Literature and Arts A-18. Fairy Tales, Children’s Literature, and the Construction of Childhood
Catalog Number: 7478
Maria Tatar
Half course (spring term). M., W., at 10, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 3
Analyzes cultural production for children in the larger context of childrearing practices, educational theories, and adult constructions of childhood. Addresses such issues as the representation of the child, the cult of childhood innocence, discipline and education, evil children, the cultivation of fantasy and imagination, canon formation, and the impossibility of children’s literature. Authors include Charles Perrault, the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, Oscar Wilde, John Locke, Rousseau, Charlotte Brontë, Lewis Carroll, J. M. Barrie, Roald Dahl, Maurice Sendak, William Golding, Vladimir Nabokov, and others.
Note: Expected to be omitted in 2004–05.
[Literature and Arts A-20. Classics in Christian Literature]
Catalog Number: 1177
Robert J. Kiely
Half course (fall term). M., W., at 11, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 4
An examination of selected literary forms and thematic preoccupations of post-Biblical texts in the Christian tradition. Focuses on personal representations of religious experience—the search for faith, narratives of conversion, testimonies of belief, and confessions of doubt. Explores the relationships between aesthetic form (genre, style, voice) and a variety of individual efforts to interpret and reconfigure the claims of the gospels. Authors include Augustine, Teresa of Avila, Juliana of Norwich, Martin Luther, John Donne, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and T.S. Eliot.
Note: Expected to be given in 2004–05.
[Literature and Arts A-22. Poems, Poets, Poetry]
Catalog Number: 5808
Helen Vendler
Half course (fall term). M., W., at 12, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 5
A study of poetry as the history and science of feeling: readings in major lyric poems of England and America. Emphasis on problems of invention and execution, and on the poet’s choice of genre, stance, context, and structure. Other topics to be raised include the process of composition, the situating of a poem in its historical and poetic contexts, the notion of a poet’s development, the lyric as dramatic speech, and the experimental lyric of the 20th century.
Note: Expected to be given in 2004–05.
[Literature and Arts A-26. Dante’s Divine Comedy and Its World]
Catalog Number: 6090
Lino Pertile
Half course (fall term). Tu., Th., at 10, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 12
Studies Dante’s Divine Comedy as an enduring work of poetry, a major text of the European literary tradition, and the most comprehensive synthesis of medieval culture. Largely based on textual analysis, the course looks at how literature works in relation to, on the one hand, the language and rhetorical tradition in which it is expressed and, on the other, the culture which it expresses and interprets. Particular attention is paid to the poem’s central philosophical concerns, from the role of the individual in history and society to the relationship between progress and happiness, and between politics and morality.
Note: Expected to be given in 2004–05.
[Literature and Arts A-35. Tragic Drama and Human Conflict]
Catalog Number: 0172
Bennett Simon (Medical School)
Half course (fall term). M., W., F., at 10, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 3
Introduces the student to the use of psychoanalytic perspectives in enhancing the understanding and appreciation of tragic drama. Focuses on tragedy as a study of the family, emphasizing the problem of how the family at war with itself can procreate and continue. Also discusses the form of tragic drama, particularly with regard to dialogue and storytelling within the plays. Readings include ancient, Shakespearean, and modern tragedies, as well as secondary sources that assist in understanding psychoanalytic concepts. Films and live performances supplement the readings.
Note: Expected to be given in 2005–06.
Literature and Arts A-40. Shakespeare, The Early Plays
Catalog Number: 0176
Marjorie Garber
Half course (fall term). Tu., Th., at 11, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 13
The early comedies, tragedies, and histories, considered in the context of the origins of the English stage and the conventions of Elizabethan drama. Particular attention paid to Shakespeare’s development as a dramatist, and to poetic expression, thematic design, stagecraft, and character portrayal in plays.
Note: Expected to be omitted in 2004–05.
[Literature and Arts A-41. Shakespeare, The Later Plays]
Catalog Number: 1624
Marjorie Garber
Half course (fall term). Tu., Th., at 11, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 13
The late comedies, tragedies, and romances, with some attention to the prevailing literary traditions of the Jacobean period. Particular attention paid to Shakespeare’s development as a dramatist, and to poetic expression, thematic design, stagecraft, and character portrayal in the plays.
