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Visual & Cultural Studies Course Offerings
Fall 2009
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Critical Theory Courses | Visual Studies Courses | Electives
VCS COLOQUIUM - J. Saab
AH 583/ CRN 10995 - W 0900-1200
CLT 462/CRN 33741 Morey 506
The Colloquium introduces students in the Visual and Cultural Studies Program to aspects of the histories, theories, and methodologies of our field of study. We proceed in three ways: First, we read and discuss together a series of texts on and in visual and cultural studies. Second, various faculty members in the program conduct sessions in their areas of expertise based on readings that they select for us. And third, each student presents his or her own work to the colloquium. For this final part, it is important that students engage with visual and cultural studies models and provide relevant readings to other members of the colloquium.
Core Critical and Cultural Theory Courses
DANCE, ART AND FILM - D. Crimp
AH 511/ CRN 94918 - M 1650-1930
FMS 508/CRN 94936 - Morey 205
Screenings - T - 1525
This course explores relations among dance, art, and film at significant moments in the 20th and 21st centuries. We will study instances in which the forms are particularly closely aligned, including the famous productions by artists such as Gontcharova, Picasso, and Matisse, for Diaghilevs Ballets Russes; Martha Grahams partnership with Isamu Noguchi; and Merce Cunninghams work with Robert Rauschenberg. We will also look simply at how dance is filmed or how dance uses film. The course will concentrate on two figures of the postwar American avant-garde: Merce Cunningham and Yvonne Rainer. Cunninghams dances choreographed for film in collaboration with film- and video-makers and Rainers move from choreography to filmmaking and eventually to hybrids of the two will constitute the core of the course.
ARCHITECTURE,PHOTOGRAPHY,MODERNISM/POST-MODERNISM- D. Crimp
AH 513/CRN 95060 - W 1400-1640
Morey 506
The subject of this course is inspired by a series of photographs commissioned from Hiroshi Sugimoto for the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Arts exhibition At the End of the Century: On Hundred Years of Architecture. Sugimotos photographs show canonical works of modern architecture shot out of focus, reduced to both icon and phantom. In the seminar we will consider the changing relations between photography and architecturebetween image and space, between picture and objectfrom the advent of modernism to the present. We will look at these relations in the New Objectivity and the New Vision, Surrealism, the International Style, Mid-Century Modern, and we will end by considering the uses of the photography of architecture in Conceptual art and the fascination with modernist architecture in contemporary photographic work. We will read critical studies of modernist architecture and photography and plot the relations between these discourses and practices.
VISUAL CULTURE OF HERITAGE & IDENTITY - J. Berlo
AH 585/CRN 11022 - M 1400-1640
HIS 472/CRN 95135 - Morey 506
Cultural critic Stuart Hall has observed that Heritage is a discursive practice. It is one of the ways in which the nation slowly constructs for itself a sort of collective social memory. In this upper level seminar, we will look at case studies of how people (through the collectivities of gender, ethnicity, race, or nation) construct visual narratives about the past. Among the topics for consideration are Holocaust memorials, Native American and Polynesian museums and cultural centers, African American quilt histories, and even individual artists projects of the last few decades (Judy Chicago, Fred Wilson, Silvia Gruner, José Bedia, and Jolene Rickard, among others). We will see how various constituencies have borrowed from what Arjun Appadurai has called a warehouse of cultural scenarios in order to construct a useable past that supplies what is needed in the present, irrespective of its relationship to the verifiable realities of the past. Readings will be drawn principally from the disciplines of history, anthropology, cultural studies, and art criticism. Juniors and Seniors in Art History, Anthropology and History, as well as graduate students, will have preference in registering for this course. Familiarity with the language and theoretical concerns of cultural studies or anthropology would be helpful.
POE, WHITMAN, DICKINSON - J. Michael
ENG 430/CRN 95913 - MW 1400-1515
Morey 502
In this class we will read widely in the writings by these three crucial figures in American nineteenth-century literature. We will relate their work to their cultural and historical moment, and also consider how they become founding figures both in an American literary and poetic tradition and also in the transatlantic development of modernism.
