Courses

Column one has the course number and section. Other columns show the course title, days offered, instructor's name, room number, if the course is cross-referenced with another program, and a option to view additional course information in a pop-up window.

The "Crisis" of the Humanities
AS.300.184 (11)

This class will investigate the cliche that the humanities are in "crisis." We will look at the most prominent critiques and defenses of the humanities in public intellectual culture and evaluate them through philosophical accounts of the aims of education. Questions to be explored include: Why study the humanities? What is the place of the humanities within the modern university? And “So, what are you going to do with that?"

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Canceled
  • Seats Available: 30/30
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Documentary Photography
AS.371.303 (21)

In this course, we will explore different genres of documentary photography including: the fine art document, photojournalism, social documentary photography, the photo essay and photography of propaganda. Field trips offer opportunities to work in the field. Students will work on a semester-long photo-documentary project on a subject of their choice. Camera experience is a plus, but not a prerequisite. Students will be loaned a digital SLR for the semester.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 1/10
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Course # (Section) Title Day/Times Instructor Room PosTag(s) Info
AS.300.184 (11)The "Crisis" of the HumanitiesMWF 1:00PM - 4:15PMMccreary, Michael DGilman 208
AS.371.303 (21)Documentary PhotographyMWTh 2:00PM - 5:15PMBerger, Phyllis AMattin Center 204

Column one has the course number and section. Other columns show the course title, days offered, instructor's name, room number, if the course is cross-referenced with another program, and a option to view additional course information in a pop-up window.

Freshman Seminar: How Literature Works: Narrative Imagination from Ancient to Modern Times
AS.300.203 (01)

Is storytelling part of human nature? Do myths and legends have a universal structure? As a bridge between experience and language, narratives inform the way we understand history, gender, politics, emotion, cognition and much more. This course will explore how narratives are composed, how they are experienced, and eventually, how they evolve throughout history. We will be reading a diverse selection of ancient and modern texts, including selections from Plato and Aristotle, the Odyssey, the Hebrew Bible, as well as 19th-and-20th-century authors such as the Brothers Grimm, Gustave Flaubert, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. The second part of the course focuses on philosophical and critical approaches to narrative in arts and media, concluding with the evolving concept of narrative in the digital age. Theoretical readings include selections from Karl Marx, Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida and Judith Butler. All readings will be in English.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 3/12
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Freshman Seminar: Tolstoy's War and Peace
AS.300.237 (01)

Leo Tolstoy’s monumental novel War and Peace, which the author Henry James called “a loose baggy monster,” is a sui generis work of modern literature that offered a response and challenge to the European Realist novel and founded a Russian national myth. We will read the novel in translation, alongside its adaptations into opera, film, and Broadway musical.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 9/15
  • PosTag(s): INST-GLOBAL

Art since 1945
AS.010.209 (01)

Critical survey of developments in the visual arts primarily in Europe and the United States from 1945 to the present, ranging from painting and sculpture to performance, photography, and video, with emphasis on the critical concepts and the aesthetic, social, and historical implications of new forms of artistic production and dissemination. Visits to the BMA and Special Collections.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Waitlist Only
  • Seats Available: 0/19
  • PosTag(s): HART-MODERN

The Holocaust in Film and Literature
AS.211.333 (01)

How has the Holocaust been represented in literature and film? Are there special challenges posed by genocide to the traditions of visual and literary representation? Where does the Holocaust fit in to the array of concerns that the visual arts and literature express? And where do art and literature fit in to the commemoration of communal tragedy and the working through of individual trauma entailed by thinking about and representing the Holocaust? These questions will guide our consideration of a range of texts — nonfiction, novels, poetry — in Yiddish, German, English, French and other languages (including works by Primo Levi and Isaac Bashevis Singer), as well as films from French documentaries to Hollywood blockbusters (including films by Alain Resnais, Claude Lanzmann, and Steven Spielberg). All readings in English.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Canceled
  • Seats Available: 15/15
  • PosTag(s): INST-GLOBAL

Challenge to Painting: Collage, Montage, Assemblage
AS.010.422 (01)

The invention of Cubist collage is generally regarded as a watershed in twentieth-century art. This seminar will examine key junctures in the rapid proliferation and redefinition of collage strategies primarily in Europe and the United States, including but not limited to Futurist “words in liberty”; Dada and Constructivist photomontage; the Surrealist exploration of desire; Situationist "détournement"; and selected varieties of postwar assemblage. Frequent meetings in Special Collections.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 5/8
  • PosTag(s): HART-MODERN

