Rose Art Museum provide exposure to an array of textile-based contemporary artworks. Discussions consider fiber arts in multiple contexts–cultural, domestic, industrial, art historical, decolonial, queer, and feminist. Usually offered every second year.

FA 23b Architectural Drawing and Digital Design I
[ ca dl ]

Intended to develop new skills in conceptualizing, designing, and communicating architectural ideas. Students will be exposed to conceptual strategies of form and space and site relationships within social and environmental factors. Students will study the basic techniques and concepts of architectural design and digital drawing, with two and three-dimensional representation skills. Usually offered every year.

FA 24a Architectural Drawing and Digital Design II
[ ca dl ]

Intended to develop new skills in conceptualizing, designing, and communicating architectural ideas. Students will be exposed to conceptual strategies of form and space and site relationships within social and environmental factors. Students will study the basic techniques and concepts of architectural design and digital drawing, with two and three-dimensional representation skills. Usually offered every year.

FA 27b Book Arts and Editions
[ ca ]

Hands-on exploration of the book format and artist book editions, including a brief introduction to the history and aesthetics of bookmaking. Students will learn about the form and structure of the book, sequencing, page layout and binding techniques, by doing their own books in class. The class includes demonstrations of various techniques, adhesive and non-adhesive bindings, sewn binding (single/multiple structures), experimental object-book formats and the preparation/layout of a book editions. No previous experience required. Usually offered every year.

FA 118a Studio Seminar
[ ca oc ]

Prerequisites: Enrollment open to junior and senior studio art majors.

Introduces students to crucial facets of a successful studio practice that happen concurrently, and in dialogue with art making. Writing, reading, communication, and professional practices will be explored as ways of bolstering students' understanding of their own studio practice within the wider history of art and particularly within the context of contemporary art. Usually offered every year.

FA 119b Professional Practice in Art
[ ca wi ]

Prerequisite: Instructor permission.

This is an introductory course to business practices of working artists and arts professionals for students who plan to pursue cultural work/production professionally. Part seminar, part laboratory, students will gain practical experience through hands-on writing exercises while contemplating the philosophical ramifications of what it means to be a contemporary practicing cultural worker through the course's curated reading material and discussion. We will explore diverse modes of professional engagement as well as various opportunities/possibilities, in and outside of traditional art world structures. Usually offered every year.

FILM 110a Film Production I
[ ca dl oc ss ]

Preference given to Film,Television and Interactive Media majors and minors.

An introduction to the basic principles and techniques of fictional narrative motion picture production. Each student will produce three short films. The films will emphasize dramatic development and creative storytelling through image composition, camera movement, editing, and sound. Usually offered every year.

FILM 110b Motion Picture Editing
[ dl oc ss ]

Preference given to Film, Television and Interactive Media majors and minors.

Students will develop visual literacy through a study of the editor's role in cinematic storytelling. The course provides an overview of the craft's history and theory and offers practical training in editing digital video with Adobe Premiere Pro. Usually offered every year.

FILM 120a Cinematography
[ ca dl oc ]

Gives students the ability learn lighting, media capture techniques, camera and subject movement choreography in both analog and digital formats. They will gain knowledge of axis and frames, dynamic editing points and creating a motion picture as an essay tapestry. Usually offered every year.

JOUR 13a Multimedia Storytelling Lab

Yields half-course credit. Formerly offered as EL 13a.

Students at both beginning and intermediate levels of experience pursue projects in photography, podcasting, and video to develop their skills as multimedia journalists. This lab course provides instruction on best practices with equipment and software as well as a forum for workshop and critique. Usually offered every year.

JOUR 101a The Fundamentals of Journalism
[ ss wi ]

Provides students with a grounding in the fundamentals of news reporting and writing, linking theory to practice. Equips them with the foundational skills to address the demands of today’s rapidly changing media world. Counts toward Writing requirement for Journalism minor. Usually offered every year.

JOUR 112b Social Journalism: The Art of Engaging Audiences
[ dl ss wi ]

Students will learn how to use social media storytelling to develop their own voices, sharpen their reporting skills, and reach new communities and platforms. They will also learn the art of tracking and building audiences through engagement tools and will critique the work of professionals and colleagues. Usually offered every second year.

JOUR 115b Storytelling with Data
[ qr ss ]

Teaches students how to use data to reveal the invisible narratives around us. We will explore how journalists, designers, and scientists have leveraged this powerful tool, and it will give students the tools of data visualization to leverage data for themselves. Usually offered every second year.

MUS 136a Critical Listening
[ ca oc ]

Required for music majors.

Designed to build a variety of listening skills (apart from ear training) and to study the historical and cultural role of listening in various times and places. Usually offered every second year.

MUS 196b Sound and Space: Sound Installation and Movement Staging in the Field of Music Composition
[ ca ]

May be repeated for credit.

Students will design their own sound installation and learn how to build meaning through space and sound In relation to a cross-disciplinary research topic. This research will be modeled on methods cross-disciplinary project-building In various disciplines. Students will be informed by historical precedent In this field, design (and fulfill) a research goal around the production of the installation, and understand how to create (and to actually create by the end of the class) an intellectually rigorous and engaging interaction between the aural and visual. Usually offered every second year.

NEJS 123a Maps, Graphs and Timelines: Technology and Design in Historical Research
[ dl hum oc ]

Learn the practical skills to represent data digitally as graphs, maps, timelines and other models. Students will develop their own research projects in topics of their interest and learn to think critically about the opportunities and pitfalls that digital methods pose, for scholarship, inclusion and for social justice. The course will include extensive practical instruction. Usually offered every second year.

THA 15b Public Speaking: The Art of Oral Communication
[ oc ]

Does not meet the requirements for the major or minor in Theater Arts. May not be used to satisfy the Creative Arts distribution requirement.

Introduces the basic concepts and techniques of making presentations to groups of people. Students explore the principles of human communication and apply them to various situations and forms of spoken discourse. Students develop a process for analyzing the audience and situation; for choosing, limiting, and researching a subject; for developing effective habits of vocal delivery; and for writing their own speeches. Usually offered every year.

THA 40a The Art of Visual Narrative and Production Design
[ ca ]

Explores the process of creating visual narrative - how do we travel from idea to image to visual storytelling? We will learn to create evocative environments and visual metaphor that transport the viewer, transcend reality, and make stories. We will construct and deconstruct the idea of performance space both theatrical and site-specific. How do we create the psychological landscape of a story? What can an architectural detail tell us about character? What can we learn from objects? We will approach design from an interdisciplinary perspective that will challenge students to combine visual art, new media, performance, and space, in surprising and meaningful ways. Of interest to designers, actors, directors, film-makers, fine artists, and anyone interested in the process of creating a visual story line. Usually offered every second year.

THA 71a Playwriting
[ ca wi ]

Introduces students to the fundamentals of playwriting. Attention will be given to dramatic structure, the development of character, and stage dialogue. In addition to completing a number of playwriting exercises, students will write one ten-minute play and one one-act play. Work will be shared with the class and read aloud. Usually offered every year.

THA 125b The Art of Scenography: Scenic Design and Invention for Performance
[ ca dl ]

May be repeated for credit if taught by different instructors. Open to non-majors.

