COML1500 - Greek & Roman Mythology

Status
A
Activity
REC
Section number integer
402
Title (text only)
Greek & Roman Mythology
Term
2023A
Subject area
COML
Section number only
402
Section ID
COML1500402
Course number integer
1500
Meeting times
R 10:15 AM-11:14 AM
Meeting location
BENN 24
Level
undergraduate
Instructors
Tiffany Nguyen
Description
Myths are traditional stories that have endured many years. Some of them have to do with events of great importance, such as the founding of a nation. Others tell the stories of great heroes and heroines and their exploits and courage in the face of adversity. Still others are simple tales about otherwise unremarkable people who get into trouble or do some great deed. What are we to make of all these tales, and why do people seem to like to hear them? This course will focus on the myths of ancient Greece and Rome, as well as a few contemporary American ones, as a way of exploring the nature of myth and the function it plays for individuals, societies, and nations. We will also pay some attention to the way the Greeks and Romans themselves understood their own myths. Are myths subtle codes that contain some universal truth? Are they a window on the deep recesses of a particular culture? Are they entertaining stories that people like to tell over and over? Are they a set of blinders that all of us wear, though we do not realize it? We investigate these questions through a variety of topics creation of the universe between gods and mortals, religion and family, sex, love, madness, and death.
Course number only
1500
Cross listings
CLST1500402
Fulfills
Arts & Letters Sector
Cross Cultural Analysis
Use local description
No

COML1250 - Belief and Unbelief in Modern Thought

Status
A
Activity
LEC
Section number integer
402
Title (text only)
Belief and Unbelief in Modern Thought
Term
2023A
Subject area
COML
Section number only
402
Section ID
COML1250402
Course number integer
1250
Meeting times
MW 1:45 PM-3:14 PM
Meeting location
TOWN 313
Level
undergraduate
Instructors
Warren G Breckman
Description
"God is dead," declared Friedrich Nietzsche, "and we have killed him." Nietzche's words came as a climax of a longer history of criticism of, and dissent toward, the religious foundations of European society and politics. The critique of religion had vast implications for the meaning of human life, the nature of the person, and the conception of political and social existence. The course will explore the intensifying debate over religion in the intellectual history of Europe, reaching from the Renaissance, through the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment, to the twentieth century. Rousseau, Voltaire, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud. These thinkers allow us to trace the varieties of irreligious experience that have emerged in modern European thought and their implications for both historical and philosophical understanding. Rather than drawing a straight line from belief to non-belief, however, we will also consider whether religion lingers even in secular thought and culture.
Course number only
1250
Cross listings
HIST1250402
Fulfills
Cross Cultural Analysis
Use local description
No

COML1250 - Belief and Unbelief in Modern Thought

Status
X
Activity
LEC
Section number integer
401
Title (text only)
Belief and Unbelief in Modern Thought
Term
2023A
Subject area
COML
Section number only
401
Section ID
COML1250401
Course number integer
1250
Meeting times
CANCELED
Level
undergraduate
Instructors
Warren G Breckman
Description
"God is dead," declared Friedrich Nietzsche, "and we have killed him." Nietzche's words came as a climax of a longer history of criticism of, and dissent toward, the religious foundations of European society and politics. The critique of religion had vast implications for the meaning of human life, the nature of the person, and the conception of political and social existence. The course will explore the intensifying debate over religion in the intellectual history of Europe, reaching from the Renaissance, through the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment, to the twentieth century. Rousseau, Voltaire, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud. These thinkers allow us to trace the varieties of irreligious experience that have emerged in modern European thought and their implications for both historical and philosophical understanding. Rather than drawing a straight line from belief to non-belief, however, we will also consider whether religion lingers even in secular thought and culture.
Course number only
1250
Cross listings
HIST1250401
Use local description
No

COML1262 - Tolstoy’s War and Peace and the Age of Napoleon

Status
A
Activity
LEC
Section number integer
401
Title (text only)
Tolstoy’s War and Peace and the Age of Napoleon
Term
2023A
Subject area
COML
Section number only
401
Section ID
COML1262401
Course number integer
1262
Meeting times
MW 10:15 AM-11:44 AM
Meeting location
STNH AUD
Level
undergraduate
Instructors
Griffin Creech
Peter I Holquist
Description
In this course we will read what many consider to be the greatest book in world literature. This work, Tolstoy's War and Peace, is devoted to one of the most momentous periods in world history, the Napoleonic Era (1789-1815). We will study both the book and the era of the Napoleonic Wars: the military campaigns of Napoleon and his opponents, the grand strategies of the age, political intrigues and diplomatic betrayals, the ideologies and human dramas, the relationship between art and history. How does literature help us to understand this era? How does history help us to understand this great book? Because we will read War and Peace over the course of the entire semester, readings will be manageable and very enjoyable.
Course number only
1262
Cross listings
HIST1260401, REES1380401
Fulfills
Cross Cultural Analysis
Use local description
No

