Subjects Taught by Semester

Prereq: none
3-0-9 HASS-H, CI-HW
Topics: Improves Close Reading, Improves Oral Communication, Is Writing-Intensive, Studies Adaptations or Translations, Thinks about Popular Culture, Thinks about Race or Class, Thinks about Science, Technology, Environment, Works with Visual Materials/Film/Media

This course will look at literature centered on monstrous figures to think about two things. The first: how do monsters (like devilish magicians, mad scientists, and any number of nameless creatures) show or de-monstrate the fears, anxieties, and problems of specific cultural moments throughout history? What are the techniques authors use to fashion their monstrous characters, and what are their implications? The second: what are we to make of the fact that, while monsters are often objects of terror, they are also frequently sympathetic figures, vibrant fictional characters whose complexities seem to protest the fear they are (supposedly) meant to inspire?

Indeed, many of the monsters we will cover are, to some readers, the heroes of their stories.

By reading literature in genres ranging from 16th century English drama to the 19th century Gothic novel to contemporary American horror fiction, this course will teach you to understand and write about—through close reading, historical and contextual research, and comparative analysis of texts—literature’s rich, ongoing, and ambivalent tradition of making monsters.

Prereq: none
3-3-6 HASS-A, CI-H
Topics: Improves Close Reading, Improves Oral Communication, Includes Critical Theory, Includes Hands-on Projects or Making, Is Writing-Intensive, Thinks about Gender or Sexuality, Thinks about Popular Culture, Thinks about Race or Class, Works with Archives, Works with Visual Materials/Film/Media

Concentrates on close analysis and criticism of a wide range of films, including works from the early silent period, documentary and avant-garde films, European art cinema, and contemporary Hollywood fare. Through comparative reading films from different eras and countries, students develop the skills to turn their in-depth analyses into interpretations and explore theoretical issues related to spectatorship. Syllabus varies from term to term, but usually includes such directors as Coppola, Eisenstein, Fellini, Godard, Griffith, Hawks, Hitchcock, Kubrick, Kurosawa, Tarantino, Welles, Wiseman, and Zhang

Prereq: Two subjects in Literature
3-0-9 HASS-H, CI-M; Can be repeated for credit
Topics: Improves Close Reading, Improves Oral Communication, Includes Hands-on Projects or Making, Is Writing-Intensive, Thinks about Race or Class, Works with Visual Materials/Film/Media

From ancient Troy, Greece, Rome, and Egypt to medieval England and France, the heroes, lovers, and villains of Shakespeare’s historical plays range widely across Europe and the Mediterranean—while speaking to the politics and passions of his present. We will work backwards and forwards in time from those stories, putting them in dialogue with the perspectives of modern media artists and literary and historical scholars alike, to map the playwright’s imaginative journeys as well as our own. From Troilus and Cressida to Antony and Cleopatra, Julius Caesar to Richard II, we will compare historical upheavals and their dramatic representation, uncovering the societal and theatrical contexts that still compel artists across the globe to stage, rewrite and film them. As well as learning about different disciplinary and theoretical approaches to them, we will analyze drama as performance—a distinctive art form within an ever-changing media landscape.  We will also celebrate the wit and outrageousness of plays such as Henry V, Pericles, and Titus Andronicus, learning from seminar participants as well as guest experts about adaptations and spinoffs, heroic myths and tragic destruction—so students in Theater Arts, Ancient and Medieval Studies, CMS/W, History and, of course, Literature will all be welcome!