CHINESE CINEMAS - G. Niu
ENG 462/CRN 49955 - TR 1400-1515
Gavet 310
Screenings T 1940
The course examines diasporic Chinese cinemas from the People's Republic of China (PRC), the Republic of China on Taiwan (ROC), Hong Kong (HK), and perhaps even the U.S. and Canada , from the 1960s to the present. We will pay special attention to the migrations of individuals (actors, actresses, directors, cinematographers, and others) and to texts (the films and in some cases television programs). We will cover a wide variety of genres, including epic, martial arts, action, thriller, comedy, and drama. The majority of our films are in Mandarin Chinese and all are subtitled in English. Some experience with film studies, especially world cinema, and Chinese history will be helpful but not required. Outside screenings of films are required. Applicable English cluster: Media, Culture, and Communication. Not open to students who took Eng 267, Topics in Media Studies: Chinese Cinemas, in fall 2004.
PSYCHOANALYSIS & LITERATURE - T. DiPiero
FR 475/CRN 97136 - TR 1400-1515
CLT 481B/CRN 97120 - Morey 402
How does literature "think," and what sorts of things does it think about? How do we decide what it means, and why are so many literary texts about love, death, and/or people finding out about who they are? Reading literature with the aid of psychoanalytic theory, we will discuss the formation of subjectivity, perspective, the gaze, and love and death, and we will investigate how art and literature can communicate things that no other form of language can. We will read works by Henry James, Edgar Allan Poe, Jean-Paul Sartre, Julia Kristeva, Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, and Salavoj Zizek, among others.
SEX & GENDER IN AMERICAN CITY - V. Wolcott
HIS 473/CRN 379 - T 1400-1640
WST 473/CRN 95398 - Lattimore 540
This course will explore the role of gender and sexuality in American cities from the nineteenth century to the present. Through intensive reading and a research paper we will explore how gender and sexuality shaped the urban environment in the arenas of labor, politics, everyday life, and the built environment. We will also examine how the structures and cultures of American cities prescribed normative gender and sex roles on urban residents.
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Core Visual Studies Courses
THE SOCIAL USES OF MEDIA: ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON MEDIA IN GLOBAL 7 LOCAL CONTEXT - E. K im
ANT 425/CRN 13118 - TR 1105-1220
Meliora 205
This course introduces students to the study of media from an anthropological perspective. We will examine constructions of media as objects of social scientific analysis, as both textual artifacts and social practice. Questions that guide the course are, What is "the media"? How have recent transformations in global capital and communications technology altered how we consume, analyze and produce media? What can the study of media tell us about social life and the imagination? We will seek to understand the medias role in producing national and transnational public spheres, focusing on a range of media formations, from multinational corporate structures to indigenous and diasporic productions, to question media's power to shape subjectivities and conceptions of cultural difference. We will examine print journalism, television, film, radio, advertising, and visual art in both local and global contexts. Students will be encouraged to incorporate media analysis and media production in their own ethnographic projects.
CONTEMPORARY FRENCH FILM - S. W illis
AH 483/CRN 96903 - MW 1400-1515
CLT 411D/CRN 96956 - RRLib 428
FR 483/CRN 96930 - Screening – T 1940-2200
Through close analysis of popular film, this course will explore contemporary French culture as it reworks national identity. Focusing on changing definitions of "Frenchness" we will examine its articulations with shifting conceptions of tradition, of the popular, and of the nation. We will read central cultural conflicts around identity and difference in the context of the emergent European economic community , as well as the specifically French context of "immigration" and "assimilation." Of particular interest, for our purposes, will be comparative analysis of French and US popular discourses on social issues involving sexuality and gender, race, ethnicity, and "multiculturalism." Films will include works by Bertrand Blier, Luc Bresson, Andre Techine, Cyril Collard [SAVAGE NIGHTS], Mathieu Kassovitz, Claire Denis, Francois Ozon, Ahmed Bouchaala [KRIM], Karim Dridi [Bye-Bye] as well as recent works by such widely known auteurs as Claude Chabrol and Jean-Luc Godard. Attendance at a weekly film screening will be required.
ART AND IMITATION: MIMESIS AND THE ORIGINS OF MODERN PICTURING IN ART & CULTURE - P. Duro
AH 508/CRN 10978 - F 1000-1250
Morey 506
This seminar course will address the issue of imitation and mimesis through the consideration of key texts from antiquity to the present. Texts will include the foundational philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, the many theorists of literature and art of the sixteen and seventeenth-centuries who wrote on imitation, and the reaction against imitation in modern art. Both graduate and undergraduate students will have the opportunity to select a topic related to their own interests and develop it into a research paper, graduate students will in addition present their paper in class.
