*History and Literature 90g. Charlemagne in Memory and Myth - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 4105 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Andrew John Romig
Half course (fall term). M., 2–4.
From the Middle Ages to the present day, the Frankish Emperor Charlemagne (d. 814) has served as a symbol of European pride and power. Students in this course will analyze the evolution of Charlemagne’s image in the literary and historical record from the early ninth century to the seventeenth. Topics of discussion will include the cultural production of myth and memory, the birth of Europe, the rise of the state, the Crusades, and early colonialism.
*History and Literature 90h. Narrating 9/11 - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 0150 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Jeanne Follansbee Quinn
Half course (fall term). W., 2–4.
This course will examine the range and kinds of narratives used by writers, photographers, politicians, historians, and critics to make sense of September 11, 2001. Readings and discussion will provide the tools for considering how historical and literary representations emerge from a collective process of cultural conversation and contestation.
*History and Literature 90i. American Road Narratives - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 9056 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Amy L. Spellacy
Half course (fall term). Th., 3–5.
Explores the significance of the road narrative in twentieth-century American literature and film, focusing on how stories of travel have functioned as a forum for examining larger social and cultural issues. Course will consider the possibilities and promises represented by travel in these stories, and will also interrogate how race, class, and gender affect the experience of being on the road. Authors include Zora Neale Hurston, John Steinbeck, Vladimir Nabokov, Jack Kerouac, and Cormac McCarthy.
*History and Literature 90j. The Paradoxes of Progress - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 1605 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Joshua Humphreys
Half course (fall term). Tu., 2–4.
This seminar explores the idea of Progress, and its accompanying problems and paradoxes, in European history and literature since the Enlightenment. Our approach will be comparative, concentrating on materials drawn primarily from France, Britain, and Germany, ranging from novels, poetry and plays by Tennyson, Hugo, Dickens, Thomas Mann, and Camus to political and philosophical writing and social and cultural criticism (Kant, Condorcet, Comte, Fourier, Freud, and the Frankfurt School) to 20th-c. music (Webern, Schönberg, Górecki).
*History and Literature 90k. Washington, D.C.: The Divided Capital - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 6224 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Lindsay M. Silver
Half course (fall term). Tu., 2–4.
The history and literature of Washington, D.C. from 1800-2000. Course will use texts such as novels, maps, music, memoirs, newspapers, poems, films, monographs, and photographs to explore the tension between the symbolic capital and the residential city. Topics include urban planning and the built environment, federal expansion, migration and immigration, the legacies of segregation and disenfranchisement, the creation of public culture and national tourism, the March on Washington, Home Rule, Watergate, and Mayor Marion Barry.
*History and Literature 90l. Stories of Slavery and Freedom in the Modern Atlantic World - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 5335 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Timothy P. McCarthy
Half course (fall term). M., 2–4.
In the last generation, scholars have revolutionized our understanding of slavery and freedom in the modern Atlantic world. This sea-change has been the result of a major methodological shift: to view this history through the eyes of slaves rather than the eyes of masters. This course will examine the history of the "black Atlantic" through a diverse range of cultural texts--poetry, pamphlets, court cases, petitions, autobiographies, novels, speeches, and sermons--produced by slaves, free blacks, and abolitionists from the Age of Revolution to emancipation.
*History and Literature 90m. Visual Culture of US Social Movements - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 1839 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Aaron S. Lecklider
Half course (fall term). Th., 3–5.
This course studies visual culture and post-1960s US social movements, including the Black Power, women’s, anti-war, and lesbian and gay liberation movements. Students in the course will explore how visual culture has been used both as a political tool and as a means for controlling and shaping the impact of identity-based social movements in recent US history.
*History and Literature 90n. Historical Representation in 19th-c. America - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 8909 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Peter Becker
Half course (fall term). Th., 2–4.
This course focuses on the competition over historical representation in the nineteenth century, which saw the beginning of historiographical writing in the modern sense. We will analyze its emergence in the context of its competitors and predecessors: the historical novel, romantic historiography, travelogue, romance, autobiography, realist fiction, journalism and photography. The course examines how these different genres changed the relationship between individual and environment, self and authority, fact and fiction.
*History and Literature 90o. Native American Literature: Narrations of Nationhood - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 3040 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Lisa T. Brooks
Half course (fall term). Th., 1–3.
How have Native American authors written the native nation? How has writing contributed to the process of imagining the space of the nation in the wake of colonization? Reaching across temporal boundaries from indigenous oral traditions, to the texts of the encounter and protest writing, to contemporary poetry, fiction, and political prose, this interactive course provides substantial grounding in the literature and the history of Native America and fosters critical discussion of contemporary issues.
*History and Literature 90p. Perverse Idols: The Cultures of fin-de-siècle Europe - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 7385 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Judith Surkis
Half course (fall term). W., 3–5.
How did the fin-de-siècle put the new possibilities of new European modernity and its dark undersides on display? How were selves and society reconceived in the process? In exploring these questions, we read contemporary philopshy, literature, social science, and psychology. Amongst our themes: secularization and the "transvaluation of values"; decadence and degeneration; mass culture and the metropolis; the "new woman" and sexual dissidence; sexology and psychoanalysis; imperial exoticism and racial anxiety; politics and social reform.
*History and Literature 97. Tutorial - Sophomore Year
Catalog Number: 1148
Jeanne Follansbee Quinn and members of the Committee.
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Introduction to interdisciplinary methods and to topics in students’ chosen fields. Required of all concentrators. Open only to concentrators.
*History and Literature 98r. Tutorial — Junior Year
Catalog Number: 2766
Jeanne Follansbee Quinn and members of the Committee
Half course (fall term; repeated spring term). Hours to be arranged.
An individually supervised study of selected topics in the student’s chosen field in History and Literature.
Note: Ordinarily taken as two half courses by juniors. Required of all concentrators.
*History and Literature 99. Tutorial — Senior Year
Catalog Number: 5362
Jeanne Follansbee Quinn and members of the Committee
Full course. Hours to be arranged.
Research and writing of the senior thesis; preparation for the oral exam.
Note: Ordinarily taken by seniors as a full course. Required of all concentrators.