Love is mad, love is obsessive, love can be painful or tragic, or an experience to be treasured forever. That's what books have taught us, by giving poetic souls a chance to imagine and develop romantic ideas – on paper. These books have in turn inspired films, or in earlier days, great operas. As a historian of ideas and a specialist of narrative with a keen interest in bodies, illness, and gender, I will explore with you in this First-Year Seminar a few favorite love stories. Each is chosen because it helps us uncover a universe of romantic feelings, often in conflict with social conventions (as in Romeo and Juliet for example). We meet once a week for two and half hours with a break in the middle. This format enables in-depth explorations of our texts, which will often be done in teamwork. We start with reading medium-length books, so be prepared to spend time engrossed in a novel. Later units of the course will involve film and opera. Among the readings for this class: The Legend of Tristan and Isolde, Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther; Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice; Jeanette Winterson's, Written on the Body.

• Days/Times: T 4:15PM - 6:45PM
• Instructor: Ender, Evelyne
• Room: Gilman 134
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/12
• PosTag(s): n/a

A famous, very experienced clinician used the phrase "The Soul of Care," signaling that medicine is not merely about fixing bodies. He wants to remind us that scientific knowledge involves mastery as well as empathy. "Narrative medicine" as this domain is called, assumes that the close study of stories can play a decisive role in preparing doctors for the challenging humanistic aspects of their profession. We focus in this First-Year Seminar on stories connected to medical cases, stories that can take us beyond medical questions to deeper issues connected to the human condition. Our seminar will be centered on discussions, often prepared in teams, based on your attentive close reading and research. The aim is to exercise your observational skills and imagination. What is at stake, medically and humanly speaking, is our capacity to uncover problems, dilemmas, ethical questions woven into texts that take us into the worlds of doctors and patients. Readings will involve a combination of modern and contemporary short stories, some of them more obviously fictional than others, some of them geographically or culturally more remote. Part of our study will also involve one longer text, namely When Breath Becomes Air, by Paul Kalanithi, and a small "anthology" of documents of a preparatory kind. We'll have at least one guest speaker, and also see a film together.

• Days/Times: MW 10:30AM - 11:45AM
• Instructor: Ender, Evelyne
• Room: Gilman 208
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/12
• PosTag(s): n/a

This course offers an introduction to modern European painting. Our point of departure will be Charles Baudelaire’s famous essay, “The Painter of Modern Life” (1863) in which he suggests that painting must engage the tensions that inform everyday life, in all its novelty and banality. We will put this claim to the test by approaching a constellation of key works that unlock different aspects of modern life: freedom and alienation, labor and leisure, metropole and colony, art and life, and the troubled intersections of class, race, and gender. Rather than treating the works we look at as “masterpieces” emblematic of European modernity, we will consider how they contribute to a critique of the idea of Europe and the modern project. Works studied will range from Francisco Goya’s “The Third of May 1808, or ‘The Executions’” to Hannah Höch’s “Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada Through the Last Weimar Beer Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany,” from Édouard Manet’s “Olympia” to Carolee Schneemann’s “Up to and Including Her Limits.”

• Days/Times: TTh 10:30AM - 11:45AM
• Instructor: Schopp, Caroline Lillian
• Room: Gilman 177
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 7/20
• PosTag(s): HART-MODERN

This course focuses on major and often intricate myths and mythical patterns of thought as they are reflected in compelling ancient visual and textual narratives. Being one of the greatest treasure troves of the ancient world, these myths will further be considered in light of their rich reception in the medieval and modern world (including their reception in the modern fields of anthropology and philosophy).

• Days/Times: MW 4:30PM - 5:45PM
• Instructor: Yatromanolakis, Dimitrios
• Room: Gilman 108
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 3/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

This class explores the history of the USSR through its varied cultural domains. It will consider music, literature, film, painting, and sculpture in both “high” and “low” registers, as well as aesthetics, power, and control over the entire Soviet period, at both the center and, especially, the periphery.