COML2020 - Russia and the West

Status
A
Activity
SEM
Section number integer
401
Title (text only)
Russia and the West
Term
2023A
Subject area
COML
Section number only
401
Section ID
COML2020401
Course number integer
2020
Meeting times
TR 10:15 AM-11:44 AM
Meeting location
COHN 392
Level
undergraduate
Instructors
D. Brian Kim
Description
This course will explore the representations of the West in eighteenth- and nineteenth- century Russian literature and philosophy. We will consider the Russian visions of various events and aspects of Western political and social life Revolutions, educational system, public executions, resorts, etc. within the context of Russian intellectual history. We will examine how images of the West reflect Russia's own cultural concerns, anticipations, and biases, as well as aesthetic preoccupations and interests of Russian writers. The discussion will include literary works by Karamzin, Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Leskov, and Tolstoy, as well as non-fictional documents, such as travelers' letters, diaries, and historiosophical treatises of Russian Freemasons, Romantic and Positivist thinkers, and Russian social philosophers of the late Nineteenth century. A basic knowledge of nineteenth-century European history is desirable. The class will consist of lectures, discussion, short writing assignments, and two in-class tests.
Course number only
2020
Cross listings
HIST0824401, REES0190401
Fulfills
Humanties & Social Science Sector
Use local description
No

COML1191 - World Literature

Status
A
Activity
SEM
Section number integer
401
Title (text only)
World Literature
Term
2023A
Subject area
COML
Section number only
401
Section ID
COML1191401
Course number integer
1191
Meeting times
MW 10:15 AM-11:44 AM
Meeting location
BENN 139
Level
undergraduate
Instructors
Qing Liao
Description
How do we think 'the world' as such? Globalizing economic paradigms encourage one model that, while it connects distant regions with the ease of a finger-tap, also homogenizes the world, manufacturing patterns of sameness behind simulations of diversity. Our current world-political situation encourages another model, in which fundamental differences are held to warrant the consolidation of borders between Us and Them, "our world" and "theirs." This course begins with the proposal that there are other ways to encounter the world, that are politically compelling, ethically important, and personally enriching--and that the study of literature can help tease out these new paths. Through the idea of World Literature, this course introduces students to the appreciation and critical analysis of literary texts, with the aim of navigating calls for universality or particularity (and perhaps both) in fiction and film. "World literature" here refers not merely to the usual definition of "books written in places other than the US and Europe, "but any form of cultural production that explores and pushes at the limits of a particular world, that steps between and beyond worlds, or that heralds the coming of new worlds still within us, waiting to be born. And though, as we read and discuss our texts, we will glide about in space and time from the inner landscape of a private mind to the reaches of the farthest galaxies, knowledge of languages other than English will not be required, and neither will any prior familiary with the literary humanities. In the company of drunken kings, botanical witches, ambisexual alien lifeforms, and storytellers who've lost their voice, we will reflect on, and collectively navigate, our encounters with the faraway and the familiar--and thus train to think through the challenges of concepts such as translation, narrative, and ideology. Texts include Kazuo Ishiguro, Ursula K. LeGuin, Salman Rushdie, Werner Herzog, Jamaica Kincaid, Russell Hoban, Hiroshi Teshigahara, Arundhathi Roy, and Abbas Kiarostami.
Course number only
1191
Cross listings
CLST1602401, ENGL1179401
Use local description
No

