2018-2019 Catalog 
    
    May 03, 2024  
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2018-2019 Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

Courses

Browse the entire list of course offerings below, or use the course filter search to view a course or selection of courses.
 

History
  

  • HIST157 CM - Gender and Sexuality in Latin America

    This course introduces students to the emerging historiography on gender and sexuality in Latin America. We examine changing gender roles and shifting constructions of masculinity, femininity, and honor in Latin America with particular attention to issues of sexuality, sexual preference, sexual constraints, and sexual transgressions. Topics include the encounter between Indigenous peoples and Europeans, slavery, honor, and whiteness during the independence era, prostitution, maternalism, patriarchy, queer studies, feminism, labor and class, nationalism, and dictatorships, social protest, and transgendered studies. Readings include works on the colonial period and the 19th century, but most of the course will focus on these issues in the context of the 20th century.

    Offered: Every other year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: HIST157 CM
  

  • HIST158 CM - Japanese Empire: Korea, China, Taiwan, and Manchuria

    Following the Meiji Ishin (1868), Japan became an imperial power as it seized territories and resources in various parts of East Asia. By the start of the Pacific War in December 1941, Japan had become one of the largest imperial powers in Asia with its colonization of Taiwan and Korea, control of vast parts of southern China and establishment of the puppet regime of Manchukuo (Manchuria). This class looks at how Japan became an imperial power in East Asia and how this development impacted those affected by Japanese rule, including Korea,China, Taiwan, and Manchuria. In particular, the class seeks to trace why and how people in Korea, China, Taiwan, and Manchuria sought to forge new ideologies, customs, and practices to not only deal with Japanese imperialism, but also modernity.

    Offered: Every other year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: HIST158 CM
  

  • HIST160 CM - EnviroLab Asia: Research and Methodologies

    This course examines the relationship between the environment and political, social, economic and cultural issues in East and Southeast Asia. In particular, it studies this relationship within the country being studied by EnviroLab Asia in the academic year. The course introduces students to a cross-disciplinary approach to study this relationship by exposing students to methodologies in humanities and social sciences as well as the history of country. The cross-disciplinary training will prepare students for a Clinic Trip at the end of the semester in which the students will travel to the country being studied to carry out research on the ground where they will apply their learned methodologies. Also listed as EA 021 CM .

    Offered: Every year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: HIST160 CM
  

  • HIST161 CM - Modern Korean History

    Examination of the evolution of modern Korean culture and society within the context of political and institutional history. Consideration of such topics as the opening of Korea, Korean reactions to imperialism, the colonial experience, national division and civil war, and contemporary Korea.

    Offered: Every year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: HIST161 CM
  

  • HIST162C CM - China: Warring States to First Emperor: The Origins of Imperial China (500-200BCE)

    The consolidation of the small kingdoms of the late Zhou into seven major states, the bloody struggles among these contenders, and the creation of a unified empire by the First Emperor in 221 BCE. Major themes include: the technological and economic forces that made possible consolidated territorial kingdoms; the intellectual ferment that produced Confucianism, Daoism, and Legalism; the development of political and military stratagems; religious practices as represented by the tomb of the First Emperor, concepts of leadership, and personalities of the First Emperor and other major figures. The course also will explore the collapse of the Qin Empire less than twenty years after unification, its institutional and intellectual legacy to the making of imperial China, and the figure of the First Emperor in political debates in the Maoist era and contemporary commercial films.

    Offered: Every other year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: HIST162C CM
  

  • HIST163 CM - Modern Chinese History, 1750 to the Present

    This course examines the various processes that define China’s struggle for a modern identity and state. It begins by evaluating the changes in 18th-century Chinese society and the economy resulting from population growth, increased commercialization, and environmental problems. It then traces the decline and collapse of the 19th-century state due to popular rebellion and foreign imperialism. The course then focuses on 20th-century revolutionary movements, efforts at state building, and currents of cultural change culminating in the Maoist revolution, and concludes with the dramatic changes in the reform era following Mao’s death.