Note: Expected to be given in 2004–05.
[Literature and Arts A-45. Theories of Authorship: Russian Case Studies]
Catalog Number: 0189
Justin Weir
Half course (fall term). Tu., Th., at 11, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 13
Surveys central theories of authorship in the western tradition and considers how they have been realized and transformed by Russian writers. We analyze the process by which different concepts of the self, as shaped by Plato, Descartes, Rousseau, and others, have been creatively appropriated by seminal Russian authors, such as Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Bulgakov, and Nabokov, in order to articulate their own ideas of the relationship between writing and identity. Concludes with an examination of how new technology and recent copyright laws have affected post-Soviet notions of authorship.
Note: Expected to be given in 2004–05.
Literature and Arts A-48. Modern Jewish Literature
Catalog Number: 1250
Ruth R. Wisse
Half course (fall term). Tu., Th., at 12, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 14
Studies works in different languages and genres that variously interpret the experience of Jews in the 20th century. Explores such issues as what information literature can provide, the relation of language and historical context to artistic strategy, and personal and national perspectives in narrative. Authors include Sholem Aleichem, Franz Kafka, Isaac Babel, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Shmuel Yosef Agnon, Primo Levi, Saul Bellow, and Cynthia Ozick.
Note: Expected to be omitted in 2004–05.
Literature and Arts A-53. “Athens and Jerusalem”: Self and Other in Classical Greek and Hebrew Literature
Catalog Number: 8681
Peter Machinist and Bennett Simon (Medical School)
Half course (fall term). M., W., (F.), at 12, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 5
Examines the representation of “self” and “other” in two literatures foundational to Western culture, Classical Greek and Biblical Hebrew. The premise is the necessity of an “other” in order to define the “self.” Starts with “Athens” and “Jerusalem” as emblematic of the self/other polarity that the West drew out of these literatures. Then explores in them other manifestations of self and other: group identity and group origins, woman and deity as other, the development of heroic selfhood, and the emergence of self-knowledge. Emphasizes throughout how poetic and narrative forms both shape and are shaped by visions of self and other.
Literature and Arts A-57. Bilingual Arts
Catalog Number: 1599
Doris Sommer
Half course (spring term). M., W., at 11, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 4
The intellectual, social and aesthetic advantages of bilingualism will be explored through significant works of literature and theory. Bilingualism is an increasingly common condition, given transnational movements. But it is often misunderstood as confused or deficient because outdated expectations about identity and belonging prefer simple labels. Normally complex and creative, bilinguals are sophisticated about language. They know it is arbitrary and that communication is full of risks, mistakes, and pleasures of intermittent contact. This uneasiness about language amounts to a predisposition toward aesthetics and other philosophies.
Literature and Arts A-58. Ethnicity, Modernity, and Modernism in 20th-Century Literature, Art, and Culture
Catalog Number: 0287
Werner Sollors
Half course (spring term). Tu., Th., at 10, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 12
Is the stress on ethnic diversity a form of resistance to, or a feature of modernity? How has aesthetic production been affected by the horrors of modernity, by violence and genocide? What is the relationship of modernism to democracy, fascism, and communism? These questions, complemented by ethnic theory, inform discussions of such texts as The Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans and such authors as Mark Twain, Gertrude Stein, Jean Toomer, Eugene O’Neill, Henry Roth, William Faulkner, Hisaye Yamamoto, LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka, Maxine Hong Kingston, Richard Rodriguez, and Gerald Vizenor.
Note: Expected to be omitted in 2004–05.
[Literature and Arts A-63. Women Writers in Imperial China: How to Escape from the Feminine Voice]
Catalog Number: 8286
Wilt Lukas Idema
Half course (fall term). Tu., Th., at 12, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 14
Despite the dominance of men as authors, subjects, and readers of literature in imperial China (221 BCE–1911), this same period also saw the emergence and development of a rich tradition of women’s literature. We will discuss what kinds of women have left literary works, and how the marginal status of women’s literature affected the genres women wrote in and the subjects they could deal with. As China’s male literature developed its own tradition of writing in the voice of women, we will pay special attention to the question of how women found their own voice despite this pre-existing “feminine” tradition.