• Days/Times: TTh 1:30PM - 2:45PM
• Instructor: Schmelz, Peter John
• Room: Hodson 210
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 10/18
• PosTag(s): HIST-EUROPE, INST-GLOBAL

In this course we will explore how religion in general and Islam in particular informs the world of Frank Herbert’s sci-fi novel Dune, laying particular emphasis on how the messianic and mystical tradition within Islam pervades the first novel. We will also watch excerpts from the film adaption by Denis Villeneuve, and the forthcoming second part in its entirety together in a local theater. As we do so, we will also discuss questions of Orientalism, representation, adaption, and appropriation in both the books and the films.

• Days/Times: MW 12:00PM - 12:50PM, F 12:00PM - 12:50PM
• Instructor: Noor, Rao Mohsin Ali
• Room: Ames 218
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 6/20
• PosTag(s): HIST-MIDEST, HIST-EUROPE

In this course we will explore how religion in general and Islam in particular informs the world of Frank Herbert’s sci-fi novel Dune, laying particular emphasis on how the messianic and mystical tradition within Islam pervades the first novel. We will also watch excerpts from the film adaption by Denis Villeneuve, and the forthcoming second part in its entirety together in a local theater. As we do so, we will also discuss questions of Orientalism, representation, adaption, and appropriation in both the books and the films.

• Days/Times: MW 12:00PM - 12:50PM, F 11:00AM - 11:50AM
• Instructor: Noor, Rao Mohsin Ali
• Room: Ames 218
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 13/20
• PosTag(s): HIST-MIDEST, HIST-EUROPE

This course investigates core questions of what constitutes political freedom, what limits on freedom (if any) should be imposed by authority, adn the relationship between freedom, responsibility, and political judgement. Spanning texts ancient, modern, and contemporary, we shall investigate how power inhabits and invigorates practices of freedom and consent. Among the questions we will consider: Can we always tell the difference between consent and coercion? Are morality and freedom incompatible? Is freedom from the past impossible? By wrestling with slavery (freedom's opposite) we will confront the terrifying possibility that slavery can be both embodied and psychic. If our minds can be held captive by power, can we ever be certain that we are truly free? The political stakes of these problems will be brought to light through a consideration of issues of religion, gender, sexuality, civil liberties, class and race.

• Days/Times: MW 11:00AM - 11:50AM, F 11:00AM - 11:50AM
• Instructor: Simon, Josh David
• Room: Mergenthaler 111
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 1/20
• PosTag(s): INST-PT, POLI-PT

This course investigates core questions of what constitutes political freedom, what limits on freedom (if any) should be imposed by authority, adn the relationship between freedom, responsibility, and political judgement. Spanning texts ancient, modern, and contemporary, we shall investigate how power inhabits and invigorates practices of freedom and consent. Among the questions we will consider: Can we always tell the difference between consent and coercion? Are morality and freedom incompatible? Is freedom from the past impossible? By wrestling with slavery (freedom's opposite) we will confront the terrifying possibility that slavery can be both embodied and psychic. If our minds can be held captive by power, can we ever be certain that we are truly free? The political stakes of these problems will be brought to light through a consideration of issues of religion, gender, sexuality, civil liberties, class and race.

• Days/Times: MW 11:00AM - 11:50AM, F 11:00AM - 11:50AM
• Instructor: Simon, Josh David
• Room: Mergenthaler 111
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 3/20
• PosTag(s): INST-PT, POLI-PT

This course investigates core questions of what constitutes political freedom, what limits on freedom (if any) should be imposed by authority, adn the relationship between freedom, responsibility, and political judgement. Spanning texts ancient, modern, and contemporary, we shall investigate how power inhabits and invigorates practices of freedom and consent. Among the questions we will consider: Can we always tell the difference between consent and coercion? Are morality and freedom incompatible? Is freedom from the past impossible? By wrestling with slavery (freedom's opposite) we will confront the terrifying possibility that slavery can be both embodied and psychic. If our minds can be held captive by power, can we ever be certain that we are truly free? The political stakes of these problems will be brought to light through a consideration of issues of religion, gender, sexuality, civil liberties, class and race.