    Offered: Every year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: HIST163 CM
  

  • HIST164 CM - Mao’s China: Revolutionary Leadership and Its Consqequences

    This course explores the life, ideas, policies, and leadership style of Mao Zedong, one of the most influential leaders of the twentieth century. Even today Mao remains a national hero to many Chinese, although others view Mao as the archetype of tyranny and despotism. This course uses Mao’s biography to illuminate a variety of issues about Mao the man, Mao the leader, the Chinese revolution, and the meaning of the Maoist party-state. Each week’s assignment covers a chronological period while introducing thematic materials on topics such as child raising, peasant behavior, the cult of the leader, mass mobilization, and reactions to totalitarianism. The course also explores the nature of charismatic leadership and the role of the individual as an agent of historical change.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: HIST164 CM
  

  • HIST166 CM - Murder and Mayhem in Imperial China

    This course examines the intersection between law and society in imperial China. Focusing primarily on the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), we will read records of crimes and disputes as windows into the ideal and reality of everyday life. Topics studied include the social and cultural fabrics of imperial China (e.g. government, family, and beliefs); the Qing legal system (e.g. how crimes were defined, tried, and punished); and skills necessary for making arguments about the past (e.g. determining what a document can and cannot tell us about the society that produced it). The course assumes no prior knowledge of Chinese history.

    Offered: Every year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: HIST166 CM
  

  • HIST167 CM - Gender and History in South Asia

    This seminar looks at the way gender is constituted with a case study of South Asia (India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh). We will use feminist approaches to discuss how ‘women’ and feminity, and ‘men’ and masculinity are produced. After a quick survey of South Asian history to locate gender, we will look at three specific problems areas: how the state and its legal system apportion power to women and men; how education works to produce different gender identities; and how in the arts the human body is differently used and interpreted, and experiences and emotions become gendered.

    Offered: Every other year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: HIST167 CM
  

  • HIST167C CM - An Economic History of Modern South Asia

    This course examines the modernization of South Asia through the lens of economic change. We will connect economic developments to broader political, legal, educational and ideological changes, in order to understand the complex processes that have transformed a wealthy pre-colonial South Asia into a struggling, poverty-ridden economy. Although we will be examining economics as a subject, our methodology will be historical and historiographical rather than econometric. Students will learn to conduct historical research for their own projects and to use a historiographical lens to analyze and debate our materials. The issues and problems covered will center on the complex modernization processes in South Asia.

    Offered: Every year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: HIST167C CM
  

  • HIST167E CM - Modernities: South Asia and Others

    Does South Asia have ‘modernity’ and how do we measure it or understand it? What is the significant difference between this modernity and that of the modern West? Should we then speak of modernities in the world? The course begins with a discussion of modernity in the West in which we clarify some historical landmarks and some interesting debates about the meanings and discourses of what we call ‘modernity.’ We then move on to South Asia and locate its different historical landmarks: educational transformation, nation-building, the emergence of new social classes, changes in gender relationships, industrial and technological growth and the discourses of modernity.

    Offered: Every other year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: HIST167E CM
  

  • HIST169 CM - Topics in Asian History

    Selected topics in the Middle East (169a), South Asia (169b), or East Asia (169c).

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: HIST169 CM
  

  • HIST173 AF - Black Intellectuals and the Politics of Race

    See Scripps College Catalog for course description.

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: HIST173 AF
  

  • HIST174 CM - Design Activism

    This seminar studies the relationship between the world of design and social transformations from the early twentieth century to the present. In particular, it examines the history of modern design movements in the non-West, especially Latin America, Asia and the Middle East, from the early twentieth century to the present, and how these movements have negotiated processes of political economy to produce new forms of agency, identity, community and social exchange for the transformation of everyday life and ultimately social renewal. Previously HIST141  CM.

    Offered: Every other year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: HIST174 CM
  

  • HIST176 AF - Civil Rights Movement in the Modern Era

    See Scripps College Catalog for course description.

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: HIST176 AF
  

  • HIST176 CM - Early American Families

    This course examines the meaning and construction of family units in the Atlantic World from the 16th to the 19th centuries. Economic changes, imperial migrations, interracial sex, and transatlantic ideas molded and shaped the notion of what a family was. Similar concepts, such as marriage, illegitimacy, and households shifted in turn. In this seminar, we will explore these changes in different imperial systems during the era of European Atlantic colonization. The course also develops vital research skills and methodologies needed by historical scholars.

