Courses

Seminar | 4 points
Professor Stephen Gross | Tue, 10:15-12:15
Room: KJCC, Rm 324

Please note: This is a required course for all CEMS majors.

The course examines the liberal order in Europe that was formed after WWII, its institutional design, the challenges it has been facing, and the implications of the liberal order for politics, society, and culture in Europe. The first part of the course reviews the social, economic, and security concerns Europe faced in 1945, and the institutions that were constructed to respond to these concerns. We will also explore the Cold War and its consequences for the politics, and the realities of people throughout Europe. The second part of the course explores the integration of Europe into a social, economic, and identity community, and the expansion of European institutions and identity first to Southern Europe and then to the former Soviet Bloc. The third part of the course addresses the current "Crisis of Europe" from the 2008 financial crisis through the surge of refugee migration and the rise of populism. We will ask whether and to what extent the current crisis threatens the system formed after 1945. The course is interdisciplinary in nature. To explore political change and continuity in contemporary Europe we will combine theories from international relations, political science, sociology, and economics, as well as readings of historical primary and secondary resources. In addition to scholarly literature we will use contemporary media outlets, cultural resources and video, when available.

Seminar | 4 points

Professor Isabella Trombetta | Tue, 2:45-4:45
Room: KJCC, Rm 324

The discussions surrounding borders, migration, and their impact on the United States and the European Union have profoundly influenced political debates and governance policies at various levels. This course will explore the role of borders and migration policies both within and beyond the territories of the US and EU.

Through the lens of borders and migration policies, we will critically analyze the interplay between nation-state dynamics, citizenship rights, the securitization of "others," and the construction of national and regional identities. Furthermore, this course aims to equip students with a comprehensive understanding of qualitative research on migration and border studies.

By the end of the course, students will possess the critical skills necessary to evaluate North American and European border and migration policies from social, historical, and political perspectives. They will gain the ability to distinguish between terms such as asylum seekers, migrants, forced migrants, and refugees, and to question the instrumentalization of these individuals. Additionally, students will explore how the US and the European Union employ international organizations to shape migration and border policies, and how humanitarian actors interact within border spaces.

In addition to the rich content knowledge gained in this course, students will also enhance their analytical writing abilities and become familiar with academic work. This multidimensional approach will provide students with a holistic understanding of the complex issues surrounding borders, migration, and governance, empowering them to engage critically and thoughtfully in this evolving field of study.

Colloquium | 4 points
Professor Larry Wolff | Mon, 2:45—5:30pm
Room: KJCC, Rm 324

This course considers Mozart's life and music in the context of the history of Vienna and the Habsburg monarchy in the late eighteenth century.

Seminar | 4 points
Professor Emma Rosenberg | Wed, 10:15—12:15pm
Room: KJCC, Rm 324

This course unpacks the interactions between nationalism, populism, and far-right ideologies. We explore how these political ideologies become vehicles for identity, ethnicity, race, and religion. We will examine the nature and origins of nationalism, populism, and far-right ideologies in Europe through a series of historic and contemporary case studies including Germany, Russia, Italy, the Netherlands, Hungary, and Serbia. The course will explore draw on literature from multiple fields including political science, sociology, journalism, and history.

Colloquium | 4 points
Professors Andrew Needham and Stephen Gross | Tue and Wed, 2:00—3:15pm
Room: KJCC, Rm 324

The world stands on the brink of a climate catastrophe. The consumption of energy lies at the center of this looming crisis. With the urgency of climate change in mind, our course traces the use of energy in human society around the world from the industrial revolutions of the nineteenth century to the present, paying particular attention to North America and Europe, along with the geopolitical networks that provide energy consumers with energy resources. Using “Energy Transitions” as the guiding concept, we will follow countries as they moved through different transitions—the rise of coal in the nineteenth century, the explosion and globalization of oil in the mid twentieth century, the stalled nuclear transition of the 1960s and 1970s, and the drive toward renewables today, among others. Along the way we will explore the way changing energy production and consumption has shaped, and in turn been shaped by geopolitics and war, state-building and market formation, ecology and economy, colonization and decolonization, social democracy and neoliberalism. At the heart of the course will be the question of how and why energy transitions happen, and how they change societies and environments in unexpected ways.

Seminar | 2 points
Larry Wolff | Wed, 12:30—2:00pm 
KJCC, Room 324

Note: This is an advanced undergraduate seminar open to juniors and seniors with the approval of the instructor.

The Eastern Europe workshop is an informal 2-credit lunchtime workshop for graduate students and advanced undergraduates, meeting together to hear speakers and discuss issues concerning Eastern Europe.

Seminar | 4 units

Professor Sophie Gonick | Mon and Wed, 3:30-4:15 

20CS 4CONF

Cities have long been sites of both wealth and poverty, progress and deep inequality. Since Engels wandered the streets of industrial Manchester, scholars and practitioners have been concerned with understanding conditions of urban poverty, its causes, and its spatial manifestations. So, too, have planners, policymakers, and reformers working in cities across the globe used poverty as territory in which to experiment with tools and techniques for its management and amelioration. In this course we will explore urban poverty within a global context, including the production and dissemination of poverty knowledge, the politics of poverty alleviation, homelessness, questions of imperialism and development, and new articulations of pro-poor social movements. Central to this endeavor will be attention to the dynamics of race, gender, indigeneity, (im)migration, and class in producing urban geographies of poverty both historically and within our contemporary moment. We will consider cases from such diverse locales as Algiers, Berlin, Chicago, Delhi, Durban, Paris, San Francisco, and of course New York.

Lecture | 4 points
Louise Rice | Tue and Thu, 3:30—4:45pm 
SILV, Room 300

The Renaissance, like classical antiquity and the Middle Ages, is a major era of Western civilization embracing a multitude of styles. It is, however, held together by basic concepts that distinguish it from other periods. Main developments of Renaissance art both in Italy and north of the Alps: the Early and High Renaissance; relation to the lingering Gothic tradition; and Mannerism. Emphasis is placed on the great masters of each phase. The survival of Renaissance traditions in Baroque and Rococo art is examined in art and architecture.

Lecture | 4 points
Kathryn Howley | Tue and Thu, 12:30—1:45pm 
SILV, Room 301

During ancient Egypt's 25th Dynasty (728-657 BCE), Egypt was ruled not by Egyptian kings but by Nubians. The Nubian rulers came from a land now situated within modern Sudan and are generally considered to have been black Africans; this brief period therefore holds great interest as one of the few times ancient Egypt was conquered by foreigners, and as one of the earliest historical attestations of sub-Saharan Africa's ancient past. However, Nubia is relatively poorly known archaeologically and did not have its own written language, meaning that the often racist, colonialist biases of modern scholars have negatively influenced how this fascinating period is understood. Recent scholarship and new fieldwork has begun to tackle the period from new theoretical standpoints, making discussion surrounding the so-called "Black Pharaohs" a current and energetic debate. This course will use both archaeological and textual evidence to reconstruct the rule of the Nubian kings and their importance to modern understandings of race and ethnic identity.

Lecture | 4 points
Kathryn Smith | Tue and Thu, 2:00—3:15pm 
SILV, Room 301

Please note there are prerequisites for this course. Please be in touch with the instructor of record with any questions.

This course examines art in the “Age of the Cathedrals” – including architecture, sculpture, stained glass, manuscript illumination, wall painting, luxury arts, and tapestry – from the traditional origins of the Gothic style in the twelfth-century Ile-de-France through the mid-fifteenth century. It views artistic developments in northern European regions within the religious, historical, political, social, and cultural contexts of their creation. Topics to be examined include Gothic artists, builders, patrons, audiences, materials, and modes of art-making; the Gothic image as bearer and barometer of later medieval religious, political, and social values and ideologies, including ideas about gender, ethnicity, and the religious “Other”; Gothic naturalism and allegory in their varied visual and imaginative contexts; word, image, and narrative in Gothic art; the arts of chivalry and courtly love; the role of art in devotional and mystical experience; manuscript marginalia and medieval humor; Gothic art in/as performance and as multisensory experience; art, death, and memory; and Gothic art and later medieval notions of seeing and the self. Emphasis is given to primary sources, and to current issues in the interpretation of Gothic art.

Lecture | 4 points
Louise Rice | Tue and Thu, 11:00am—12:15pm 
SILV, Room 301

Please note there are prerequisites for this course. Please be in touch with the instructor of record with any questions.

Painting and sculpture in Italy, 1580-1700. The course highlights major developments in the visual arts and the work of the leading Baroque artists, including Caravaggio and the caravaggisti, the Carracci and their Bolognese followers, Bernini, Cortona, Poussin, and Salvator Rosa. Fascinated by the paradoxes inherent in representation, they developed a language that blends real and ideal, emotion and reason, imitation and innovation. Special attention is paid to the creative process and the factors that influence it: the role of the patron, the logistics of site, the dynamics and pressures of rivalry, and the artist's own thought process as revealed through preparatory drawings and sketches. The course is designed to help students develop the skills necessary to read and interpret works of art in all their rich complexity of form and meaning.

Lecture | 4 points
Jonathan Ritter | Mon and Wed, 12:30—1:45pm 
SILV, Room 301

Introduction to the history of Western architecture, emphasizing the formal, structural, programmatic, and contextual aspects of selected major monuments from ancient times to the present. Monuments discussed include the Parthenon, the Roman Pantheon, Hagia Sophia, the cathedral at Chartres, St. Peter's, Palladio's Villa Rotonda, St. Paul's Cathedral, Versailles, the London Crystal Palace, Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater, Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona Pavilion, and others. Lectures analyze monuments within their contexts of time and place. Also considers aspects of city planning in relation to certain monuments and to the culture and events of their time.

Seminar | 4 points
Kevin Feeney | Mon and Wed, 3:00—4:15pm 
MEYR, Room 122

In the sixth century B.C., Rome was an obscure village. By the end of the third century B.C., Rome was master of Italy, and within another 150 years, it dominated almost all of the Mediterranean world. Then followed a century of civil war involving some of the most famous events and men in Western history: Caesar, Pompey, and Cato . The course surveys this vital period with a modern research interpretation.

Seminar | 4 points
Peter Meineck | Tue and Thu, 3:30—4:45pm 
GCASL, Room 269

Shakespeare’s plays and poetry are teeming with ancient mythological characters, classical historical figures, references to the teaching of ancient languages, ancient locations, and direct influences from Ovid, Virgil, Plutarch, Plautus, Terrence, and perhaps even Sophocles, Euripides, and Aeschylus. This class will examine the literary, material cultural, and historical influences in the works of Shakespeare within the contexts of the ancient Mediterranean, the Elizabethan world, and their modern reception today around the world today. Shakespeare was one of the first working-class English people to receive a secondary education, which was steeped in the radical new subject of classics, and we will also examine what he learned in the new grammar school in Stratford-Upon-Avon. These ancient texts and artworks had been produced by people from all over the Mediterranean world including Africa, Greece, the Near and Middle East, Spain, and Italy, and those who created them reflected the multi-ethnic and cultural make-up of the region. The premise of this class is that these ancient works were always radical in some way and played an essential role in the creative process of Shakespeare and in the development of the Elizabethan theatre and beyond. We will be reading several plays in tandem with some of the texts and artworks they have been influenced by including Comedy of Errors, Coriolanus, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet, and Othello, as well as several sonnets. We will also be examining the folkloric and mythic traditions of England and the performance techniques that were influenced by ideas about ancient drama. Students do not need any prior knowledge of the subject and will be required to sit a midterm, complete one paper and deliver a final report.