• Days/Times: MW 11:00AM - 11:50AM, F 3:00PM - 3:50PM
• Instructor: Simon, Josh David
• Room: Mergenthaler 111
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 9/20
• PosTag(s): INST-PT, POLI-PT

This course investigates core questions of what constitutes political freedom, what limits on freedom (if any) should be imposed by authority, adn the relationship between freedom, responsibility, and political judgement. Spanning texts ancient, modern, and contemporary, we shall investigate how power inhabits and invigorates practices of freedom and consent. Among the questions we will consider: Can we always tell the difference between consent and coercion? Are morality and freedom incompatible? Is freedom from the past impossible? By wrestling with slavery (freedom's opposite) we will confront the terrifying possibility that slavery can be both embodied and psychic. If our minds can be held captive by power, can we ever be certain that we are truly free? The political stakes of these problems will be brought to light through a consideration of issues of religion, gender, sexuality, civil liberties, class and race.

• Days/Times: MW 11:00AM - 11:50AM, F 3:00PM - 3:50PM
• Instructor: Simon, Josh David
• Room: Mergenthaler 111
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 11/20
• PosTag(s): INST-PT, POLI-PT

iddish was the language of European Jews for 1000 years. From the 19th century to the present day it has been a language that millions of Americans — Jewish immigrants and their descendants–have spoken, written in, conducted their daily lives in, and created culture in. This course will examine literature, film, newspapers, and more to explore how Jewish immigrants to America shaped their identities—as Jews, as Americans, and as former Europeans. What role did maintaining, adapting, or abandoning a minority language play in the creation of Jewish American identity—cultural, ethnic, or religious? How was this language perceived by the majority culture? How was it used to represent the experiences of other minoritized groups? What processes of linguistic and cultural translation were involved in finding a space for Yiddish in America, in its original or translated into English? The overarching subjects of this course include migration, race, ethnicity, multilingualism, and assimilation. We will analyze literature (novels, poetry, drama); film; comedy; and other media. All texts in English.

• Days/Times: MW 12:00PM - 1:15PM
• Instructor: Spinner, Samuel Jacob
• Room: Gilman 381
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 10/15
• PosTag(s): INST-GLOBAL

Beetles, fleas, bees, ants, ticks, butterflies: as the earth’s most abundant animals, insects affect our lives in countless ways. In this seminar, we will explore the diverse world of insects and other arthropods and analyze their appearance in philosophy, literature, and the sciences. Reading our way from John Donne’s “The Flea” and Robert Hooke’s “Micrographia” to Mandeville’s “The Fable of the Bees,” Uexküll’s biosemiotics, and Kafka’s “Metamorphosis,” we will ask how concepts and stories of insects reflect and shape the ways we imagine our ecological milieus. We will look more closely at how entomological imaginaries evolved over time and pursue lines of inquiry that will shed new light on human interactions with the environment, politics, and cultural diversity. This course covers a wide range of sources from different European languages (all made available in English translations) and is writing intensive.

• Days/Times: TTh 10:30AM - 11:45AM
• Instructor: Frey, Christiane
• Room: Gilman 186
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 9/15
• PosTag(s): ENVS-MAJOR, MSCH-HUM

This course explores the interplay between protest and cultural productions using the Israeli society as a case study. We will examine the formation and nature of political and social protest movements in Israel, such as the Israeli Black Panthers, Israeli feminism, the struggle for LGBTQ rights and the 2011 social justice protest. Dissent in the military and protest against war as well as civil activism in the context of the Palestinians-Israeli conflict will serve us to explore the notion of dissent in the face of collective ethos, memory and trauma. The literary, cinematic, theatrical and artistic productions of dissent will stand at the center of our discussion as well as the role of specific genres and media, including satire and comedy, television, popular music, dance and social media. We will ask ourselves questions such as how do cultural productions express dissent? What is the role of cultural productions in civil activism? And what is the connection between specific genre or media and expression of dissent? All material will be taught in English translation.