Introduces students to the process of creating evocative and imaginative designs for the stage. This course is designed for students of all majors and years who want to learn about scenic design. Working with a variety of source material, students will explore how to develop ideas and striking theatrical images that tell the story of the text. How can we create a psychological visual environment that transports the viewer to another time and space? How do textures, colors, and composition work on the mind? We will use installation art, sculptural thinking, and creative writing to inspire our environments. We will examine the body and the space it inhabits to create new interdisciplinary possibilities. How can new technologies such as video and projection inform our process? Working in a studio setting, students will be introduced to methods and craft of set design - including research, sketching, model making and drafting. Above all, students will be asked to take risks, and begin to develop their artistic vision. Of interest to designers, directors, film-makers, fine artists, and anyone interested in the process of creating a visual story line. Students are required to purchase materials. Usually offered every year.

THA 138a The Business of Show Business
[ ca oc ]

Provides students with an overview of the many different facets of what it takes to produce live theater in America today. With an emphasis on non-profit theater, students will learn about organizational structure, aesthetic and artistic goals, facilities management, budgeting and revenue streams, public relations/marketing/advertising and communication. From brainstorming to barnstorming, this course will give students the step-by-step process of delivering live, professional theater. Usually offered every second year.

THA 138b Creative Pedagogy
[ ca oc ]

Explores the individual discovery in human creativity and how this journey impacts the quality and inclusivity of teaching and learning both inside and outside of educational spaces. Students will dig into their own educational experiences and their relationship to creativity in this creativity-engaged space. Using the theoretical stages of creativity, students read research, reflect on their own experiences, try new creative endeavors, and engage in creative collaboration with others with the lens towards inspiring and supporting learning. Students are asked in the course to expand their own creative reach and risk-taking capabilities. Usually offered every second year.

THA 180a Multimedia and Video Design for Live Performance
[ ca dl ]

Explores the convergence of multimedia theater, installation art, and video design. Students will learn about the use of technology in visual storytelling, and the cross-disciplinary and hybrid practices of multimedia design including sound, video, light and space. How can we use technology to enhance, frame or even reveal new perspectives on the stories we tell? Students will learn about tools and techniques from design professionals, and will engage directly and collaboratively with technology and space to design full-scale experiences focused around performance. No experience in performance, theater, or design expected. Usually offered every second year.

WGS 41b Storyweaving: Movement and Creative Process through Dance
[ ca ss ]

No prior dance experience or training is required. Attendance and physical participation is the primary mode of learning for this course. Therefore, students at risk for health concerns or potential obstacles related to in-person attendance or physical participation are encouraged to consult with their advisor and the instructor in advance of the start of class.

Explores forms of modifiable movement, alongside guided movement and creative processes for dance making. Pedagogy and readings for this course will center on Indigenous approaches to movement and dance, and Indigenous performance and dance studies scholarship. Usually offered every year.

WLIT 171a Literary Translation in Theory and in Practice
[ hum ]

Prerequisite: Excellent reading knowledge of any language other than English. Students will be asked to demonstrate proficiency before receiving consent to enroll in the course.

Approaching literary translation from several angles at once, this course combines readings in the history and theory of translation with a practical translation workshop. Students will experience first-hand the challenges of literary translation and, with the help of the theoretical readings, reflect on what the process teaches us about linguistic, literary, and cultural difference. Usually offered every second year.

AAAS 124a After the Dance: Performing Sovereignty in the Caribbean
[ hum oc ss ]

Utilizing short fiction, essays, plays, poetry, and the visual arts, this class theorizes movement and/as freedom in the spectacular or mundane movements of the region, including annual Carnival and Hosay celebrations. Usually offered every third year.

AAAS 134b Novel and Film of the African Diaspora
[ djw hum nw ]

Writers and filmmakers, who are usually examined separately under national or regional canonical categories such as "(North) American," "Latin American," "African," "British," or "Caribbean," are brought together here to examine transnational identities and investments in "authentic," "African," or "black" identities. Usually offered every third year.

AAAS 155b Hip Hop History and Culture
[ ss ]

Examines the history of hip hop culture, in the broader context of U.S., African American and African diaspora history, from the 1960s to the present. Explores key developments, debates and themes shaping hip hop's evolution and contemporary global significance. Usually offered every second year.

AAAS/ENG 80a Black Looks: The Promise and Perils of Photography
[ deis-us djw hum wi ]

Explores novelists’ and poets’ fascination with photography; the fraught role of photography in the struggle against antiblackness; Black photographers in the studio; and theorists of photography and looking. In African, African-American, Caribbean and Black British archives, canons and communities, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Usually offered every third year.

AAAS/WGS 124a Gender and Surrealism in Popular Black TV and Film
[ deis-us ]

Interprets contemporary Black experimental TV and Film (including Terence Nance’s Random Acts of Flyness, Misha Green’s Lovecraft Country) through two distinct yet overlapping intellectual and political traditions: Black feminism (as a politic that interrogates assumptions behind gender, sexuality, and race in the interests of Black women’s freedom) and Afrosurrealism (as an anti-imperialist poetic, musical, and artistic movement that denaturalizes linked power structures from African diasporic perspectives). Students will identify and articulate key features, principles, and goals of Black feminism and Afrosurrealism, tracing how different Black artists and thinkers have employed and revised these traditions since the 1960s. Special one-time offering, fall 2022.

AAAS/WGS 152b Beyoncé and Beyond: The Politics of Black Popular Music
[ deis-us ss ]

Prerequisite: AAAS 5a, AAAS/WGS 125a or AAAS/WGS 136a.

Introduces the history of contemporary black popular music and uses Beyoncé's wide-ranging and African diasporic musical repertoire as an entry-point into Black sound cultures from the US, Africa, the Caribbean, and Western Europe. Each week will spotlight part of Beyoncé's repertoire, i.e., Lemonade, Black is King, B-day, and Dangerously in Love, taking these as a jumping off point from which to survey and delve into such genres as R&B, Hip-hop, Disco, Dancehall, UK Garage, Trap Soul, New Orleans Bounce, as well as Jungle & Afrobeats. In addition to understanding these histories and genres, students will also explore public-facing popular music writing and criticism, and produce a piece of music criticism such as a blog post or Op-ed. Overall, this course investigates the aesthetic, political, cultural, and economic dimensions of Black popular music, paying particular attention to questions of gender, sexuality, class, nation, language, and technology. Usually offered every second year.

AAPI/ENG 22b Asian American Literature
[ deis-us hum ]

With its focus on a major and enduring racial formation in the U.S., this course covers a wide range of literary expressions of Asian American subjectivities forged in various flashpoints of American history, from the early days of Chinese “coolie” labor in the late nineteenth century to the contemporary moment of refugee migration. Along the way, we will learn about structures of violence that have manifested into exclusion laws, internment camps, devastating wars, and refugee displacements. Usually offered every fourth year.

AAPI/ENG 142a Vietnam War Representations
[ djw hum ]

Fifty years after it ended, the war in Vietnam seems marked for collective forgetting. Yet the war fundamentally changed the histories of Vietnam and the U.S. through the Cold War to the present day. Taking a transnational approach, this course will examine various understandings of the war through major U.S., Vietnamese, and Vietnamese diasporic literary texts and films from the mid-twentieth century to the present day. All course materials are in English. Usually offered every third year.