Literature of the Great Recession
AS.215.417 (01)

The Great Recession—sometimes called the financial crisis or the economic crisis of 2008—brought financial markets to a halt and created significant political turmoil across the North Atlantic. But its impact on culture, and literature especially, has often been ignored. This seminar will travel across Europe, from Dublin to Madrid, from London to Reykjavík in order to examine how literature has registered this most recent economic crisis. We will focus on how crisis is narrated and the ways in which literary works have managed to provide a voice for marginalized social, economic, and political demands.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 6/16
  • PosTag(s): GRLL-ENGL, INST-ECON

Philosophical Conceptions of the Infinite
AS.300.315 (01)

What is the infinite? Can we comprehend it? Can we experience it? In this course we will explore various ways in which philosophers in the western tradition have answered questions such as these. In the first half of the semester, we will examine theoretical treatments of the infinite that inform how we understand the fabric of our world, from the ordinary objects around us to more sublime concepts of God, space, time, and mathematics. In the second half, we will turn to arguments in aesthetics and ethics that reveal an interplay between infinity and finitude occurring before our very eyes. Philosophers we will cover include Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Kant, Hegel, Russell, Levinas, and Arendt. Throughout, we will ask such fundamental questions as, what is the starting point of philosophy? what is its methodology? what can it achieve in terms of knowledge? and in terms of practice?

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 3/15
  • PosTag(s): INST-PT

The Contemporary Philosophical Novel
AS.300.309 (01)

What can literature offer to philosophical reflection? Can literature address experiences that evade theoretical philosophy? Or, does fictional writing conflict with rigorous philosophical inquiry? The long-standing separation of philosophy and literature begins when Plato bans poetry and tragedy from the ideal city in the Republic. This seminar focuses on nineteenth and twentieth century thinkers that challenge the predisposition against literature through different attempts to write the “philosophical novel.” In this seminar, we will take seriously the philosophical stakes of literary texts, and investigate how and why literature offers a unique perspective for philosophical reflection. We will read texts by Plato, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Iris Murdoch, and David Foster-Wallace.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 8/18
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Existentialism in Literature and Philosophy
AS.213.374 (01)

This course explores the themes of existentialism, including the meaning of existence, the nature of the self, authenticity and inauthenticity, the inescapability of death, the experience of time, anxiety, freedom and responsibility to others, in literary and philosophical works. It will be examined why these philosophical ideas often seem to demand literary expression, or bear a close relation to literary works. Readings may include writings by Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Heidegger, Rilke, Kafka, Simmel, Jaspers, Buber, Sartre, de Beauvoir, and Camus.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Waitlist Only
  • Seats Available: 0/15
  • PosTag(s): GRLL-ENGL

The Modernist Novel: Mann, Woolf, and Joyce
AS.300.319 (01)

In this course, we will survey the major works of three of the greatest, most relentless innovators of the twentieth century – Thomas Mann, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce – who explored and exploded narrative techniques for depicting what Woolf called the “luminous halo” of life.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 10/19
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Heidegger's Being and Time and the Examined Life
AS.211.332 (01)

This course will explore Heidegger’s Being and Time with attention to such central concepts as Dasein’s unique relation to Being, worldliness, care, authentic and inauthentic existence, attunement, understanding, projection, and being unto death. The first eight weeks will be devoted to a thorough reading of Being and Time and selected critical texts. The last five will consider works of art that expand our understanding of Heidegger’s magnum opus.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 13/15
  • PosTag(s): GRLL-ENGL, GRLL-GERM

Introduction to Narrative Analysis
AS.300.341 (01)

Is storytelling part of human nature? Do myths and legends have a universal structure? What is the relationship between factual and fictional narratives? What role do narratives play in the construction of personal identities? As a bridge between experience and language, narrative informs the way we understand history, gender, politics, emotion, cognition and much more. This course will provide a systematic understanding of how narratives are composed, how they are experienced, and eventually, how they evolve. The first part of the course focuses on ancient and modern approaches to the formal study of narrative elements such as genre, plot, character, narrator and reader. The second part of the course focuses on critical approaches to narrative, such as gender and narrative, social and political critique of narrative, postmodern perspectives on the representation of reality, forms of narrative in other arts and media, and conclude with the evolving concept of narrative in the digital age. Readings include works by Aristotle, Plato, Barthes, Genette, Todorov, Bakhtin, Butler, Derrida and others. Theoretical/analytical texts will be combined with practical exercises on literary and visual excerpts.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Canceled
  • Seats Available: 15/15
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Freshman Seminar:Great Books at Hopkins
AS.360.133 (04)