    Offered: Every year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: HIST176 CM
  

  • HIST179 CM - Researching the Holocaust

    Exploration of research and reflection on the cutting-edge of current issues and debates surrounding Nazi Germany’s attempt to annihilate the Jews. In a seminar-style inquiry designed for students who want to take their previous Holocaust studies to a more advanced level, attention focuses on film and internet resources, as well as on recent books and articles. Previously HIST137  CM.

    Offered: Every other year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: HIST179 CM
  

  • HIST182 CM - Human Health and Disease in American History

    This seminar explores how health and disease shaped American societies, culture, and politics from the colonial period to the present. Topics will include the changing science of human health, folk medicine, the professionalization of American medicine, and the politics and ethics of biomedical research in a historical context. Readings, assignments, and in-class exercises will prepare students to produce an original research paper. This course fulfills the research requirement for the history major. 

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: HIST182 CM
  

  • HIST183 CM - The Fall of Rome and the End of Empire

    Political corruption, economic failure, barbarian invasion, religious rupture, and even the plague have all been offered as explanations for the end of the Roman Empire. But do we really understand how and when a political system and culture that enjoyed such remarkable longevity finally came to an end? This course will examine the often widely divergent interpretations of material and documentary evidence offered by historians, classicists, and archaeologists. Political, economic, military, religious, social, and environmental factors will receive careful attention.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: HIST183 CM
  

  • HIST186B CM - Revolutionary London & Paris: 1688-1815

    This upper-level research seminar explores the Enlightenment and 18th-century revolutions by focusing on London and Paris as epicenters of culture, commerce, and politics. How did urban institutions, print culture, an emerging consumer marketplace, and a booming population contribute to new social relations and tensions? How did both cities’ networks and urban landscape facilitate revolution? Using historical texts, maps, economic and demographic data, art, architecture, literature, and the contemporary press, we will research how urban life in London and Paris shaped the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the American Revolution, the Enlightenment and French Revolution, and how inhabitants experienced these transformations.

    Offered: Every other year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: HIST186B CM
  

  • HIST188 CM - Travel and Encounter in the Islamic World

    How does travel shape self-definitions and regional stereotypes? What can studying the history of travel and tourism tell us about the shift from early modern empires to colonial worlds and to the contemporary processes of globalization? This class is designed to help you explore and formulate answers to these questions by looking at how the region, which we commonly refer to as the “Middle East” and the “Islamic World,” came to be constructed historically through circuits of travel and cross-cultural encounters. We will investigate tensions inherent in the history of travel itself: between travel as pleasure, leisure, and a means for spiritual fulfillment vs. travel as a mode of conquest, a strategy for economic and political survival and an experience of alienation. Our over-arching goal will be to analyze how travel functions simultaneously as a means of identification with another culture and as a re-affirmation of cultural difference. Previously HIST159I CM.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: HIST188 CM
  

  • HIST190 CM - Race and American Cities

    This upper-level research seminar will examine the relationship between urban development and race from the colonial era to the present. We will analyze the historical forces and institutions that have created forms of racial segregation and economic inequality and explore the role of cities as a site of racial conflict, interaction, collaboration and identity formation. Surveying a wide range of places, groups and issues, the course will provide a way to better understand the economics, politics and social life of American cities in the past and the present and to think spatially and geographically about historical continuity and change.

    Offered: Every other year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: HIST190 CM
  

  • HIST191 CM - Advanced Topics in Asian History

    Selected topics in Asian history.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: HIST191 CM
  

  • HIST194 CM - Advanced Topics in Ancient History

    Selected advanced topics in Ancient history.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: HIST194 CM
  

  • HIST195 CM - Advanced Topics in European History

    Selected advanced topics in European history.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: HIST195 CM
  

  • HIST196 CM - Advanced Topics in American History

    Selected advanced topics in American history.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: HIST196 CM
  

  • HIST197 CM - Advanced Topics in World History

    Selected advanced topics in world history.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: HIST197 CM
  

  • HIST199 CM - Independent Study in History

    Students who have the necessary qualifications and who wish to investigate an area of study not covered in regularly scheduled courses may arrange for independent study under the direction of a faculty reader.

    Offered: Every semester

    Credit: 0.5 or 1

    Course Number: HIST199 CM

Interdisciplinary
  

  • ID050 AF - Caribbean Society and Culture

    Examines the complexity and diversity of the Caribbean in terms of its socioeconomic reality, the lives of its people, and its artistic and intellectual products.