• Days/Times: TTh 12:00PM - 1:15PM
• Instructor: Stahl, Neta
• Room: Gilman 413
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 7/10
• PosTag(s): INST-CP, INST-GLOBAL

What does immunity have to do with literary studies? We will explore this question by examining the concept of immunity, not only as a medical and legal concept, but also as a cultural phenomenon. Students will analyze what “immunity” can teach us about the ideas of tolerance and defense and about the ways we come into contact and build relationships with others. Through attention to French novels and graphic novels, students will investigate the grammars and images linked to the concept of immunity and research how these languages and images shape how we think of mental and physical illnesses, vulnerability, exposure, as well as how they permeate body representations in French literature. Secondary sources such as philosophical texts, movies, and photographs will embed these narratives into larger issues within the history of medicine and postwar French literature.

• Days/Times: TTh 1:30PM - 2:45PM
• Instructor: Kheyrkhah, Clara
• Room: Gilman 10
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 7/12
• PosTag(s): n/a

This course surveys modern and contemporary Chinese literature with a focus on the interplay between nature and narratives. We will read fictions by Shen Congwen, Xiao Hong, Alai, and Chi Zijian, among others, to embark on a journey through different forms, ideas, and practices of storytelling with and about nature. As we traverse the landscape of Chinese literature - from West Hunan to occupied Manchuria, from Tibet to Inner Mongolia - we will pay special attention to how local geographies, aesthetics, and epistemes inform these works and help create their literary worlds. Literary texts will be brought into dialogue with ecocritical theories, as we explore storytelling as a world-making practice in which both human and non-human beings take active part. Such a perspective is helpful for reimagining a future that overcomes human exceptionalism and environmental exploitation. All readings will be provided in English translations; knowledge of Chinese is not required.

• Days/Times: T 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: An, Mengqi Mercy
• Room: Gilman 208
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 9/12
• PosTag(s): ENVS-MAJOR

A survey of post-WWII literatures written in Japanese and/or by writers of Japanese backgrounds from the perspective of their engagement with the memories of war and imperialism. Reading novels, short stories, essays, and poems produced by representative postwar Japanese writers, zainichi Korean writers, and overseas Japanophone writers, we will discuss how their struggles with the contested, politicized, and/or un-historicized memories of suffering from war and imperialism shapes literary forms. These works will be coupled with critical writings on key concepts such as pain, trauma, victimhood, responsibility, nationalism, diaspora, and gender. Readings in Hayashi Fumiko, Abe Kobo, Mishima Yukio, Oe Kenzaburo, Murakami Haruki, Lee Yangji, Yu Miri, John Okada, and Kazuo Ishiguro, among others. This course also serves as an introduction to postwar Japanese literature and culture. All readings are in English.

• Days/Times: WF 12:00PM - 1:15PM
• Instructor: Hashimoto, Satoru
• Room: Gilman 119
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 6/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

Modern literature in East Asia is as much defined by creation of national boundaries as by their transgressions, negotiations, and reimaginations. This course examines literature originally written in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean in light of contemporary understandings of political, social, and cultural boundary demarcation and crossings. How do experiences of border-crossing create and/or alter literary forms? How, in turn, does literature inscribe, displace, and/or dismantle boundaries? Our readings will include, but not limited to, writings by intra- and trans-regional travelers, exiles, migrants, and settlers; stories from and on contested borderlands and islands (e.g. Manchuria, Okinawa, Jeju); and works and translations by bilingual authors. All readings are provided in English translation.

• Days/Times: F 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Hashimoto, Satoru
• Room: Gilman 208
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 7/12
• PosTag(s): n/a

Composer Matthew Aucoin has recently called opera “the impossible art.” Its impossibility feels particularly acute today, as it is buffeted by competing media, genres, and attention. Yet since 2000, opera has never seemed as vibrant, with composers new and old continuing to engage with its "generative impossibilities,” using a variety of literary genres as their sources. This class considers central opera examples from the past twenty years, looking at compositions by such creators as Thomas Adès, Unsuk Chin, Missy Mazzoli, Terence Blanchard, and György Kurtág, among others. These composers and their performers and critics engage with a variety of literary genres including novels, short stories, memoirs, and plays, as well as different media, chief among them film. They address opera’s tangled history and its possible roles in our contemporary world, asking questions about race, class, ideology, the environment, politics, and identity. This class will do the same, asking what opera today is capable of doing that other genres (musical and otherwise) cannot. How can—and does--opera speak to the present moment? The class will spend time developing a theoretical and practical vocabulary for considering both literary texts and how best to listen to, watch, and analyze opera. No musical background is required.