Seminar | 4 points
Joan Connelly | Mon and Wed, 11:15am—12:15pm 
SILV, Room 503

What impact did built urban development have on local communities across the ancient Greek world? What was the relationship between sacred spaces and the growth and structure of Greek cities? This survey examines Greek urban and religious centers from the time of their foundation through the end of Roman rule. We will look at landscape, topography, archaeology, local myth narratives, and the ways in which religious, political, social, economic, and cultural forces shaped the growth and development of cities and sanctuaries. Special emphasis on: the relation between architecture and society, city planning and design, continuity of sacred space, construction methods and innovations, connectivity of sites, as well as the theories and concepts that inform the study of Greek urbanism. Micro-scale as well as regional trends will be considered along with the role of urban borderscapes as arenas for social, political and cultural interaction.

Seminar | 4 points
Julia Hernandez | Tues and Thu, 12:30—1:45pm 
TISC LC 6

As Rome expanded during its imperial period, epic poetry became a literary space for authors such as Virgil, Ovid, and Lucan to explore evolving concepts of empire and colonization from complex perspectives. Just as these authors looked to the Greek epic tradition for models to legitimize their projects, so too would the writers of the Spanish empire look to Roman epic as a genre to emulate during its colonial expansion. This engagement with Latin epic served in many cases to promote Spain as true heir to Rome through the metaphorical transfer of imperial power (translatio imperii). However, just as importantly, epic modeled on iconic Roman works also became a resonant space for writers in colonized zones to negotiate, interrogate, reimagine, and invert new identities shaped by colonization. This course will explore how a variety of authors from the Spanish Atlantic world dialogued and continue to dialogue with the epic tradition of Virgil, Ovid, and Lucan. It will center the voices of writers underrepresented in the canon and in particular, those from marginalized communities past and present. It will place their voices in conversation with ancient texts through a process of parallel reading: relevant selections of Roman authors will be analized alongside epic works from the early modern period to today, ranging from the Neo-Latin works of Afro-Spaniard Juan Latino and the Guatemalan Jesuit Rafael Landívar to Manuel Zapata Olivella's postmodern epic novel of the Black diaspora and Giannina Braschi's epic of the Nuyorican experience. Students will consider not only how ancient works inform readings of these epic transformations, but conversely how reading such works from the Spanish-speaking world, historically under-recognized in classical reception studies, informs our rereading of Roman epic in turn. Works will be read in translation, no Latin or Spanish required (although opportunities will be available for students with knowledge of one or both languages to read selections in the original languages).

Seminar | 4 points
Michah Gottlieb | Mon and Wed, 11:00am—12:15pm 
GCASL, Room 279

What makes a life well-lived? Central questions to be explored include: Does living well require acquiring knowledge and wisdom? What is the place of moral responsibility in the good life? Is the good life a happy life or does it require sacrificing happiness? Does religion lead to living well or does it hinder it? What is friendship and how does it contribute to the good life? Thinkers to be studied may include: Aristotle, Seneca, Maimonides, Glikl, Spinoza, and Levinas.

Seminar | 4 points
Vincent Renzi | Tue and Thu, 11:00am—12:15pm 
SILV, Room 503

Despite having written nothing himself, Socrates is—if not the most influential—certainly one of the most influential intellectual figures in the Western tradition, for it is with Socrates that “philosophy” seems first to move from natural history to an explicit concern for human affairs. Indeed, so great is the magnitude of this change that we continue to term earlier thinkers “pre-Socratic philosophers.” His stature is marked again in the name given to a distinctive form of philosophical literature, the Socratic discourse, and an approach to philosophical inquiry and instruction, the Socratic method. In antiquity, his thought, importantly, inspired Plato, Xenophon, the Stoics, the Skeptics, and the Cynics, beyond those thinkers stretching to influence in Rome and Judea...and four centuries before the presumed time of Jesus, Socrates had already suffered martyrdom for his idiosyncratic political, philosophical, and religious views. In modernity, his life both fascinates and repels the attention, notably, of Nietzsche; though criticisms of his mode of existence he had already endured in his own time at the hands of the comedian Aristophanes, among others.

Lecture | 4 points
Emanuela Bianchi | Tue, 4:55—7:40pm 
BOBS LL142

Since the end of the 18th century, Ancient Greek philosophy and literature has enjoyed a fascinating resurgence in Western thought. In this class our aim is to read a range of difficult texts from both antiquity and modernity slowly and carefully, examining closely a series of important philosophical conjunctions. By examining these scenes of reception, both the ancient text and the modern shed light upon one another – why do certain ancient texts come to illustrate and illuminate modern philosophy, and how do modern concerns come to re-animate the ancient texts? In the course of our readings we will become familiar with various philosophical and theoretical paradigms: Hegelian dialectic, Nietzsche’s critique of metaphysics, Freudian psychoanalysis, Derridean deconstruction, postcolonial critique, feminist analysis, as well as a variety of classical Greek literary and philosophical texts. The conjunctions will include Sophocles and Hegel; the Presocratics and Nietzsche; Sophocles and Freud; Plato and Derrida; Aeschylus and Said.

Lecture | 4 points
Luisa Ardizzone | Mon and Wed, 2:00—3:15pm 
CASA ITALIANA, Room 201

Italian Romanticism was the expression of a culture that was both literary and philosophical as well as scientific and technical. It was the product of a society in which elements of revolt, conservation, and tradition coexisted. Romanticism is the result of a great cultural change that enhances the value of the history transmitted by Giambattista Vico. It inherits the teachings of French philosophers like Rousseau, Voltaire, and Montesquieu, and grafts them on its own tradition, as testified not only by the Lombard and pragmatic Enlightenment of intellectuals such as Pietro Verri, Cesare Beccaria, and Carlo Cattaneo, but also by the Neapolitan illuminists as the legal scholar Gaetano Filangieri and the economist Ferdinando Galiani. The most visible effect of this culture was the creation of Italian unity, which transformed a country divided into different states with different traditions and laws into a nation, created a Parliament, and assigned to a part of its citizens the right to vote—a right which, though limited, marked the beginning of a new era. The creation of Rome as the new Capital of the new Realm and the emergence of new social classes are all aspects that European Enlightenment and the French Revolution favor together with the Napoleonic era. In Milan, this era led to the creation of the Cisalpine Republic, whose presidency will be that of Napoleon himself and the vice-presidency of the enlightened aristocratic Francesco Melzi d’Eril. A Lombard primacy was thus established that the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria had certainly favored, as well as the corrosive criticism of the nobility made by Parini. This played an important role in the formation of a new social awareness and conscience. In this culture, the word is conceived in conjunction with the action it must carry out, where rhetoric has a social and political purpose, and where technique enters to improve society. Here sentiment feeds on great reforming ideals, often conflicting ideologies, and the turmoil of reforms. Intellectuals and poets of bourgeois or noble extraction, and women of the nobility but also of humble origin, participate in such movement. The course traces a sort of map of Romanticism, its background and origin, as it first manifests itself in the work of Ugo Foscolo, The Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis, in his lyric poetry, in his inaugural oration pronounced in Pavia. We will then read a selection of Manzoni’s romance, The Betrothed, and theoretical texts, followed by the reading of several Cantos by Leopardi and selections from The Discourse of an Italian on Romantic Poetry, Operette morali, and Zibaldone. We will then read selections from Ippolito Nievo’s novel, Memories of an Italian, and from the correspondence and writings of Cristina di Belgioioso and Enrichetta Caracciolo. The course will also introduce some of the debates in which these poets participated, among them the one promoted by the Swiss-French Madame de Stael. Topics to be discussed include the secret societies, the contrasts between republican and monarchical ideology, the conversations of the post-revolutionary Parisian salons, and those of Milan and Naples, the activity of literary-political magazines and newspapers, their contribution in the creation of the movement. The participation of women like Jessie White Mario, Clara Maffei, Cristina di Belgioso, Enrichetta Cattaneo and others in the movement and their active collaboration in the creation of the nation is one of the contents of the course. The course will be given in English and is conceived as a seminar.

Seminar | 4 points
Benjamin Robinson | Thu, 3:30—4:45pm 
SILV, Room 406

Nothing is more common than getting worked up about politics. But what is it about politics that riles the passions – and what role do the passions play in shaping politics? Why are some expressions of emotion valorized in political culture, while others are dismissed as irrational, illegitimate, or pathological? Starting around the time of upheaval brought about by the French Revolution, this course will explore through the optic of literature and film the whole scale of political affect from the “righteous passion” of Kleist’s Michael Kohlhaas to the peculiar impassivity of Melville’s Bartleby. For passion in politics can express itself in moments of revolution, rebellion, or outrage, but equally in apparently more “passive” attitudes of disaffection, apathy, or depression. Discussion will be supplemented by readings in political theory from Hobbes to Butler. Literary texts may include Hölderlin, Kleist, Kafka, Melville, Jelinek, Coetzee, Lorde, Dangarembga; films by Chantal Akerman, Michael Haneke, Béla Tarr, and Claire Denis.

Seminar | 4 points
Avital Ronell | Fri, 2:00—4:30pm 
7E12 LL33

This course offers a slow and steady probe into positions taken by rival camps—philosophy and psychoanalysis as they conduct raids into each other’s territories with various attitudes of defiance, resistance, and furtive takeaways. Each discursive empire reverts to literary example and relies on poetry to score points for its side. | We shall look at case studies beginning with Lacan and Derrida’s dispute over Edgar Allen Poe’s crucial story of power, loss, the Power Queen and “Idiot” King, destination and phallus as they are positioned in The Purloined Letter. We shall also analyze selected works of Freud, Melanie Klein, Winnicott and others with a view to phenomenological protocols of reading. I am still improvising on the trajectory, which will be modified and customized according to students’ levels of reading knowledge and experience with texts that require guided tours rigorously plotted. We may take a serious look at Hamlet in psychoanalysis and philosophy, ending with Derrida’s Specters of Marx and Lacanian takes on Shakespeare.