    Offered: Every other year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: ID 050 AF
  

  • ID076 JT - Intersections: Gender, Race and Sexuality

    What assumptions do people address everyday in their lives about gender and sexuality? This introductory course focuses on this question, analyzing topics such as the historical emergence of feminism and feminist critique; social constructions of gender and the family; patriarchy and the state; the politics of gender and sexuality; the relationship between bodies and institutions; representations of gender in art, literature, film, and the media; and intersections with race/ethnicity, class, nation and other identities. Readings engage a broad range of disciplines including contemporary feminist theory, history, sociology, and literary and media studies. The course privileges a collaborative feminist approach to introduce students to social theories.

    Offered: Every year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: ID 076 JT
  

  • ID120 CM - The Science of Making Life Better

    This course will examine theories about what leads to human happiness and fulfillment, including money, power, pleasure, fame, beauty, adventure, and pleasure. We also will explore another theory: the paradoxical notion that people are happiest when they pursue selfless behavior. This seems to challenge much of traditional economic and evolutionary theory, which posits that humans seek to maximize their own personal self-interest. Thus we will look at the science behind such phenomena as heroism, altruism, morality, and cooperation. Finally we will explore case studies of social entrepreneurs and innovators who seek to make life better for others in the world.

    Offered: Every year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: ID 120 CM
  

  • ID150 CM - Contemporary African Voices

    This course is designed to provide an introduction to, or better understanding of, some of the most significant novels and other literary works by Anglophone and Francophone writers from Africa in recent years. Topics include: Home and Exile, Rwandan genocide, Truth and Reconciliation, Testimonies, Migration, and Cosmopolitanism.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: ID 150 CM
  

  • ID150 JT - Interdisciplinary Special Topics

    The scholar and the athlete have long existed in a complex and contested relationship both in the history of higher education and in American culture at large. This interdisciplinary course aims to study that relationship from a variety of perspectives: historical, philosophical, sociological, and institutional. We will trace modern views of the scholar and the athlete back to classical and Enlightenment theories of education and the good life and then study how these roles have been represented and reconfigured both in the university setting and in contemporary public policy debates.

    Offered: Every other year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: ID 150 JT
  

  • ID196 CM - Gould Center Seminar

    This is a standing course with a director and topic that change annually.

    Offered: Every year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: ID 196 CM

Korean
  

  • KORE001 CM - Introductory Korean

    Korean 1 is designed for students who do not have any Korean language background. Emphasis is placed on the acquisition of four basic skills: comprehension, speaking, reading, and writing. This course includes a tutorial session each week (times arranged).

    Offered: Every fall

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: KORE001 CM
  

  • KORE002 CM - Continuing Introductory Korean

    A continuation of KORE 001 CM , Korean 2 aims to equip students with basic communicative skills in Korean, with emphasis on conversation, reading, and writing. This course includes a tutorial session each week (times arranged).

    Prerequisite: KORE 001 CM  or equivalent

    Offered: Every spring

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: KORE002 CM
  

  • KORE033 CM - Intermediate Korean

    Korean 33 is the first semester of second year Korean. This course furthers development of four basic skills, with emphasis on conversation, reading, and writing. This course includes a tutorial session each week (times arranged).

    Prerequisite: KORE 002 CM  or equivalent

    Offered: Every fall

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: KORE033 CM
  

  • KORE044 CM - Advanced Korean

    Korean 44 is the second semester of second year Korean. This course aims to equip students with advanced communicative skills in Korean, with emphasis on advanced grammar and vocabulary building. This course includes a tutorial session each week (times arranged).

    Prerequisite: KORE 033 CM  or equivalent 

    Offered: Every spring

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: KORE044 CM
  

  • KORE100 CM - Readings in Korean Literature and Culture

    This course is designed to help students improve Korean language proficiency through extensive reading and discussions of a variety of texts, including short stories, poetry, essays, and newspaper articles. Reading and discussion topics are selected to extend students’ understanding of Korean society and culture. Emphasis is also placed on writing critical essays in Korean.