Freshman Seminar: Students attend lectures by an interdepartmental group of Hopkins faculty and meet for discussion in smaller seminar groups; each of these seminars is led by one of the course faculty. In lectures, panels, multimedia presentations, and curatorial sessions among the University's rare book holdings, we will explore some of the greatest works of the literary and philosophical traditions in Europe and the Americas. Close reading and intensive writing instruction are hallmarks of this course.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 5/15
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Literature of the Everyday
AS.300.429 (01)

The ordinary, the common, the everyday: why does literary realism consider the experiences of the average individual to be worthy of serious contemplation? In this course, we will read closely a set of novels by Flaubert, Mann, Dickens, Eliot, Zola, Tolstoy, and Woolf from the period between 1850 and 1950 in which the development of realism reaches it climax. These novels transform the conventions for the representation of lives of lower and middle class subjects, revealing such lives as capable of prompting reflection upon deep and serious questions of human existence.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 8/15
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Gender and Sexuality Beyond the Global West: Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Art in North Africa and the Middle East
AS.363.329 (01)

This course aims to explore how gender and sexuality is situated in contemporary artistic practices in the geographical Middle East, through concepts of religion, war, revolution, resistance, nation-state, post-colonialism, and neoliberalism, especially as written and observed first-hand by artists, curators and scholars from the Middle East and North Africa region and their diasporas. Every week, under an overarching topic, notions of gender and sexuality will be questioned through works of selected artists across the region, as well as texts that provide the historical, theoretical, sociological and political background.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Canceled
  • Seats Available: 15/15
  • PosTag(s): ISLM-ISLMST

Freshman Seminar: Great Books at Hopkins
AS.360.133 (01)

Freshman Seminar: Students attend lectures by an interdepartmental group of Hopkins faculty and meet for discussion in smaller seminar groups; each of these seminars is led by one of the course faculty. In lectures, panels, multimedia presentations, and curatorial sessions among the University's rare book holdings, we will explore some of the greatest works of the literary and philosophical traditions in Europe and the Americas. Close reading and intensive writing instruction are hallmarks of this course.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Waitlist Only
  • Seats Available: 0/15
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Freshman Seminar: Great Books at Hopkins
AS.360.133 (02)

Freshman Seminar: Students attend lectures by an interdepartmental group of Hopkins faculty and meet for discussion in smaller seminar groups; each of these seminars is led by one of the course faculty. In lectures, panels, multimedia presentations, and curatorial sessions among the University's rare book holdings, we will explore some of the greatest works of the literary and philosophical traditions in Europe and the Americas. Close reading and intensive writing instruction are hallmarks of this course.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Waitlist Only
  • Seats Available: 0/15
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Documentary Photography
AS.371.303 (02)

In this course, we will explore different genres of documentary photography including: the fine art document, photojournalism, social documentary photography, the photo essay and photography of propaganda. Field trips offer opportunities to work in the field. Students will work on a semester-long photo-documentary project on a subject of their choice. Camera experience is a plus, but not a prerequisite. Students will be loaned a digital SLR for the semester.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Approval Required
  • Seats Available: 1/10
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Freshman Seminar: Great Books at Hopkins
AS.360.133 (03)

Freshman Seminar: Students attend lectures by an interdepartmental group of Hopkins faculty and meet for discussion in smaller seminar groups; each of these seminars is led by one of the course faculty. In lectures, panels, multimedia presentations, and curatorial sessions among the University's rare book holdings, we will explore some of the greatest works of the literary and philosophical traditions in Europe and the Americas. Close reading and intensive writing instruction are hallmarks of this course.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Canceled
  • Seats Available: 15/15
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Russian Avant-Garde Cinema
AS.300.366 (01)