Note: Expected to be given in 2004–05.
Literature and Arts A-64. American Literature and the American Environment
Catalog Number: 4783
Lawrence Buell
Half course (fall term). Tu., Th., at 9, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 11
A study of selected traditions in American writing that have been formed by perceptions of the American environment. Topics include the cult of wilderness; white images of the American Indian and vice versa; the pastoral, agrarian, and natural history traditions in American prose; and literary responses to urbanization and environmental endangerment. Readings range from 17th-century Puritan texts to contemporary works, with primary emphasis on narrative and nonfictional prose, but some works of poetry are included as well.
Note: Expected to be omitted in 2004–05.
[Literature and Arts A-68. Poets and Poetry in the Celtic Literary Tradition]
Catalog Number: 3957
Patrick K. Ford
Half course (spring term). Tu., Th., at 11 and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 13
Examines the role of poets (i.e., “seers, prophets, satirists, singers of praise”) in the development of the Celtic literary tradition from antiquity through the Middle Ages and beyond. The focus is on the social function of literature, broadly defined, in the Celtic world, and the ways in which poets used their powers of praise and satire in the maintenance of social and political power. Of especial importance is the mythology of poetry, those narratives that tell how wisdom and poetry were first acquired and those that promulgate the magical powers of praise and satire.
Note: Expected to be given in 2004–05.
[Literature and Arts A-70. The Book of Job and the Joban Tradition]
Catalog Number: 7991
Peter Machinist
Half course (fall term). M., W., at 12, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 5
An examination of the biblical book of Job along with related texts, ancient, medieval, and modern, that allow us to establish the literary and philosophical traditions in which Job was composed and the literary and philosophical legacy it has left. Particular focus on the ways the texts play off one another in literary form and expression and in their treatment of such themes as divine justice, human piety, and the nature of the divine-human encounter.
Note: Expected to be given in 2005–06.
Literature and Arts A-72. The Enlightenment Invention of the Modern Self
Catalog Number: 7800
Leo Damrosch
Half course (spring term). Tu., Th., at 1, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 15
A study of major 18th-century autobiographical, fictional, and philosophical texts that explore the paradoxes of the modern self at a time when traditional religious and philosophical explanations were breaking down. Writers to be read include Mme. de Lafayette, Boswell, Voltaire, Gibbon, Diderot, Rousseau, Laclos, Franklin, and Blake.
Literature and Arts A-78. The Vikings and the Nordic Heroic Tradition
Catalog Number: 7919
Stephen A. Mitchell
Half course (fall term). Tu., Th., at 10, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 12
Examines the heroic legacy resulting from the historical events in northern Europe AD 800?1100, concentrating on the medieval Icelandic sagas. The course focuses on how these texts present their heroes as warriors, kings, poets, outlaws, and adventurers. We consider several specific heroic traditions over time and review how the viking image is received and shaped in later periods (e.g., 19th-century Danish poetry, Victorian art, contemporary scholarship and pseudo-scholarship). The elusive question of the North American colony of “Vinland” as a meaningful component of this legacy is examined in both its scientific and imaginative contexts.
Note: Expected to be omitted in 2004–05.
[Literature and Arts B-20. Designing the American City: Civic Aspirations and Urban Form]
Catalog Number: 3243
Alex Krieger (Design School)
Half course (spring term). Tu., Th., at 1, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 15
An interpretive look at the American city in terms of changing attitudes toward urban life. City and suburb are experienced as the product of design and planning decisions informed by cultural and economic forces, and in relationship to utopian and pragmatic efforts to reinterpret urban traditions in search of American alternatives. Topics include: persistent ideals such as the single-family home, attitudes toward public and private space, the rise of suburbs and suburban sprawl, cycles of disinvestment and renewed interest in urban centers, and impacts of mobility and technology on settlement patterns.
Note: Expected to be given in 2004–05.
Literature and Arts B-21. The Images of Alexander the Great
Catalog Number: 2267
David G. Mitten
Half course (fall term). M., W., (F.), at 12, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 5
The images of Alexander the Great are examined within various cultural contexts ranging from 4th-century BCE Greece to 20th-century America. Various art forms (including sculpture, coins, and paintings) illuminate Alexander’s personality and career and the development of his legend. Course explores how images reveal the complex relationship between a strong individual personality and artistic conventions. Special attention is paid to the importance of political imagery and how the images of Alexander reflect changing ideas of rulership. Where, if anywhere, is the “truth” in these images? Original objects in the Sackler collection and Boston Museum of Fine Arts are emphasized.