Lecture | 4 points
Alison Cornish | Tue and Thu, 9:30—10:45am 
CASA ITALIANA Auditorium 

This course is dedicated to a one-semester guided reading of the Divine Comedy in its entirety. The text will be read in facing-page translation for the benefit of those who know some Italian and those who do not. Lectures and discussion are in English. Students will learn about the historical, philosophical, and literary context of the poem as well as how to make sense of it in modern terms. Evaluation will be by means of bluebook midterm and final, testing knowledge of key terms, concepts, and passages, two short papers, and active participation in lectures and discussion.

Lecture | 4 points
Paul Edwards | Thu, 11:00am—1:45pm 
SILV, Room 514

This course offers a global survey of theatre, drama, and performance including Greek antiquity; the classical theatre of India, Japan, China; the English Renaissance; and the French neoclassical period. Although designed toward a broad history of the stage from the 8th century BCE to the beginning of the 19th century CE, students will explore multiple streams of practices and theories that have informed conceptions of theatre. This course thus invites students to lead conversations based on in-depth scholarship through faculty facilitation. The class will engage in critical analysis, creative reinterpretations, and our own polemics in the question, “what is theatre?” By the end of the semester students will have a greater knowledge of theatre history, concepts of dramatic traditions, and an understanding of various theories of performance.

Colloquium | 4 points
Cyrus Patell | Mon and Wed, 12:30—1:45pm 
7E12 134

This course introduces students to the theory and practice of world literature by asking the question, “Why and how do some works leave behind their local origins and become pieces of global cultural heritage”? Using the plays of William Shakespeare as a case study, the course considers the playwright both as an exemplar of Western literature and also as a world author whose influence—whether as inspiration or antagonist—can be felt throughout many cultures. We will approach the study of Shakespeare through three different sets of questions: 1) In what ways was Shakespeare a “global” author in his own day, adopting a “worldly” approach that transcends his English context? 2) How does the history of the publication, performance, and criticism of his plays transform “Shakespeare” into a global cultural commodity? 3) What is the cultural legacy of Shakespeare’s work throughout a variety of global media forms, including plays, films, novels, operas, and works of visual art? We will begin by looking at four plays—Othello, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, and The Tempest—that together capture many of the dynamics of the spread of Shakespeare’s work through a variety of cultural contexts and genres. We will then devote a number of classes to a closer investigation of the global spread of Shakespeare’s most famous play, Hamlet, from 1603 to the present. The course concludes with a creative project inspired by Shakespeare’s lost play, Cardenio, based on an episode from Cervantes’s Don Quixote. An abiding question of the course will be: What does the study of "world literature" add to a major in “English” or “Dramatic Literature”?

Lecture | 4 points
John Waters | Tue and Thu, 11:00am—12:15pm 
ERIN 101

A study of the rich dramatic tradition of Ireland since the days of Yeats, Lady Gregory, and the fledgling Abbey Theatre. Playwrights covered include Synge, O’Casey, Beckett, Behan, Friel, Murphy, McGuinness, and Devlin. Issues of Irish identity, history, and postcoloniality are engaged alongside an appreciation of the poetic achievements and theatrical innovations that characterize this body of work.

Lecture | 4 points
Ludovic Cortade | Fri, 12:30—1:45pm 
721B 670

This course is an introduction to the history of French cinema from its origins to the New Wave through the lens of art and French civilization (history, literature, class, gender, ethnicity). The movements and directors we will be studying include : early cinema (Lumière brothers, Méliès), Surrealism and the Avant-Garde (Bunuel, Dreyer), Poetic Realism (Renoir, Carné), the « New Wave » (Godard, Truffaut, Varda, Demy).

Lecture | 4 points
Jenny Mann | Mon and Wed, 2:00—3:15pm 
SILV, Room 414

Literature in English I is a survey of English literature from its origins in Anglo-Saxon poetry through the later seventeenth century. This course will trace the formation of an English-language community from different ethnic and linguistic strands through the history of the written imagination in the British Isles. The possible origins and early development of concepts such as nationalism, racial difference, and colonialism will be considered. Gender and sexuality will help determine what, how, and who we read. Attention to media (writing, speaking, and eventually print) will also help us enjoy the form and beauty of the imaginative texts we study. Lectures and recitations will encourage close reading of representative works, with attention to the historical, intellectual, aesthetic, and social contexts. Term papers and other regular writing tasks will be assigned. In class mid-term exam and a final exam. Recitation required: You must be enrolled in a Recitation to receive a grade for this class. You must attend the assigned recitation to pass the class: this is especially notable for late registrants. Prerequisites: “Writing the Essay” or equivalent. Students who intent to register close to the Add deadline are urged to contact the professor beforehand for relevant course information and requirements. Textbook: The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Tenth Edition, Volumes A & B. One or two other texts may be assigned. Works to be read include: Beowulf ; Marie de France; Geoffrey Chaucer: Canterbury Tales selections, Margery Kempe selections; a medieval play; the sonnet; writings by Queen Elizabeth; Edmund Spenser, Faerie Queene selections; poems by Aemilia Lanyer, John Donne, and Ben Jonson; a Shakespeare play; Katherine Philips; Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing World; John Milton, Paradise Lost selections.

Lecture | 4 points
Zachary Samalin | Tue and Thu, 3:30—4:45pm 
SILV, Room 411

Survey of English literature from the Restoration to the 20th century. Close reading of representative works with attention to the historical, intellectual, and social contexts of the period.

Lecture | 4 points
Nicola Cipani | Thu, 12:30—1:45pm 
CASA ITALIANA, Room 301

Lecture | 4 points
Kelly Sullivan | Tue and Thu, 2:00—3:15pm 
ERIN 101

Although this seminar will trace Irish poetry beginning in the 1930s with the influence of W.B. Yeats, the emphasis will be on later twentieth-century poets (including Seamus Heaney, Louis MacNeice and Alan Gillis) and poetry by women (like Eavan Boland, Colette Bryce, Ailbhe Darcy, Vona Groarke, Leontia Flynn and Sinead Morrissey). We will discover new writers publishing poems and books in contemporary magazines and poetry journals and dip into contemporary Irish language poetry (read in translation). Reading these poets will allow us to grapple with some of the most pressing issues facing poetry criticism in the Irish Studies field and beyond: the struggle with Yeats’s commanding example; the relation of poetry to national partition and the civil crisis in Northern Ireland; the confining and liberating aspects of lyric tradition; the use of translation as a means of finding voice; the agency of poetry in forcing change within a conservative cultural climate; the arrival of prosperity in Ireland and the consequent need to revise our conceptions of Irish culture.

Seminar | 4 points
Sarah Waidler | Tue and Thu, 11:00—12:15pm 
ERIN 102

From Roman claims of human sacrifice to tales of shape-shifting goddesses and from heroes that live for hundreds of years to journeys to Otherworlds and magical creatures, the world of Celtic myth and its interpretation presents us with a rich panorama. This class explores what we know about non-Christian religions in the Celtic regions, drawing on archaeological evidence and examining literary sources for medieval perceptions of paganism. In the first part of the class we will define what we can really know about the ‘religious’ beliefs of the wider Celtic world before and during the Roman conquests before turning to the literary tales that survive from the Middle Ages that are set in the non-Christian past of Ireland and Wales. We will question what can be defined as ‘myth’ and how stories of pagan gods and heroes are treated in a medieval Christian world. This course will take a critical approach to the material and continue to question how much we can know about these early belief systems and what our surviving literary texts meant to their various audiences.

Lecture | 4 points
John Archer | Thu, 2:00—4:45pm 
BOBS 837

Bordering the Nation in Shakespeare’s England Current critical interest in ethnicity, race, religion, citizenship, and migration has led to renewed questions about nations and borders and the possible origins of these phenomena in early-modern times. Theater in Renaissance England was well-positioned to help its audiences imagine something like a national community, to adapt Benedict Anderson’s classic phrase. What is, or was, a nation? Did English people in Shakespeare’s time see themselves as part of a nation or as encircled by borders and borderlands? What role did gender and sexuality play in their self-image? How did Wales, Scotland, and Ireland define the immediate borders of English nationality? What exchanges and conflicts did borders make possible? How did earlier concepts of geographically-defined community border upon or anticipate the coming idea of the nation in later modernity? Finally, how do earlier texts and performances alert us to the limits of the renewed interest in the nation and borders today? Our senior seminar will address these questions through the careful reading of seven or eight plays, mostly by Shakespeare. Along with each play, we shall take up one or two theoretical statements or critical articles that deal with the nation or borders from different points of view; older approaches like new historicism will be included, but the focus will be on work from the past decade. Along with Anderson, we will read the perspectives of Etienne Balibar, Hannah Arendt, and Sandro Mezzadra, along with a range of approaches from scholarship and literary criticism about early-modern England, as well as Alba, Cymru, and Éire (Scotland, Wales, and Ireland). We shall begin in the Elizabethan period with Richard II and the Henry IV plays, and proceed to Henry V. Attention will be given to Elizabethan Wales and especially Ireland; we will read the anonymous Stukeley play, the only play from the period that includes scenes set in occupied Éire. During the final part of term we shall consider major Shakespearean tragedies like Othello, King Lear, and the Scottish play of Macbeth. Immigrants, resident aliens, refugees and other border figures appear in our secondary readings along with the developing problematic of “the nation” as exponent of physical, human, and political geographies in Shakespeare. This course will be useful to students interested in Shakespeare and early modern drama, political forms, legal and economic criticism, landscape and environment, religion and secularism, colonial and postcolonial studies, race, ethnicity, and Irish studies. Requirements will include presentations, papers, and constant, well-informed class participation. All instruction will take place in-person.

Lecture | 4 points
Benoit Bolduc | Tue, 11:00—1:45pm 
SILV, Room 510

Please note there are prerequisites for this course. Please be in touch with the instructor of record with any questions.

Fabulous Versailles, the synthesis of baroque and classical aesthetics and the cult of kingship, serves as an introduction to the study of major aspects of 17th- and 18th-century culture and French influence on European civilization. This course views the intellectual, artistic, and social complexities of the period through the works of contemporary philosophers, dramatists, artists, memorialists, and historians from Descartes to Voltaire. Films, field trips, and multimedia presentations of music and art.

Lecture | 4 points
Emily O'Brock | Mon and Wed, 2:00—3:15pm 
TISC LC2

Please note there are prerequisites for this course. Please be in touch with the instructor of record with any questions.

Retrospective and introspective view of French civilization from the early period to 1900 through the interrelation of history, literature, fine arts, music, and philosophy. Study of major historical forces, ideas, and tensions; the formation of collective identities (territorial, religious, political, and so on); France's diversity and formative conflicts; the Republican model; France and the outer world; and the relationship between state, nation, and citizenry. Primary sOffered in the fall. 4 points. Retrospective and introspective view of French civilization from the early period to 1900 through the interrelation of history, literature, fine arts, music, and philosophy. Study of major historical forces, ideas, and tensions; the formation of collective identities (territorial, religious, political, and so on); France's diversity and formative conflicts; the Republican model; France and the outer world; and the relationship between state, nation, and citizenry. Primary sources and documents such as chroniques, memoires, journaux, revues, and correspondances.