DANCE, ART AND FILM - D. Crimp
AH511/CRN 94918 - M 1650-1930
FMS 508/CRN 94936 - Morey 205
Screenings - T - 1525
This course explores relations among dance, art, and film at significant moments in the 20th and 21st centuries. We will study instances in which the forms are particularly closely aligned, including the famous productions by artists such as Gontcharova, Picasso, and Matisse, for Diaghilevs Ballets Russes; Martha Grahams partnership with Isamu Noguchi; and Merce Cunninghams work with Robert Rauschenberg. We will also look simply at how dance is filmed or how dance uses film. The course will concentrate on two figures of the postwar American avant-garde: Merce Cunningham and Yvonne Rainer. Cunninghams dances choreographed for film in collaboration with film- and video-makers and Rainers move from choreography to filmmaking and eventually to hybrids of the two will constitute the core of the course.
ARCHITECTURE,PHOTOGRAPHY,MODERNISM/POST-MODERNISM - D. Crimp
AH 513/CRN 95060- W 1400-1640
Morey 506
The subject of this course is inspired by a series of photographs commissioned from Hiroshi Sugimoto for the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Arts exhibition At the End of the Century: On Hundred Years of Architecture. Sugimotos photographs show canonical works of modern architecture shot out of focus, reduced to both icon and phantom. In the seminar we will consider the changing relations between photography and architecture between image and space, between picture and object from the advent of modernism to the present. We will look at these relations in the New Objectivity and the New Vision, Surrealism, the International Style, Mid-Century Modern, and we will end by considering the uses of the photography of architecture in Conceptual art and the fascination with modernist architecture in contemporary photographic work. We will read critical studies of modernist architecture and photography and plot the relations between these discourses and practices.
SENIOR SEMINAR: ART AND CATASTROPHE - R. Haidu
AH 598/ CRN 11296 R 1525-1805
Morey 506
This seminar focuses on art's role in relation to catastrophes both man-made and natural. We examine art that responds directly to political and social catastrophe as well as art made in the shadow of wars or during periods of political and social repression. We will discuss readings that range from Stephen Eisenman's recent book "The Abu Ghraib Effect," Susan Sontag's "Regarding the Pain of Others," and Ariella Azoulay's "Death's Showcase: The Power of Image in Contemporary Democracy"three books that focus particularly on photography and its social rolesto Mark Godfrey's study of Abstract Expressionism, "Abstraction and the Holocaust" and Eyal Weizman's study of the relationship between military planning and urban and architectural planning in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
VISUAL CULTURE OF HERITAGE & IDENTITY - J. Berlo
AH 585/ CRN 11022 - M 1400-1640
HIS 472/CRN 95135 - Morey 506
Cultural critic Stuart Hall has observed that Heritage is a discursive practice. It is one of the ways in which the nation slowly constructs for itself a sort of collective social memory. In this upper level seminar, we will look at case studies of how people (through the collectivities of gender, ethnicity, race, or nation) construct visual narratives about the past. Among the topics for consideration are Holocaust memorials, Native American and Polynesian museums and cultural centers, African American quilt histories, and even individual artists projects of the last few decades (Judy Chicago, Fred Wilson, Silvia Gruner, José Bedia, and Jolene Rickard, among others). We will see how various constituencies have borrowed from what Arjun Appadurai has called a warehouse of cultural scenarios in order to construct a useable past that supplies what is needed in the present, irrespective of its relationship to the verifiable realities of the past. Readings will be drawn principally from the disciplines of history, anthropology, cultural studies, and art criticism. Juniors and Seniors in Art History, Anthropology and History, as well as graduate students, will have preference in registering for this course. Familiarity with the language and theoretical concerns of cultural studies or anthropology would be helpful.
HISTORY OF JAPANESE CINEMA - J. Bernardi
CLT 414A/CRN 33693 - TR 1525-1640
RRLIB 428
A survey of Japanese cinema since its origins, this course examines the major issues, trends and moments that make up its history. Content varies according to the particular timespan offered (origins to 1960s or origins to present), but significant topics addressed include: silent film and popular culture; the import market and its influence; prewar, wartime and postwar censorship; popular genres; animation; the early international festival circuit; the art film and New Wave; and patterns of global distribution and exchange. Course taught in English (additional instruction in Japanese available for majors).