• Days/Times: TTh 12:00PM - 1:15PM
• Instructor: Schmelz, Peter John
• Room: Gilman 208
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 19/20
• PosTag(s): n/a

It was more or less like this. They said: - You know, Hela, you’re an anxious human being. She: - I’m a human being? - Why, of course. You’re not a puppy. She pondered. After a long pause, surprised: - I’m a human being. I’m Hela. I’m a girl. I’m Polish. I’m mommy’s little daughter, I’m from Warsaw…. What a lot of things I am! (Janusz Korczak, Ghetto Diary) This course isn’t what you expect. It is not easy. It is not even fun. We will tackle painful topics: orphanhood, loneliness, jealousy, death. You will learn that “Snow White expresses, more perfectly than any other fairy-tale, the idea of melancholy.” (Theodor Adorno) We will also deal with parenthood, childhood, justice, and love. We will not watch any Disney films (but we shall analyze some memes). So who is a child? “Children are not people of tomorrow; they are people today,” wrote in 1919 Janusz Korczak, pediatrician, pedagogue, and children’s author who proposed the idea of inalienable Children’s Rights. We will read folk tales from different cultures, discuss authorial fairy tales (Oscar Wilde), fantasy books (Tove Jansson’s Moomintrolls) and science-fiction (Stanisław Lem’s Fables for Robots). We will also investigate the special connection between children and animals (Juan Rámon Jimenez, Margaret Wise Brown). Many iconic children’s literature characters, such as J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, “a Betwixt-and-Between” with a Thrush’s Nest for a home, St.-Exupéry’s Little Prince, and Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi Longstocking, are outsiders. All along we will consider how children’s literature reflects and shapes ideas of selfhood, from archetypal to post-humanistic ones.

• Days/Times: MW 12:00PM - 1:15PM
• Instructor: Jerzak, Katarzyna El?bieta
• Room: Gilman 208
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 1/25
• PosTag(s): n/a

This seminar aims at providing a survey of some fundamental concepts and problems that shape modern and contemporary debates in philosophy, literary studies, and the humanities at large. This term we will study different notions of existence, language, truth, power, otherness, race, gender, and reality. This course serves as the proseminar in methods and theory for graduate students in Comparative Thought and Literature but is open to students in all departments.

• Days/Times: Th 2:00PM - 4:30PM
• Instructor: Marrati, Paola
• Room: Gilman 208
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 4/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

In this course, we will explore American labor, business and immigration history through data using AI. Students will learn how to think critically about how data are made and organized. They will then use that data to build arguments and visualizations about social and economic change over time. Throughout the course, we will learn to use various tools such as Google Sheets, Python, and Chat GPT for data analysis. No prior experience with statistics or programming is necessary, but students should come with a desire to learn. For advanced undergraduates and graduates.

• Days/Times: M 5:00PM - 7:30PM
• Instructor: Hyman, Louis
• Room: Gilman 377
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): HIST-US, AGRI-ELECT, MSCH-HUM

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.