[Literature and Arts B-24. Constructing Reality: Photography as Fact and Fiction]
Catalog Number: 5649
Robin E. Kelsey
Half course (fall term). M., W., (F.), at 11, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 4
Historically, photographs have been exceptionally persuasive records of places, people, and events. This course will consider photographs from a broad range of cultural sites and activities, including battlefields, expeditions, laboratories, slums, farms, factories, political rallies, and crime scenes, to investigate the ways in which photographers, viewers, and institutions have negotiated the interplay of photography’s rhetorical and evidentiary dimensions. Featured photographs and practices will be drawn from various countries and historical moments. Particular attention will be given to fostering skills in visual analysis and historical interpretation.
Note: Expected to be given in 2004–05.
[Literature and Arts B-27. Majesty and Mythology in African Art]
Catalog Number: 5822
Suzanne P. Blier
Half course (fall term). M., W., at 12, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 5
Examines the royal arts of Africa, at once providing an overview of key themes in royal African art and discussing what these arts reveal about the nature of kingship generally. The diverse ways that African rulers have employed art and architecture to define individual and state identity are considered in the context of key traditions from West, Central, Eastern, and Southern Africa. Among the topics to be discussed are palace architecture, royal regalia, status prerogatives, women of the court, divine kingship, state cosmology, royal burial, enthronement ceremonies, dynastic history, and the importance of art in diplomacy and war.
Note: Expected to be given in 2004–05.
Literature and Arts B-28. The Arts of Pre-Columbian America: Media and Themes
Catalog Number: 7397
Thomas B. F. Cummins
Half course (spring term). M., W., at 1, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 6
This course will study Pre-Columbian visual arts with an aim to understanding their forms, materials, and themes. Covering a time period from 1000 BC to the beginning of the 16th century, we will investigate the art and architecture of the Aztec, Inca, and many earlier cultures in Peru, Mexico, Ecuador, and Columbia. The meaning and appreciation of Pre-Columbian art will be studied both in terms of how things were made and the different forms of expression that sculpture, textiles, and painting took, ranging from life-like portraiture to geometric abstraction and everything in between.
Literature and Arts B-35. The Age of Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent: Art, Architecture, and Ceremonial at the Ottoman Court
Catalog Number: 1678
Gülru Necipoglu-Kafadar
Half course (spring term). Tu., Th., at 1, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 15
“Golden Age” of Ottoman-Islamic visual culture in the 16th century, considered within its ceremonial and historical contexts, focusing on architecture, miniature painting, and decorative arts. Stresses the transformation of Byzantine Constantinople into Ottoman Istanbul, formation of an imperial architectural style, and artistic contacts with contemporary European and Islamic courts. Considers art and architecture of Safavid Iran and Mughal India as a comparative backdrop. Discusses the role of centralized court ateliers in propagating canons of taste, the emphasis on decorative arts in a culture that rejected monumental sculpture and painting, and representations of the East by European artists in the Orientalist mode.
Note: Expected to be omitted in 2004–05.
[Literature and Arts B-43. The Gothic Cathedral]
Catalog Number: 1561
Jeffrey F. Hamburger
Half course (fall term). Tu., Th., at 10, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 12
Coined as a term of contempt, “Gothic” now defines among the most exalted works of art and architecture in the Western tradition. To this day, Gothic cathedrals dominate the urban landscape in much of Europe. In their own time, they represented a revolution in design and in religious and social practice. The course aims to consider the cathedral, principally in France, but also England and Germany, in all its dimensions: civic, religious, ideological, and historiographical, with the emphasis on the architecture, as well as sculpture, stained glass, metalwork, and manuscript illumination.
Note: Expected to be given in 2004–05.
