Course Archive
Spring 2014
Spring 2014
Alain-Philippe Durand
WEDNESDAY 1:00 to 4:00 p.m.
Jan 22 to Apr 23
What makes the French laugh? Why do the French like Jerry Lewis (and other comedians such as Charles Chaplin) so much? Why does Hollywood remake so many French comedies? This interactive seminar responds to these questions by examining the comic and humor techniques used in French cinema throughout the years. In addition to watching and analyzing several representative films from different periods, participants will study the cultural and historic roots of French humor and laughter throughout history. Representative films (with English subtitles) and texts are used in our investigation. The...
Spring 2014
Steven D. Martinson
WEDNESDAYS
9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
Jan 22 to Apr 2
The youthful interests of Friedrich Nietzsche permeate his later work, for which the critical-creative writer is most widely known. We will first consider his early experiences, memories, illustrations, piano compositions, poetry, and prose, including his first major published writing, The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music, and university lectures on the pre-Socratics. The goal is to render a new and different reading that challenges contemporary perceptions, images, and conceptions of one of the most influential and controversial German writers of world literature.
Spring 2014
Richard T. Hanson
TUESDAYS
9:00 a.m. until 12:00 p.m.
Jan 21 to Apr 1
There Is Nothing Like a Dame! celebrates the women of Broadway who wrote the scripts, composed the songs, penned the lyrics, designed, directed, choreographed, and starred in classics of the American musical theater.
The seminar introduces the women of the Golden Age of musical theater who paved the way for the women now working on new musicals for the millennium. Revel in archival performances by the great ladies of Broadway past and cheer for the new divas of the Great White Way who are creating musical memories for a new generation of theatergoers.
There Is Nothing Like a Dame! also...
Spring 2014
Jerry Hogle
SECTION FULL -- TUESDAYS
1:00 until 4:00 p.m.
Jan 21 to Apr 1
England during the reign of Victoria is famous for industrial, scientific, and technological advances, as well as sexual repression. But it was also an era when the ghost story – and its extensions in longer fictions during one of the heydays of the English novel – flourished in print just as old traditions about the spirit world were being called into question by the many supposed “progresses” of the day. This seminar sets out to explain both the wide range of ghost stories during the time before and after Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” in 1843 (which will be included) and the many...
Fall 2013
Fall 2013
Jay Rosenblatt
MONDAYS
1:00 - 4:00 p.m.
Oct 14 to Dec 16
The year 2013 will commemorate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901), and over four sessions we will survey his vast output of operas. The first lecture will provide an overview of Verdi’s life and career. We will also consider his most important predecessors (Rossini, Bellini, and Donizetti) and the relationship of their music to his as seen in his earliest operas. Subsequent classes will continue the chronological survey, with in-depth examination of selected scenes using video clips and recordings. Finally, we will focus on Verdi’s last operas, Otello and...
Fall 2013
Meg Lota Brown
FRIDAYS
9:00 a.m. until noon
Oct 4 to Dec 13
John Milton was one of England’s most controversial, celebrated, and reviled writers. As the course title suggests, we will study Milton’s poetry and prose within the context of the many revolutions in which he was a major figure: revolutions in politics, theology, poetics, and philosophy. One of our goals will be to examine not only how Milton–and the culture in which he was embedded–constructed meaning but also why it is important for us to undertake such an examination. We will read works from many of the different genres in which Milton wrote: sonnets, epic (Paradise Lost), masque,...
Fall 2013
Michael Gill
THURSDAYS
1:00-3:00 p.m.
Oct 3 to Dec 12
Utilitarianism is the idea that one ought to perform those actions that produce the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers, which is one of the most important views of morality ever developed. In this course we will explore Utilitarianism’s philosophical origins, its influences on politics and literature, and recent attempts to show that contemporary neuroscience and psychology validate it. We will read works of the philosophers David Hume, Adam Smith, and John Stuart Mill, and excerpts from the novels of Dickens and Dostoevsky. The contemporary writers we will critically examine include...
