This interdisciplinary film & literature course will approach a 300-year history of documenting abolition through the lens of history, art, and activism.

The class will be divided roughly in half: pre-20th century, and post-20th century. We will put into dialogue the legacy of the 18th-century movement to document and abolish racial slavery, with the history of journalistic art-making and media activism. The diverse activist art forms include but are not limited to: woodcut engravings, ceramics, petitions, boycotts, manifestos, graphic novels, poetry, and documentary films.

The course will also include a number of abolitionist and activist speakers working today. Authors will include 18th and 19th-century transatlantic writers like Ottobah Cugoano and Frederick Douglass, as well as contemporary abolitionists and critics of the prison industrial complex, for example: Angela Davis, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, and Jackie Wang. Films and media will span early agitational documentaries, especially by Dziga Vertov and Joris Ivens, and will continue through the 1960s with documentaries by Alain Resnais, Santiago Alvarez, Madeline Anderson, and others.

The course will conclude with viewings of contemporary films and media centering around Black Lives Matter and other liberatory movements. Alongside works from the US we will also discuss abolition and activism from a global perspective, thus analyzing films and media from the former USSR, East Asia, South America, and beyond.

Class Structure

Class will be offered in a synchronous format, on Zoom between 1:30-3:30 PM (although class will likely end between 3-3:30). There will be no asynchronous recordings.

Assignments

Along with academic research papers and analyses, as well as discussion board posts, the course will integrate a substantial number of creative projects, and the course will culminate in a final creative-critical project, to be completed either collaboratively between students, in conjunction with an activist organization, or on an individual basis. Readings will be primarily in electronic format although some (especially the graphic novels/comics, which aren’t available in electronic format) will need to be purchased in print form. The approximate cost of all print materials should not exceed $60. There will be no timed quizzes or exams.

Tentative Weekly Schedule

Fri-Tues: Complete readings

By Wed eve: Write short discussion board post on Canvas

By Thurs: Attend and participate in Zoom class 1:30-3:30 (attendance required)
INSTRUCTORS: JULIA ALEKSEYEVA, CHI-MING YANG

This seminar has a bold aim: it seeks to understand better what has happened in our world since the era of decolonization, by considering the term “politics” in its very broadest and most dramatic connotation—as the dream of social change (and its failures). Another way of describing its subject matter is to say that the course is about revolution and counterrevolution since the Bandung Conference. Together we will investigate the way in which major historical events, including the struggle for Algerian independence, the military coup in Indonesia, the Cuban Revolution, the assassination of Patrice Lumumba in Congo, the Vietnam War, the fall of the Soviet Block, the end of apartheid in South Africa, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Iraq War and its aftermath, and contemporary concerns with immigration, corporate malfeasance, structural adjustment and privatization, and environmental catastrophe have been represented in some of the most innovative and moving films of our time. Attention will therefore be paid to a variety of genres, including cinema verité, documentary, the thriller, the biopic, animation, the global conspiracy film, hyperlink cinema, science fiction and dystopia. Films will include: The Battle of Algiers, The Year of Living Dangerously, Memories of Underdevelopment, Lumumba and Lumumba: La Mort du Prophète, The Fog of War, The Lives of Others, Y Tu Mama Tambien, Even the Rain, The Constant Gardener, Syriana, Waltz with Bashir, Caché, Children of Men, and The Possibility of Hope. An archive of secondary readings will be provided on Canvas. Writing requirements: a mid-term and a final paper of around 8-10 pages.
INSTRUCTOR: RITA BARNARD

This course will consider the horror genre within the specific context of two national cinemas: France and Italy. For France, the focus will be almost exclusively on the contemporary period which has been witnessing an unprecedented revival in horror. For Italy, there will be a marked emphasis on the 1960s-1970s, i.e. the Golden Age of Gothic horror and the giallo craze initiated by the likes of Mario Bava and Dario Argento. Various subgenres will be examined: supernatural horror, ghost story, slasher, zombie film, body horror, cannibalism, etc. Issues of ethics, gender, sexuality, violence, spectatorship will be examined through a variety of critical lenses (psychoanalysis, socio-historical and cultural context, aesthetics, politics, gender, etc.).
INSTRUCTOR: PHILLIPE CHARLES MET

This course introduces students to one specific Book of the Hebrew Bible. "The Bible in Translation" involves an in-depth reading of a biblical source against the background of contemporary scholarship. Depending on the book under discussion, this may also involve a contextual reading with other biblical books and the textual sources of the ancient Near East. Although no prerequisites are required, this class is a perfect follow-up course to "Intro to the Bible."
INSTRUCTOR: ISABEL CRANZ

This course introduces students to selections from the best literary works written in Hebrew over the last hundred years in a relaxed seminar environment. The goal of the course is to develop skills in critical reading of literature in general, and to examine how Hebrew authors grapple with crucial questions of human existence and national identity. Topics include: Hebrew classics and their modern "descendents," autobiography in poetry and fiction, the conflict between literary generations, and others. Because the content of this course changes from year to year, students may take it for credit more than once. This course is conducted in Hebrew and all readings are in Hebrew. Grading is based primarily on participation and students' literary understanding.
INSTRUCTOR: NILI GOLD

European intellectual and cultural history from 1870 to 1950. Themes to be considered include aesthetic modernism and the avant-garde, the rebellion against rationalism and positivism, Social Darwinism, Second International Socialism, the impact of World War One on European intellectuals, psychoanalysis, existentialism, and the ideological origins of fascism. Figures to be studied include Nietzsche, Freud, Woolf, Sartre, Camus, and Heidegger.
INSTRUCTOR: WARREN BRECKMAN

In this course we will consider texts that become national epics. How and when might such imaginative texts emerge? Do they represent all the hopes and aspirations of all members of a nation? Nations change, demographics shift, and texts of yesteryear, once deemed representative, may no longer serve, or may be read differently; new sagas achieve prominence. We will study the literary and performative qualities of given texts, but also of the struggles of the nations they represent.