• Days/Times: MW 12:00PM - 1:15PM
• Instructor: Spinner, Samuel Jacob
• Room: Gilman 443
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/12
• PosTag(s): INST-GLOBAL

Memory is considered one of the central ways we shape individual and collective identity. But it is also a basic element of cognition. This course is about the role of words in taking us from one to the other--from memories to Memory, from to-do lists to the Book of Exodus. We will examine the relations between textual forms and forms of memory by studying the ways that words are used to record, shape, and transmit both personal memories and collective memory, including mnemonic devices, historical narratives, memoirs, novels, and poetry. We will also consider the distinctions between verbal (written and oral), visual, and auditory memory as well as the impact of various forms of computer memory and storage on the older mnemonic and memorial models that have found a home in literature. We will draw on a wide range of examples but our focus will be on the relations between literature and memory in Jewish culture and religion in the modern age. All readings in English

• Days/Times: W 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Spinner, Samuel Jacob
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 12/12
• PosTag(s): n/a

The Caribbean is often described as enigmatic, uncommon and supernatural. While foreigners assume that the Caribbean is exotic, this course will explore this assumption from a Caribbean perspective. We will examine the links between Caribbean and Old-World imagination, the relationship between exoticism and Caribbean notions of superstition, and the way in which the Caribbean fictional universe derives from a variety of cultural myths. The course will be taught in English and all required texts are in English, French, and English translations from French. Students in the French program can choose to read all the original French versions and write in French.

• Days/Times: TTh 3:00PM - 4:15PM
• Instructor: Desormeaux, Daniel
• Room: Shaffer 301
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 7/10
• PosTag(s): n/a

What does it mean to exist, and to be able to reflect on this fact? What is it mean to be a self? This course explores the themes of existentialism in literature and philosophy, including the meaning of existence, the nature of the self, authenticity and inauthenticity, the inescapability of death, the experience of time, anxiety, absurdity, freedom and responsibility to others. 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, Camus, and Daoud.

• Days/Times: T 3:00PM - 5:30PM
• Instructor: Gosetti, Jennifer Anna
• Room:  
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/20
• PosTag(s): n/a

This course critically engages the presentation and imagination of animals and other non-human life in modern literature, philosophy, and thought. We will examine the figure of the animal and the means of conceptual differentiation between the animal and the human, considering animals' relation to or perceived exclusion from language, pain, embodiment, sexuality, and the visual gaze. The course is ideal for students interested in fascinating themes in literature and how they reflect philosophical concerns. No prior courses in philosophy are required. Students will read philosophical texts alongside literary works in learning the conceptual history of animals and of humanity as a distinct species. Expect fascinating readings and engaging, lively discussions. Readings may include works by Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger Derrida, Agamben, Poe, Kleist, Hofmannsthal, Rilke, Kafka, Mann, Pirandello, and Coetzee.

• Days/Times: W 3:00PM - 5:30PM
• Instructor: Gosetti, Jennifer Anna
• Room: Bloomberg 278
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 1/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

This course offers an introductory survey of foundational authors of modern philosophy and moral and political thought whose ideas continue to influence contemporary problems and debates. The course is taught in lectures and seminar discussions. Authors studied include Plato, René Descartes, Immanuel Kant, Karl Marx, Virginia Woolf, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Iris Murdoch, James Baldwin, Cora Diamond, Judith Butler, Kwame A. Appiah and others.

• Days/Times: TTh 12:00PM - 1:15PM
• Instructor: Marrati, Paola
• Room: Gilman 208
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 1/25
• PosTag(s): INST-PT

The “founding father of modern Chinese literature,” Lu Xun (1881-1936) saw himself as a contemporary of writers like Gogol, Ibsen, and Nietzsche in creating his seminal short stories and essays, and likewise, he has been seen by numerous Chinese and Sinophone writers as their contemporary since his lifetime until today. In this course, we will survey Lu Xun's canonical works and their legacies through a comparative approach. What echoes do Lu Xun's works have with the European and Russian texts he engaged with? Why did his works manage to mark a “new origin” of Chinese literature? How were his works repeated, adapted, and appropriated by Chinese and Sinophone writers from the Republican period through the Maoist era to the post-socialist present, even during the Covid-19 pandemic? Are his times obsolete now that China is on the rise? Or, have his times come yet? We will raise these questions to guide our comparative investigation into Lu Xun’s works and their legacies in China’s long twentieth century and beyond.