[Literature and Arts B-44. The Architecture of Capital and Court in Western Europe, 1600–1800]
Catalog Number: 3767
Alice G. Jarrard
Half course (fall term). M., W., at 10, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 3
Examines architectural works in dialogue with the social, cultural, political, and technological forces that shape them. Rather than simply surveying the works of architects including Bernini, Borromini, Guarini, Juvarra, Piranesi, Le Vau, Mansart, Ledoux, Hawksmoor, and Wren, we will approach their buildings and projects by studying selective historical moments in Italy, France, England, and Spain. Themes considered: the creation of the capital city, dialectics between urban and pastoral modes, innovation and the interpretation of the past, printmaking and architectural publication, and the audiences and ritual uses of architecture.
Note: Expected to be given in 2004–05.
Literature and Arts B-46. Art in the Wake of the Mongol Conquests: Genghis Khan and His Successors
Catalog Number: 6029
David J. Roxburgh
Half course (fall term). M., W., at 11, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 4
Genghis Khan’s legacy entailed the destruction of social and cultural order. Paradoxically, his empire forged a dynamic relationship between nomadic and sedentary societies; his successors fostered a climate of intense activity in art and architecture, producing complex fusions of artistic traditions between the Middle East and China. Key works of art and architecture are studied as a process of cultural assimilation, as constructions of an evolving political structure and social order in the aftermath of the Mongol conquests (ca.1256?1506). Themes include patronage, production, art as political and ideological tool, tensions between nomadic and sedentary sources of prestige and legitimation.
[Literature and Arts B-48. Chinese Imaginary Space]
Catalog Number: 9186
Eugene Wang
Half course (spring term). Tu., Th., at 11, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 13
Examines visual representations of imaginary space, i.e., alternative worlds or heightened modes of existence, such as heaven, paradise, numinous afterlife world, utopian land, immortal islets, fictive frontier, and mindscape, etc., as they are evoked in Chinese tombs, cave shrines, sarcophagus design, scroll paintings, calligraphy, gardens, architecture, and films. Modes of analysis are introduced to understand how different media effectively conjure up these other worlds and spaces. Also explores how these imaginary worlds displace social reality and cultural aspirations. The ultimate goal is to enable the student to appreciate the crucial role of space in the making of visual culture.
Note: Expected to be given in 2004–05.
Literature and Arts B-51. First Nights: Five Performance Premieres
Catalog Number: 0144
Thomas Forrest Kelly
Half course (fall term). Tu., Th., at 10, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 12
A study of five famous pieces of music, both as timeless works of art and as moments of cultural history. Close attention is given to techniques of musical listening, and to the details of the first performance of each work, with a consideration of the problems involved in assembling such a picture. Works studied are Beethoven, Symphony no. 9; Berlioz, Symphonie fantastique; Stravinsky, Le sacre du printemps; Handel, Messiah; Monteverdi, Orfeo. The course concludes with the first performance of a new work especially commissioned for this course.
[Literature and Arts B-54. Chamber Music from Mozart to Ravel]
Catalog Number: 1487
Robert D. Levin
Half course (spring term). M., W., (F.), at 1, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 6
Examines selected masterworks of chamber music from the 1770s, when the distinctive timbres of Baroque instruments shaped composers’ imaginations, to the beginning of the 20th century. Follows parallel developments in the technology of instrument making and growing performer virtuosity. Style and rhetoric are central concerns, and attention is given to the evolution in interpretative style through listening to historic, as well as recent, recordings. Selections from the assigned works are demonstrated in live performances.
Note: Expected to be given in 2004–05.
Literature and Arts B-63. Bach in His Time and Through the Centuries
Catalog Number: 1520
Christoph Wolff
Half course (spring term). M., W., at 10, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 3
A study of the music of J.S. Bach in various contexts, focusing on selected vocal and instrumental compositions (cantatas, motets, oratorios, concertos, sonatas, suites, preludes, and fugues) with particular attention to style, genre, and the music of major contemporaries. Beyond this, the encyclopedic nature of Bach’s creative output, which renders him one of the most seminal figures in the history of music, lends itself to an examination of his relationship to musical traditions from the Middle Ages through the Baroque, as well as his influence on compositional techniques and aesthetics from the 18th through the 20th century.
Note: Expected to be omitted in 2004–05.