    Prerequisite: KORE 044 CM  or equivalent 

    Offered: Every other year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: KORE100 CM
  

  • KORE199 CM - Independent Study in Korean

    Students who have the necessary qualifications and who wish to investigate an area of study not covered in regularly scheduled courses may arrange for an independent study under the direction of a faculty reader.

    Offered: Every semester

    Credit: 0.5 or 1

    Course Number: KORE199 CM
  

  • KRNT130 CM - Korean Cinema and Culture

    This course examines Korean history, politics, culture, and society through analysis of their representation in contemporary Korean cinema. This course will follow the history of Korea chronologically from Yi Dynasty to the present focusing on the topics such as Confucianism, Colonial period, nationalism, Korean War, national division, military government, and democratic movements. The focus of the class will be equally distributed between the films themselves and the historical time and people captured on these films. Knowledge of Korean is not required.

    Offered: Every other year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: KRNT130 CM

Leadership
  

  • LEAD010 CM - Foundations of Leadership

    This course is designed to provide a solid foundation on how leadership is defined, viewed, and studied. Using multidisciplinary approaches, the course will review conceptualizations and theories of leaders and leadership from ancient times to the present.

    Offered: Every semester

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LEAD010 CM
  

  • LEAD040 CM - Practicum in Event Management

    This course will instruct students in leadership theory as it relates to event management and then provide them with the practical skills to be effective event managers. The course will prepare students for managing events, giving them hands on work experience at an established campus event, as well as the opportunity to design and implement their own event, consistent with CMC’s Personal and Social Responsibility Initiative. Students will work in small groups to design and implement management solutions for design, budgeting, operations, marketing, hospitality, social and traditional media, volunteer recruitment and training, risk management, and emergency planning.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 0.5

    Course Number: LEAD040 CM
  

  • LEAD041 CM - Leadership in Sports

    Legendary coach John Wooden said, “I believe leadership is largely learned. Whatever leadership skills I possess were learned through listening, observation, study, and then trial and error along the way.” This course examines leadership in sports through analyses of coaches, athletes, and executives. Students will study leadership behavior to determine why certain coaches, athletes, and management teams are successful, measurement of success, the outcomes, barriers to, and social responsibility of successful leadership. Also examined are cases of failed leadership, the behaviors that lead to failure, and whether atonement for a coach, athlete, or organization is possible.

    Offered: Each year

    Credit: 0.5

    Course Number: LEAD041 CM
  
  

  • LEAD121 CM - Making a Difference: Strategies for Solving Social Problems

    The news can seem depressing - full of gloom and doom, detailing everything that’s wrong with the world. This course will introduce students to “rigorous and compelling reporting about [positive] responses to social problems.” These are news stories that highlight the most promising ideas for solving the challenges of the 21st century - from improving education to increasing economic prosperity and opportunity for all. Students will also apply this knowledge to selecting a social change organization that deserves funding. Acting as philanthropists, they will evaluate and determine the initiative that can most effectively make a difference in the community.

    Offered: Every year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LEAD121 CM
  

  • LEAD122 CM - Civic Leadership

    Civic leaders are people who strive to make a positive impact in their communities. Whether they are working to improve education, public health, human rights, the environment, freedom, or financial prosperity for all Americans, civic leaders are attempting to make the world a better place. How do they succeed? What are the most effective strategies and best practices? What are the obstacles, barriers, and challenges that civic leaders face most often? This course will explore the essential tools that nonprofits need to function efficiently and effectively for sustained growth and maximum impact.

    Offered: Every year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LEAD122 CM
  

  • LEAD142 CM - Leading Social Innovation: How Award-Winning Social Entrepreneurs Change the World

    Social entrepreneurs are motivated by the desire to see the world as it can be, not merely as it is. This course is about the leadership opportunities and challenges of creating and sustaining creative solutions that address social problems-whether through nonprofit, for-profit, or hybrid models of change. Students learn about the key determinants of social innovation: the complexity of the world’s problems, theoretical frameworks rooted in psychology and business management, community building and ecosystem development, governance and funding models, scalability and growth, and impact measurement techniques. Students learn from and work directly alongside multi-award winning social entrepreneurs and practitioners who are creating systems change in their respective sectors.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LEAD142 CM
  

  • LEAD150 CM - Leadership, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley

    This course provides an overview of leadership, innovation, and social entrepreneurship theories and constructs, with applications and implications for leading in innovative and cutting-edge organizations in Silicon Valley. Topics will range from leading creative, entrepreneurial teams to the leadership skills necessary to foster innovative organizations. A central theme will be to equip students with the knowledge and skills to be effective leaders in innovative organizations - both established firms and start-ups. Offered as part of the Silicon Valley Program.