• Days/Times: WF 12:00PM - 1:15PM
• Instructor: Hashimoto, Satoru
• Room: Gilman 208
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): INST-GLOBAL

This course offers a broad survey of tragic drama in the Western tradition, from its origins in ancient Greece to the twentieth century. In lectures and discussion sections, we will study the specific literary features and historical contexts of a range of different works, and trace the continuities and transformations that shape them into a unified tradition. Key questions and themes throughout the semester will include what counts as tragic, the tragedy of social and political conflict, the bearing of tragedy on the meaning and value of life, the antagonistic relation between world and humans, the promises and dangers of tragedy for contemporary culture. Authors to be studied: Sophocles, Euripides, Seneca, Shakespeare, de la Barca, Racine, Goethe, Strindberg, Lorca, and Beckett.

• Days/Times: TTh 10:30AM - 11:45AM
• Instructor: Lisi, Leonardo
• Room: Gilman 208
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 8/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

If Shakespeare had a sister who also went to London to be a writer, what would she write? In A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf charts a thwarted career for Judith, and this will frame our investigation of the plays, poetry and prose writings by Shakespeare’s contemporary women writers, much of their work unknown to Woolf. They include Isabella Whitney, Elizabeth Cary, Mary Sidney, Aemelia Lanyer, Mary Wroth and others. Students will create fictional biographies of Judith Shakespeare, locate these constructed personae in historically accurate contexts, and identify potential support networks able to facilitate “Judith” as she builds a career in her chosen genre. As needed, mapping techniques will come into play.

• Days/Times: T 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Patton, Elizabeth
• Room: Gilman 208
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 14/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

I looked for home elsewhere, and was confident of finding none which I should relish less than the one which I was leaving. Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass Caught between Paradise Lost and the Promised Land, between a yearning for utopia and the menace of dystopia, humans seem prone to nostalgia. Originally defined as a disease, nostalgia in literature has functioned both in space and in time. If Romanticism codified certain forms of literary nostalgia, it only follows that anti-nostalgia comes later, maturing in modern exilic and science-fiction works. Both notions lose their raison d’être without the concept of home, be it a place, a temporal home of childhood, or a future home. In the seminar we will analyze modern expressions of anti-nostalgia, from Stendhal’s revulsion towards his hometown of Grenoble, through various accounts of precluded return, to a poisoned, mangled return. Disappointment, disillusionment, even horror accompany anti-nostalgia. Shock and trauma pervert a sense of belonging into disgust and fear. While nostalgia is lyrical, anti-nostalgia can be violent and bitter or passive and indifferent. We will study works of prose (Stendhal, Kafka, Bunin, Lem, Lispector, Márai, Bobowski) and poetry (Szymborska, Grynberg) as well as film (Nadav Lapid, Paweł Łoziński). Our secondary sources will include Jean Starobinski, Vladimir Jankélévitch, Jean Baudrillard, and Jora Vaso.

• Days/Times: Th 4:30PM - 7:00PM
• Instructor: Jerzak, Katarzyna El?bieta
• Room: Gilman 208
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 1/10
• PosTag(s): n/a

This course invites students to explore culture in the late and post-Cold War world from a broader perspective by surveying literature, thought, cinema, art, and music in Chinese and Soviet societies from the 1980s to the present. How did Chinese and Soviet intellectuals reconfigure, reform, and/or reinvent their cultures as they re-embraced the ideas of freedom, democracy, and globalization? How did they grapple with the legacies of their socialist and even pre-socialist pasts as they entered new eras of reforms? How did reform movements adopt different forms and strategies in different parts of the USSR and in the Sinophone world? What kinds of negotiations took place between various centers and peripheries within and around these regions? What can we learn from their cultural endeavors about the promises, contradictions, and discontents of the post-Cold War world, as we witness the rise of a so-called “new cold war” today? In this co-taught course, specialists in Sinophone and Soviet cultures will guide students to read and discuss representative works from the 1980s onward from a comparative perspective. Readings include Cui Jian, Yu Hua, Can Xue, Mo Yan, Yan Lianke, Guo Songfen, and the film Hibiscus Town, as well as Viktor Tsoi, Komar and Melamid, Aka Morchiladze, Oksana Zabuzhko, Serhiy Zhadan, and the film Repentance. No prerequisites. All course materials will be provided in English translation or with English subtitles.

