In one of the most evocative frescoes of the Renaissance, Raphael juxtaposes Plato and Aristotle. The pairing would seem obvious, since the two thinkers had been for centuries symbols of philosophy and wisdom. But only the recent revival of Plato, begun in the mid-fifteenth century, had allowed Latin West to gain a better understanding of Platonic philosophy and therefore to compare Plato's doctrines directly to those of Aristotle. Were master and disciple in harmony? And if not, which of the two should be favored? Such questions were less innocent than one might think, and the answers to them had implications for philosophy, theology, speculation on the natural world, and even politics. The course will offer an overview of Renaissance philosophy and culture by focusing on the different ways in which Plato and Aristotle were read, interpreted and exploited between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. The course will be conducted in English; a basic knowledge of Latin is desirable but not required.
INSTRUCTOR: EVA DEL SOLDATO

This seminar will listen attentively to the echoes of Franz Kafka in the novels of J.M. Coetzee. Building on Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s concept of a minor literature, elaborated on the example of Kafka’s oeuvre, we will situate Kafka against the backdrop of the German-speaking Jewish community of Habsburg-era Prague and read Coetzee within the context of apartheid and his native South Africa. Beyond an investigation of empire and its aftermath, this course will consider the arguably posthuman ethics of these authors, examining them through the lens of animal studies and the environmental humanities in order to reveal how they anticipate and participate in current thinking on the Anthropocene. Reading Kafka’s fables beside Coetzee’s allegorical narratives, the seminar will follow the twisted course taken by literary justice from the Josef K. of Kafka’s Trial to Coetzee’s Life and Times of Michael K. Alongside these two towering figures, the influence of and affinities with other German-language authors (Heinrich von Kleist, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Robert Walser) and Anglophone contemporaries (Samuel Beckett, Nadine Gordimer, Cormac McCarthy) will also be considered. Other works to be read will include Kafka’s Castle, In the Penal Colony, Metamorphosis and late animal stories as well as Coetzee’s In the Heart of the Country, Waiting for the Barbarians and Elizabeth Costello. Advanced undergraduates may enroll with the permission of the instructor. Readings and discussions in English.
INSTRUCTOR: IAN FLEISHMAN

The language that we know today as Old Church Slavonic was invented, along with the Slavic alphabet(s), in the 9th century by two Greek scholars, Sts. Cyril and Methodius. They had been tasked by the Byzantine Emperor with bringing the Christian faith to the Slavic-speaking people of Great Moravia, a powerful medieval state in central Europe. From there, literacy, along with the Christian faith, spread to other Slavs, and even non-Slavic speakers, such as Lithuanians and Romanians. Church Slavonic and its regional variants were used to compose the oldest texts of the Slavic-speaking world, which today is comprised of Belarus, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Russia, Poland, Slovakia, Serbia, Slovenia, and Ukraine. Knowledge of this language and tradition aids in understanding the cultural, literary, and linguistic history of any modern Slavic language. For learners of Russian and other Slavic languages, Church Slavonic provides a layer of elevated stylistic vocabulary and conceptual terminology, similar to, and even greater than, the role of Latin and Greek roots in the English language. For historical linguists, Church Slavonic provides unique material for comparison with other ancient Indo-European languages, such as Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit. For medievalists and cultural historians, it opens the door into the Slavic Orthodox tradition that developed in the orbit of the Byzantine Commonwealth. The course introduces students to the linguistic basics of Old Church Slavonic and its later variants, paying special attention to its cultural and historical context and its material culture - manuscripts. We will focus on the Russian variant of Church Slavonic but can also examine other variants (Serbian, Croatian, Bulgarian, or Ruthenian, should there be interest). The course is suitable for advanced undergraduate and graduate students. Knowledge of a Slavic language is a significant advantage but is not necessary.
INSTRUCTOR: JULIA VERKHOLANTSEV

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