Lecture | 4 points
Ariane Bottex-Ferragne | Tue and Thu, 4:55—6:10pm 
SILV, Room 402

Lecture | 4 points
Ludovic Cortade | Fri, 2:00—4:45pm 
721B 670

Globalization has generated new challenges and identities in France and in Francophonie that are reflected by contemporary French and Francophone cinemas. This course offers an introduction to the history of French and Francophone auteur cinema since the New Wave from two angles: (1) the director’s artistic signature and (2) the contextualization of films in the political and cultural history of the French speaking world.

Lecture | 4 points
Benjamin | Tue and Thu, 3:30—4:45pm 
SILV, Room 406

Nothing is more common than getting worked up about politics. But what is it about politics that riles the passions – and what role do the passions play in shaping politics? Why are some expressions of emotion valorized in political culture, while others are dismissed as irrational, illegitimate, or pathological? Starting around the time of upheaval brought about by the French Revolution, this course will explore through the optic of literature and film the whole scale of political affect from the “righteous passion” of Kleist’s Michael Kohlhaas to the peculiar impassivity of Melville’s Bartleby. For passion in politics can express itself in moments of revolution, rebellion, or outrage, but equally in apparently more “passive” attitudes of disaffection, apathy, or depression. Discussion will be supplemented by readings in political theory from Hobbes to Butler. Literary texts may include Hölderlin, Kleist, Kafka, Melville, Jelinek, Coetzee, Lorde, Dangarembga; films by Chantal Akerman, Michael Haneke, Béla Tarr, and Claire Denis. Taught in English.

Seminar | 4 points
Avital Ronell | Fri, 2:00—4:30pm 
7E12 LL33

This course offers a slow and steady probe into positions taken by rival camps—philosophy and psychoanalysis as they conduct raids into each other’s territories with various attitudes of defiance, resistance, and furtive takeaways. Each discursive empire reverts to literary example and relies on poetry to score points for its side. We shall look at case studies beginning with Lacan and Derrida’s dispute over Edgar Allen Poe’s crucial story of power, loss, the Power Queen and “Idiot” King, destination and phallus as they are positioned in The Purloined Letter. We shall also analyze selected works of Freud, Melanie Klein, Winnicott and others with a view to phenomenological protocols of reading. I am still improvising on the trajectory, which will be modified and customized according to students’ levels of reading knowledge and experience with texts that require guided tours rigorously plotted. We may take a serious look at Hamlet in psychoanalysis and philosophy, ending with Derrida’s Specters of Marx and Lacanian takes on Shakespeare.

Lecture | 4 points
Friedrich Ulfers | Wed, 2:00—4:30pm 
TISC LC3

The objective of this seminar is to show how Nietzsche revolutionized Western philosophy and how this influenced significantly what is known as “Continental Philosophy,” including such figures as Derrida and Deleuze. Particular attention will be paid to Nietzsche’s reinterpretation of the notion of the tragic, his questioning of the meaning of “truth,” the declaration of the world as an “aesthetic phenomenon,” as well as the often misunderstood ideas of the “Will to Power” and the “Eternal Recurrence of the Same.” Also discussed will be the role that language plays in Nietzsche’s thought, his revaluation of morality and his influence on the arts.

Lecture | 4 points
Andrea Krauss | Mon and Wed, 9:30—10:45am 
19UP 100D

The seminar examines the way cultural and historical topics are presented in contemporary German literature. The selected texts originate in different national contexts (Swiss, Austrian, German, German-Turkish, German-Japanese) and deal with questions concerning the representation of national, cultural, and individual identity. We will explore how the texts (de)construct those identities through narrative structures and will contextualize these structures with respect to recent theories of transcultural identities. Authors include José Oliver, May Ayim, Zafer Şenocak, Homi K. Bhaba, Georg Simmel, Leslie Adelson, Yōko Tawada, Natasha Wodin, Franco Biondi, Martin Suter, Emine Sevgi Özdamar, Christoph Schlingensief, Thomas Bernhard, Fatih Akin. Readings and discussion in German. Taught IN GERMAN.

Seminar | 4 points
Michah Gottlieb | Mon and Wed, 11:00—12:15am 
GCASL 279

What makes a life well-lived? Central questions to be explored include: Does living well require acquiring knowledge and wisdom? What is the place of moral responsibility in the good life? Is the good life a happy life or does it require sacrificing happiness? Does religion lead to living well or does it hinder it? What is friendship and how does it contribute to the good life? Thinkers to be studied may include: Aristotle, Seneca, Maimonides, Glikl, Spinoza, and Levinas.

Lecture | 4 points
Benjamin Gladstone | Tue and Thu, 2:00—3:15 pm 
SILV 509

Examines the power structure and mechanisms of contemporary Israeli politics beginning with the emergence of the provisional government in 1948. Traces how Israel's national institutions, key basic bills and the legislation mechanism, and electoral system developed. The course also examines key fault lines in Israeli social, political, and economic life, including Jewish-Arab relations; the balance between the welfare state and economic liberalism; Union workers and gender relations.

Seminar | 4 points
Joan Connelly | Mon, 3:30—6:00 pm 
SILV 503A

Seminar | 4 points
Joan Connelly | Mon and Wed, 11:00 am—12:15 pm 
SILV 503

Seminar | 4 points
Eleftheria Astrinaki | Wed, 2:00—4:30 pm 
60FA C10

The beginnings of hip hop music can be traced back to the streets of New York in the 1970’s. Hip hop has been rooted in black culture and social commentary. At its origin, hip hop artists created music that combined traditional African-American forms of music, played in jam sessions and used to speak out on social maladies. Hip hop music has evolved over the years, to become not only a multi-billion-dollar industry, but also an attractive form for cultural appropriation around the globe. In Greece, hip hop arrives two decades later. Public Enemy and their sold-out concert in 1992 in Athens is a milestone event in the “birth” of Greek hip hop. FF.C (Fortified Concept), Terror X Crew and Active Member release their first album Protest at the end of 1992. However, it is only after 2010 and the European debt crisis that Greek hip hop is on the rise, engaging a wider audience. This course is designed to introduce students to the key moments in the history of hip hop music and its appropriation (from Kool Herc to Eminem and from Tupac and Kendrick Lamar to hip hop Latino Americano and K-rap), before delving into the Greek scene in an attempt to study Greekness through hip hop. An analysis of Greek hip hop songs will reveal how inextricably linked they are to the historical, cultural and social context in which they are produced and consumed. Q&As with artists and concerts attendance will be vital parts of the course.

Lecture | 4 points

Eleftheria Astrinaki | Mon and Wed, 2:00—4:30 pm 

194M 306A

In a moment in which the world is beset with crises of all kinds, fourteen films and one book will guide our effort to think about fascism, perhaps the vaguest of all political terms, but one that is presently increasing in circulation around the globe. Using Robert Paxton’ s The Anatomy of Fascism as a kind of lens through which to begin analyzing cinematic responses to fascism in different countries, we will evaluate the way in which these films either follow or exceed his framework for understanding the rise of fascism. We will consider fascism beyond its classic manifestations in Italian fascism and German Nazism and look at the forms it has taken from Latin America to the Middle and Far East. We will also look at primary sources on filmmaking in order to study how formal techniques support the particular political perspective of each film considered. The course will also seek to think about the relation between the way in which fascism—its origins, its power, and its appeal—is depicted in these several films and its more contemporary versions today. By looking at these different instances of fascism, we will ask about what makes fascism fascism.

Lecture | 4 points
Daniel Juette | Tue and Thu, 3:30—4:45pm 
Kimmel 808

Please note there are prerequisites for this course. Please be in touch with the instructor of record with any questions.

This course provides an introduction to the culture, society, and politics of Renaissance and early modern Europe (ca. 1450-1800). We will explore major topics and themes, including the Italian and Northern Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation and the ensuing religious wars, Europe’s “discovery” of other societies and cultures, the origins and development of nation states, the Scientific Revolution, the European Enlightenment, and the origins of the French Revolution. History Major Requirements Fulfilled: Pre-1800s and European

Lecture | 4 points
Guy Ortolano | Mon and Wed, 12:30—1:45pm 
Kimmel 803

Please note there are prerequisites for this course. Please be in touch with the instructor of record with any questions.

This course introduces the broad chronologies and major developments in British and imperial history. It begins with the union between England and Scotland in 1707, and continues through the issues raised today by Brexit. Assignments include two midterms, a group project, and a weekly journal. There are no pre-requisites, and all students are welcome. History Requirements Fulfilled: Advanced Pre-1800s and European

Lecture | 4 points
Anne O'Donnell | Tue and Thu, 11am—12:15pm 
Tisch LC11

Please note there are prerequisites for this course. Please be in touch with the instructor of record with any questions.

Workshop | 4 points
Andrew Lee | Mon and Wed, 11:00am—12:15pm 
Silver 514

The Great War — as it was originally known — only became the First World War with the Second. For many years the official Library of Congress subject heading was “The European War.” This was how the war was traditionally studied and described and the vast majority of casualties occurred on the European fronts. Yet it was truly a global conflict with ground combat in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Pacific as well as naval combat off the coasts of the Americas. US citizens were killed even before the USA declared war in 1917. We will be studying the war as a global event, although with greater focus on Europe. We will also examine representation of the war, both during the conflict and afterwards. These representations include art. cinema, and literature. How have these influenced the memory and commemoration of the war?

Workshop | 4 points
Sandrine Kott | Wed, 4:55—7:40pm 
Bobst LL142

From 1815 to 1914,the nation state gradually imposed itself as the model of political organization in Europe. We will examine the various forms adopted by these national constructions and how they were accompanied or gave rise to nationalist movements and ideologies that took extreme forms during the Second World War.

Lecture | 4 points
Anne O'Donnell | Mon and Wed, 12:30—1:45pm 
Bobst LL142

Please note there are prerequisites for this course. Please be in touch with the instructor of record with any questions.

What is revolution? Who makes it—revolutionaries, the “common people,” intellectuals, bureaucrats? How does revolution change not just who holds power, but the nature of power? Where do new institutions come from, and the people who staff them? Where do old ones go? When can we say that a revolution has succeeded? What does it mean for a revolution to fail? This seminar will examine revolution as a historical phenomenon and a category of analysis. From Paris to Cairo, few types of historical event have elicited so great an effort to describe and explain as revolutions, which makes it incumbent upon us, as students of the phenomenon, to tackle not only what revolutions are, but what scholars have seen them to be. After several weeks studying the theoretical approaches of historians, sociologists, and political scientists to revolution, we will move to an examination of revolutionary case studies. Our cases range from the French Revolution (1789) to the Arab Spring (2011); they grapple with the major movements of global modern history, including liberalism (France), colonialism (Haiti), communism (Russia and the Soviet Union), and Islamism (Iran). Our analysis will focus on revolutions in three parts of the world: France and its colonies; Russia and the Soviet Empire; and Iran.