[Literature and Arts B-78. Soundscapes: Exploring Music in a Changing World]
Catalog Number: 2093
Kay Kaufman Shelemay
Half course (spring term). M., W., (F.), at 11, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 4
Many musical traditions at the turn of the 21st century cross geographic boundaries. Nowhere are diverse music traditions more prominently represented in public performance and maintained in private practice than in North America, where centuries of immigration and an increasingly multiethnic population have given rise to a complex musical environment. “Soundscapes” explores a cross-section of the different musical styles that coexist and interact in today’s society, examining their relationship to their historical homelands and to their present-day settings.
Note: Expected to be given in 2004–05.
Literature and Arts B-82. Sayin’ Something: Jazz as Sound, Sensibility, and Social Dialogue
Catalog Number: 9532
Ingrid Monson
Half course (fall term). M., W., at 1, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 6
An examination of jazz improvisation as a musical and social process. Key themes are learning to listen from the “bottom of the band up” and understanding why jazz is a music that is perceived to “say something” about social issues. The social issues addressed are racial segregation, interracial encounter through music, the impact of the struggle for civil rights on the music, and the politics of aesthetic modernism in jazz. Musical examples drawn from throughout the history of the music will illustrate this ongoing dialogue between the musical and the social.
[Literature and Arts C-18. Hindu Myth, Image, and Pilgrimage]
Catalog Number: 7384
Diana L. Eck
Half course (spring term). Tu., Th., at 11, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 13
An exploration of Hindu myths, images, and pilgrimages in the context of classical and modern Hindu culture. Studies the stories of the gods of India: Vishnu, Krishna, Shiva, and Devi; the heroes and heroines of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata; the temples and visual images of the gods and heroes in the classical and folk traditions; and the pilgrimages that link this mythological and artistic complex to the mountains, rivers, and cities of India.
Note: Expected to be given in 2004–05. For students under the Core requirement, counts as either Literature and Arts C or Foreign Cultures, but not both.
Literature and Arts C-20. The Hero of Irish Myth and Saga
Catalog Number: 7817
Tomás Ó Cathasaigh
Half course (spring term). M., W., at 12, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 5
A study of the ways in which the hero is represented in early Irish sources, especially in the saga literature. The texts reflect the ideology and concerns of a society which had been converted to Christianity, but continued to draw on its Indo-European and Celtic heritage. The biographies of the Ulster hero, Cú Chulainn, of his divine father, Lug, and of certain king-heroes are studied in depth. The wisdom literature, and archaeological and historical evidence will be taken into account.
Note: Expected to be omitted in 2004–05.
Literature and Arts C-22. European Culture in the Middle Ages
Catalog Number: 2020
Jan Ziolkowski
Half course (spring term). Tu., Th., at 1, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 15
Studies the culture—literary, artistic, and musical—that was produced and disseminated in the Middle Ages through the fusion of classical education with Christian scriptures and liturgy. Examines major authors and texts in which this culture took shape and expressed itself (such as Augustine, Song of Roland, Chrétien de Troyes, Tristan, and Dante’s Inferno). Relates texts to art, especially manuscript illumination.
Literature and Arts C-25. The Medieval Stage
Catalog Number: 5114
Eckehard Simon
Half course (spring term). M., W., (F.), at 10, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 3
Case studies of major plays from medieval Europe (mainly France and England) and how they were staged in their original settings (churches, marketplaces, streets). Examines theater as worship and revelry in monasteries and cathedrals, as an expression of emerging town culture, and as a mass medium of religious instruction. Explores the architecture of theater spaces, different stage types, the “theater” of medieval art, and the role of music. Illustrated lectures.
Note: Expected to be omitted in 2004–05.
[Literature and Arts C-28. Icon-Ritual-Text: Reading the Culture of Medieval Rus’]
Catalog Number: 2798
Michael S. Flier
Half course (spring term). M., W., (F.), at 11, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 4
An introduction to the culture of the medieval East Slavs, precursors of the Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians. The course examines icon and fresco painting, architecture, ritual, music, folklore, and literature in historical and social context for clues to the evolution of an apocalyptic worldview, extending from the Christianization of Rus’ in the 10th century, through the reign of Ivan the Terrible, to the advent of Peter the Great at the end of the 17th century.
Note: Expected to be given in 2004–05. All readings in English.