AAPI/WGS 137b Performing Asian/American Women on Screen and Scene
[ deis-us oc ss ]

Examines performances of Asian/American women and how they have changed over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. We analyze American film, television, and stage performances to trace the shifting, yet continuous participation of Asian/American women on screen and scene in the United States. Important issues include Orientalism and representation, race and racism, immigration and diasporas, militarism and hypersexualization, yellow face practices then and now, as well as assimilation and resistance. We ask: what have dominant representations of Asian/American been like from the silent film era to the current digital age? How have the figures of the lotus blossom, the dragon lady, the trafficked woman, the geisha, the war bride, the military prostitute, the orphan, among other problematic tropes emerged to represent Asian/American women? How has the changing political, social, and cultural position of Asian/Americans shaped their participation in media production, as well as their media representations in the United States broadly speaking? Students will leave this course with a strong understanding of how media and culture shapes the racial and sexual formation of Asian Americans, as well as how to interact with that media and culture beyond just consumption but instead towards analysis and critique too. Usually offered every second year.

AMST 35a Hollywood and American Culture
[ ss ]

This is an interdisciplinary course in Hollywood cinema and American culture that aims to do justice to both arenas. Students will learn the terms of filmic grammar, the meanings of visual style, and the contexts of Hollywood cinema from The Birth of a Nation (1915) to last weekend's top box office grosser. They will also master the major economic, social, and political realities that make up the American experience of the dominant medium of our time, the moving image, as purveyed by Hollywood. Usually offered every second year.

AMST 103b Advertising and the Media
[ ss ]

Combines a historical and contemporary analysis of advertising's role in developing and sustaining consumer culture in America with a practical analysis of the relationship between advertising and the news media in the United States. Usually offered every second year.

AMST 131b News on Screen
[ ss ]

An interdisciplinary course exploring how journalistic practice is mediated by moving image--cinematic, televisual, and digital. The historical survey will span material from the late-nineteenth-century "actualities" of Thomas Edison and the Lumiere Brothers to the viral environment of the World Wide Web, a rich tradition that includes newsreels, expeditionary films, screen magazines, combat reports, government information films, news broadcasts, live telecasts, television documentaries, amateur video, and the myriad blogs, vlogs, and webcasts of the digital age. Usually offered every second year.

AMST 136a Planet Hollywood: American Cinema in Global Perspective
[ hum ss ]

Examines the global reach of Hollywood cinema as an art, business, and purveyor of American values, tracking how Hollywood has absorbed foreign influences and how other nations have adapted and resisted the Hollywood juggernaut. Usually offered every second year.

AMST/ENG 48a American Immigrant Narratives
[ deis-us hum wi ]

With its essential role in U.S. society and history, immigration figures prominently in the American literary canon. This course traverses varied immigrant tales of twentieth-century and contemporary United States, set in the frontier of westward expansion, the Golden West, and the Eastern Seaboard. Some classics of this vast cultural corpus will anchor our critical inquiries into subject and nation formation, citizenship, and marginalization under powerful political forces both at home and abroad. By probing the complex aesthetic modes and narrative strategies in these and other texts, we will investigate deeply felt impacts of ever-shifting American cultural politics shaping immigrant experiences. Usually offered every third year.

AMST/JOUR 113a Long-form Journalism: Storytelling for Magazines and Podcasts
[ dl oc ss ]

What makes for a great story? This course will examine the hallmarks of successful narrative nonfiction, in both written and audio form. Students will analyze award-winning magazine stories as well as reporting-based podcasts that have injected new energy and financial success into the journalism world. They will learn story structure and techniques to capture and hold the audience's attention. And they will learn by doing, producing their own podcasts and written pieces. This course fulfills the Reporting requirement of the Journalism minor. Usually offered every year.

AMST/JOUR 137b Journalism in Modern America
[ ss ]

May not be taken for credit by students who took AMST 137b in prior years.

Examines what journalists have done, how their enterprise has in fact conformed with their ideals, and what some of the consequences have been for the republic historically. Usually offered every year.

AMST/MUS 35a Rock, Country, and Hip-Hop: History of American Popular Music
[ ca oc ]

Formerly offered as MUS 35a.

Examines the historical context, stylistic development, and cultural significance of rock and roll and other closely related genres, spanning the 1950s through the present. Close attention is paid to how political and social changes have interacted with technological innovations through commercial music to challenge, affirm and shape ideas of race, gender, class and sexuality in the United States. Usually offered every third year.

AMST/MUS 39b Protest Through Song: Music that Shaped America
[ ca oc ss ]

Open to music majors and non-majors.

Examines 20th and 21st century protest music to better understand the complex relationships between music and social movements. Through class discussions, reading, writing, and listening assignments, and a final performance students will discover how social, cultural, and economic protest songs helped shape American culture. Usually offered every second year.

ANTH 61b Language in American Life
[ deis-us oc ss ]

Examines both language-in-use and ideas about language varieties in the United States from an anthropological perspective. Explores how language-in-use emerges from and builds relationships, social hierarchies, professional authority, religious experience, dimensions of identity such as gender and race, and more. Usually offered every second year.

ANTH 115a Listening and Society: Therapy, Care, and Governance
[ oc ss ]

Politics, power, and even a sense of self are frequently identified with having a voice. Creating such a voice, however, is not solely up to speakers. Far from being a passive activity, listening can be evaluative and even coercive, guiding people to speak and act in certain ways. It plays a part in the creation of political ideologies and is an important tool that states use to govern people. It can also be a means to sympathetically connect to people, though such listening tends to be unequally distributed and can create burdens for listeners and speakers alike. In this class, we will critically analyze ways that listening shapes relationships between people. Using data from various parts of the world and a wide range of settings including cities, deaf communities, places of suffering, legal hearings, and prisons, we will explore the broad social effects of different ways of listening. Usually offered every fourth year.

ANTH 128a Meaning and Material Culture
[ ss ]

Whether indexing identities, exchange valuables, or representations of cultural meanings, objects are seen as means to mediate social interaction and practices. This course focuses on how materials that express culturally coded meanings (whether contextual, formal, or conventional) can be adequately studied in the relative absence of indigenous interpretation. The course has a hands-on component based on the artifact collection in the department's Material Culture Research Center. Usually offered every second year.

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.

ANTH 132a Why Should I Listen to You? Authority, Expertise, and Education in the 21st Century
[ ss ]

Authority is an important part of education, politics, and society at large. In a world where so few of us have direct access to evidence for that which we believe to be true, expertise is a prevalent way to generate authority and get people to listen. However, scholars and popular media commentators alike have noted that people do not trust experts to the same degree that they did in the 20th century, and the organization of authority is changing rapidly. In this class, we ask, “Who listens to whom and why?” to better understand how and why the nature of authority has changed in the 21st century. In class discussions, we give special attention to how those changes affect education in schools and in the workplace. Usually offered every second year.

ANTH 138a Digital Cultures
[ dl ss ]

Examines the complex and often fraught relationships between digital technologies and human cultures. By thinking through digital technology’s relationships to structures like race, gender, sexuality, class, and ability, this course helps us explore the human components in the creation, circulation, and experience of digital technologies. What this class spotlights is that though digital technologies may seem materially new and technically innovative, they are built on longstanding power relations that structure both their construction and their circulation. Involves participatory research projects and group work. Usually offered every third year.

ANTH 152a The Social Fabric: An Anthropology of Fashion
[ dl ss ]

An ethnographic exploration of fashion as industry and cultural practice. This course addresses how fashion shapes our gendered, ethnic and individual identities. Understanding how much seemingly personal processes unfold within larger economic structures illuminates the linkage between power, modernity, and capitalism. Usually offered every second year.

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.

