Class Schedules

This course introduces students to the intellectual roots and contemporary applications of cultural studies, including critical media studies, focusing on the theoretical bases for analyses of power and meaning in production, texts, and reception. It includes primary readings in anti-racist, feminist, modern, postmodern, and queer cultural and social theory, and compares them to traditional approaches to the humanities. Designed as preparation for intermediate and advanced work grounded in cultural studies, the course is writing intensive, with special emphasis on developing skills in critical thinking and scholarly argumentation and documentation. Completion of or enrollment in MCST 110 is the prerequisite for majoring in media and cultural studies.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

The Far Right in the United States has appropriated working class identities to produce an identity among the white working class. Donald Trump, for instance, intentionally portrays a large gap in highbrow and lowbrow to take jabs at privileged liberals (such as when he tweeted the "Hamberder" photo). This course observes what can be called the Far Right "theater of politics" in order to understand how liberals have left working class culture behind in ways that allowed the far right to fill the void by finding persuasive techniques in culture (country music, religion, church...) to articulate a political voice that some working class folks, especially whites, may find appealing. Some of the major questions of the course include: (1) How do political and economic elites produce class, gender, and racial divides and segmentations by aligning themselves with the cultural practices often associated with working class folks? (2) Can the left create a political culture that cultivates respect for organic cultural expressions that include religious expressions and pop-cultural themes like country music and sports (yes, even football!) into their fold  Reducing everything to class and asking all others to submit to its political logic is a limited vision. Instead, the course investigates whether it is possible to envision a political project that rather than privileging the concerns of upper-middle class whites produces a culture of resistance that can articulate working class subjects - straight, queer, white, black, binary, non-binary - into a populist left movement? One of the truly powerful features of the Left is that it is much more diverse than the Far Right. Is it possible to extend that diversity even further so that it can show a "little respect" for organic cultural producers to feel comfortable producing and living in multiple class, racial, gender, and sexual habitus?

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course is a historical survey of theories and methodologies used in feminist and queer studies. Course material highlights the unique and intertwined knowledges feminist and queer scholars have produced; these include the re-makings of liberal, Marxian, antiracist, poststructuralist, and postcolonial theories, and their uses in humanities and social science methods. The course centrally examines how feminist and queer studies transform societies and are transformed through struggle over their gender/sexual identities, racial formations, and global/transnational locations. The course considers how feminist and queer studies have arisen in close relationships-of union, tension, and antagonism-and how feminist and queer work today may link. Prerequisite(s): Intermediate level courses require sophomore standing or permission of the instructor, and at least one introductory-level women's, gender, and sexuality studies core course.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

Analysis of contemporary feminist theories regarding gender identity, biological and socio-cultural influences on subjectivity and knowledge, and relations between the personal and the political.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Analysis of contemporary feminist theories regarding gender identity, biological and socio-cultural influences on subjectivity and knowledge, and relations between the personal and the political.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Taught in English; there is an optional German component for those who want to have the course count toward their German-taught courses. In this case, students must do the reading and writing assignments and some of their oral presentations in German. In this course we focus on the exchanges and influences among French, German, and American cinematographers within the genre of road movies. We begin with a couple of 1940s-1950 American films that cut across the genres of road movie and film-noir and had an impact on the French nouvelle-vague director Jean-Luc Godard, whose films, in turn, inspired American road movies during their acme in the 1960s-1970s (Dennis Hopper, Bob Rafelson). We shall then turn to the German director Wim Wenders to focus on the relation of his 1970s-1980s road movies to both the German literary canon and American cinematography, notably Jim Jarmusch. The course will conclude with the German director of Turkish descent, Fatih Akin, who complicates the above exchanges by intertwining them with the significant German-Turkish cultural exchange. Students will gain insight into film as an aesthetic, ideological, and political medium, and into specifics of the culture of the countries involved. No pre-knowledge required; appropriate for all students.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course is designed to engage students with the most sophisticated and useful schools of thought available in the social science disciplines. The course raises a number of questions: How can we best understand the complexities of self and society? Are these units of analysis useful in and of themselves? Are they contained in an essential body or polity that we can identify as some unitary entity called Jenny and John Doe, American, French, Arab/Jew, black/white, modern/primitive, developed/underdeveloped, Oriental/ Occidental, homo/heterosexual, male/female? Or are they socially produced units that have no essence in-of-themselves, produced and made real only through performance with the "Other"? Furthermore, is there something unique about modernity that has fundamentally transformed the notions of our selves, bodies, polities, races, and civilizations? If the answer to the last question is in the affirmative, how and why did this come to be the case, and what consequences does it hold for our understanding of the past and of the future? These are the kinds of questions that great figures in sociology have been asking since the nineteenth-century, including classic theorists like Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Karl Marx, as well as more recent writers such as Ervin Goffman, Michel Foucault, Immanuel Wallerstein, and Edward Said.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