[Literature and Arts C-30. How and What Russia Learned to Read: The Rise of Russian Literary Culture]
Catalog Number: 7952
William Mills Todd III
Half course (spring term). M., W., (F.), at 10, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 3
An exploration in the Russian imperial period (18th–19th centuries) of the development of a secular literary tradition. Focus on institutions of literature, issues of literature and ideology, and the refraction of cultural problems in literary form. Reading of novels by Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy in social and historical context.
Note: Expected to be given in 2004–05. No knowledge of Russian required.
[Literature and Arts C-37. The Bible and Its Interpreters]
Catalog Number: 1255
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Half course (spring term). M., W., F., at 1, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 6
Seeks to acquaint students with the principal parts of the Hebrew Bible and to provide some exposure to the different ways in which the Bible has been read and interpreted in various periods, from late antiquity to modern times. To achieve this, the course concentrates on a group of central biblical figures whose stories are examined in the context of ancient Israelite history and society, and then compared with later, often fanciful, elaborations of these same biblical tales by Jewish and Christian interpreters.
Note: Expected to be given in 2004–05.
[Literature and Arts C-40. The Chinese Literati]
Catalog Number: 5226
Peter K. Bol
Half course (spring term). Tu., Th., at 11, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 13
Examines from literary, philosophical, and historical perspectives the creation in later imperial China of an enduring national culture, which flourished through dynastic change and foreign conquest. Particular attention is given to the role of the literati and their work as poets, essayists, novelists, painters, moral philosophers, and political thinkers. Themes include the relation of culture to political authority, the search for grounds for individual autonomy, the literary and artistic representation of the self, growing ambivalence toward political service, and the rise of individualism. Introduces Chinese approaches to interpreting literary, artistic, and philosophical works.
Note: Expected to be given in 2004–05. For students under the Core requirement, counts as either Literature and Arts C or Historical Study B, but not both.
Literature and Arts C-42. Constructing the Samurai
Catalog Number: 3743
Harold Bolitho
Half course (fall term). M., W., at 11; and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 4
Examines the rise and fall of Japan’s warrior class and of the bushido ethos. Concentrates on two interrelated themes: the historical reality and the construction of a mythology—both positive and negative—in Japanese popular culture and the Western imagination. Themes will include warfare, training, religion, values, art, literature, and family life. Visual materials will be used extensively.
Note: For students under the Core requirement, counts as either Literature and Arts C or Historical Study B, but not both.
Literature and Arts C-43. The Medieval Court
Catalog Number: 5794
Eckehard Simon
Half course (fall term). M., W., (F.), at 10, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 3
In the High Middle Ages (1100–1250), the European aristocracy created a court culture that became a permanent part of the Western heritage. We study this civilization by reading its greatest literature: the Roland epic, lyrics of the troubadours and minnesingers, the tales of Marie de France, the Arthurian and grail-quest romances of Chrétien and Wolfram, Gottfried’s Tristan. To probe the complex interrelationship between literature and life, we look, in slide lectures, at the historical context: feudal society, castles and castle life, women and marriage, “courtly love,” knights and chivalry, court art, major courts, notable lives.
Note: Expected to be omitted in 2004–05.
[Literature and Arts C-50. Russian Imperial Masterworks and Their Post-Histories: Or, What Makes a Classic?]
Catalog Number: 2786
Julie A. Buckler
Half course (fall term). M., W., (F.), at 1, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 6
Investigates major works of imperial Russian culture (literary, architectural, musical, theatrical) as products of their original historical contexts and in terms of their on-going life as acknowledged “masterworks” in Russia and the West. Works include Rastrelli’s Winter Palace, Falconet’s monument to Peter the Great, Pushkin’s “The Bronze Horseman,” Dostoevsky’s “Notes From the Underground,” Tolstoy’s “War and Peace,” Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov,” Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake,” Chekov’s “Uncle Vanya,” and Bely’s “Petersburg,” as well as the imperial capital city of St. Petersburg itself. How have these masterworks been variously renewed and reinterpreted since their initial reception?
Note: Expected to be given in 2004–05.