The turn to nationalism signaled by this course title might seem surprising, or counter-intuitive. Globalism has become the default mode of academic study: global antiquity, global postmodernity, the global Middle Ages. National Epics seeks not to deny the validity of such approaches, but rather to complement them: for it is evident that within current conditions of warp-speed global connectivity, cultural and political forms of nationalism are making a comeback. 5G networks proliferate, but with growing suspicion of the builders. Supply chains seem too long, diseases cross borders, and voters are swayed by protectionist and nationalist narratives. Initiatives in trans-national partnership, treaty-keeping, and conservation are in retreat. Populism, often racially-inflected, is on the rise. It thus seems timely for us to review the cultural mechanisms of national identity, national pride, nation by nation.

Of course, most of us may be citizens of just one (or two) nations, but with awareness of long, hyphenated family histories: Chinese-American, Cuban American, Italian-American, Polish-American, African-American; also perhaps Lenni Lenape American, native American, or French Canadian. Some students in this course last year took the opportunity to investigate, for their final project, family histories (and hence their own, personal connection to "national epics"). Such investigation might actually be an ideal project in lockdown, Zoom-dictated conditions.

There will likely be four assignments, along these lines:
Assignment 1: pass/ pass: a short meditation, of about 500 words or 2 pages, on the theme of personhood and nationhood. You may draw upon your own experiences here, or offer a response to texts and issues covered in class. This will serve a tune up writing exercise and will be especially useful if English is not your first language. I will provide feedback. It will also allow me to get a more detailed and nuanced account of your interests, of what you might hope for in this class.

Assignment 2: short essay, chosen from a list of topics to be provided (and covered in class): 4 pages.

Assignment 3: long essay brainstorm. Again, this need not be long: the chief point is to let me know how your thinking is developing, so that (again) I can suggest further reading, focus on critical issues, etc. Some class discussion of topics and issues arising might prove useful.

Assignment 4: longer essay, 8-10 pages. Long, but not ridiculously long: compactness and concision are to be valued above omnium gatherum bagginess.

Assessment: assignment 1 p/f; ass.2 20%; ass. 3 P/F; ass. 4 70%; class participation 10%.
INSTRUCTOR: DAVID WALLACE

What does it mean to imagine environmental justice?

Our course explores a range of narrative forms from distinct global contexts, to ask what environmental justice looks like in a world where the effects of colonialism and climate change are unevenly distributed across populations. Sustained engagement with Indigenous North American, African American, Palestinian, and South African imaginary traditions will highlight diverse ways of relating to land, water and nonhuman animals challenge that challenge capitalist and colonial logics of extraction.

This course asks students to comparatively and critically reflect on literary, filmic, and nonfictional narratives that engage in different ways with the question of justice. Course materials highlight not only instances of spectacular environmental catastrophe but also more subtle effects on bodies and landscapes, attending to the complex ways that environmental crisis intersects with race, gender and sexuality. The class will enable participants to translate these ideas into practice by producing public-facing content through creative modes of enquiry. Ultimately, we will strive to understand how various forms of artistic and creative expression might enable us to imagine more equitable futures.
INSTRUCTOR: REBECCA MACKLIN

This course is offered online with synchronous and asynchronous components.

This course will provide an introduction to some of the most important film theory debates, and allow us to explore how writers and filmmakers from different countries and historical periods have attempted to make sense of the changing phenomenon known as "cinema," to think cinematically. Topics under consideration may include: spectatorship, authorship, the apparatus, sound, editing, realism, race, gender and sexuality, stardom, the culture industry, the nation and decolonization, what counts as film theory and what counts as cinema, and the challenges of considering film theory in a global context, including the challenge of working across languages. No knowledge of film theory is presumed. Fulfills Cross Cultural Analysis.
INSTRUCTORS: META MAZAJ, KAREN REDROBE

Karl Marx gave his well-known work Capital the subtitle “A Critique of Political Economy”—not “how to be a communist,” or “why the Soviet Union is the best,” or “what is wrong with religion, freedom, and democracy.” Those non-existent subtitles describe some of the preconceptions many in the U.S. have about Marx and Marxisms, while the actual subtitle reminds us that Marx and Marxisms at their root simply try to examine the problems with both capitalism and the political and economic discourses that justify or ignore those problems. Today, many around the globe are also reflecting on capitalism’s problems, in the hope of imagining and realizing a better future. This course will trace some of the origins of that renewed inquiry, and allow us to discuss its limits and possibilities in today’s world. It will offer an introduction to the works of Marx and some of the varied traditions that have spun out of them; no prior familiarity with that work or those traditions is required. By reading Marx’s own writings as well as social theory influenced by them, and by reading literature and watching film, art, and popular culture from around the globe, we will consider a diverse array of answers to questions like: How are activism and theory connected? How do racial, gender, economic, and political inequalities emerge and increase around the globe? Why does shopping make us feel so much pleasure, pain, or numbness? What was the relationship between Atlantic world slavery and capitalism? What are ideology and alienation? How might culture help us imagine our way out of the violence and inequality of social relations?
INSTRUCTOR: DAVID KAZANJIAN