• Days/Times: F 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Hashimoto, Satoru; Schmelz, Peter John
• Room: Gilman 381
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

At a time when racial, economic, social, cultural, religious, and political divides seem more irreconcilable then ever, the very fabric of democracy shows its vulnerability in the United States as well as at the global scale. This seminar aims to study how different thinkers, in different historical periods, addressed the challenges, betrayals, and fragile hope of the American Dream and how their voices resonate with contemporary authors and problems inside and outside the United States.

• Days/Times: M 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Marrati, Paola
• Room: Gilman 208
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 9/10
• PosTag(s): n/a

This course introduces basic computational techniques in the context of empirical humanistic scholarship. Topics covered include the command-line, basic Python programming, and experimental design. While illustrative examples are drawn from humanistic domains, the primary focus is on methods: those with specific domains in mind should be aware that such applied research is welcome and exciting, but will largely be their responsibility beyond the confines of the course. Students will come away with tangible understanding of how to cast simple humanistic questions as empirical hypotheses, ground and test these hypotheses computationally, and justify the choices made while doing so. No previous programming experience is required.

• Days/Times: TTh 1:30PM - 2:45PM
• Instructor: Lippincott, Tom; Sirin Ryan, Hale
• Room: Gilman 50
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 15/20
• PosTag(s): n/a

This course introduces substantial machine learning methods of particular relevance to humanistic scholarship. Areas covered include standard models for classification, regression, and topic modeling, before turning to the array of open-source pretrained deep neural models, and the common mechanisms for employing them. Students are expected to have a level of programming experience equivalent to that gained from AS.360.304, Gateway Computing, AS.250.205, or Harvard’s CS50 for Python. Students will come away with an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of different machine learning models, the ability to discuss them in relation to human intelligence and to make informed decisions of when and how to employ them, and an array of related technical knowledge.

• Days/Times: TTh 3:00PM - 4:15PM
• Instructor: Backer, Samuel Ehrlich; Messner, Craig A
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 9/10
• PosTag(s): n/a

This studio art course will introduce students to the basic techniques and applications of fine art photography using digital technology. Emphasis will be placed on DSLR camera functions, image manipulation with Adobe Creative Cloud, and digital inkjet printing. Throughout the semester, students will engage in classroom critiques and discussions to aid their dialogue on art and their understanding of photographic imagery. In this course, creative exploration will be fostered through the visual language of photography. DSLR film cameras are available on semester loan. Attendance in first class is mandatory.

• Days/Times: F 10:00AM - 1:00PM
• Instructor: Berger, phyllis A
• Room: The Centre 318
• Status: Approval Required
• Seats Available: 0/11
• PosTag(s): n/a

This studio art course will introduce students to the basic techniques and applications of fine art photography using digital technology. Emphasis will be placed on DSLR camera functions, image manipulation with Adobe Creative Cloud, and digital inkjet printing. Throughout the semester, students will engage in classroom critiques and discussions to aid their dialogue on art and their understanding of photographic imagery. In this course, creative exploration will be fostered through the visual language of photography. DSLR film cameras are available on semester loan. Attendance in first class is mandatory.

• Days/Times: F 2:00PM - 5:00PM
• Instructor: Berger, phyllis A
• Room: The Centre 318
• Status: Approval Required
• Seats Available: 0/11
• PosTag(s): n/a

In this course, we will explore different genres and approaches to documentary photography and the questions inherent to this mode of image-making. We will explore such themes as representation, storytelling, research, records and archives, journalism, community engagement, and personal perspective. Contemporary issues within our culture and the local Baltimore community will provide inspiration for the work made in this course. Students will produce a final documentary project on a subject of their choice as the culmination of their semester’s work. DSLR cameras are available on loan for the semester. Attendance in first class is mandatory.

• Days/Times: W 10:00AM - 1:00PM
• Instructor: Caro, Christiana
• Room: The Centre 318
• Status: Approval Required
• Seats Available: 1/11
• PosTag(s): n/a