All readings and class taught in English; no pre-knowledge required. For thousands of years value has been scrutinized in philosophy, art history, and economic analysis, as it cuts across three constitutive aspects of social, cultural, and political life: economy, aesthetics, and ethics. Not only do we have and impose on the world our moral, aesthetic, and exchange values, but these three fields often become difficult to distinguish, as is evident in the slippery flexibility of words that allow us to say as much "this painting is bad or worthless" as "I think this person is bad or worthless," or "this is a bad, or worthless, remark" and "this is a bad or worthless check." This course will focus primarily on influential accounts of value in aesthetic theory, while also examining the ways in which aesthetic value demarcates itself from or implicates its moral and economic counterparts, and what the interplays among the three fields entail for aesthetic value. Our readings will focus on the formation of modern aesthetic theory-from the early eighteenth century through the Enlightenment and Romanticism to high modernism, the Frankfurt School, and postmodernism.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

All readings and class taught in English; no pre-knowledge required. For thousands of years value has been scrutinized in philosophy, art history, and economic analysis, as it cuts across three constitutive aspects of social, cultural, and political life: economy, aesthetics, and ethics. Not only do we have and impose on the world our moral, aesthetic, and exchange values, but these three fields often become difficult to distinguish, as is evident in the slippery flexibility of words that allow us to say as much "this painting is bad or worthless" as "I think this person is bad or worthless," or "this is a bad, or worthless, remark" and "this is a bad or worthless check." This course will focus primarily on influential accounts of value in aesthetic theory, while also examining the ways in which aesthetic value demarcates itself from or implicates its moral and economic counterparts, and what the interplays among the three fields entail for aesthetic value. Our readings will focus on the formation of modern aesthetic theory-from the early eighteenth century through the Enlightenment and Romanticism to high modernism, the Frankfurt School, and postmodernism.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

According to Cedric Robinson, capitalism, from its advent, "pursued essentially racial directions." This insight led Robinson to a theory of “racial capitalism” that has been taken up by several scholars across disciplines. Through this course, we will attempt to answer the following questions: What is racial capitalism? How do we understand its key components (racism and capitalism) and how do they relate to one other? Is the question of the relationship between racism and capitalism a historical one or a purely theoretical one? How have these concepts influenced contemporary political struggles? What role do slavery, property relations, prisons, and the police play in the reproduction of racial capitalism?