Fall 2013
Fabio Lanza
THURSDAYS
9:00 a.m. until noon
Oct 3 to Dec 12
This course analyzes the evolution of Chinese urban space to show how both Chinese people and outsiders viewed the evolving form of the city as the symbol of China’s progress, its position in the world, and its internal social dynamics. From the walls of the Forbidden City to the Western buildings of Shanghai, from the massive squares and the drab structures of communism to the incredible expansion in the last thirty years, we will investigate the shifting meanings of architecture and city life. We will look at how such notions as cosmopolitanism, nationalism, and scientific rationality...
Fall 2013
Norman Austin
WEDNESDAYS
10:00 a.m. until noon
Oct 2 to Dec 11
This seminar will take students through a reading of the whole of Homer’s Iliad. The first two weeks will be devoted to historical conditions around the work, including discussion of the nature of oral composition and aesthetic aspects of oral epic. The remaining eight weeks will be devoted to a consecutive reading of the poem, with the focus on such issues as the relations between the gods and human beings, between one human being and another, the making of the hero, destiny, choice, free will, and the tragic consequences of a human individual’s choices.
Fall 2013
Lanin Gyurko
TUESDAYS
1:00 to 4:00 p.m.
Oct 1 to Dec 10
Join Professor Lanin Gyurko as he explores the life and films of one of the greatest film directors, Alfred Hitchcock, master of suspense, mystery, and intrigue. Films from the silent and sound eras, in black and white and color, and biopics will be discussed. The course will highlight both the films’ spellbinding content and their use of dazzling cinematic techniques, as well as Hitchcock's adroit utilization of star power--from Joan Fontaine and Laurence Olivier to Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, and Kim Novak. Films that will be studied include The Lodger, Blackmail, Rebecca,...
Fall 2013
Thomas Price
TUESDAYS
9:00 a.m. until noon
Oct 1 to Dec 17
Who are the Turks? Where did they come from, and how did they help build the Islamic world? What role did they play in the Crusades? A major world power for nearly 500 years, how did they rule so much of Europe before finally taking Constantinople in 1453, and with what consequences?
More recently, what role have Turks--both Ottomans and post-Ottomans--played in modern history? As the Sick Man of Europe for most of the 19th century, they provided fuel for the western imagination in literature, architecture, food, and fashion--not to mention wars. The dismantling of their empire created the...
Fall 2013
Albrecht Classen
MONDAYS
9:00 a.m. until 12:00 p.m.
Sep 30 to Dec 16
This course will focus on some of the central and most significant texts from the Middle Ages which have withstood the test of time and continue to exert a tremendous fascination on us today. We will explore what some of the fundamental issues in human life have always been and how responses to them in the past prove to be most illuminating for us today. Some of those issues are: meaning of fortune/misfortune, happiness in human life, experience of death, loss of love, love itself, heroism and tragedy, friendship, gift giving, exploration of the unknown, religious conflicts and difference,...
Summer 2013
Summer 2013
Peter Medine
THURSDAYS
9:00 a.m. until 12:00 p.m.
Aug 1 to Aug 29
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. (Henry IV, Part 2)
Of his ten histories, the four interrelated plays forming the second tetralogy are among Shakespeare's greatest theatrical achievements. These works, which deal with the period of 1400 to 1420, include Richard II, Henry IV Part 1, Henry IV Part 2, and Henry V. They feature a rich variety of characters: the tragic Richard II, the ruthlessly ambitious and ultimately remorseful Henry IV, the heroic Henry V, and the brilliantly comic Falstaff. The plays focus on some of the enduring political questions: the transference of power from one...
Summer 2013
Fabian Alfie
WEDNESDAYS
9:00 a.m. until 12:00 p.m.