    Offered: Every semester

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LEAD150 CM

Literature
  

  • LIT030 CM - Introduction to Video Art

    This is an introductory course in digital video production. The course provides an opportunity for students to explore the language and aesthetics of film and media through creative projects. Over the course of the semester, students will make a series of short videos, and will consider how video production helps to elucidate important concepts in the history and theory of film and media practice. Practical instruction will be given in the use of cameras, tripods, microphones, lighting and editing equipment. In addition to video projects, coursework will include readings and screenings.

    Prerequisite: One introductory film studies or media studies course.

    Offered: Every year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 030 CM
  

  • LIT031 CM - Introduction to Creative Writing

    This course offers the chance to explore three genres of creative writing: fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. We’ll read contemporary short stories, poems, and personal essays, looking at the choices writers have made in terms of structure, technique, and content. We’ll then put this knowledge to use by trying our hands at fiction, creative non-fiction, and formal and free verse. By the end of the course, students will have had the chance to experience literature from the writer’s side, and perhaps will have found a genre to explore in more depth in further creative writing classes.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 031 CM
  

  • LIT032 CM - Writer’s Workshop

    This workshop stresses students’ collaboration with each other and with the instructor and focuses on narratives growing out of the writer’s experience. The course will maximize student participation through frequent small-group work, class discussions, and peer critiques. Open to all interested students, whether experienced writers or beginners.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 032 CM
  

  • LIT034 CM - Creative Journalism

    An intensive hands-on course in feature writing styles and journalistic ethics; a primer for writing in today’s urban America. Essentially, journalism, like all art, tells a story. How that story is told is as critical to the success of a piece as the importance of its theme. A series of writing exercises and reporting “assignments” will give both inexperienced and more advanced writers the tools to explore their writerly “voice.” Special attention will be devoted to discussions of the role of the journalist in society. All registered students must attend the first class.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 034 CM
  

  • LIT036 CM - Screenwriting

    A seminar-workshop on the theory and practice of writing screenplays. We will view films and read scripts in a variety of genres, examine the roles of art, craft, and commerce in writing for film, and discuss in general the enterprise of being a writer. Each student will make substantial progress in the writing of an original screenplay. All registered students must attend the first class.

    Prerequisite: written permission of department chair.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 036 CM
  

  • LIT037 CM - Poetry Writing I

    This class is an introductory workshop in poetry writing for those who wish to improve their craft as poets while broadening their knowledge of poetry. More than half the semester will be devoted to formal weekly exercises. Poems by students will be discussed in a “workshop” format with attention to the process of revision. Class time will also be spent on assigned readings and issues of craft. Students will be asked to regularly memorize and recite poems. A final portfolio of eight revised poems will be required for completion of the course.

    Offered: Every year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 037 CM
  

  • LIT038 CM - Fiction Writing

    This course, which will be conducted as a workshop, will deal with both short and long forms of fiction. Participants, who may choose either form, will present their original manuscripts and will discuss those submitted by their fellow writers. All registered students must attend the first class.

    Prerequisite: written permission of instructor.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 038 CM
  

  • LIT057 CM - British Writers I

    A survey of the major British writers from the medieval and Renaissance periods. Throughout the course we will pay attention to how this literature reflects political, religious, and philosophical influences, as well as particular aspects of the early development of the English language.

    Offered: Every fall

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 057 CM
  

  • LIT058 CM - British Writers II

    A survey of representative major themes and texts from the Restoration through the early 20th century. The course, which emphasizes poetry, drama, and non-fiction prose, addresses the transitions between Neoclassic, Romantic, Victorian, and Modernist trends in British literature.

    Offered: Every spring

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 058 CM
  

  • LIT060 CM - American Writers to 1900

    A survey of major American writing (excluding novels) illustrating the development of a national literature from the Colonial period through the 19th century. Readings will be chosen from the works of such representative writers as Edwards, Franklin, Hawthorne, Poe, Melville, Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Dickinson, and Henry James. Considerable attention will also be paid to the social and philosophical forces which influenced the literature.