Lecture | 4 points
Thomas Truxes | Mon and Wed, 12:30—1:45pm 
Ireland House101

The emphasis of this course varies by semester and is designed to allow flexibility in course offerings from visiting scholars and specialists in particular fields. Past examinations have included imagery and ideology of Irish nationalism, Irish American popular folk culture, and the Irish in America.

Lecture | 4 units

Professor Rahsaan Maxwell | Mon and Wed 9:30-10:45 

CANT 101

Major concepts, approaches, problems, and literature in the field of comparative politics. Methodology of comparative politics, the classical theories, and the more recent behavioral revolution. Reviews personality, social structure, socialization, political culture, and political parties. Major approaches such as group theory, structural-functionalism, systems analysis, and communications theory and evaluation of the relevance of political ideology; national character; elite and class analysis; and problems of conflict, violence, and internal war.

Seminar | 4 points
Larry Wolff | Mon, 2:45-4:45PM
In Person | KJCC, Room 324

This course will follow the history of Ukraine from medieval Kiev to modern independent Ukraine and right up to the current war in Ukraine. Topics will include Ukrainian religion, the Ukrainian Cossacks, the Ukrainians of the Habsburg monarchy, Ukraine within the Soviet Union, and the causes and origins of the current war. The course will consider Ukraine from the perspectives of history, politics, international relations, religion, and culture.  

Seminar | 4 points
Thomas Zittel | Wed, 10:15–12:15pm
In Person | KJCC, Room 324

The question of how to organize the political game is key to any student of politics. Europe is a fascinating laboratory in this regard. It involves a rich tapestry of political regimes. This, for example, ranges from a majoritarian form of democracy, found for instance in the UK, to consensual systems that are located in the Nordic countries. It also includes advanced forms of direct democratic regimes such as Switzerland, which compare to staunch representative systems such as the one in Germany. This class will explore the different patterns of democracy in Europe including both the old democracies in Western Europe and the newer democracies in Eastern Europe. It aims to provide an overview to students about how democracy is organized on the European continent. Most importantly, this class will explore the stimulating question of why Europe is home to different types of democracy and how history and social context matter in this regard. Furthermore, we ask whether differences in institutional regimes matter for the lives of ordinary people, looking, for example, at specific policies and how they affect the social and economic fortunes of Europeans.

Seminar | 4 points
Alexander Geppert | Thu. 10:15AM-12:15PM
In Person | KJCC, Room 324

Extraterrestrials have been with us since 1897. This history of science class studies their manifestations, conjunctures and figurations as the most radical form of human alterity, from literature, music and film to alleged UFO sightings, alien encounters and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence known as SETI.

Seminar | 4 points
Isabella Trombetta | Thu, 2:45-4:45PM
In Person | KJCC, Room 324

The discussions surrounding the securitization of borders, migration control, and their impact on the European Union have profoundly influenced political debates and governance policies at various levels. This undergraduate course will focus on the bordering processes in Europe and the criminalization of immigration and solidarity, as well as their surrounding narratives. It will explore and critically analyze the legal, social, and political aspects of migration and solidarity. Using case studies and a comparative lens, the students will gain a comprehensive understanding of migration processes and the role of civil society and international organizations in border contexts.

Seminar | 4 points
Tamsin Shaw | Mon, 12:30-2:30PM
In Person | KJCC, Room 324

In this course we will look at the relationship between art and politics from the 18th century until the present in Europe. This will involve examining the way in which artists have responded to political thought, as well as the role that political thinkers have seen for art, beginning with Rousseau‘s “Discourse on the Arts and Sciences.” We will examine the role of art in European fascism and the way in which subsequent artistic traditions were affected by the most momentous events of the 20th century. This means we will have to ask how art can respond to the Holocaust and to war on a global scale. We will also look at censorship as a way of understanding the political power of art. We will include not just the visual arts, but also music, opera, film and literature.

Seminar | 4 points
Louise Rice | Mon, Thurs, 9:30-10:45AM
In Person | 31 Washington Pl (Silver Ctr) Room 301

Prerequisite: Foundations of Art History (ARTH-UA 10), or History of Western Art II (ARTH-UA 2), or Renaissance and Baroque Art (ARTH-UA 5), or a score of 5 on the AP Art History exam. Identical to MEDI-UA 311 Prerequisite: ARTH-UA 10 Foundations of Art History; or ARTH-UA 2 History of Western Art II; or ARTH-UA 5 Renaissance Art; or a score of 5 on the AP Art History exam; or permission of the instructor. Students who do not have the prerequisite, but who have taken other art history courses or courses in relevant fields are encouraged to contact the instructor directly. The course traces developments and themes in Netherlandish painting between 1550 and 1700. Artists under discussion include the great Flemish masters Bruegel, Rubens, Van Dyck, and Jordaens; the Dutch Caravaggists; Rembrandt and his followers; Vermeer and the painters of genre; and the leading representatives of the Dutch schools of portraiture, landscape, and still life. We will be talking about old and new ways of seeing and picturing the world; about the interface between realistic and symbolic modes of representation; and more broadly about how art reflects cultural values, societal preoccupations, and the widening world at a time of dramatic political, religious, and economic change.

Seminar | 4 points
TBA | Mon, Wed, 4:55-6:10PM
In Person | 31 Washington Pl (Silver Ctr) Room 300

No prerequisites. Introduction to the history of Western architecture, emphasizing the formal, structural, programmatic, and contextual aspects of selected major monuments from ancient times to the present. Monuments discussed include the Parthenon, the Roman Pantheon, Hagia Sophia, the cathedral at Chartres, St. Peter's, Palladio's Villa Rotonda, St. Paul's Cathedral, Versailles, the London Crystal Palace, Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater, Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona Pavilion, and others. Lectures analyze monuments within their contexts of time and place. Also considers aspects of city planning in relation to certain monuments and to the culture and events of their time.

Lecture | 4 points
David Levene | Tue, Thu, 2:00PM-3:15 PM
In Person | 238 Thompson St (GCASL) Room 361

This course will study daily life as it was lived by Romans in the period of the late Republic and early Empire: how they worked and worshipped, how they dressed, fed and entertained themselves. We will look at the lives of women, men and children, at questions of family life and social status, at rich and poor, at slaves and free. We will consider topics such as work and leisure, food and drink, marriage and divorce, crime and punishment, law and property. All of these issues will be examined through a careful study of the evidence from the time, both written and archaeological, giving us direct access to the ways in which people lived, and how they depicted their own lives and the lives of others.

Lecture | 4 points
Andrew Monson | Tue, Thu, 11:00AM-12:15PM
In Person | 31 Washington Pl (Silver Ctr) Room 405

Continuation of the history of ancient Greece from the age of Alexander the Great in the fourth century B.C. until Emperor Augustus consolidated the Roman hold over the eastern Mediterranean in the first century B.C. These three centuries saw the relationship between Rome and the Near East become most meaningful. Examines Alexander?s conquests, the states established by his successors (Ptolemies of Egypt and Seleucids of Syria), and the increasing intervention of Rome.

Seminar | 4 points
Kevin Feeney | Mon, Wed, 2:00PM-3:15PM
In Person | 70 Washington Sq S (Bobst) Room LL138

This course examines both the history and theory of law in Ancient Rome, from the Republic to the Empire. Students will be introduced to the ideas underpinning Roman conceptions of law and justice, many of which have shaped notions of jurisprudence throughout the modern world, including in the present-day United States. Students will encounter these ideas through an exploration of the actual substance of Roman Law in areas like property, family, and contract law, as well as the theories of influential Roman jurists and legal writers. Simultaneously, this course will also explore the historical context in which these concepts developed, looking at the creation of law codes such as the Twelve Tables and the Code of Justinian in order to understand where these ideas came from and why they proved so enduring. This course is suitable for all students interested in Ancient History or the History of Law regardless of their prior experience.

Seminar | 4 points
Joan Connelly | Mon, Wed, 11:00AM-12:15PM
In Person | 31 Washington Pl (Silver Ctr) Room 503

From the house frescoes of Bronze Age Thera to the tomb paintings of Macedonia, from Minoan painted pottery to Athenian red-figured vases, Greek painting was a powerful aesthetic and narrative force within Greek art and culture. This course traces developments in monumental wall painting and the decoration of vases, with special emphasis on production, exchange, technique, style, authorship, narrative, context, function, and meanings. Issues of representation and signification will be examined within the frameworks of a variety of critical approaches, including semiotics, structuralism, and formal analysis. Special emphasis will be placed on issues of reception from the Eighteenth century on and, particularly, on the impact of connoisseurship and the art market on values ascribed to ancient vases.

Lecture | 4 points
Peter Meineck | Tue, Thu, 12:30PM-1:45PM
In Person | 19 University Pl Room 102

Discusses the myths and legends of Greek and Roman mythology and the gods, demigods, heroes, nymphs, monsters, and everyday mortals who played out their parts in this mythology. Begins with creation, as vividly described by Hesiod in the Theogony, and ends with the great Trojan War and the return of the Greek heroes, especially Odysseus. Roman myth is also treated, with emphasis on Aeneas and the foundation legends of Rome.

Seminar | 4 points
Hent de Vries | Fri. 11:00AM-1:30PM
In Person | 181 Mercer St (Paulson Center) Room 234

Intro to German Culture & Thought: Marx and Philosophy | F 11:00am – 1:30pm | In English |While the publication of a new complete translation into English and accompanying annotation of Karl Marx's magnum opus, entitled Das Kapital (Capital), is imminent, this intellectual and political moment in time is as good as any to revisit the theoretical (metaphysical) and pragmatic (ethical) premises, next to the renewed and still growing influence, of this author's most important work. In addition to proposing an integral rereading of Capital as a founding document of so-called historical materialism and a resounding critique of classical political economy, special attention will be paid to the most original and rigorous among Marx's 20th and 21st century philosophical interpreters.

Lecture | 4 points
Edward Ziter | Tue, Thu, 9:30AM-10:45AM
In Person | 31 Washington Pl (Silver Ctr) Room 404

ontemporary controversies surrounding acting reveal echoes of past practices. To take one example, modern debates around race-conscious casting in Shakespeare’s plays reflect how those plays performed emerging ideas of race in the Renaissance as well as changing practices of racial representation over five-hundred years of performance. Examining acting as a historically specific practice not only helps us understand past theatre and past societies, it helps us better understand acting today as product and appropriation of that past. This may help explain why in discussions of acting, passions run high. Some fifteen years before Shakespeare began performing with the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, critics like Stephen Gosson complained of a flood of actors leading the nation to “pleasure, sloth, sleep, sin, and without repentance to death and the Devil.” In France, actors were denied Christian burial until the eighteenth century. However, by the nineteenth century a critic as reputable as William Hazlitt would describe the actress, Sarah Siddons, as “not less than a goddess, or than a prophetess inspired by the gods.” Whether considered damned or divine, the actor has served as a receptacle for her society’s anxieties and aspirations. Consequently, debates over the actor’s craft have breached the controversies of their day, exploring the meaning of the sublime, the human capacity for sentiment, the functioning of the human body, the makeup of the nation, even the nature of race. This class charts the evolution of these debates in Europe and the U.S. and asks why actors and acting have inspired invectives, paeans, and riots. The class introduces the student to the major actors and acting styles of both the comic and tragic stages during the Renaissance, the baroque period, the romantic period, and the modern period. Students will read and examine a range of primary materials, and will be asked to assess both their reliability and value as historical documents.