FILM HISTORY: 1959-PRESENT - G. Niu
ENG 457/CRN 49949 - TR 1105-1220
Morey 506
Screenings – M 1940
This course will explore the developments in world cinema - industrial, technological, social and political - in the second half of the sound period (1959 to the present). What brought about the collapse of the Hollywood studio system? What's new about the French New Wave? What do we mean by "Third Cinema"? How do different national cinemas influence each other? Requirements: mandatory weekly screenings, participation in class discussions, weekly film journals, and three take-home exams. Applicable English clusters: Modern and Contemporary Literature; Media, Culture, and Communication.
POPULAR FILM GENRE: HORROR FILM - J. Middleton
ENG 480/CRN 94888 - MW 1525-1640
Meliora 224
RESEARCH SEMINAR. This course examines major critical issues surrounding the horror genre, through close study of Classical Hollywood, post-Classical, and international horror films, and readings in critical theory. Issues to be explored include boundary transgression and bodily abjection in the construction of the horror monster; gender, pregnancy, and the monstrous feminine; social Otherness (race, class, sexuality) as monstrosity; the figure of the serial killer and the shift from classic to modern horror; the grotesque and the blending of comedy and horror in the zombie film; international horror (especially Japan) and cross-cultural influences with Hollywood. As a research seminar, the course will involve the development of a substantial research project.
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Electives
WOMEN AS IMAGE AND TEXT - G. Seiberling
AH 410/CRN 94963 - TR 1525-1640
Morey 205
Feminist art historians have changed the way we think about images of women, works by women artists, and the very notion of artistic genius. This course will investigate the ways in which visual images of women participate with other cultural and social factors in the construction of the idea of woman. It will look at types and conventions in works by male and female artists, as well as in anonymous images and advertising from different periods, with concentration on the 19th and 20th centuries.
CULTURAL TOURISM - G. Seiberling
AH 460/CRN 94991 - TR 1230-1345
Morey 506
Tourism is a phenomenon in which art, money, media, colonialism, and ideas about culture come together. From religious pilgrimages to study abroad or the contemporary urbanite's search for contact with exotic cultures, journeys to unfamiliar places have served many purposes. This seminar will present students with varied perspectives and methodologies through discussion of readings drawn from different fields, and will consider tourism in the past, looking at phenomena such as medieval pilgrimages or the Grand Tour in the 18th century, and the present, such as the shaping of the Other in Western eyes, or the implications of new media. Students' research projects will connect subject matter drawn from their own interests with the idea of tourism, taken in its broadest sense. When feasible, resources at local museums and archives will be tapped.
TRADITIONAL JAPANESE CULTURE - D. Pollack
CLT 408A/CRN 97062 - TR 1650-1805
Lattimore 210
An overview of Japan's traditional culture through the most prominent examples of it visual, literary, and performing arts, with attention to the social contexts of aesthetic experience and to ideas of a "national culture." Taught in English, additional work available in Japanese where appropriate.
NAPOLEON IMAGE, MYTH, HISTORY - R. Doran
CLT 466/CRN 96882 - MW 1525-1640
Meliora 221
With the exception of Jesus Christ, no historical personage has been more written about, or been the subject of more iconic portrayals, than Napoleon Bonaparte. This course examines the image of Napoleon at the intersection of myth and history, for Napoleon attempts to write his own history as myth. Literary accounts of Bourienne, Chateaubriand, Stendhal, Hugo, Dumas, Tolstoy, and Scott. Pictorial representations by David, Gros, Géricault. Abel Gance's classic silent epic Napoleon (1927), Guitry's Napoleon (1955), as well as other cinematic treatments. Modern historical treatments by Cole, Englund, Bell . Conducted in English.
STUDIES IN TRANSLATION - C. Schaefer
CLT 487/CRN 33770 - TR 1230-1345
ENG 487/CRN 50034 - Latt 401
This course will introduce students to the theoretical backgrounds, practical challenges, and creative activity of literary translation. We will survey appropriate theories of language and communication including semiotics, post-structuralism, pragmatics, discourse analysis, and cognitive linguistics. We will consider varied and conflicting descriptions by translators of what it is they believe they are doing and what they hope to accomplish by doing it; and we will study specific translations into English from a variety of sources in order to investigate the strategies and choices translators make and the implication of those choices for our developing sense of what kinds of texts translations actually are. Finally, students will, in consultation with the instructor or with another qualified faculty member, undertake exercises in translation of their own. By the end of this class each student should have a working knowledge of both the critical backgrounds and the artistic potentials of translation.