COML1120 - Translating Cultures: Literature on and in Translation

Status
A
Activity
SEM
Section number integer
401
Title (text only)
Translating Cultures: Literature on and in Translation
Term
2023A
Subject area
COML
Section number only
401
Section ID
COML1120401
Course number integer
1120
Meeting times
TR 1:45 PM-3:14 PM
Meeting location
WILL 307
Level
undergraduate
Instructors
Kathryn Hellerstein
Description
"Languages are not strangers to one another," writes the great critic and translator Walter Benjamin. Yet two people who speak different languages have a difficult time talking to one another, unless they both know a third, common language or can find someone who knows both their languages to translate what they want to say. Without translation, most of us would not be able to read the Bible or Homer, the foundations of Western culture. Americans wouldn't know much about the cultures of Europe, China, Africa, South America, and the Middle East. And people who live in or come from these places would not know much about American culture. Without translation, Americans would not know much about the diversity of cultures within America. The very fabric of our world depend upon translation between people, between cultures, between texts. With a diverse group of readings--autobiography, fiction, poetry, anthrology, and literary theory--this course will address some fundamental questions about translating language and culture. What does it mean to translate? How do we read a text in translation? What does it mean to live between two languages? Who is a translator? What are different kinds of literary and cultural translation? what are their principles and theories? Their assumptions and practices? Their effects on and implications for the individual and the society?
Course number only
1120
Cross listings
GRMN1120401, JWST1120401
Fulfills
Arts & Letters Sector
Use local description
No

COML5440 - Public Environmental Humanities

Status
A
Activity
SEM
Section number integer
401
Title (text only)
Public Environmental Humanities
Term
2023A
Subject area
COML
Section number only
401
Section ID
COML5440401
Course number integer
5440
Meeting times
W 1:45 PM-4:44 PM
Meeting location
DRLB 2C2
Level
graduate
Instructors
Bethany Wiggin
Description
This broadly interdisciplinary course is designed for Graduate and Undergraduate Fellows in the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities (PPEH) who hail from departments across Arts and Sciences as well as other schools at the university. The course is also open to others with permission of the instructors. Work in environmental humanities by necessity spans academic disciplines. By design, it can also address and engage publics beyond traditional academic settings. This seminar, with limited enrollment, explores best practices in public environmental humanities. Students receive close mentoring to develop and execute cross-disciplinary, public engagement projects on the environment. In spring 2018, participants have the opportunity to participate in PPEH's public engagement projects on urban waters and environmental data. These ongoing projects document the variety of uses that Philadelphians make of federal climateand environmental data, in and beyond city government; they also shine light onclimate and environmental challenges our city faces and the kinds of data we need to address them. Working with five community partners across Philadelphia, including the City's Office of Sustainability, students in this course will develop data use stories and surface the specific environmental questions neighborhoods have and the kinds of data they find useful. The course hosts guest speakers and research partners from related public engagement projects across the planet; community, neighborhood, open data, and open science advocates; and project partners in government in the City of Philadelphia and Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Course assignments include: * 2 short-form essays (course blog posts); * a 12-hour research stay (conducted over multiple visits) with a community course partner to canvas data uses and desires; * authorship of 3 multi-media data stories; * co-organization and participation in a city-wide data storytelling event on May 2, 2018.
Course number only
5440
Cross listings
ANTH5440401, ENVS5440401, GRMN5440401, URBS5440401
Use local description
No

COML1110 - Jewish American Literature

Status
A
Activity
LEC
Section number integer
401
Title (text only)
Jewish American Literature
Term
2023A
Subject area
COML
Section number only
401
Section ID
COML1110401
Course number integer
1110
Meeting times
TR 10:15 AM-11:44 AM
Meeting location
BENN 141
Level
undergraduate
Instructors
Kathryn Hellerstein
Description
What makes Jewish American literature Jewish? What makes it American? This course will address these questions about ethnic literature through fiction, poetry, drama, and other writings by Jews in America, from their arrival in 1654 to the present. We will discuss how Jewish identity and ethnicity shape literature and will consider how form and language develop as Jewish writers "immigrate" from Yiddish, Hebrew, and other languages to American English. Our readings, from Jewish American Literature: A Norton Anthology, will include a variety of stellar authors, both famous and less-known, including Isaac Mayer Wise, Emma Lazarus, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Celia Dropkin, Abraham Cahan, Anzia Yezierska, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Cynthia Ozick, and Allegra Goodman. Students will come away from this course having explored the ways that Jewish culture intertwines with American culture in literature.
Course number only
1110
Cross listings
GRMN1110401, JWST1110401
Fulfills
Cultural Diviserity in the U.S.
Arts & Letters Sector
Use local description
No

COML5420 - MLA Proseminar: Connecting the Arts to Climate Action

Status
A
Activity
SEM
Section number integer
640
Title (text only)
MLA Proseminar: Connecting the Arts to Climate Action
Term
2023A
Subject area
COML
Section number only
640
Section ID
COML5420640
Course number integer
5420
Meeting times
M 5:15 PM-8:14 PM
Meeting location
BENN 138
Level
graduate
Instructors
Simon J Richter
Description
Topics vary annually.
Course number only
5420
Cross listings
GRMN5420640
Use local description
No