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This is an upper-level course aimed at providing an introduction to phenomenology and existentialism, two interrelated philosophical movements originating in Europe at the beginning of twentieth century. In particular, we will examine some of the most prominent thinkers in these movements (namely, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and de Beauvoir) as well as their respective views concerning several core themes (namely, being-in-the-world, authenticity, the body, the other, and freedom). We will examine each figure and their views on these topics respectively, all the while gradually comparing them to each other and noting the differences and evolution of views between them.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course considers surveillance as a social formation, inseparable from the theory and exercise of power. On the one hand, it takes up the pressing questions surveillance raises, from the development of cutting-edge technologies to the complex work of international regulation. On the other hand, it situates surveillance historically as central to projects of imperial conquest, state formation, and colonial rule. Engaging with theoretical works, primary sources, empirical studies and artistic renderings, students will grapple with problems of surveillance and power across geographic and historical contexts.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course considers surveillance as a social formation, inseparable from the theory and exercise of power. On the one hand, it takes up the pressing questions surveillance raises, from the development of cutting-edge technologies to the complex work of international regulation. On the other hand, it situates surveillance historically as central to projects of imperial conquest, state formation, and colonial rule. Engaging with theoretical works, primary sources, empirical studies and artistic renderings, students will grapple with problems of surveillance and power across geographic and historical contexts.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Taught in English; there is an optional German component for those who want to have the course count toward their German-taught courses. In this case, students must do the reading and writing assignments and some of their oral presentations in German. In this course we focus on the exchanges and influences among French, German, and American cinematographers within the genre of road movies. We begin with a couple of 1940s-1950 American films that cut across the genres of road movie and film-noir and had an impact on the French nouvelle-vague director Jean-Luc Godard, whose films, in turn, inspired American road movies during their acme in the 1960s-1970s (Dennis Hopper, Bob Rafelson). We shall then turn to the German director Wim Wenders to focus on the relation of his 1970s-1980s road movies to both the German literary canon and American cinematography, notably Jim Jarmusch. The course will conclude with the German director of Turkish descent, Fatih Akin, who complicates the above exchanges by intertwining them with the significant German-Turkish cultural exchange. Students will gain insight into film as an aesthetic, ideological, and political medium, and into specifics of the culture of the countries involved. No pre-knowledge required; appropriate for all students.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Varies by semester. Consult the department or class schedule for current listing.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

This course introduces students to the intellectual roots and contemporary applications of cultural studies, including critical media studies, focusing on the theoretical bases for analyses of power and meaning in production, texts, and reception. It includes primary readings in anti-racist, feminist, modern, postmodern, and queer cultural and social theory, and compares them to traditional approaches to the humanities. Designed as preparation for intermediate and advanced work grounded in cultural studies, the course is writing intensive, with special emphasis on developing skills in critical thinking and scholarly argumentation and documentation. Completion of or enrollment in MCST 110 is the prerequisite for majoring in media and cultural studies.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

What makes some jokes so funny? Why do we laugh? A well-timed joke can have the power to transform our reality—to disrupt through surprise, to change the rules of society through reversal and truth-telling, or, at the very least, to blow off steam and build communities through joyous laughter. But can comedy actually create lasting social changes? Or is laughter just catharsis—a therapeutic release of personal and social discontent? And what about mean-spirited or offensive jokes? What is the line between comedy and injury? And who gets to decide what is funny in the first place? Comedy is so much more than a light-hearted genre: it now invades every level of discourse in our society, from the fine arts to presidential politics. Comedy punctuates our attention, structures our everyday perceptions and habits, facilitates our communication and expression, and has a profound influence on all of our lives and experiences.In this course, we will approach the topic of comedy from every angle, while also keeping the funny alive. (As many have demonstrated, there is no surer way to ruin a joke than by explaining it.) We will read philosophies and theories of comedy, satirical newspapers, and social histories of stand-up. We will watch funny movies, TV shows, Internet memes, viral videos, and talk about them. And, of course, we will write and perform our own comedy in the classroom. By studying the history and formations of comedy—from the devices of comedic gags to the social politics of laughing bodies—we will think about how jokes can help us to reconcile with the past, survive the present, and reshape the future.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WC

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

The course is an introduction to some of the important theoretical and methodological work conducted by scholars in various disciplines who hope to better define and understand religious phenomena. This seminar begins with some of the early twentieth century texts that are often cited and discussed by contemporary scholars of religion (e.g., Durkheim, Weber, Freud) and then turns to a number of investigations stemming from engagement with earlier theorists or refracting new concerns. The course inquires into the problems of defining and analyzing religious cultures, and the researcher's position or positions in this analysis, as this has been approached from anthropological, sociological, and religious studies perspectives.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WC