SHAKESPEARE - K. Gross
ENG 410/CRN 95895 - TR 0940-1055
Morey 525
The course will explore the full range of Shakespeare's theater, including history plays, comedy, tragedy, and romance. We will be approaching the plays from many angles, looking at their extravagant language, the movement and structure of their plots, their invention of complex, conflicted human psyches, their self-conscious theatricality, as well as their ways of joining together play and earnest, tragic and comic tonalties. Well be probing the plays fascination with madness and delusion, their use of ghosts, witchcraft, and magic, and their penetrating explorations of human history and politics. Lectures will consider Shakespeare both in his own time and in ours, in order to understand why his work still speaks to us so powerfully, why modern writers and directors often cannot get Shakespeare out of their heads. The reading list will include Romeo and Juliet, Richard II, Twelfth Night, The Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Coriolanus, Antony and Cleopatra, and The Winter's Tale. Course Work: two shorter and one longer essay and a final examination. Also fulfills pre-1800 requirement for the English major. Applicable English Clusters: Great Books, Great Authors; Plays, Playwrights, and Theater.
EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE - J. Glover
ENG 418/CRN 95931 - TR 1650-1805
Morey 205
This course surveys the emergence of American literary culture, with a special emphasis on the relationship between print and other forms of media. We will consider a broad range of American writing from this period, from the jeremiads of English Puritan reformers to the literature of the American revolution. Our literary readings will range from sermons and captivity narratives to canonical classics like Franklins Autobiography, yet along the way, we will also consider a wide range of media, from epitaphs, broadsides, and songs to more ephemeral forms of communication like rumors and gossip, natural soundscapes, and animal noises. Topics of discussion will include oral culture, magic and sorcery, cross-cultural interaction, and political revolution.
19 TH CENTURY BRITISH NOVEL - S. Rajan
ENG 422/CRN 95959 - TR 0940-1055
Morey 501
This course introduces students to some of the major novelists in nineteenth-century British literature. While the course provides broad coverage of the nineteenth-century British novel, our discussion of these select nineteenth-century novels will be guided by the theme of possession. What is the connection, this course asks, between marriage and romance and other forms of possession such as land, money, or things, in the nineteenth- century British novel? In addressing this question, we will discuss how narrative devices like the marriage-plot offer vehicles for novelists such as Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens, and George Eliot to explore the linkages between romance, sexuality, property, and capitalism. While possession may be a major theme underlying the courses structure, we will also discuss other topics such as nationalism, the woman question and the problem of separate spheres, changes in class structure, and British imperialism. In addition to addressing thematic and political issues, students will also have an opportunity to analyze the aesthetic dimensions of literary texts, paying attention to the techniques writers employ as they shape and experiment with forms of the novel.
20 TH CENTURY DRAMA - Schottenfeld
ENG 435/CRN 95986 - MW 1230-1345
Morey 205
A study and exploration of the major movements of twentieth- century drama naturalism, expressionism, surrealism, epic theater, absurdism. Possible author list: Anton Chekhov, Eugene ONeill, Tennessee Williams, Bertolt Brecht, Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Edward Albee, David Mamet, Caryl Churchill, August Wilson, Sam Shepard, Paula Vogel, Suzan-Lori Parks, Yasmina Reza.
AUTHORS, EDITORS & LITERATURE MARKETPLACE - B. London
ENG 442/CRN 96006 - MW 1230-1345
Morey 402
What is an author? This course begins with the premise that the answer to this question is anything but self-evident. How does the literary ideal of the author as solitary genius -- as sole creator of a unique, original work of art -- correspond to the actual practices of ordinary writers? And, for that matter, how does it correspond to the actual practice of even the great authors (Shakespeare, for example) it purportedly describes? Was such an ideal ever anything but a myth? What role do editors play in the practice of authorship? When does an editor count as a co-author? How do market factors and modes of publication affect what and how an author writes? How has our understanding of authorship changed in a world of virtual authors and virtual texts? How do we make sense of the journalistic scandals (involving authors, editors, and sources) that seem to have become so prevalent today? What happens when readers become authors, as in zines? For some time now, debates have raged, in both the academy and the popular media, about the nature and practice of authorship. Looking at examples drawn from both literature and journalism, this class will examine a number of sites of these debates: collaborative authorship; ghost writing; editorial theory and practice; forgeries and hoaxes; plagiarism; cult or celebrity authorship; pulp fiction, best-sellerdom, and popular authorship; authorial practices in media other than print (film, electronic and digital media, etc.); vanity presses and on-demand publishing; copyright law; readership and reception. Students will have the opportunity to do original research and pursue case studies of their own choosing.