Seminar | 4 points
Helen Theodoratou; Olga Taxidou | Thu, 2:00PM-4:30PM
In Person | 238 Thompson St (GCASL) Room 288

SAME AS IRISH-UA.0185 Same as HEL-UA 320.001 - Greek Tragedy and Modern Greece - This course examines the ways in which Greek Tragedy is re-imagined within the broader context of Modern Greek culture from the early twentieth century to today. It is based on the premise that the encounter with the ancient texts enables Modern Greek writers, playwrights, and directors to think through, embody, and sometimes problematize concerns about nationhood, tradition and modernity, classicism and experimentation. Greek Tragedy is approached both thematically and formally, as text and vehicle for performance. This interface between the ancients and the moderns acquires particular relevance and urgency at moments of political crisis, such as the civil war, the military dictatorship, and the contemporary refugee crisis. This course will approach this dialogue within these specific historico-political contexts and concentrate on the modes of writing and re-writing it has helped to shape. We will examine the classical play-texts and the ways they have been re-imagined not only on the stage, but also in Greek poetry, fiction, music, and film. Visits from Greek filmmakers, theater directors, and artists will be an essential component of this course.

Lecture | 4 points
John Archer | Tue, Thu, 11:00AM-12:15PM
In Person | 12 Waverly Pl Room L120

SAME AS ENGL-UA 410 AND MEDI-UA 410. In this survey of William Shakespeare’s career as a playwright we will consider the relation between the mingled genres of his plays (romantic and problem comedy, history, tragedy, and tragicomic romance) and the social and political conditions that shaped his developing sense of dramatic form. This semester, the survey is framed in terms of Renaissance educational practices and the radically different expectations they set for young women and men. Education also enabled crossings and complications within an ostensibly binary gender system, especially when coupled with theater as both instructional method and popular entertainment. Our selection of plays, which juxtaposes domestic conflict and the recovery of classical and especially Roman culture, reflects the programs and perplexities of the original audience’s educational experiences, and perhaps our own. Critical analysis of the plays as both performances and written works will make up the fabric of this course; the connection of the drama to its culture will be the guiding thread. Excerpts from film, video, and audio performances will be played and discussed in class along with other visual materials. We will explore nine plays. The requirements include two essays, two exams, and consistent attendance at both lectures and recitations. Individual editions of the plays from the Pelican Shakespeare series will be ordered for this course, easy to read and to carry. Plays this semester include: The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Much Ado About Nothing, Troilus and Cressida, Richard III, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, and Cymbeline. We will also read Hamlet this semester.

Lecture | 4 points
Susanne Wofford | Tue, Thu, 2:00PM-3:15PM
In Person | 31 Washington Pl (Silver Ctr) Room 411

This course surveys literature in English from the Old English epic Beowulf (ca. 700) to John Milton’s epic Paradise Lost (1674). Medieval readings besides Beowulf include “Caedmon’s Hymn" , and "The Wanderer,” selections from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Wakefield Second Shepherds’ Play. Early Modern readings include selections from Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, the poetry of Wyatt, Sidney, Shakespeare, and others, the drama of Shakespeare, and selected poetry by Donne, Jonson, Lanyer, Wroth, Herbert, Philips, Marvell, Herrick, and Milton, among others, and ending with selections from Paradise Lost. The focus throughout will be on the close reading of the literary texts in their linguistic, historical, and cultural contexts.

Lecture | 4 points
Lenora Hanson | Tue, Thu, 3:30PM-4:45PM
In Person | 31 Washington Pl (Silver Ctr) Room 414

Literature in English II, 1660 - 1900. This survey course introduces students to the study of literature in English from the British Isles and British Empire, from the Restoration through the close of the Victorian era. Our course will focus in particular on several overlapping areas of concern, including: the rise of the novel as a dominant cultural form; literary responses to the emergence of capitalist exploitation and to European imperialism; the centrality of sexuality, emotion, and other aspects of human subjectivity to aesthetic production; and the changing relationship between literature and scientific discourse (including philosophy, evolutionary theory, and social science). Possible texts include: Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (1719); Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (1726); Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative (1789); William Blake, Songs of Innocence and Experience (1789); Jane Austen, Persuasion (1817); Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818); Mary Prince, The History of Mary Prince (1831); Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton (1848); Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (1861); Olive Schreiner, The Story of an African Farm (1883); Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891); and Victoria Cross, Anna Lombard (1901).

Seminar| 4 points
Kathryn Smith; Martha Rust | Tue, Thu, 2:00PM-3:15PM
In Person | 31 Washington Pl (Silver Ctr) Room 301

Seminar | 4 points
Maria Ardizzone | Mon, Wed, 2:00PM-3:15PM
In Person | 24 W 12 St (Casa Italiana) Room 203

Seminar | 4 points
Alison Cornish | Tue, Thu, 9:30AM-10:45AM
In Person | 24 W 12 St (Casa Italiana) Room 203

Seminar | 4 points
Nicola Cipani | Tue, Thu, 12:30PM-1:45PM
In Person | 24 W 12 St (Casa Italiana) Room 203

Lecture | 4 points
Benoit Bolduc | Tue, Thu, 3:30PM-4:45PM
In Person | 181 Mercer St (Paulson Center) Room 253

This course, which is entirely conducted in French, is an introduction to French and Francophone Performing Arts from the early modern period to the present day. The emphasis is placed on the relationship between the performers and the viewers through theatrical illusion, speech, and the body in the theater, operas, ballets and poetry readings. Students will discuss the significance of social issues in French and Francophone performing arts on a global scale. The main sources are read and discussed in French. They include landmark texts and recordings of works by writers and performers including: Molière, Corneille, Hugo, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Cocteau, Mnouchkine, Delcuvellerie.

Lecture | 4 points
Emmanuelle Ertel | Tue, Thu, 11:00AM-12:15PM
In Person | 181 Mercer St (Paulson Center) Room 321

The major French novelists of the 20th century have moved the novel away from the traditional 19th-century concept. Proust and Gide developed a first-person-singular narrative in which the reader is participant. Breton uses the novel for a surrealist exploration. With Celine and Malraux, the novel of violent action becomes a mirror of man's situation in a chaotic time and leads to the work of Sartre and Camus, encompassing the existentialist viewpoint. Covers Beckett's sparse, complex narratives and Robbe-Grillet's "new" novels. Novels are studied with respect to structure, technique, themes, language, and significant passages.

Lecture | 4 points
Benoit Bolduc | Tue 11:00AM-1:30PM
In Person | 31 Washington Pl (Silver Ctr) Room 409

Fabulous Versailles, the synthesis of baroque and classical aesthetics and the cult of kingship, introduces study of major aspects of 17th- and 18th-century culture and French influence on European civilization. Views the intellectual, artistic, and social complexities of the period through the works of contemporary philosophers, dramatists, artists, memorialists, and historians from Descartes to Voltaire. Films, field trips, and multimedia presentations of music and art.

Lecture | 4 points
Rachel Watson | Mon, Wed, 12:30PM-1:45PM
In Person | 181 Mercer St (Paulson Center) Room 250

Study of the theatrical genre in France, including the golden age playwrights (Corneille, Racine, Moli?re); 18th-century irony and sentiment; and the 19th-century theatrical revolution. Topics include theories of comedy and tragedy; development of stagecraft; romanticism and realism; and the theatre as a public genre, its relationship to taste and fashion, and its sociopolitical function.

Seminar | 4 points
Laurence Marie | Fri, 9:30AM-10:45AM
In Person | 181 Mercer St (Paulson Center) Room 243

Students not only read the work of, but also meet and discuss their reading with, contemporary French writers who speak at the Maison Française as part of the interview series “French Literature in the Making” organized by celebrated French journalist Olivier Barrot.

Seminar | 4 points
Hent de Vries | Fri, 11:00AM-1:30PM
In Person | 181 Mercer St (Paulson Center) Room 234

SAME AS COLIT-UA 220. Title: "Marx and Philosophy" Description: While the publication of a new complete translation into English and accompanying annotation of Karl Marx's magnum opus, entitled Das Kapital (Capital), is imminent, this intellectual and political moment in time is as good as any to revisit the theoretical (metaphysical) and pragmatic (ethical) premises, next to the renewed and still growing influence, of this author's most important work. In addition to proposing an integral rereading of Capital as a founding document of so-called historical materialism and a resounding critique of classical political economy, special attention will be paid to the most original and rigorous among Marx's 20th and 21st century philosophical interpreters. Taught in English.

Seminar | 4 points
Avital Ronell | Mon, Wed, 4:55PM-6:10PM
In Person | 181 Mercer St (Paulson Center) Room 230

SAME AS V29.0244 Title: "Derrida's Greatest Hits" Description: This course examines Jacques Derrida's engagement with German philosophy, psychoanalysis, aesthetics, and literature. We shall study how he slays major falsehoods and mystifications associated with the metaphysical tradition, including gender, drugs, nationalisms, and political presumption. - Spectres (with a focus on Marx and analyzing Hamlet) - Beliers (which allows close-reading of Celan) - Spurs (for the Nietzsche connection to gender politics) - On cosmopolitanism and forgiveness - Freud ("Freud et la scène de l'écriture") - Plato's pharmacy - Economimesis (on Kant and aesthetics) - on Kafka - on Heidegger Taught in English.

Lecture | 4 points
Elisabeth Strowick | Tue, Thu, 9:30AM-10:45AM
In Person | 181 Mercer St (Paulson Center) Room 320

Description: German cinema is on the map again. The many awards German films have been granted over the past two decades speak to the renaissance of German Cinema since 2000. Among these movies are Florian Henckel von Donnersmarcks 'The Lives of Others' (Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, 2006), Caroline Link's 'Nowhere in Africa' (Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, 2002), Fatih Akin's 'Head-On' (Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival, 2004; European Film Award 2004), Oliver Hirschbiegel's 'Downfall' (nominated for Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, 2004) or Wolfgang Becker’s 'Goodbye, Lenin!' (European Film Award, 2003). Nazi Germany, the Stasi, or the Reunification are prominent topics of this internationally acclaimed Contemporary German Cinema. Parallel to these mainstream productions, an aesthetically far more adventurous cinema has developed known as “Berlin School” or “Nouvelle Vague Allemande.” Directors associated with the Berlin School are Christian Petzold, Angela Schanelec, Christoph Hochhäusler or Valeska Grisebach. Dissecting the everyday reality of post-wall Germany, this ‘counter-cinema’ draws on the New German Cinema of the 1970s (among others) to develop radical notions of realism and challenge narrative conventions. This course will give a survey on German Film since 2000 – discussing the historical and cultural context of selected movies as well as analyzing aesthetic strategies and concepts of realism in Contemporary German Cinema. Readings and discussions IN GERMAN.