    Offered: Every other year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 060 CM
  

  • LIT060B CM - American Writers 1900-Present

    This course is an introduction to modern American literature in different genres: though our emphasis will be on the novel, we will also be looking at short stories, poems, plays, essays, and films. We will study the evolution of American literature within the changing social, cultural, intellectual, and literary contexts and conventions of the last hundred or so years by tracing shifting mythologies and perceptions of Americanness in authors such as Cather, Hemingway, W.C. Williams, Faulkner, O’Neill, Ellison, Kerouac, and McCarthy. Our reading will emphasize the variety of narrative strategies and formal experiments authors developed and undertook in order to capture local color or distinct voices, to respond to or register changes in the modern world, or to shape discourses of nationhood, democracy, liberty, race, and gender.

    Offered: Every other year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 060B CM
  

  • LIT061 CM - The Bible

    This course focuses on intensive reading in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, with special attention to the complexities of interpreting a sacred text. The problems of authorship, historical and religious context, canon formation, and translation will be considered in light of the history of interpretation from midrash, St. Augustine, and Origen through modern literary criticism, especially Robert Lowth, Eric Auerbach, Northrop Frye, and Robert Alter. Special attention will be given to the use of the Bible by modern writers.

    Offered: Every other year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 061 CM
  

  • LIT062 CM - Shakespeare’s Tragedies

    This course will treat the development of Shakespeare’s tragic dramas and explore the nature of tragedy. We will read seven works by Shakespeare and three by his contemporaries Marlowe, Tourneur, and Webster. Shakespeare’s contribution to tragedy will be studied partly in the context of ancient and medieval as well as Renaissance conceptions of tragedy.

    Offered: Every other year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 062 CM
  

  • LIT063 CM - Chaucer

    This course introduces students to the major works of the 14th-century English poet, Geoffrey Chaucer. We read seven of the major tales from The Canterbury Tales; two of the longer dream vision poems, The House of Fame and The Book of Duchess, and Chaucer’s epic poem, Troilus and Criseyde. Students will learn to read all Chaucerian works in their original Middle English.

    Offered: Every other year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 063 CM
  

  • LIT064 CM - Shakespeare’s Histories and Romances

    This course studies representative plays from each of the major phases of Shakespeare’s evolution, from the histories, the comedies, the tragedies, to the last plays, or romances. Designed for literature majors and non-majors alike, this course enables the latter, in particular, to proceed to other plays in the Shakespearean canon. While focusing on different stages in his development, it also looks to the more enduring thematic patterns and personal myths present in Shakespeare’s work.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 064 CM
  

  • LIT065 CM - Love Poetry of the English Renaissance

    The ages agree that love is among the most powerful and significant human experiences. Love is the most urgent of poetic messages, and has inspired the greatest variety of expressive forms. This course will explore the depiction of love in English poetry from the early 16th to the late 17th centuries, in courtly sonnets, erotic narratives, marriage poems, devotional meditations, metaphysical lyrics and satire. Authors will include Skelton, Wyatt, Sidney, Spenser, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, Marvell, Rochester, and Swift.

    Offered: Every other year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 065 CM
  

  • LIT066 CM - Shakespeare’s Comedies

    Shakespeare’s comedies have entertained audiences for four centuries; they are also complex works of art which reward detailed study. In this course we will read eight of Shakespeare’s comedies, from the lighthearted play The Taming of the Shrew to the darker Measure for Measure, and supplement our readings with film. We will discuss topics such as love, sex, marriage, gender roles, parents and children, figurative language, jokes, scansion, performance in Shakespeare’s time and ours, the nature of comedy, happy endings and those excluded from them.

    Offered: Every other year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 066 CM
  

  • LIT067 CM - Milton

    England’s greatest epic poet was also a political and controversial religious thinker whose life and work had an enormous influence on British and American writers from Blake to Melville. This course will examine Milton’s major epic poems - Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes - as well as his great early poems Lycidas, and Comus, in the context of biblical and classical literary traditions as well as the religious and political crises of his time. Milton’s controversial prose writings on education, kingship, marriage, and freedom of the press will also be considered.

