Fall 2013
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]