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

All readings and class taught in English; no pre-knowledge required. Marx's contribution to the theorization of the function of the imaginary in both the constitution of subjectivity and the mechanisms of politics and economy-usually referred to as ideology-cannot be overestimated. The first part of this course traces Marx's gradual conceptualization of the imaginary throughout his work-as well as further Marxist theoreticians, such as Louis Althusser, Étienne Balibar, and Slavoj Žižek-while exploring how the imaginary enabled Marx's discovery of three further crucial concepts: structure, the unconscious, and the symptom, all of which are central in the analysis of culture and ideology. In the second part of the course, we shall focus on the logic and mechanisms of power in contemporary neoliberalism, including the claim that today Marx's theory is no longer relevant (readings will include Friedrich Nietzsche, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Maurizio Lazzarato, McKenzie Wark).

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

All readings and class taught in English; no pre-knowledge required. Marx's contribution to the theorization of the function of the imaginary in both the constitution of subjectivity and the mechanisms of politics and economy-usually referred to as ideology-cannot be overestimated. The first part of this course traces Marx's gradual conceptualization of the imaginary throughout his work-as well as further Marxist theoreticians, such as Louis Althusser, Étienne Balibar, and Slavoj Žižek-while exploring how the imaginary enabled Marx's discovery of three further crucial concepts: structure, the unconscious, and the symptom, all of which are central in the analysis of culture and ideology. In the second part of the course, we shall focus on the logic and mechanisms of power in contemporary neoliberalism, including the claim that today Marx's theory is no longer relevant (readings will include Friedrich Nietzsche, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Maurizio Lazzarato, McKenzie Wark).

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

All readings and class taught in English; no pre-knowledge required. Marx's contribution to the theorization of the function of the imaginary in both the constitution of subjectivity and the mechanisms of politics and economy-usually referred to as ideology-cannot be overestimated. The first part of this course traces Marx's gradual conceptualization of the imaginary throughout his work-as well as further Marxist theoreticians, such as Louis Althusser, Étienne Balibar, and Slavoj Žižek-while exploring how the imaginary enabled Marx's discovery of three further crucial concepts: structure, the unconscious, and the symptom, all of which are central in the analysis of culture and ideology. In the second part of the course, we shall focus on the logic and mechanisms of power in contemporary neoliberalism, including the claim that today Marx's theory is no longer relevant (readings will include Friedrich Nietzsche, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Maurizio Lazzarato, McKenzie Wark).

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

All readings and class taught in English; no pre-knowledge required. Marx's contribution to the theorization of the function of the imaginary in both the constitution of subjectivity and the mechanisms of politics and economy-usually referred to as ideology-cannot be overestimated. The first part of this course traces Marx's gradual conceptualization of the imaginary throughout his work-as well as further Marxist theoreticians, such as Louis Althusser, Étienne Balibar, and Slavoj Žižek-while exploring how the imaginary enabled Marx's discovery of three further crucial concepts: structure, the unconscious, and the symptom, all of which are central in the analysis of culture and ideology. In the second part of the course, we shall focus on the logic and mechanisms of power in contemporary neoliberalism, including the claim that today Marx's theory is no longer relevant (readings will include Friedrich Nietzsche, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Maurizio Lazzarato, McKenzie Wark).