Lecture | 4 points
Avinoam Patt | Mon, Wed, 2:00PM-3:15PM
In Person | 238 Thompson St (GCASL) Room 265

Major developments in the history and culture of the Jews from the 16th to the 20th centuries, emphasizing the meanings of modernity in the Jewish context, differing paths to modern Jewish identity, and internal Jewish debates over the relative merits of modern and traditional Jewish values.

Seminar | 4 points
Joan Connelly | Mon, Wed, 11:00AM-12:15PM
In Person | 31 Washington Pl (Silver Ctr) Room 503

Seminar | 4 points
Olga Taxidou | Mon, 2:00PM-4:30PM
In Person | 238 Thompson St (GCASL) Room 288

This course examines the long-standing and constitutive relationships between theatre and medicine. From the classical Greek plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, through Shakespearean drama to Tony Kushner's Angels in America, the stage has offered a platform for the expression of illness, disability and trauma, both individual and collective. Throughout its history the stage has also offered the medical discourses metaphorical ways of conceptualizing ideas of deformity, normality, deviance and disability. At the same time, it teaches us empathy and affect and contributes to our physical and mental wellbeing. This course will examine this intertwined relationship between theatre and medicine from the Greeks to the contemporary stage, by looking at plays by, among others, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, William Shakespeare, Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg, Oscar Wilde, Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, Larry Kramer and Tony Kushner.

Lecture | 4 points
Olga Taxidou | Wed, 2:00PM-4:30PM
In Person | 60 Fifth Ave Room 261

The encounters with Greek Tragedy throughout the ages have not only shaped our understanding of theatre in the Western canon, but have also informed basic concepts and theories of classicism, neo-classicism and humanism more broadly. A privileged genre in aesthetic theory, its powerful roles (like Clytemnestra, Oedipus, Antigone) have had a huge impact on modern thinking, from psychoanalysis and philosophy to legal and political theory. This course will take an interdisciplinary approach to Greek Tragedy, bringing together critical languages from Classics, Theatre Studies, Performance Theory, but also philosophy and critical theory. Through a series of close readings of key play-texts by the three tragedians – Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides – this course will analyze the development of Greek tragedy as a dramatic genre and vehicle for performance within the context of the democratic city-state. It will also look at the ways these texts have been re-written and re-imagined for performance within the broader context of modernity.

Seminar | 4 points
Olga Taxidou | Thu, 2:00PM-4:30PM
In Person | 238 Thompson St (GCASL) Room 288

This course examines the ways in which Greek Tragedy is re-imagined within the broader context of Modern Greek culture from the early twentieth century to today. It is based on the premise that the encounter with the ancient texts enables Modern Greek writers, playwrights, and directors to think through, embody, and sometimes problematize concerns about nationhood, tradition and modernity, classicism and experimentation. Greek Tragedy is approached both thematically and formally, as text and vehicle for performance. This interface between the ancients and the moderns acquires particular relevance and urgency at moments of political crisis, such as the civil war, the military dictatorship, and the contemporary refugee crisis. This course will approach this dialogue within these specific historico-political contexts and concentrate on the modes of writing and re-writing it has helped to shape. We will examine the classical play-texts and the ways they have been re-imagined not only on the stage, but also in Greek poetry, fiction, music, and film. Visits from Greek filmmakers, theater directors, and artists will be an essential component of this course.

Lecture | 4 points
Guy Ortolano | Mon, Wed, 12:30PM-1:45PM
In Person | 40 W 4th St (Tisch Hall) Room LC11

SAME AS EURO-UA.0012 This course surveys modern European history since about 1750. It proceeds chronologically and thematically, focusing on politics, ideas, and culture. The main topics are the Enlightenment, French Revolution, industrialization, nationalism, imperialism, mass politics, communism, fascism, world wars, decolonization, the fall of the Soviet Empire, and globalization. History Major Requirments Fulfilled by this course: Europe

Lecture | 4 points
Maria Montoya | Wed, 11:00AM-1:45PM
In Person | 12 Waverly Pl Room L111

This class will trace the origins, course, and legacy of the Second World War, viewing it as a contest among empires and countries aspiring to create empires. Although military topics will be covered, this is primarily a political, economic, and international history of the Second World War. We will pay particular attention to several thematic questions. Why did Germany and Japan seek to create empires, and how did their imperial projects differ from those of Western European powers in ideology and practice? How did the war change the way people thought about questions of economics, society, and class? How did the war shape American, Soviet, and European plans for a new, postwar international order? And finally, to what extent did the war bring an end to imperialism as a form of political governance? History Major Requirements Fulfilled by this course: Intro US, European OR Non-west

Lecture | 4 points
Thomas Truxes | Mon, Wed, 12:30PM-1:45PM
In Person | 1 Wash Mews (Ireland House) Room 102

SAME AS IRISH-UA 181. Eighteenth century Ireland remained calm under a repressive penal code that deprived the Roman Catholic majority access to political power. By the 1720s, the seeds of Irish nationalism had been planted by the ruling Anglo-Irish minority as it challenged British economic and political dominance over Ireland. Emboldened by political rhetoric imported from America in the 1760s and 1770s, Ireland was convulsed, leading to a new constitutional relationship with Great Britain, but there was little change in the status of Irish Catholics. News of the French Revolution gave rise to a radical movement in Ireland that would settle for nothing less than full civil rights for Catholics and the establishment of an Irish Republic. The government’s bloody suppression of the United Irishmen in 1798, passage of the Act of Union in 1800, and the legacy of Robert Emmet’s abortive rising in 1803 colored Ireland’s political agenda for more than a century. History Major Requirements Fulfilled by this Course: Advanced European

Lecture | 4 points
Peter Hession | Mon, Wed, 12:30PM-1:45PM
In Person | 1 Wash Mews (Ireland House) Room 101

SAME AS IRISH-UA 183. This course explores the Irish experience at home and abroad from the Act of Union of 1800 up to the present-day, encompassing the major scholarly debates which have helped shape contemporary perspectives on modern Irish history. Placing Ireland in global context, the course moves through key junctures in Irish history to embrace diverse themes ranging from the rise of democracy, empire and nationalism to Ireland’s role in the history of capitalism and its place in the modern world system. Framing Irish history in colonial, postcolonial and diasporic terms, the course moves from the crucible of modern Ireland in the nineteenth-century – the rise of mass politics, famine, mass migration, agrarianism, nationalism and unionism – to the formation of modern Ireland in the early twentieth-century through cultural revival, revolution and counter-revolution, partition, state formation, depression and war. The course goes on to examine the emergence of contemporary Ireland through the crosshairs of ‘the Troubles’, Europeanization, secularization and neoliberal globalization since the 1960s, tracing struggles for civil rights, gender equality and constitutional change up to the recent crises of the 2008 crash, Brexit and Covid-19. History Major Requirements Fulfilled by this course: Advanced European

Lecture | 4 points
Todd Needham; Edward Berenson | Mon, Wed, 4:55PM-6:10PM
In Person | 36 E 8th St (Cantor Film Ctr) Room 102

This course examines the history of the modern Western city by taking New York and Paris as comparative case studies. If Paris was the “capital of the nineteenth century,” as the philosopher Walter Benjamin put it, can New York be seen as capital of the twentieth? By trying to answer this question and others like it, we will examine the nature and meaning of modern urban life and its relationship to modernity in general. We will also consider why so many prominent observers have seen fit to compare Paris and New York. The reading and lectures for the course will cover the following topics, among others: urban development and redevelopment, nature and the built environment, monuments and their symbolism, politics and protest, poverty and inequality, migration and immigration, popular music and urban culture, and gentrification and its discontents. Readings will include both primary and secondary sources. History Major Requirements Fulfilled by this course: Advanced Pre-1800s, US OR Europe

Lecture | 4 points
Peter Hession | Mon, Wed, 12:30PM-1:45PM
In Person | 1 Wash Mews (Ireland House) Room 101

SAME AS HIST-UA 183 This course explores the Irish experience at home and abroad from the Act of Union of 1800 up to the present-day, encompassing the major scholarly debates which have helped shape contemporary perspectives on modern Irish history. Placing Ireland in global context, the course moves through key junctures in Irish history to embrace diverse themes ranging from the rise of democracy, empire and nationalism to Ireland’s role in the history of capitalism and its place in the modern world system. Framing Irish history in colonial, postcolonial and diasporic terms, the course moves from the crucible of modern Ireland in the nineteenth-century – the rise of mass politics, famine, mass migration, agrarianism, nationalism and unionism – to the formation of modern Ireland in the early twentieth-century through cultural revival, revolution and counter-revolution, partition, state formation, depression and war. The course goes on to examine the emergence of contemporary Ireland through the crosshairs of ‘the Troubles’, Europeanization, secularization and neoliberal globalization since the 1960s, tracing struggles for civil rights, gender equality and constitutional change up to the recent crises of the 2008 crash, Brexit and Covid-19.

Colloquium | 4 points
Thomas Truxes | Mon, Wed, 11:00AM-12:15PM
In Person | 1 Wash Mews (Ireland House) Room 102

This course will sort out the myths and realities of the “Golden Age of Piracy.” The emergence of Spain as a political and economic superpower in the early sixteenth century bred waves of French, English, and Dutch interlopers, contraband slave traders, seaborne raiders, freebooters, and privateers eager to thwart her attempt at hegemony and expropriate her wealth. Their success gave rise to a multi-national and cross-cultural underworld of violence and crime on the high seas that flourished nearly unchecked from the mid-seventeenth century until its suppression in the early decades of the eighteenth century. The response of the early modern world to piracy and buccaneering is embedded in the “Law of Nations” and the “Law of the Sea,” progenitors of modern international law. Participants in this course will engage a rich body of primary and secondary historical sources to reconstruct and interpret the multiple contexts within which piracy and buccaneering operated.