ANTH 186b Language and Culture: Linguistic Anthropology
[ ss ]

Explores the foundational relationship between language and culture by introducing students to linguistic anthropology. Explores how language both reflects and creates thought, culture, identity, and power relations. Topics include the study of linguistic meaning in context, the construction of social relationships through language, language and politics, language and religion, and our own experiences with language in everyday life. Usually offered every second year.

BUS 154a Branding Strategy
[ ss ]

Prerequisite: BUS 152a with a grade C or higher, or BUS 252a with a grade of C+ or higher.

Examines the value of building, sustaining, and communicating a company's brand and its value
proposition through promotional activities and channels of distribution. A competitive, online
simulation is used to enhance case studies. Usually offered every year.

CAST 110b Dance and Migration
[ ca deis-us djw nw ]

Highlights the aesthetic, political, social, and spiritual potency of dance forms and practices as they travel, transform, and are accorded meaning both domestically and transnationally, especially in situations (or in the aftermath) of extreme violence and cultural dislocation. Usually offered every third year.

CAST 150b Introduction to Creativity, the Arts, and Social Transformation
[ ca ss ]

How can music, theater, dance and visual and other arts, and forms of cultural expression contribute to community building, coexistence, and nonviolent social change? Students explore these questions through interviews, case studies, and projects. Usually offered every year.

CAST 160a Provocative Art: Outside the Comfort Zone
[ ca ]

Presents, analyzes, and discusses art that provokes controversies, discomfort, and other strong responses. This class will focus on a broad range of artistic expressions, including visual art, theater, film, music, and literature with Brandeis faculty as well as visiting artists. Final project consists of students finding, articulating, and advocating for provocative art from multiple perspectives. Note: Students are responsible for attendance and assignments during the shopping period and must be present in those classes to be enrolled off the waitlist. Usually offered every semester.

CHIN 130b China on Film: The Changes of Chinese Culture
[ hum nw ]

Taught in English. All films viewed have English subtitles.

Focuses on the enormous changes under way in Chinese society, politics, and culture. Helps students to identify and understand these fundamental transformations through a representative, exciting selection of readings and films. Usually offered every second spring.

CLAS 157a Ancient Egypt on the Silver Screen
[ djw hum ]

Explores the relationship between Egyptian history and archaeology from the silent film era to the modern period. Topics include colonial archaeology, the 1922 discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb, modern Egyptian archaeology, race, and ethnicity in telling the story of Egypt's antiquity. Characters and periods examined include the Pyramid Builders of Giza, Joseph, Moses and the Exodus, Akhenaten and Nefertiti, and Cleopatra. Discussions will also examine how archaeological discoveries impacted design, costumes, and Egypt's power. All films and readings are in English or with English subtitles. Usually offered every third year.

ED 21a Reading Teens: Learning from Young Adult Literature
[ ss ]

Why YA? Young Adult literature isn’t always taken seriously, but it raises serious questions about crucial social issues. It wrestles with questions of identity and equity and what it means to be human. Plus, dragons. Voracious consumers of YA often don’t see themselves as “readers,” and yet they bring sophisticated strategies to their reading—strategies that could be leveraged for a lifetime of reading across genres. In this course we’ll explore a host of questions about the genre, including: What is it about YA lit that keeps teens reading? How might YA lit expand the traditional English curriculum in schools? What is the role of YA lit in the classroom and in students’ lives? What can we learn by leaning into YA lit? This course involves a LOT of reading—some of it scholarly, and much of it curl-up-on-the-couch delicious. Usually offered every second year.

ED 115a The Reading Wars: What is Reading and Why Do We Love to Fight About It?
[ ss ]

Recent media rhetoric has hyped up a supposed dichotomy between an imagined protagonist, who represent “the science of reading," and an enemy--those scholars of “balanced literacy” and their misinformed classroom acolytes who are anti-phonics and anti-science. This invented drama is replete with financial scandals, and the stakes are not only moral but also impact the very health and fabric of our society. And yet, the scholars of literacy themselves emphatically deny the entire dichotomy.

ED 144a Look Who’s Talking: Student Voice and Classroom Discourse

Students are encouraged, though not required, to engage in fieldwork through ED 60a while taking this course so that they can apply their learning in real classrooms.

Teaching is about students, who they are, how they learn, and what they bring to the classroom, that is: their funds of knowledge. While traditional teaching uses a "banking model" in which teachers “deposit” information into students’ empty brains; this course reimagines what that bank would look like if students were the ones with the funds. In this course, participants practice classroom structures in which students, rather than teachers, do the bulk of the intellectual work. The course examines small interactions in classrooms (micro) to understand big ideas about education (macro). Usually offered every second year.

ENG 12a Decolonizing Tongues: Language in African Literature
[ deis-us djw hum wi ]

A comparative exploration of the politics of language in postcolonial African Literature and its impact on literary production. It locates the language question in anglophone and francophone African Literature within the context political independence. Usually offered every third year.

ENG 20a Bollywood: Popular Film, Genre, and Society
[ djw hum nw ]

An introduction to popular Hindi cinema through a survey of the most important Bollywood films from the 1950s until today. Topics include melodrama, song and dance, love and sex, stardom, nationalism, religion, diasporic migration, and globalization. Usually offered every third year.

ENG 20b Literary Games
[ deis-us dl hum oc ]

Course includes a mandatory lab and yields 6 credits.

Addresses a long durée history of the games through the lens of transmedia. This then is the start pointing to examine how transmedia theory may help unpack issues in what I call 'literary games' from the medieval chess board, dice game, to digital multi-player video games now. Within a discussion of transmedia we will address the various theories about narrative and play that have animated discussions about games from the Middle Ages to contemporary media. This class will also center race, gender, sexuality, disability, class in thinking through the issues of transmedia and the gaming cultures that have most recently been in the political mainstream news in relation to far-right politics. Usually offered every third year.

ENG 30a Introduction to Graphic Novels
[ hum ]

Introduces students to the genre conventions and theoretical context necessary for the critical study of graphic novels. In particular, we examine single-author graphic novels that trouble the border between fiction and nonfiction--memoirs, graphic reportage, and speculative histories. Usually offered every third year.

ENG 30b American Film Auteurs of the 1970s
[ deis-us hum ]

Interrogates idea of cinematic style. Examines works by directors such as Robert Altman, Peter Bogdanovich, Bob Fosse, Roman Polanski, and Martin Scorsese. Usually offered every third year.

ENG 41a Critical Digital Humanities Methods and Applications
[ deis-us dl hum ]

Introduces critical digital humanities methods and applications. Considers both theory and praxis, the issues of open and accessible scholarship and work, and the centrality of collaboration. We will investigate power relations, inclusivity, and the ethics of social justice. Usually offered every second year.

ENG 43b Medieval Play: Drama, LARP, and Video Games
[ djw hum oc ]

Works with a selection of medieval mystery plays, medieval-themed video games and participatory live-action role play to explore: play structures and design; alternative-world creation by way of immersion; the significance of gender, race, disability, and sexuality in performance. Usually offered every third year.

ENG 60b Literature by Ear: Talking Books from the Gramophone to the Podcast Era
[ hum ]

Explores how genres change and how ideas about art change when oral/aural distribution either supplements or replaces the printed word. Traces the idea of the talking book, from its origins to the present—and by inviting students to perform their own experiments with creating new kinds of audiobook, or podcasts, or more radical forays into the world of the ear. Beginning with a historical look at the early forms of mechanical recording (Victorian poetry recording, radio drama, the rise of recorded books around WW2) it moves forward into contemporary forms like YouTube poetry channels and the explosion of audiobook production in “the age of Amazon.” Usually offered every third year.