THE OUTSIDER IN LITERATURE - J. Tucker
ENG 445/CRN 49880 - MW 1230-1345
Morey 506
This course uses literature to analyze social behavior and discursive practice, specifically processes of inclusion and exclusion. How communities are constructed, around what signs and sets of practices, and the role that exclusion plays in defining a community are topics we will explore. What does it mean to belong? To be excluded? And just how stable are these categories? Literature from a variety of traditions, historical periods, and genres will provide examples, case histories, and a vocabulary with which such social and discursive phenomena can be discussed. Texts include Beowulf, John Gardner's Grendel, Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Seamus Heaney's The Cure at Troy , Amin Maalouf's In the Name of Identity, Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, Peter Shaffer's Equus , Virginia Woolf's A Room of Ones Own, Richard Wright's Black Boy, and more.
THE FILMS OF MARTIN SCORSESE - G. Grella
ENG 460/CRN 49961 - R 1815-2200
Dewey 2162
The course will deal with a selection of films directed (and some also written) by the highly regarded contemporary director, Martin Scorsese. We will proceed in roughly chronological order, examining the growth and development of his career, his characteristic manner and matter, his successes and failures. We will also discuss the concept of the auteur as it applies to his work. Applicable English cluster: Media, Culture, and Communication.
CHANGING GENRES OF EROTICA - D. Bleich
ENG 467/CRN 96064 - TR 0940-1055
Morey 524
Recently the large-scale dissemination of erotic and pornographic literature and film has begun to affect the majority of the population in the West. There are two main issues in the course:1) the history of the changing genres of erotica and the social changes taking place because of its wide dissemination; and 2) the proposition that if societies were different little harm and much good would come from the inclusion of erotica in peoples reading and viewing habits: erotic materials, by removing sex from the realm of the forbidden and viewing it as a species of everyday life, can contribute to the education of both sexes and people of all sexual tastes and preferences. Readings in the course will concentrate on classical, early modern, enlightenment, and contemporary erotica, with attention to the contemporary debates about pornography begun by the activism of MacKinnon and Dworkin. Of particular interest in this critique is the claim that erotic materials encourage the practice of violence against women and children, and help to promote a culture dependent on the use of force and violence. The course reviews the current debate on pornography and sexually explicit language as a context for viewing the history of the more familiar erotic materials from classical times, to the Renaissance and 18th century, to D.H.Lawrence, and Erica Jong. Film showings Thursday evenings 7-10.
ROBIN HOOD: MEDIA CREATURE - T. Hahn
ENG 480/CRN 50026 - MW 1525-1640
Morey 501
RESEARCH SEMINAR. This course, part of the Kauffman Entrepreneurial Program, will address the popularity of the outlaw hero Robin Hood across six centuries and through a variety of media, including oral stories; popular and art songs; manuscripts, broadsheets and ballads; chapbooks and tabloid "lives"; comics, serials, and children's literature; woodcuts, engravings, chromolithographs, and high-end illustrations; silent and sound film, animation, TV series, and video. The course will require shared readings (including writings on media theory and history), but much of the work will entail individual research that will be available to other class members through live discussion and through the computer and website that will constitute the "research lab." Students will be asked to investigate the ways in which Robin Hood reached various in different time periods audiences by examining and/or preparing facsimiles (hard copy, microfilm, digital) of early printed material, tracing out the print and reading history of texts and authors popular in their own time, or by uncovering the production and reception history of commercial films and TV movies and series. These projects will grow partly from students individual interests, and aim to lead to genuine expertise. Each member of the class will be expected to produce several finished projects over the course of the semester. The research, editing, and technological work of the course will proceed in a hands-on and cooperative way; besides the continuing opportunities to share ones specialized knowledge in class, students will ultimately have the chance to make their discoveries available to a wider audience through Robin Hood: A Digital Archive. The development of this website will potentially engage students in website design, market research (ie, who will come if we build this website? with what constituencies in mind should we design it?), and issues of property rights in the private and public domains.