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

What can a short text do that a long text can’t? This course will look for answers to this question by reading and discussing short prose works from the 12th century to the present. It will also introduce students to the field of Comparative Literature, the study of literature across national, disciplinary, and linguistic boundaries. We will pursue the history of the novella—which is not a short novel but a literary form in its own right—from its emergence in the Renaissance (Boccaccio, Marguerite de Navarre) to its modern adaptations in German and French romanticism (Claire de Duras, Goethe, Kleist), the 19th century (Flaubert) and modernism (Kafka), through to contemporary authors like Annie Ernaux. We will explore the complexities of the essay from Michel de Montaigne, who created the genre in the 16th century, through Francis Bacon, whose scientific method relied on it, to its use as a hybrid form between science and literature in the early twentieth century (Freud) or by anticolonial writers (Fanon). And we will focus on the form that epitomizes the rhetorical virtue of brevitas: the aphorism, from the 17th century moralists (La Rochefoucauld), through the secular pietism of the 18th century (Lichtenberg), the 19th century’s answers to nihilism (Kierkegaard, Nietzsche), the uncompromising pessimism of Adorno, and the aphoristic art fiction of Sophie Calle. Our aim is to explore how these forms persist but are also being reworked by contemporary and postcolonial Francophone and German-speaking authors. In addition to works in these three genres, we will read short theoretical works fundamental to the discipline of Comparative Literature by Franco Moretti, Emily Apter, Edward Said, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Discussion questions will include: what are the literary and rhetorical effects of brevity? How can words gain by being few? What happens when texts get longer? How is literature a form of knowledge and science a form of literature? Taught in English, but students with knowledge of French and/or German will have the opportunity to read the texts and write on them in the original. Two short papers, one final paper with revision and project presentation. No prerequisites.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

In this course, we will consider films that provoke horror, fear, disgust, shock, terror, panic, and revulsion and ask about their political, philosophical, and cultural effects and potentials. As a genre organized around visceral experiences, both on-screen (gore, violence, monstrosity, terror) and in the audience (jump scares, trembling, squirming, fright), horror reminds us of the embodied dimension of existence, our living, material, and creaturely side and its entanglement with other people and the non-human world. In this manner, horror films can be privileged sites for working out ideas about gender, race, and sexuality, in ways that often reproduce existing power dynamics, but can sometimes subvert them. We will also consider the horror film as a potential mode of theory or philosophy itself, one attuned to the unthinkable or occult dimensions of our existence. Organized around detailed engagements with individual films, we will pay careful attention to their formal and aesthetic properties. Additionally, our work will be both historical and intertextual, moving between canonical examples and more contemporary films. Finally, as our course is designed around a genre, we will pay special attention to the ways that genres work. This will mean thinking critically about intertextual connections and how considering films together changes their individual meanings. And we will practice using these intertextual links and categories as interpretative and analytical tools in our written assignments and class discussions. Some of the films we will address: Peeping Tom (Michael Powell, 1960), The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982), Pulse (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2001), Raw (Julia Ducournau, 2016). Counts as an elective in the Critical Theory concentration.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Varies by semester. Consult the department or class schedule for current listing.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Varies by semester. Consult the department or class schedule for current listing.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