Lecture | 4 points
Thomas Truxes | Mon, Wed, 12:30PM-1:45PM
In Person | 1 Wash Mews (Ireland House) Room 102

Eighteenth century Ireland remained calm under a repressive penal code that deprived the Roman Catholic majority access to political power. By the 1720s, the seeds of Irish nationalism had been planted by the ruling Anglo-Irish minority as it challenged British economic and political dominance over Ireland. Emboldened by political rhetoric imported from America in the 1760s and 1770s, Ireland was convulsed, leading to a new constitutional relationship with Great Britain, but there was little change in the status of Irish Catholics. News of the French Revolution gave rise to a radical movement in Ireland that would settle for nothing less than full civil rights for Catholics and the establishment of an Irish Republic. The government’s bloody suppression of the United Irishmen in 1798, passage of the Act of Union in 1800, and the legacy of Robert Emmet’s abortive rising in 1803 colored Ireland’s political agenda for more than a century.

Seminar | 4 points
John Waters | Tue, Thu, 9:30AM-10:45AM
In Person | 1 Wash Mews (Ireland House) Room 101

Covers the tumultuous period from the fall of Charles Stuart Parnell, through the Easter Rising in 1916, and into the early years of national government in the 1930s. Readings in various genres (poetry, short story, novel, drama). Writers may include Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, Lady Gregory, John Millington Synge, Sean O’Casey, Samuel Beckett, and Flann O’Brien.

Lecture | 4 points
Sarah Waidler | Tue, Thu, 11:00AM-12:15PM
In Person | 1 Wash Mews (Ireland House) Room 101

SAME AS MEDI-UA 800, ENGL-UA 717, COLIT-UA 825 AND FREN-UA 813. The legend of King Arthur has continued to fascinate audiences from the early medieval period until the modern day. But was there a real Arthur? How did his story begin and how did it grow? Why did he become such an iconic hero? This course will search for the roots of the legend of the famous king as a hero in medieval Wales and look at its development, plotting the many depictions of its main character from villain to tragic hero. We will also explore the origins of his companions, with particular emphasis on the origins of the wizard Merlin. From there, we will travel across the sea to Ireland and examine how the legend developed, to what extent it took on elements of Irish mythology and how the Celtic Arthur compared with that of the continental Romances. Students will be encouraged to investigate such elements as the legend’s interpretation of Christianity and the pagan past, the depiction of ‘magic’ and ‘miracles’ within the story and the role of gender in medieval writing. In assessing the creation of the Arthurian legend, this course will delve into medieval understandings of history, the construction of identity and the concept of the ‘hero’ in Celtic literature and give students a grounding in critical thinking and how to approach historical texts.

Seminar | 4 points
David Forgacs | Tue, Thu, 12:30PM-1:45PM
In Person | 24 W 12 St (Casa Italiana) Room 306

The 1960s and 70s in Italy saw an eruption of protest across a wide social spectrum, from workers and students to women and gay men, and against dysfunctional or oppressive institutions, from schools to factories to prisons and mental asylums. What caused these protests and why did they take such radical and sometimes violent forms? Why was Italy considered a terrorist danger zone by some observers and a laboratory of political creativity by others? This course examines a cross-section of protest movements through the close study of documents in translation, as well as visual and sound documents: photographs, nonfiction films and music.

Seminar | 4 points
Ida Caiazza | Mon, Wed, 11:00AM-12:15PM
In Person | 24 W 12 St (Casa Italiana) Room 203

What defines the roles and identities of women and men within a given society? How do men and women experience love, sex, and attraction? How do they perceive and construct their gendered selves-in-love? What happens when they venture beyond the binary conceptualization of gender and sexuality? These questions resonate strongly in our modern world, yet they held great significance during the Early Modern period, albeit explored through different terminology and mentalities. In Renaissance Italy -- a context characterized by relative freedom of thought and expression, where women intellectuals were aware of being an intellectual community -- writers and thinkers identifying with different genders and sexual orientations explored these issues in literature, art, philosophical and religious discourses. This course explores these themes in the broader context of the European tradition, through historical reconstructions (for instance about the lesbian nun Benedetta Carlini) and the works of writers like Sappho, Plato, Aristotle, Virgil, Abelard and Heloise, the troubadours, Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Ludovico Ariosto, Vittoria Colonna, Gaspara Stampa, Giulia Bigolina, Pietro Aretino.

Seminar | 4 points
Joseph Perna | Mon, Wed, 3:30PM-4:45PM
In Person | 24 W 12 St (Casa Italiana) Room 306

What can fiction teach us about environmental change? Which features of the landscape does it aim to describe, transfigure, or blot out? This course explores Italo Calvino’s enduring investment in landscapes both real and imagined, from the hills above Sanremo to the fractured terrain of Italy’s industrial cities. We’ll engage his distinctive blend of realism, fable, and romance to consider new ways of coming to terms with environmental change and its multiple timelines; we’ll also explore Calvino’s links to writers in France and Latin America, his legacy on readers today, and his relationship to worlds far beyond our own.

Seminar | 4 points
Isabella Livorni | Mon, Wed, 12:30PM-1:45PM
In Person | 24 W 12 St (Casa Italiana) Room 203

This seminar explores Blackness in Italian history and contemporary culture, from the Renaissance to Black Lives Matter. Through a wide-ranging examination of films, novels, monuments, music, visual art, and nonfiction essays, we will examine questions of race, citizenship, immigration, and national identity in Italy. This course will spotlight the contributions of Black writers, artists, athletes, filmmakers, and musicians to contemporary Italian culture, from Spike Lee to Mario Balotelli. We will also consider how Black Italians relate to Black citizens in other national contexts (particularly the United States). Course readings will include works by Igiaba Scego, Ubah Cristina Ali Farah, and Djarah Kan, among others. This course will be taught in English. No prior knowledge of Italian is necessary.

Seminar | 4 points
Maria Ardizzone | Mon, Wed, 2:00PM-3:15PM
In Person | 24 W 12 St (Casa Italiana) Room 203

Identical to MEDI-UA 269 The Divine Comedy is a very long poem traditionally judged to be one of the most important in Western culture. At the center of the poem is the human being, his condition in the after life and his punishment or reward. Taken literally, the theme is the state of the souls after the death. But allegorically, the true subject is moral life and thus the torments of the sins themselves or the enjoyment of a happy and saintly life. Since the beginning of its circulation the Divine Comedy has been seen as a text to be read in context, that is in light of the cultural tradition Dante was channelling and interpreting. This course proposes a reading of Dante's Commedia, considered in light of the ancient and medieval idea of learning. The objective of the course is to familiarize students with one of the most important author of Western culture. Through Dante's texts, students will gain a perspective on the Biblical, Christian, and Classical traditions as well as on the historical, literary, philosophical context of medieval Europe.

Seminar | 4 points
Nicola Cipani | Tue, Thu, 2:00PM-3:15PM
In Person | 24 W 12 St (Casa Italiana) Room 203

This course examines a variety of sound artifacts and sound related texts from the period between WWI and the 70s — between the early noise machines of the Futurists and the experiments of maverick singer Demetrio Stratos. Yet the focus will not be exclusively on music proper: we will examine sound in a range of manifestations and contexts — propaganda, magic-religious rituals, oral poetry, folklore, commercial sound design, prison songs, soundtracks, etc. The course will touch upon issues such as the relationship between music and other arts; the development of Italian media; Fascist sound politics; prison songs; the discussion on technology for sound production/ consumption in Italian cultural circles; the survival of (largely non-textual) oral-aural art forms. The course is in English, no Italian required.

Seminar | 4 points
Laura Bresciani | Tue, Thu, 12:30PM-1:45PM
In Person | 181 Mercer St (Paulson Center) Room 241

Italian identity, culture, and economy remain deeply connected to fashion as both an institution and industry. Examines how fashion played a key role in the construction of national style and courtly life from the Middle Ages and Renaissance to the twentieth-century design houses, which not only reshaped commercial and aesthetic trends, but also solidified Italy’s association with post-war design culture more broadly.

Seminar | 4 points
Stefano Albertini | Mon, Wed, 9:30AM-10:45AM
In Person | 24 W 12 St (Casa Italiana) Room AUD

Studies representation of Italian history through the medium of film from ancient Rome through the Risorgimento. Issues to be covered throughout include the use of filmic history as a means of forging national identity.

Seminar | 4 points
Anja Jauernig | Tue, Thu 11.00AM - 12.15PM
In Person | 5 Washington Pl, Room 101

Examines some of the most important philosophical ideas and developments in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe. Covers some of the major writings of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, and Hume, and concludes with a brief examination of some aspects of Kant’s philosophy. (Kant is examined in more detail in PHIL-UA 30.) May also include writings of Hobbes, Malebranche, Elisabeth of Bohemia, Conway, Berkeley, and Shepherd, among others.

Seminar | 4 points
Gwyneth McClendon | Mon, Wed 9.30AM - 10.45AM
In Person | 36 E 8Street (Cantor Film Center), Room 102

Offered every semester. 4 points. Major concepts, approaches, problems, and literature in the field of comparative politics. Methodology of comparative politics, the classical theories, and the more recent behavioral revolution. Reviews personality, social structure, socialization, political culture, and political parties. Major approaches such as group theory, structural-functionalism, systems analysis, and communications theory and evaluation of the relevance of political ideology; national character; elite and class analysis; and problems of conflict, violence, and internal war.

Seminar | 4 points
Maxwell Rahsaan | Tue, Thu 9.30AM - 10.45AM
In Person | 40 W 4 Street (Tisch Hall), Room LC1

Seminar | 4 points
Peter Meineck | Tue, Thu 12.30PM - 1.45PM
In Person | 19 Universtiy Pl, Room 102

Discusses the myths and legends of Greek mythology and the gods, demigods, heroes, nymphs, monsters, and everyday mortals who played out their parts in this mythology. Begins with creation, as vividly described by Hesiod in the Theogony, and ends with the great Trojan War and the return of the Greek heroes. Special emphasis on the return of Odysseus, as related by Homer in the Odyssey.

Intro to Environmental Humanities.
Marxism & Culture.
Revolution in History: Franc, Russia, Iran.
Russian and Soviet Queer Culture.
The Soviet Union.
Ukrainian Avant-Garde Cinema & Literature.

Note: Information and details for each specific topic can be found on Albert Course Search.

Seminar | 4 points
Anne Lounsbery | Tue, Thu 2.00PM - 3.15PM
In Person | 60 5th Ave, Room C10

Formerly Russian Literature in Translation I. Offered in the fall. 4 points. A survey of the Russian literature of the first half of the 19th century, from romanticism to the beginning of realism. The reading list includes major works by Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, and Dostoevsky. All works are read in translation.

Seminar | 4 points
Ilya Kliger | Mon, Wed 4.55PM - 6.10PM
In Person | 194 Mercer Street, Room 304

This course examines novels and shorter texts by Lev Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky in the context of Russian history and culture. Additional topics include: modernity and the rise of the novel; philosophy of history; theory and history of the novel; literature and social critique; principles and limits of literary representation. Alongside a selection of novels and contemporaneous critical and theoretical texts, we will discuss contemporary and more current theories of literature, culture, and representation. Readings and discussions in English. Willingness to read a lot and participate in discussion required. No prior background in Russian literature and culture required.