ENG 61b Philosophical Approaches to Film Theory
[ hum ]

Studies a philosophical approach to film theory, examining both what philosophy has to say about film and what effects the existence and experience of film can have on philosophical thinking about reality, perception, judgment, and other minds. Usually offered every third year.

ENG 107a Women Writing Desire: Caribbean Fiction and Film
[ hum ]

Literature and film of the last two decades drawn from across the Caribbean and its diasporas, and read in dialogue with popular culture, theory, and earlier generations of artists. Usually offered every third year.

ENG 128a Race and US Cinema
[ deis-us hum ]

Explores the central role film plays in the construction and policing of racialized identities in the US. We will focus primarily, but not exclusively, on the Black/white binarism. The course is structured as a survey. US cinema originates in the white depiction of Blacks or in the white deployment of blackface, and racialized bodies continue to serve as a ubiquitous (if frequently unacknowledged) source of fascination and anxiety in contemporary cinema. We will begin with early 'whitewashing' films and D.W. Griffith's foundational epic, The Birth of a Nation, and conclude with new queer Black cinema and contemporary Black filmmakers. Usually offered every third year.

ENG 143a The History of Mediascapes and Critical Maker Culture
[ deis-us dl hum oc ]

Class has a required lab component and yields six semester-hour credits towards rate of work and graduation.

To consider how to decolonize book history and “maker culture,” the class examines colonial erasure, colonial knowledge production, race, gender, disability, neurodiversity, sexuality in making an alternative book history that includes khipu, girdle books, wampum, pamphlets, zines, and wearable media technology. Usually offered every third year.

ENG 152a Indian Love Stories
[ djw dl hum nw ]

Introduces students to writings on love, desire and sexuality from ancient India to the present. Topics include ancient eroticism, love in Urdu poetry, Gandhi's sexual asceticism, colonial regulation of sexuality, Bollywood, queer fiction and more. Usually offered every third year.

ENG 170a Nigerian Movies in the World
[ hum nw ]

Introduces students to Nigeria's film industry, one of the world's largest. It focuses on both the form and the content of Nollywood films. Examines how Nollywood films project local, national, and regional issues onto global screens. Usually offered every third year.

ENG/WLIT 70b Environmental Film, Environmental Justice
[ djw hum ]

Examines films that address nature, environmental crisis, and green activism. Asks how world cinema can best advance the goals of social and environmental justice. Includes films by major directors and festival award winners. Usually offered every third year.

FA 59a Modern Art and Modern Culture
[ ca ]

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.

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 third year.

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.

FREN 116a Vagabonds, Drifters, and Flaneurs in French and Francophone Literature and Film
[ fl hum ]

Prerequisite: FREN 105a or FREN 106b, or equivalent.

What is a vagabond, a drifter, a flâneur or flâneuse? This course examines these figures as they appear in French and Francophone literature and film from the Romantic period up to today. Readings include works by authors ranging from Victor Hugo to Virginie Despentes, films from the Nouvelle Vague to contemporary francophone filmmakers. Usually offered every third year.

FREN 129a La Révolution tranquille?: Québec's Culture Wars on Stage and Screen
[ djw fl hum ]

Prerequisite: FREN 105a or FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.

Considers the plays and films of the last sixty years that have probed the tensions at the heart of québécois culture to provide a violent counterpart to the sexual, political, and generational "Révolution tranquille" of the 1960's and 1970's. Usually offered every third year.

FREN 141b Introduction to French and Francophone Cinema: un certain regard
[ fl hum ]

Prerequisite: FREN 105a or FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.

Introduces students to the major trends in French and Francophone cinema from the postwar period to the present. The course will include a discussion of major works of cinema from a variety of genres, including comedy, documentary, social realism, historical drama, and autobiography. Each work will be studied through formal analysis, different theoretical lenses, and in the context of major historical and artistic turning points. Topics of discussion will include student protest movements, class struggle, and decolonization, as well as the issues of pressing concern today, such as immigration and social, political, and environmental inequality. Usually offered every third year.

FREN 149b Le Livre Illustré: Word and Image in Francophone Texts from Bestiaries to Bandes Dessinées
[ fl hum wi ]

Prerequisite: FREN 105a or FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.

Explores the theories and practices of text-image interactions in illustrated francophone books of the past and present by addressing themes such as learning, travel, sentimentality, pornography, politics, and humor. This course will include archival work in the Brandeis library. Usually offered every third year.

FREN 162b From Les Confessions to Instagram: Self-Writing in Contemporary French and Francophone Literature
[ fl hum wi ]

Prerequisite: FREN 105a or FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.

Through the works of major writers, the main goal of the course will be to study the many variations of autobiographical writing that characterize contemporary French and Francophone literature, and to relate them to the renewed exploration of the post-modern subject. We will examine along the way how the self relates to the others, how it engages with filiation, memory and history - (especially World War II and the Franco-Algerian War) - and we will put an emphasis on the notions of self-fashioning and performance. Usually offered every second year.

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.

HBRW 44b Advanced Intermediate Hebrew: Israeli Culture and Media
[ fl hum ]

Prerequisite: Any 30-level Hebrew course or the equivalent. Four class hours per week with additional half an hour to practice speaking skills.

Reinforces the acquired skills of speaking, listening comprehension, reading, and writing at the intermediate level. Contemporary cultural aspects are stressed; conversational Hebrew and reading of selections from modern literature. Usually offered every semester.

HBRW 161b What’s up in Israel Today?: Diverse Perspectives in Film and Media
[ fl hum wi ]

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

In this course, Israeli films, media, TV shows (e.g., Srugim ), and online resources will be used to promote discussion, enhance oral communication skills, and also broaden cultural awareness and understanding of diverse societal perspectives. Usually offered every second year.

HISP 121b Sexualidades disidentes del sur (ensayo, ficción, cine)
[ djw fl hum ]

Prerequisite: HISP 111b or instructor approval.

We will study cultural texts (fiction, essay, film) to approach issues of gender and sexuality in Latin America. The last three decades have been characterized by the emergence of gender and sexualities as central to the articulation of political and cultural dissent, with profound impact on all aspects of social life. LGBTQ+ and new generation feminist movements, artists, and cultural agents incorporate issues of class, ethnicity, coloniality, and the environment in their interventions and struggles. Usually offered every third year.

HISP 126a Race and Media in Latin America
[ hum ]

HISP 127a Latin American Theater and Performance
[ fl hum oc ]

Prerequisite: HISP 111b.

Explores an array of rituals, performances, plays, and stage-to-film adaptations in Latin America from colonial times to the present. We will examine the transgressive nature of theater and performance in multiple dimensions: as alternative sites of cultural memory versus hegemonic texts and archives, as disruptors of media boundaries and realities, and as transformational acts that frequently challenge structures of power and oppression. Special attention will be devoted to Black theatrical practices and aesthetics: religious ceremonies, spirit possession, carnival, and related subgenres and movements such as Teatro bufo (a variant of Cuban blackface) and Teatro Experimental do Negro (one of the first and most influential Afro Brazilian theater groups). Our discussions will include not only works by renowned playwrights (Nelson Rodrigues in Brazil, Lola Arias in Argentina, Eugenio Hernández Espinosa in Cuba, and Sergio Blanco in Uruguay, among others), but also collective initiatives like Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani in Perú and Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol in Mexico. Usually offered every second year.