What can a short text do that a long text can’t? This course will look for answers to this question by reading and discussing short prose works from the 12th century to the present. It will also introduce students to the field of Comparative Literature, the study of literature across national, disciplinary, and linguistic boundaries. We will pursue the history of the novella—which is not a short novel but a literary form in its own right—from its emergence in the Renaissance (Boccaccio, Marguerite de Navarre) to its modern adaptations in German and French romanticism (Claire de Duras, Goethe, Kleist), the 19th century (Flaubert) and modernism (Kafka), through to contemporary authors like Annie Ernaux. We will explore the complexities of the essay from Michel de Montaigne, who created the genre in the 16th century, through Francis Bacon, whose scientific method relied on it, to its use as a hybrid form between science and literature in the early twentieth century (Freud) or by anticolonial writers (Fanon). And we will focus on the form that epitomizes the rhetorical virtue of brevitas: the aphorism, from the 17th century moralists (La Rochefoucauld), through the secular pietism of the 18th century (Lichtenberg), the 19th century’s answers to nihilism (Kierkegaard, Nietzsche), the uncompromising pessimism of Adorno, and the aphoristic art fiction of Sophie Calle. Our aim is to explore how these forms persist but are also being reworked by contemporary and postcolonial Francophone and German-speaking authors. In addition to works in these three genres, we will read short theoretical works fundamental to the discipline of Comparative Literature by Franco Moretti, Emily Apter, Edward Said, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Discussion questions will include: what are the literary and rhetorical effects of brevity? How can words gain by being few? What happens when texts get longer? How is literature a form of knowledge and science a form of literature? Taught in English, but students with knowledge of French and/or German will have the opportunity to read the texts and write on them in the original. Two short papers, one final paper with revision and project presentation. No prerequisites.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Are we living in revolutionary times?  How do we know? This course takes a journey through the last 50 years of some large upheavals across the world-in language, politics, economics, culture, and media-to find some answers of how we are similar and different.  It uncovers how and why the struggles, in theories and practices, for power and representation have created the conditions in which we exist today. We travel through all kinds of 'post' and 'neo'-liberalism, humanism, feminism, nationalism, and colonialism-and how they intertwine in our own lived experiences.  Some topics: protest against gender, sexual, race, economic, and linguistic bio-regimes, revolts of the colonized and marginalized, and resistant/ liberatory creations in art, technology, and media. Authors include Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Michel Foucault, Theresa Cha, Silvia Federici, Noam Chomsky, Ta-Nehisi Coates, bell hooks, Chela Sandoval, and Gayatri Spivak, among others.  At the end of the course, we will all know a little more about where we stand. People from all disciplines welcome. Prerequisite(s): Sophomore or junior standing or permission of instructor, and at least one course in the department (core course recommended, cross-listed accepted).

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

What is language and what is it for? What makes a series of sounds into a meaningful sentence? What makes a sentence true? Why is language always changing? This course will introduce students to ways in which twentieth century philosophers have attempted to provide answers to such questions. Since the philosophy of language has been so crucial to contemporary philosophy, this course also serves as an introduction to philosophical thought from the beginning of twentieth century to the present. Topics will range from more technical problems (theories of meaning, reference and truth; synonymy and analyticity; universals and natural kinds; private languages) to broader issues examining the relationship between language and culture (language games; radical interpretation; social change). Readings typically include writings by Ludwig Wittgenstein, W.V. Quine, John Searle, Donald Davidson, Richard Rorty, Michel Foucault, and bell hooks. Prerequisite(s): PHIL 201, or permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Traces the evolution of (global) political economy as a peculiarly modern way of understanding and organizing (global) social life. Particular attention will be paid to how the distinction between the political and the economic is drawn and implemented in interconnected ways within nation-states and in international society. Course includes a detailed study of one of the key components of the international political economy: international trade, international finance, technological processes, etc. Prerequisite(s): Sophomore-standing or permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

From Italian Mafia dons to famous American philanthropists; from the knitting of "trauma teddies" in Helsinki to gift shopping in London; and from ceremonial exchange rings in Melanesia to the present day global refugee crisis: this course will investigate how generosity is understood and practiced in global perspective. We'll begin the semester by examining key debates surrounding reciprocity, gifts, and exchange, theories of altruism and generosity, and patron-client relations. We'll then explore the birth of the "humanitarian spirit," and the complicated ethics and politics of humanitarian intervention. We will compare diverse religious traditions' approaches to giving, including Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, and Jainism. And we'll explore contemporary debates surrounding volunteerism within sectarian and neoliberal political regimes.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

From Italian Mafia dons to famous American philanthropists; from the knitting of "trauma teddies" in Helsinki to gift shopping in London; and from ceremonial exchange rings in Melanesia to the present day global refugee crisis: this course will investigate how generosity is understood and practiced in global perspective. We'll begin the semester by examining key debates surrounding reciprocity, gifts, and exchange, theories of altruism and generosity, and patron-client relations. We'll then explore the birth of the "humanitarian spirit," and the complicated ethics and politics of humanitarian intervention. We will compare diverse religious traditions' approaches to giving, including Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, and Jainism. And we'll explore contemporary debates surrounding volunteerism within sectarian and neoliberal political regimes.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Traces the development of theoretical accounts of culture, politics and identity in Africa, South Asia, the Caribbean and related lands since the 1947-1991 decolonizations. Readings include Fanon, Said, Walcott, Ngugi and many others, and extend to gender, literature, the U.S., and the post-Soviet sphere. The course bridges cultural representational, and political theory. Prerequisite(s): Prior internationalist and/or theoretical coursework strongly recommended.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Traces the development of theoretical accounts of culture, politics and identity in Africa, South Asia, the Caribbean and related lands since the 1947-1991 decolonizations. Readings include Fanon, Said, Walcott, Ngugi and many others, and extend to gender, literature, the U.S., the post-Soviet sphere, and Europe. The course bridges cultural, representational, and political theory. Prerequisite(s): Prior internationalist and/or theoretical coursework strongly recommended.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