Russian cinema was born out of the intense artistic experimentation of the fin-de-siècle avant-garde and developed in a climate of dramatic political and cultural change in the twenties and thirties. While subject to draconian censorship in the Soviet period, it nonetheless engaged in active dialogue with the film industries of Western Europe and America and had a lasting impact on world cinema. This course examines the extraordinary flourishing of avant-garde cinema in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 30s including films by Eisenstein, Vertov, Pudovkin, and Dovzhenko, their theoretical writings, and their far-reaching influence on film and film theory. All readings in English, films subtitled in English.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 9/15
  • PosTag(s): INST-GLOBAL

Introduction to Digital Photography
AS.371.152 (01)

Students learn to use their digital cameras through a variety of documentary, landscape and portrait projects, which will help them develop technical and creative skills. Critiques and slide lectures of historic photographs, which range from postmortem daguerreotypes to postmodern digital imagery, help students develop a personal vision. Students are provided digital SLR cameras and gain proficiency with one-on-one instruction in the field. Basics for print adjustment and output will be covered. Attendance at first class is mandatory. Approval for this course will be considered after enrollment on SIS; no need to email.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Approval Required
  • Seats Available: 0/10
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Photoshop/Digital Darkroom
AS.371.151 (01)

Photoshop is not only the digital darkroom for processing images created with digital cameras; it is also a creative application for making original artwork. In this course, students use Photoshop software as a tool to produce images from a fine art perspective, working on projects that demand creative thinking while gaining technical expertise. Students will make archival prints, have regular critiques, and attend lectures on the history of the manipulated image and its place in culture. We will look at art movements which inspire digital artists, including 19th-century collage, dada, surrealism, and the zeitgeist of Hollywood films. Students must have a digital SLR camera. Prior knowledge of Photoshop is not required. Attendance at first class is mandatory. Approval for this course will be considered after enrollment on SIS; no need to email.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Approval Required
  • Seats Available: 0/10
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Documentary Photography
AS.371.303 (01)

In this course, we will explore different genres of documentary photography including: the fine art document, photojournalism, social documentary photography, the photo essay and photography of propaganda. Field trips offer opportunities to work in the field. Students will work on a semester-long photo-documentary project on a subject of their choice. Camera experience is a plus, but not a prerequisite. Students will be loaned a digital SLR for the semester.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Approval Required
  • Seats Available: 0/10
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Modernities and Comparison
AS.300.425 (01)

Comparative survey of literary modernities in Europe and East Asia (China, Japan, and Korea). We will study works of modern literature as well as critical and philosophical texts from these civilizations in each other’s light. We will, as a working hypothesis, begin our examination by bracketing off the conventional center-periphery (Europe-Asia) scheme and considering literary modernities to be singular and contested, yet mutually resonating attempts at reconstruction, restoration, and revolution vis-à-vis the deconstructive forces of capitalist modernity. Ultimately, we will interrogate how we should understand literary modernities in the plural, as they emerged in distant civilizations. Topics of discussion include decadence, repetition, the trope of the human, ideology, the sublime, ritual, and translation. Readings in Hegel, Nietzsche, Mann, Benjamin, Baudelaire, Proust, Breton, Sōseki, Kobayashi, Wang Guowei, Lu Xun, and Yi Kwangsu. All readings are in English.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 16/18
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Black and White: Digital Darkroom
AS.371.162 (02)

In this digital course, students explore the black-and-white aesthetic. They develop camera skills on numerous field trips and local walks. Students meet frequently for critiques and discussions based on historic and contemporary imagery. Techniques such as high dynamic range, and infrared are covered. Emphasis is on composition, and developing a photographic style with shooting and post processing. Students are encouraged to make work that is meaningful to them and which communicates its intent to their audience. Attendance at first class is mandatory.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Approval Required
  • Seats Available: 8/10
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Black and White: Digital Darkroom
AS.371.162 (01)

In this digital course, students explore the black-and-white aesthetic. They develop camera skills on numerous field trips and local walks. Students meet frequently for critiques and discussions based on historic and contemporary imagery. Techniques such as high dynamic range, and infrared are covered. Emphasis is on composition, and developing a photographic style with shooting and post processing. Students are encouraged to make work that is meaningful to them and which communicates its intent to their audience. Attendance at first class is mandatory.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Approval Required
  • Seats Available: 0/10
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Visual Reality
AS.371.149 (01)