HISP 142b Literature, Film, and Human Rights in Latin America
[ djw fl hum nw wi ]

Prerequisite: HISP 109b or HISP 111b, or instructor permission.

Examines literature, film (fiction and non-fiction), and other artistic expressions from Latin America, in conversation with the idea of human rights from the colonial arguments about slavery and the "natural rights" of the indigenous, to the advent of human rights in the context of post-conflict truth and reconciliation processes, to the emergence of gender and ethnicity as into the human rights framework, to the current debates about rights of nature in the midst of a global ecological crisis. Usually offered every third year.

HISP 160a Culture, Media, and Social Change in Latin America
[ djw fl hum nw wi ]

Prerequisite: HISP 109b or HISP 111b, or permission of the instructor.

Explores the role of various creative arts (creative writing, visual arts, music, film, performance) in their role as fostering political change in Latin America. We will examine key eras of 20th and 21st century cultural production in relation to shifting mass-media landscapes, from the revolutionary impetus of the early 20th century avant-gardes in literature and visual arts, the Mexican Revolution, popular music in the 1940s, documentary film and music, and the anti-establishment movements of the 1960s-1970s guerrillas, artistic resistance to the dictatorship, to the street art accompanying human rights, and grass roots identity movements of the 2000s. Usually offered every second year.

HISP 162b New Latin American Cinema: From Revolution to the Market
[ djw fl hum oc ]

Prerequisite: HISP 109b or HISP 111b, or permission of the instructor.

Places two pivotal periods of film production in conversation with one another, both of which were considered "new waves" of Latin American cinema. On the one hand, there were the new cinemas of the 1960s and 1970s, which accompanied decolonial, anti-establishment, insurrectional movements. On the other hand, there was a more market-oriented film boom that emerged in the 2000s, in which aesthetic experimentation intersected with new realities of neoliberal policies and globalization. Usually offered every second year.

HISP 192b Latin American Global Film
[ djw hum nw oc ]

May be taught in English or Spanish.

We will study the dynamic between local and global imagination and forces in the production, circulation, and reception of films from and/or about "Latin America." Local productions, traditional topics and genres are now refashioned for international audiences. Some film directors and actors have gained mainstream global visibility; U.S.-based ‘platforms’ finance local productions for international markets. How are all these new and old images and narratives mobilized? What are all these forces and projections doing? Analysis of visual representation and film techniques will be combined with an attention to socio-cultural backgrounds. Usually offered every second year.

HIST 132a The Stuff of Dreams: Consumerism in the Modern U.S.
[ ss ]

This lecture and discussion course explores the evolution of consumer life in the 20th century U.S. – how it has shaped American culture and politics, and how it has been shaped by them in turn. Tracking changes in mass production, marketing, and mass media, we will ask how Americans’ lives changed as they adopted new ways of consuming goods, food, clothing, housing, transportation, entertainment, and culture. We will also explore historical perspectives on consumerism, considering both celebratory and critical perspectives on its social and environmental impacts. Usually offered every second year.

HIST 162a Writing on the Wall: Histories of Graffiti in the Americas
[ djw dl ss ]

Focuses on the history of graffiti in the U.S. from 1960s forward. Includes the historical role of Caribbean migration, the impact of criminology and economic recession of the 1970s on graffiti culture, and the relationship between private property, public space, and graffiti. Usually offered every second year.

IGS 171a The Asian Wave: Global Pop Culture and its Histories
[ djw ss ]

Asia is not only remaking itself but also exporting images and ideas across the world. This course explores how Asian pop culture shapes global modernity, as countries project their values and aspirations to a global audience through increasing connectivity. Usually offered every second year.

IGS 173a Asian Gangsters: Contemporary Crime Cinema
[ djw dl ss ]

Studies contemporary crime films to examine modern Asian society and politics. Drawing upon film theory, cultural studies, historical and sociological research, this class considers the world's largest media market to understand the continent's rapidly changing socio-political milieu. Usually offered every second year.

IGS 175a Digital Asia: Democracy in the Internet Age
[ djw dl nw oc ss ]

Analyzes the transformative potential of the internet as an agent of development and as a mechanism for disrupting social and political orders in Asia, home to the world's largest democracy and also the world's largest authoritarian regime. Usually offered every second year.

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 analysis of several Italian cinematic productions from the twentieth century to the present, inspired by writers such as Lampedusa, as well as contemporary writers, such as Baricco, Ammaniti, and Ferrante with emphasis on the theme of historical, individual, and familial identity within the context of socio-economic upheaval and transformative cultural events. Conducted in Italian. Usually offered every second year.

ITAL 128a Mapping Modern Italian Culture: Inherited Conflicts
[ fl hum oc ]

Prerequisite: ITAL 105a or 106a or permission of the instructor. Conducted in Italian with Italian texts.

Covers a broad and significant range of cultural topics that exemplify creative responses to historical events and social dilemmas that have shaped contemporary Italian culture including economic changes, the new face of immigration in Italy and second generation's representations, the Italian American diaspora in the United States, the political environment during The Years of Lead, and social justice representations in the fight against the Mafia and Camorra through literature and cinema. Usually offered every second year.

ITAL 134b Voci e storie della cultura ebraica italiana
[ fl hum wi ]

Prerequisite: ITAL 105a or 106a or permission of the instructor. Conducted in Italian. Materials fee: $20.

Analyzes Italian Jewish representations in Italian culture from medieval times to the founding of the ghetto in Venice in 1516 and leading Jewish figures of the Renaissance. Works of modern Italian Jewish writers and historians are examined as well as Italian movies that address Jewish themes within mainstream of Italian culture. This course has an interdisciplinary approach while focusing on advanced Italian language skills. Usually offered every second year.

JAPN 125b Putting Away Childish Things: Coming of Age in Modern Japanese Literature and Film
[ hum nw ]

Explores the ways in which modern Japanese writers and filmmakers have represented childhood, youth, and coming of age. A variety of short stories, novels, and memoirs from the 1890s to the present day are read, and several recent films are also screened. Usually offered every third year.

JAPN 135a Screening National Images: Japanese Film and Anime in Global Context
[ hum nw ]

All films and readings are in English.

An introduction to some major directors and works of postwar Japanese film and anime with special attention to such issues as genre, medium, adaptation, narrative, and the circulation of national images in the global setting. Usually offered every third year.

JOUR 139b Reporting on Diverse Communities in Journalism
[ deis-us ss ]

Examines who has been left out of the news discourse; how that has shaped public understanding of race, immigration, gender, and sexual orientation in the United States; and how to produce coverage that is more representative and better reflects reality. Usually offered every second year.

JOUR 152a Truth, Fact and Research in Journalism
[ ss ]

Investigates the concept of journalistic truth through immersion into research, fact-checking, and the art of the interview. Working with transcripts, footage, and other sources, students learn how to find the story, leveraging the power of new media and converting information into knowledge. Usually offered every second year.

LING 197a Language Acquisition and Development
[ dl oc ss ]

Open to all students.

The central problem of first language acquisition is to explain what makes this formidable task possible. Students will learn about the acquisition and development of phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics in child language.  Additional topics to be covered include the brain and language development, experimental methods for evaluating the linguistic knowledge of children, second-language acquisition, bilingualism, and heritage language and heritage speakers. The overall goal is to arrive at a coherent picture of the language learning process. Usually offered every second year.