What can a short text do that a long text can’t? This course will look for answers to this question by reading and discussing short prose works from the 12th century to the present. It will also introduce students to the field of Comparative Literature, the study of literature across national, disciplinary, and linguistic boundaries. We will pursue the history of the novella—which is not a short novel but a literary form in its own right—from its emergence in the Renaissance (Boccaccio, Marguerite de Navarre) to its modern adaptations in German and French romanticism (Claire de Duras, Goethe, Kleist), the 19th century (Flaubert) and modernism (Kafka), through to contemporary authors like Annie Ernaux. We will explore the complexities of the essay from Michel de Montaigne, who created the genre in the 16th century, through Francis Bacon, whose scientific method relied on it, to its use as a hybrid form between science and literature in the early twentieth century (Freud) or by anticolonial writers (Fanon). And we will focus on the form that epitomizes the rhetorical virtue of brevitas: the aphorism, from the 17th century moralists (La Rochefoucauld), through the secular pietism of the 18th century (Lichtenberg), the 19th century’s answers to nihilism (Kierkegaard, Nietzsche), the uncompromising pessimism of Adorno, and the aphoristic art fiction of Sophie Calle. Our aim is to explore how these forms persist but are also being reworked by contemporary and postcolonial Francophone and German-speaking authors. In addition to works in these three genres, we will read short theoretical works fundamental to the discipline of Comparative Literature by Franco Moretti, Emily Apter, Edward Said, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Discussion questions will include: what are the literary and rhetorical effects of brevity? How can words gain by being few? What happens when texts get longer? How is literature a form of knowledge and science a form of literature? Taught in English, but students with knowledge of French and/or German will have the opportunity to read the texts and write on them in the original. Two short papers, one final paper with revision and project presentation. No prerequisites.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

In this course, we will combine the close study of Ludwig van Beethoven’s late works, composed two hundred years ago, with the close reading of contemporary critical writing about this music. The course intends to deepen students’ experience with Beethoven’s music and provide an introduction to the discipline of critical musicology. The musical works we will examine include piano sonatas, string quartets, symphonies, and a setting of the Catholic (Latin) Mass. Our reading will consider these works from aesthetic, phenomenological, ethical, theological, and other critical perspectives. Our questions will include: Does this music put forth a vision of a unified, coherent experience, or an alienated, fractured one? To what extent is this music affirmative, oppositional, critical? How does late Beethoven’s musical language engage with the ideologies of Enlightenment and Romanticism? How might we characterize the ethical dimension of Beethoven’s late work? What is the role of biography in our engagement with these (and any) artworks? How might we speak of the status of Beethoven’s music today, in senses that include but also extend beyond its value as a commodity? Prerequisite(s): MUSI 113

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

This course introduces students to the broad range of explanations for social and cultural phenomena used by anthropologists since the emergence of the discipline in the 19th century. The course focuses on the development of three broad theoretical approaches: The American school of cultural anthropology, British social anthropology, and the French school that emerged from the work of Durkheim and his followers. The course also examines theoretical approaches such as cultural materialism, and symbolic and interpretive approaches to the study of culture. Prerequisite(s): Junior or senior standing.  Students should have at least two courses in anthropology including ANTH 101 or ANTH 111, or the permission of the instructor.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials