|
99241 |
ARTH 323 “Crossroads” of Civilization: Art of Medieval Spain |
Jean French |
M . . . . |
4:30 -6:50 pm |
FISHER ANNEX |
AART |
Cross-listed: Medieval
Studies, LAIS A study of over thirteen
hundred years of the art and architecture of the Iberian peninsula. The course
will begin with a brief look at the Celtiberian culture and at the colonial activities
of the Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans.
The major focus, however, will be four primary areas: Visigothic art;
Al-Andalus, the Islamic art of Spain; Asturian and Mozarabic art; Romanesque
art of the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela. Students will investigate the complex
patterns of exchange, appropriation, assimilation and tension among the
Islamic, Judaic and Christian traditions and will attempt to assess the effects
of this cross-fertilization of cultures on the visual arts. The course will be
conducted as a seminar and is open to students outside art history.
|
99159 |
HIST 140 Intro to Russian Civilization |
Gennady Shkliarevsky |
M . W . . |
3:00 -4:20 pm |
OLIN 203 |
HIST |
Cross-listed:
Medieval Studies, Russian and Eurasian Studies This course examines the origins and evolution of
Russian civilization from the founding of the first Eastern Slavic state
through the eighteenth century, when Russia began to modernize by borrowing
from Western culture. Among the topics to be considered are the ethnogeny of
early Russians, the development of state and legal institutions, the
relationship between kinship and politics, the role of religion in public and
private spheres, economic organization, social institutions, family, gender
relations, sexuality, popular culture, and the impact of the outside world
(both Orient and Occident) upon Russian society. The sources include a variety
of Russian cultural expressions (folk tales, literature, art, film, music),
original documents, and scholarly texts.
|
99158 |
HIST 3112 PLAGUE! |
Alice Stroup |
M . . . . |
1:30 -3:50 pm |
OLIN 308 |
HIST |
Cross-listed:
EUS; Human Rights; Medieval Studies
The cry “Plague!” has struck fear among people
around the world, from antiquity to the present. What is plague? How has
it changed history? Starting with
Camus’ metaphorical evocation of plague in a modern North African city, we will
examine the historical impact of plague on society. Our focus will be bubonic plague, which was epidemic throughout
the Mediterranean and European worlds for four hundred years, and which remains
a risk in many parts of the world (including the southwestern United States) to
this day. Topics include: a natural
history of plague; impact of plague on mortality and socio-economic structures;
effects on art and literature; early epidemiology and public health;
explanations and cures; the contemporary presence of bubonic plague and fears
about “new plagues.” Readings include:
literary works by Camus, Boccaccio, Manzoni, and Defoe; historical and
philosophical analyses by ancients Thucydides and Lucretius; contemporary
literature on history, biology, and public health. Upper College Seminar: open to fifteen moderated students.
|
99093 |
LIT 204A Comparative Literature I |
Karen Sullivan |
. T . Th . |
4:00 -5:20 pm |
ASP 302 |
ELIT |
Cross-listed:
Medieval Studies
How does a medieval or Renaissance text mean? What is the logic
according to which it functions? How can we, as modern readers, enter into that
logic? In this course, we will engage in a series of close readings of
important texts from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries and try to gain
access to their strange textual world. We will attempt to make sense of birds
who sing hymns, wolves who become human beings, suicides who become trees, a
man by the name of Petrarch who fears that, because of love, he is being
petrified, and a woman by the name of Ginevra who becomes a man and a counselor
to the sultan. In these lyric poems, lays, romances, epics, and tales,
metamorphoses are not just themes, integral to these texts’ content, but
structures, integral to their form, and, as such, they lie at the heart of how
these texts function. Works to be read include the Carmina Burana, the letters of Abelard and Heloise, the lays of
Marie de France, Arthurian romance, Dante’s Inferno,
Petrarch’s sonnets, and Boccaccio’s Decameron.
|
99406 |
LIT 2061 Arab-American Literature |
Youssef Yacoubi |
. T . Th . |
1:00 -2:20 pm |
OLIN 205 |
ELIT/DIFF |
Cross-listed: American Studies, Middle Eastern Studies Surveying over one hundred
years of Arab-American literature, thought, art and film, this course will
examine important moments in the formation and consolidation of cultural
connections between the United States and the Arab world. The aim of the course is to introduce students
to the early and later works of influential Arab-American thinkers, writers,
artists and public intellectuals. We will explore issues of intertextuality;
stylistic appropriations of romanticism, transcendentalism, modernism,
post-modernism, and themes related to diasporic expression, cultural
metamorphosis and imaginative portrayals of Arab-Americans before and after the
event of “9/11”. Major writers will include Gibran Khalil Gibran, Ameen Rihani,
Mikhail Nuayma, Samuel John Hazo, Etel Adnan, Abinader Elmaz and Edward Said.
Our analysis and discussions will be informed by the recent developments in
critical/ literary theories and cultural studies. The course will be organized
around four themes/ topics: Representations of the Middle East in Early American
literature; Key pioneers of Arab-American exchange; Forms and modes of
inscribing Arabness/ Muslimness, diaspora and worldliness; pre and post “9/11”
images and imaginings.