Literature and Arts C-51. Revolution and Reaction: The Rise and Fall of the Russian Avant-Garde
Catalog Number: 6984
John E. Malmstad
Half course (spring term). M., W., F., at 11, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 4
An introduction to the radical transformations of Russian culture between 1890–1930, with particular attention to the “isms,” avant-garde and otherwise, that shaped society and the arts during a period of rapid modernization and experimentation: Symbolism, Futurism, Cubo-Futurism, Suprematism, Constructivism. Focuses on developments in literature, art, music, ballet, and film, their interaction and relation to the historical context.
Note: Expected to be omitted in 2004–05. All readings in English. For students under the Core requirement, counts as either Literature and Arts C or Foreign Cultures, but not both.
[Literature and Arts C-55. Surrealism: Avant-Garde Art and Politics between the Wars]
Catalog Number: 7818
Susan R. Suleiman
Half course (fall term). M., W., (F.), at 12, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 5
An overview of Surrealism in the context of European culture and politics of the 20th century. Focus on major works of writers, artists, and filmmakers associated with the Surrealist movement, chiefly in the period between the two world wars; some attention also paid to earlier works and movements, and to the influence of and reactions to Surrealism after 1945. Discussion of works by Breton, Aragon, Tzara, Lautréamont, Artaud, Eluard, Carrington, Bunuel and Dali, Dulac, Magritte, Tanning, Ernst, Man Ray, Bellmer, and others.
Note: Expected to be given in 2004–05.
Literature and Arts C-56. Putting Modernism Together
Catalog Number: 8437
Daniel Albright
Half course (fall term). M., W., at 12, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 5
Just as a pine or a willow is known from the shape of its branching, so human culture can be understood as a growth-pattern, a ramifying of artistic, intellectual, and political action. This course tries to find the center of the Modernist movement (1872-1927) by studying the literature, music, and painting of the period, to see whether some congruence of effort in all these media can be found. By looking at the range of artistic production in a few key years, we come to know this age of aesthetic extremism, perhaps unparalleled in Western history.
Literature and Arts C-61. The Rome of Augustus
Catalog Number: 1101
R. J. Tarrant
Half course (fall term). Tu., Th., at 12, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 14
Roman culture and society in a period of radical transformation, the lifetime of the first emperor, Augustus (63 BCE–14 CE). Focuses on the interplay between a new set of political realities and developments in literature, the visual arts, and the organization of private and social life. Readings (all in translation) from Catullus, Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Livy, Propertius, Ovid, and Tacitus, with special attention to the two great masterworks of the period, Virgil’s Aeneid and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Most lectures illustrated with slides.
Note: Expected to be omitted in 2004–05. For students under the Core requirement, counts as either Literature and Arts C or Historical Study B, but not both.
[Literature and Arts C-65. Repression and Expression: Literature and Art in Fin-de-siècle Germany and Austria]
Catalog Number: 4312
Peter J. Burgard
Half course (spring term). Tu., Th., at 11, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 13
Examines German and Austrian literature and art of the period 1880–1920 in terms of gender, sexuality, and language. Begins with readings of Nietzsche and Freud that establish the thematic parameters of investigation and that enable an understanding of the extent to which this period in cultural history is grounded in their ideas. Discussions of individual texts and paintings focus on how problems of gender, sexuality, and language both intersect and reflect one another in the literature and art of the age. Readings include Nietzsche, Freud, Ibsen, Schnitzler, Hofmannsthal, Mann, Musil, Kafka. Artists include Klimt, Schiele, Kokoschka, Kirchner, Marc, Kandinsky.
Note: Expected to be given in 2004–05. No knowledge of German required.
[Literature and Arts C-69. Pompeii]
Catalog Number: 8499
Rabun Taylor
Half course (fall term). M., W., at 11, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 4
Buried in an eruption in 79 AD and rediscovered only in the mid-18th century, the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum offer modern visitors a panoramic view of Roman life. The forum, temples, baths, houses, shops, theaters, and streets weave a tattered tapestry still saturated with meaning today. Our task is to recover some of that meaning through the refractory lens of our modern minds. Using ancient literary texts and various analytical approaches, we will sample the rich visual and material legacy of Mt. Vesuvius, seeking through artifacts—some magnificent and others merely interesting—to recollect a way of life.
Note: Expected to be given in 2005–06.