RENAISSANCE DRAMA - R. Kegl
ENG 516/CRN 96485 - W 1000-1240
Morey 403
Description to come.
MODERN POETRY - J. Longenbach
ENG 550/CRN 50391 - M 1400-1640
Morey 403
Description to come.
CONSTRUCTION OF AUTHORSHIP - B. London
ENG 557/CRN 50421 - T 1400-1640
Morey 403
Description to come.
CONTEMPORARY FRENCH CULTURE - C. Kemedjio
FR 404/CRN 52980 - TR 0940-1055
Meliora 205
This course is designed to provide students with a comprehensive view of French Contemporary culture through major trends of French cultural, political, and intellectual life in the recent years. While we cannot study factual representations of French culture, we will attempt to establish a conceptual framework that would help us in the understanding of complex questions such as; What does it mean to be French?, What is France? What is French culture?, etc.
NOVEL IN EUROPE : 1814-1848 - R. Doran
FR 435/CRN 52999 - TR 1525-1640
CLT 451/CRN 33735 - Lattimore 413
This course studies the emergence of historical fiction and realism in the first half of the nineteenth century as a European-wide phenomenon. Through the study of four seminal novels--Scott's Waverly (1814), Manzoni's The Bethrothed (1822/1840), Stendhal's The Red and the Black (1830), and Balzac's Lost Illusions (1837-1843)--we will examine how literary representation as epitomized in the novel coincided with the rise of the bourgeois class as political, social, and economic force. Concepts discussed: Bildungsroman (roman d' apprentissage), mimesis, figuralism, historical consciousness, style, narration. Critiical readings include texts by Erich Auerbach, Georg Lukacs, René Girard, Franco Moretti, Fredric Jameson, and Hayden White.
AMERICAN HEALTH POLICY & POLITICS - T. Brown
HIS 405/CRN 56283 - T 1400-1640
Med Center
This course examines the formation and evolution of American health policy from a political and historical perspective. Concentrating primarily on developments from 1932 to the mid-1990s, readings and seminar discussions focus on political forces and institutions and on historical and cultural contexts. Among the topics covered are periodic campaigns for national health insurance, efforts to rationalize and regionalize health care institutions, the creation of Medicare and Medicaid and the further evolution of these programs, the rise of dominance of economists and economic analysis in the shaping of health policy, incremental and state-based vs. universal and federal initiatives, and the formation and failure of the Clinton administration's health reform agenda.
TOPICS IN MEDIEVAL HISTORY - R. Kaeuper
HIS 450/CRN 95333 - W 1400-1640
RRLib 362
Modern popular ideas of chivalry distort the medieval reality considerably. We will try to understand the original ideals and practices through reading and discussing a combination of medieval chivalric literature and modern scholarly writing.
ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY - S. Weaver
HIS 471/CRN 97298 - R 1400-1640
Meliora 206
This course is an upper-level introduction to the recently bourgeoning field of environmental history. Drawing on both old and new scholarship in the field, and on a variety of primary historical materials, we will study the many ways in which humans have influenced the environments around them and, in turn, how various natural environments have shaped and influenced human societies. Some background in modern history is strongly recommended. The course requirements include weekly reading and discussion and a substantial primary research paper.
SEX & GENDER IN AMERICAN CITY - V. Wolcott
HIS 473/CRN 379 - T 1400-1640
WST 473/CRN 95398 - Lattimore 540
This course will explore the role of gender and sexuality in American cities from the nineteenth century to the present. Through intensive reading and a research paper we will explore how gender and sexuality shaped the urban environment in the arenas of labor, politics, everyday life, and the built environment. We will also examine how the structures and cultures of American cities prescribed normative gender and sex roles on urban residents.
20 TH CENTURY AMERICAN CULTURAL HISTORY - D. Borus
HIS 482/CRN 95410 - M 1400-1640
RRLib 456
This course concentrates on the cultural and intellectual ferment of the first twenty years of the twentieth century spurred by the growing acceptance of the idea that no single principle could account fully for diverse phenomena. In many fields of inquiry, the notion that there were many truths, many values, and many beauties challenged the way of the world. As a result, American cultural and intellectual life featured a sense that the world was not already made, that standards were not firm and fixed, that accepted hierarchies were not always valid, and that contingency and context mattered. Among the fields of inquiry we will address are popular culture, philosophy, political science, psychology, and anthropology.
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