Jul 10 to Jul 31
Using a facing-page translation, we will deal with the climax of Dante’s Divine Comedy. While Inferno depicts sin and evil, and Purgatorio portrays redemption, Paradiso illustrates the possibility of transcendence. Not only does a blessed soul understand the transcendent universe, but that person also transcends her or his fallen human nature. In this seminar we will cover the numerous historical personages and references in the work, and discuss its cosmological and theological basis. Dante’s Paradiso is the culmination of the Comedy, illustrating the perfect nature of the universe, as...
Summer 2013
David Soren
MONDAYS
9:00 a.m. until 11:00 a.m.
Jul 8 to Jul 29
Join anthropologist/classical archaeologist David Soren in a survey of the art and archaeology of ancient Rome. This course will highlight the major wonders of the Roman world from the 8th century B.C. to the 6th century A.D., including the historical truth behind Rome's alleged founders Romulus and Remus, the frightening demonology of the Etruscans, the remarkable seven-terraced sanctuary of Praeneste, and the unique construction of the Pantheon. Dr. Soren has recently been assigned to direct a miniseries on ancient Rome, and he will discuss highlights of his project throughout Italy. The...
Summer 2013
Thomas P. Miller
THURSDAYS
9:00 a.m. until 12:00 p.m.
Jun 6 to Jun 27
What’s the value of a good argument? That question is not merely rhetorical. For the sake of argument, we will reassess the classical opposition of rhetoric and philosophy that was first established by Plato. Ironically, it was not Socrates’s student but a student of the Sophists who founded the humanities upon a skepticism about received truths. In our first class we will explore the sophistic art of deliberating upon the uncertainties of civic life, and in our second we will read Plato’s highly rhetorical attacks on rhetoric. Then we will turn to the Aristotelian works that first...
Summer 2013
J. Pat Willerton
TUESDAYS
9:00 a.m. until 12:00 p.m.
May 7 to May 28
Contemporary Russia continues to search for a post-Soviet national identity: what Russians refer to as their country’s “national idea.” The return to the presidency of Vladimir Putin signifies that the country’s most historically significant leader since Stalin reassumes the decisive role as Russia continues to wrestle with its identity, sociopolitical goals, and position in the world community. We focus on political system and institution building, elites, and socioeconomic change as we consider an emergent 21st -century Russian “national idea.” The core concept of the “Russian soul”...
Summer 2013
Endre Stavang
THURSDAYS
10:00 a.m. until 12:00 p.m.
May 2 to May 30
Our global environmental problems need attention from almost all legal disciplines, including constitutional law, property law, natural resources regulation, and international and comparative law. This timely class presents core issues in environmental law – broadly construed -- based on cutting-edge research by faculty at the College of Law. The issues are: how environmental law can be grounded in water law (Glennon); environmental law's constraints and competing concerns within the context of international trade (Gantz); how migration of species is and can be regulated, with special...
Spring 2013
Spring 2013
Barbara Kosta
MONDAYS
10:00 a.m. until noon
Jan 28 to Apr 15
Beginning with the German cinema of the 1920s and ending with contemporary films, this course provides a historical overview of influential German movies, major periods, and key filmmakers.
In the 1920s German cinema was one of Hollywood’s fiercest competitors, and the Ufa, Germany’s premier film studio, produced a body of innovative films that would become classics. Movies such as Nosferatu and Metropolis continue to influence filmmaking practices internationally. We will begin with a look at the cinema of the Weimar Republic (1919-1933) and the transition of silent film to sound film...
Spring 2013
Jay Rosenblatt
MONDAYS
1:00 p.m. until 3:00 p.m
Jan 28 to Feb 18
In 2013 we celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Richard Wagner (1813–1883). Perhaps no other composer so changed the course of music history through the way he reconceived the nature of opera and the way he stretched the boundaries of tonality. Many composers who followed found themselves swept up in these new approaches to form and harmony.
Four classes will consider Wagner in terms of both biography and music. The first two will provide an overview of Wagner’s life, including his background and education, his practical experience in the opera house (emphasizing his years as...