In art, "Realism" is a simulation of visual reality. But art can also simulate alternative realities, those realities or truths which exist only in daydreams or nightmares. In this class, we will learn to explore and create representations of these additional moments of existence. This will require thinking creatively or "outside the box," a useful skill in any field. Using a variety of media, students are asked to solve problems to which there is no one correct answer.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Waitlist Only
  • Seats Available: 0/12
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Course # (Section) Title Day/Times Instructor Room PosTag(s) Info
AS.300.203 (01)Freshman Seminar: How Literature Works: Narrative Imagination from Ancient to Modern TimesT 1:30PM - 4:00PMSirin, HaleMattin Center 161
AS.300.237 (01)Freshman Seminar: Tolstoy's War and PeaceTh 1:30PM - 4:00PMEakin Moss, AnneGilman 208INST-GLOBAL
AS.010.209 (01)Art since 1945TTh 10:30AM - 11:45AMWarnock, MollyGilman 119HART-MODERN
AS.211.333 (01)The Holocaust in Film and LiteratureW 1:30PM - 4:00PMSpinner, Samuel Jacob INST-GLOBAL
AS.010.422 (01)Challenge to Painting: Collage, Montage, AssemblageT 3:00PM - 5:30PMWarnock, MollyGilman 177HART-MODERN
AS.215.417 (01)Literature of the Great RecessionM 3:00PM - 5:30PMSeguin, Becquer DBloomberg 176GRLL-ENGL, INST-ECON
AS.300.315 (01)Philosophical Conceptions of the InfiniteM 1:30PM - 4:00PMHost, Alexander StoltzfusGilman 208INST-PT
AS.300.309 (01)The Contemporary Philosophical NovelTh 1:30PM - 4:00PMLevi, Jacob EzraMudd 26
AS.213.374 (01)Existentialism in Literature and PhilosophyTTh 1:30PM - 2:45PMGosetti, Jennifer AnnaHodson 216GRLL-ENGL
AS.300.319 (01)The Modernist Novel: Mann, Woolf, and JoyceWF 12:00PM - 1:15PMOng, Yi-PingGilman 186
AS.211.332 (01)Heidegger's Being and Time and the Examined LifeMW 4:30PM - 5:45PMTobias, RochelleGilman 381GRLL-ENGL, GRLL-GERM
AS.300.341 (01)Introduction to Narrative AnalysisTTh 2:00PM - 3:15PMSirin, Hale 
AS.360.133 (04)Freshman Seminar:Great Books at HopkinsTTh 12:00PM - 1:15PMReese, MatthewLevering Arellano
AS.300.429 (01)Literature of the EverydayF 1:30PM - 4:00PMOng, Yi-PingGilman 186
AS.363.329 (01)Gender and Sexuality Beyond the Global West: Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Art in North Africa and the Middle EastW 2:00PM - 4:30PMInce, Ezgi ISLM-ISLMST
AS.360.133 (01)Freshman Seminar: Great Books at HopkinsTTh 12:00PM - 1:15PMPatton, ElizabethLevering Arellano
AS.360.133 (02)Freshman Seminar: Great Books at HopkinsTTh 12:00PM - 1:15PMEnder, EvelyneLevering Arellano
AS.371.303 (02)Documentary PhotographyF 2:00PM - 4:50PMBerger, Phyllis AMattin Center 204
AS.360.133 (03)Freshman Seminar: Great Books at HopkinsTTh 12:00PM - 1:15PMNichols, StephenLevering Arellano
AS.300.366 (01)Russian Avant-Garde CinemaTTh 10:30AM - 11:45AMEakin Moss, AnneGilman 208INST-GLOBAL
AS.371.152 (01)Introduction to Digital PhotographyT 10:00AM - 12:50PMEhrenfeld, HowardMattin Center 204
AS.371.151 (01)Photoshop/Digital DarkroomM 10:00AM - 12:50PMEhrenfeld, HowardMattin Center 204
AS.371.303 (01)Documentary PhotographyF 10:00AM - 12:50PMBerger, Phyllis AMattin Center 204
AS.300.425 (01)Modernities and ComparisonT 1:30PM - 4:00PMStaffGilman 208
AS.371.162 (02)Black and White: Digital DarkroomW 2:00PM - 4:50PMBerger, Phyllis AMattin Center 204
AS.371.162 (01)Black and White: Digital DarkroomW 10:00AM - 12:50PMBerger, Phyllis AMattin Center 204
AS.371.149 (01)Visual RealityT 2:00PM - 5:00PMBakker, D.S.Mattin Center 201