MUS 3b Global Soundscapes: Performing Musical Tradition Across Time and Place
[ ca djw nw ]

Open to all students. Required of all Cultural Studies track majors.

What are we listening to? Applies engaged listening skills and critical analysis for a deeper appreciation of (non-Western) music as a cultural expression. Focuses on particular traditions as well as social context, impact of globalization, cultural production, cultural rights, etc. Usually offered every year.

MUS 36b Divas
[ ca wi ]

Though her name means 'goddess,' the diva is frequently imagined as a creature with all-too-human failings; she is both talented and tempestuous, both revered and reviled. This course will explore the complex image of the diva in Western culture from the middle ages to the present day. We'll treat the category of 'diva' expansively ' encompassing opera singers and pop stars, composers and castrati ' and engage with thorny questions of gender, sexuality, race, class, and power, in hopes of understanding the enduring cultural potency of this compelling and problematic figure. Usually offered every second year.

MUS 57a Jazz, Politics, and Protest
[ ca deis-us ]

Since the emergence of jazz at the dawn of the 20th century, musicians have built a long and storied tradition of protest and political engagement. This course will explore forms of protest pursued by jazz artists over that time, tracing key historical moments, as well as ongoing themes and strategies. Topics will include musicians' extensive participation in the civil rights and racial justice movements; the formation of musician-organized collectives to protect artists' rights; the complex relationship between jazz musicians and the U.S. State Department; and contemporary examples of musical activism in response to the Movement for Black Lives, the #MeToo movement, civic responses to Hurricane Katrina, and other issues. The class will include a combination of reading assignments, as well as close listening to germinal works that broach political themes. In addition to written papers, students will have options to pursue applied projects, depending on their preferences and academic focus. Our overarching goal will be to consider the theme of jazz and protest not only as a topic of historical interest, but as one that continues to resonate in the jazz community today. Usually offered every second year.

MUS 58a Jazz History and American Culture
[ ca deis-us ]

An introductory survey to the history of jazz and the music's resonance in American cultural history. The course will outline key innovators and historical developments, as well as explore the music's social and political resonance. Certain units of the course will proceed via chronological history, while others will offer thematic examinations of how contemporary artists have used the music to respond to a variety of contemporary discourses. Usually offered every second year.

MUS 183b Introduction to Ethnomusicology
[ ca ]

Ethnomusicology is the study of music in action—in the moment, amongst musicians, and focalizing the context of performance and the shared ground of meaning in which that music is enacted. This course introduces disciplinary ethnomusicology by way of a broad overview of the history and development of the field, its interactions (both successful and unsuccessful) with its sister disciplines, and the role of ethnomusicology within and beyond the academy. We will read, listen to, and discuss some of the major scholars and thinkers of the field, examining the social context of their interventions in the discipline and their fieldwork. We will pursue several special projects through the semester, ranging from transcription workshops to computer-assisted musical analysis. Finally, the course will prepare students for a brief participant-observation fieldwork project that will function as a capstone assignment for the course. Usually offered every third year.

MUS 195a Writing About Music: Seminar and Practicum
[ ca ]

Enrollment limited to graduate students and advanced undergraduates, or with instructor permission.

Music scholars often spend a great deal of time thinking about music, but comparatively little thinking about the craft of writing about music. What makes a good writer of music scholarship? Who is your audience? What/who are good models? What makes a good “story” in musicological writing? How do non-academic forms of writing help the writing process? What does it mean to have a “voice” in your writing?

In this course, we will explore processes and practices of writing through a combination of discussion and workshop-based approaches. The class will closely engage with three types of texts: (1) Pedagogical works discussing strategies and techniques for scholarly writing; (2) Examples of good (and bad) writing from various subdisciplines of music, provided by both students and the instructor; and (3) Student writing contributions, which will undergo extensive peer workshopping throughout the semester.

For the final assignment, each participant will develop an individual writing project based on their current professional goals. These projects will be geared toward practical application within the field (completing a dissertation chapter, developing a conference presentation, expanding and preparing a previous work for publication in a journal, etc.). Critiques and guidance will be tailored toward the particular goals of each participant. In this way, the course is designed to provide substantive professional development for graduate or advanced undergraduate students in any subdiscipline. Usually offered every third year.

NEJS 134a Debating Religion: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Dialogue and Dispute
[ hum ]

A history of interreligious polemic, disputation, and dialogue among Jews, Christians, and Muslims from antiquity to modernity. The course highlights points of difference and contention among the traditions as well as the ways in which the practice of disputation played a formative role in the coevolution of those traditions. Usually offered every second year.

NEJS 136a Popular Culture and Politics in Israel-Palestine: Media, Sound, and Screen
[ hum ]

Explores how popular culture shapes and reflects everyday life in Israel/Palestine. Through film, music, television, and digital media, we examine how artists and cultural producers engage with questions of identity, politics, and social change.

From early cinema to contemporary streaming series, and from Mizrahi and Palestinian music scenes to global pop culture, we consider how culture both responds to and reshapes political realities. Rather than treating culture as a passive reflection of conflict, the course highlights its role in challenging dominant narratives and creating new forms of expression.

Themes include nationalism and diaspora, religion and secularism, gender and performance, language and translation, and the power of media in shaping public debate. No prior background is required, just an interest in how pop culture helps us understand society and politics in a complex region. Usually offered every second year.

NEJS 142b Antisemitic Stereotypes: Histories, Consequences, Responses
[ djw dl hum ]

Jews have been accused of simultaneously being capitalists and communists, powerful and weak, threatening and inferior. This course will explore the history and contemporary relevance of anti-Jewish stereotypes through texts, social media, and film and will teach students to develop strategies to counter and cope with such forms of prejudice in the present. Usually offered every second year.

NEJS 180b Israeli Film, Literature, and Culture
[ deis-us djw hum ]

Taught in English.

Surveys the development of Israeli literature and culture over the past 100 years and includes selections of poetry and prose from a wide range of writers. The course aims to illuminate what makes Hebrew literature distinct as well as investigate the themes, symbols, and subject matter that have come to constitute its central concerns since the early 20th century. Usually offered every second year.

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.

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.

NEJS 182a Jewish Life in Television, Film, and Fiction
[ hum wi ]

Film and fiction are windows through which we can view transformations in American Jewish life. By depicting religious, socioeconomic, and cultural change over the past half-century, these media both reflect and shape the shifting definitions of the American Jew. Some of the topics covered over the course of the semester include immigrant fiction, the American dream and its discontents, literary multilingualism, ethnic satire and humor, the after-effects of the Holocaust, and the impact of gender on the Jewish experience in America. Usually offered every year.

NEJS 184b Disability Cultures: Art, Film and Literature of People with Disabilities
[ deis-us djw hum oc ]

Explores cultural representations of disability in Israel, Europe, and the US. By focusing on literature, film, dance, and visual art, it explores physical, mental, and emotional disability experiences, and their relations to gender, sexuality, nationalism, and identity politics. Usually offered every second year.

NEJS/WGS 110a Sexual Violence in Film and Culture
[ deis-us djw hum oc ]

Explores the effects of sexualized violence in society. While exploring representations of gender-based sexual violence in documentaries and features, stand-up comedy, memoirs, poetry, and visual art, this course will offer a critical discussion on Rape Culture in the 21st century, with particular attention to the intersections of gender, race, sexuality, class, and disability in the construction of sexual violence. Usually offered every second year.

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.

RECS 154a Vladimir Nabokov: Art and Ethics
[ hum ]

Open to all students. Conducted in English. Readings in English.

A concentrated study of Vladimir Nabokov, the most noted Russian author living in emigration and one of the most influential novelists of the twentieth century. Focuses on the major Russian- and English-language novels, with special attention to the interplay within them of Nabokov’s philosophy of art and his views on ethics and morality. Usually offered every third year.

SAS 150b Love, Sex, and Country: Films from India
[ djw hum nw ]

A study of Hindi films made in India since 1947 with a few notable exceptions from regional film, as well as some recent films made in English. Students will read Hindi films as texts/narratives of the nation to probe the occurrence of cultural, religious, historical, political, and social themes. Usually offered every third year.

SAS 165a Cinemas of India: Caste, Gender, and State
[ djw hum ]

The Indian film industry is the largest in the world, catering to spectators within and outside the country. Often, however, the discussion of Indian cinema limits itself to the Hindi film industry or Bollywood. This course attempts to study cinema in India in different languages and genres through the categories of caste, gender, and state. It traces the beginnings of cinema in India, its development in the post-independence period, and contemporary digital cinema, focusing on Marathi, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, and Malayalam and going beyond a Bollywood-centric approach by complicating the discourse on region and nation. It endeavors to unpack the questions of ideology, aesthetics and affect in Indian cinema by examining the powers of caste, gender, and state in the cultural production of the country and how it is being contested in/through cinema. Special one-time offering, fall 2024.

SOC 56b Sociology of Celebrity
[ ss ]

May not be taken for credit by students who took SOC 156b in prior years.

Ahh celebrity. Fame, money and bling, right? But have you ever wondered how it actually works? What celebrity is, how celebrities are made and why we are so obsessed with them? In this course, we will answer these questions. In the process, you will learn the sociological concepts and theories related to popular culture, mass media, social psychology, social inequality, and power. Usually offered every second year.

SOC 116b Social Inequalities in the Media
[ deis-us oc ss ]

Using sociological theories of media, students will examine how difference is constructed across race, gender, and sexuality and how those representations are connected to larger processes of inequality. Students are expected to complete a research project on media representations. Usually offered every second year.

SOC 148b The Sociology of Information: Politics, Power, and Property
[ ss wi ]

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.

THA 2a Theater Foundations: Process, Production, and Performance
[ ca oc ]

Intended as an entry level course for majors, minors, and interested students with little to no theater experience. May count towards the major or minor in Theater Arts.

An introduction and investigation of theater in its many aspects. This course will acquaint the student with the theatrical elements of production and performance and familiarize the student with the role of artist and audience. Usually offered every year.

THA 10a Theater as Collaboration
[ ca oc ]

Develops the student's ability to read a theatrical text through the lens of the collaborative theater artist. Reading, discussions, papers, and exercises about acting, directing, movement, design, dramaturgy, technical theater, and management will constitute the bulk of this course. Intended as the entry level course for majors, minors, and interested students with a background in theater. Usually offered every year.

THA 16b Genius in Small Group Communication: Theory and Practice
[ oc ]

Does not meet the requirements for the major or minor in Theater Arts. May not be used to satisfy the Creative Arts distribution requirement.

The study of small group communication centers on placing the self as secondary and the group as primary, implementing the art of compromise and collaboration. This course develops critical skills in communicating in public and within a small group context. Course meetings introduce theoretical frameworks around small group communication and students will immediately put ideas into practice in class. Requires group work inside and outside of class. Usually offered every second year.

THA 70a Directing: Imagination in Action
[ ca dl ]

Examines the art of theater from the director's perspective. Focuses on how theory and practice meet in the crucible of actual rehearsal, production, and performance from the director's point of view. Usually offered every year.

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.

THA 122b Butoh: Japanese Dance Theater
[ ca djw hwl2 pe-1 ]

Butoh began in 1960s Japan as a new dance-theater form created by collaborations between Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno and has since become a global phenomenon. This course draws from Butoh training through guided imagery, movement, and structured improvisation. The exercises pull from nature, the mythical, and the unconscious as sources of inspiration. As well as studying the practice of Butoh, students will also learn about the art form's cultural, historical, and philosophical aspects. The course will be a mixture of movement and performance exercises as well as weekly readings and discussions. Students will develop an in-depth understanding of the Butoh through both an academic and embodied approach. Usually offered every year.

THA 126a Playing for Change - Community Building and Social Change on Stage
[ ca djw ]

Examines ways in which theatrical arts can create change in a variety of non-traditional situations. This course is grounded in the discussion/practice of theater activists such as Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed. For both theater and non-theater students, this course focuses on how and why this collaborative, useful art form can be introduced into sociological, psychological, political, cultural, educational, medical, and historical paradigms. Students will generate work surrounding social issues of importance to them. Usually offered every second year.

THA 144b Black Theater and Performance
[ ca deis-us ]

Explores aesthetic innovations and transformations in African American theater and performance and examines the crucial role the stage has played in shaping perceptions and understandings of blackness. Usually offered every year.

THA 145a Queer Theater
[ ca deis-us ]

Explores significant plays that have shaped and defined gay identity during the past 100 years. Playwrights span Wilde to Taylor Mac. Examining texts as literature, history, and performance, we will explore cultural change, politics, gender, the AIDS epidemic, camp, and coming out. Usually offered every third year.

THA 146a Theater and the Holocaust
[ ca djw ]

By studying plays and theatrical tools, students can gain insight into the Holocaust and what made it possible as well as its lasting impact. The course will examine how theater has attempted to represent the unimaginable as and communicate about the toxic appeal of antisemitic Nazi ideology, both in the context of the Holocaust and its legacy. Usually offered every third year.

THA 147a Latinx Theater
[ ca deis-us ]

Examines the theatrical artistic expression by and about people of the Latin American diaspora in the United States, exploring how theatrical performance, in its many forms, wrestles with questions of faith, family, gender, space, nationhood, and the myriad identities one bears. Students will celebrate, survey, and study the historic and contemporary contributions of artists, movements, and collectives to better understand the rich and distinct identities and artistic practices in the Latino/a/x/e population. Usually offered every fourth year.

THA 150a Global Theater: Voices from Asia, Africa, and the Americas
[ ca djw nw wi ]

Explores dramatic literature and performance traditions from across the globe. Examines the ways various artists have engaged theater to express, represent, and interrogate diversity and complexity of the human condition. Usually offered every year.

WGS 166a Gender, Sexuality, and Social Media
[ deis-us ss ]

Asks how gender, sexuality, race, dis/ability, class, and other intersections of identity impact how we use and appear on social media. Early internet theorists imagined the World Wide Web as a "free" society, where "bodily" issues such as race, gender, and disability would somehow disappear. However, these identities have not vanished; in fact, we might argue that they remain even more potent in today's age of constant media connection. We will explore feminist theories of media, gender, sexuality, and race, as well as applying these theories to current events online. Students will explore the boundaries of digital activism, question the ways we continue to be embodied online, and consider power relations, discipline, and surveillance. Usually offered every third year.

WLIT 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.

WLIT 160a East European Literature and Film: Art and Life in the Throes of History
[ hum ]

All texts, films, and instruction in English. No prerequisites.

Examines major East European films and literary works from the Ukrainian, Polish,  Czech, Romanian, Hungarian, (former) Yugoslavian, Bosnian, and other traditions. With an eye toward the unique historical, political, and ideological currents of the region and its constituent nationalities, we will focus on both artistic expression and engagement with larger issues.  Usually offered every second year.