    Offered: Every third year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 067 CM
  

  • LIT069 CM - Shakespeare’s Sonnets

    This course is focused on a single volume of poems which are among the most famous and canonical in English. We will read them closely, with particular sensitivity to their syntax and sonic structure. This will be a course not only in love poetry but in poetic style. We will consider diverse thematic readings and address arguments by Shakespeare’s recent critics. We will often be studying the ways in which interpretability provides new life to old poems. And we will consider what other poets since Shakespeare have made of the sonnet form. We will be constantly studying very great verbal art.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 069 CM
  

  • LIT070 CM - The Rise of the English Novel

    In a famous phrase, D. H. Lawrence called the novel “the one bright book of life.” This course examines the rise of the novel in England from its emergence in the early 1700s to its establishment as a dominant, if controversial, genre just over a century later. Key issues to be studied will be plot, characterization, the perspectives of satire vs. sentiment, social class, gender roles, courtship and marriage, and fiction’s ethical powers and responsibilities. Readings include novels by Defoe, Swift, Richardson, Fielding, Sterne, Johnson, Radcliffe, Austen, and Scott, as well as background readings in criticism and theory.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 070 CM
  

  • LIT071 CM - 19th-Century British Novel

    The novel is the crowning achievement of 19th-century British literature, a form which fully retains its immense popularity, critical interest and critical acclaim today. The accomplishment of such masters as Austen, Dickens, Thackeray, Eliot and Hardy will be seen through a close reading of major works. Discussions and lectures will focus both on concerns and issues of the period as well as on ways in which Victorian masterworks like Vanity Fair, David Copperfield, and Jude the Obscure reflect the growth and change of the novel form itself.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 071 CM
  

  • LIT072 CM - Jane Austen

    One of the greatest and most beloved English writers, Jane Austen played a major role in the development of the novel as a genre. This course will cover the six published novels, her letters, and unpublished works. We will study Austen’s role within a tradition of women’s writing, with attention to both her predecessors and successors. We will examine her works in relation to the cultural context of the late 18th and early 19th century and will also survey the growing body of scholarship on Austen.

    Offered: Every other year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 072 CM
  

  • LIT073 CM - The Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins

    In this course we will read closely some Hopkins poems and study this great Victorian as a devotional poet and a stylistic innovator, especially at the level of prosody and diction. We will consider the significance of diction in poetry and investigate Hopkins’ prosodic innovations as a return to Anglo-Saxon models of accentual versification. T. S. Eliot saw a divide in English poetry between the native, Anglo-Saxon style of Dryden and the Latinate style of Milton. We will investigate nativism in English poetry from Dryden to Basil Bunting in order to establish a context for Hopkins’ innovations.
     

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 073 CM
  

  • LIT074 CM - The Gothic Novel: Producing Monsters

    Francisco Goya famously declared that “the sleep of reason produces monsters.” In this course we will examine the Gothic novel, a literary genre that attempts to obscure the line between the real and the fantastic. We will consider the relationship between the language of terror and the age of enlightenment, the social upheavals and political revolutions that shaped the Gothic novel, as well as the ways in which the individual came to be represented by the Gothic imagination. Readings will include, but are not limited to: The Castle of Otranto, The Monk, The Italian, Zofloya, Northanger Abbey, Frankenstein, and Dracula.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 074 CM
  

  • LIT075 CM - Vladimir Nabokov

    This seminar will examine the depth and breadth of the works of Vladimir Nabokov. Special attention paid to those works originally written in English. Special consideration will be accorded to Nabokov’s irreverent and idiosyncratic opinions on the task of the critic. Readings will include: Lolita; Speak, Memory; Pale Fire; Pnin; Ada, or Ardor; The Real Life of Sebastian Knight; The Gift; Strong Opinions; and Lectures on Literature.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 075 CM
  

  • LIT078 CM - Travel and The Literary Imagination

    The Travel Narrative is essentially an account of a conquest, sometimes in the service of the Divine, sometimes in the service of Empire, sometimes in the service of private enterprise, sometimes in the service of personal satisfaction and private revelations. The readings start with the book of Exodus and go on to the voyage of Ibn Battuta, the voyage of Christopher Columbus, the travels of William Bartram, The Journals of Lewis and Clark, the conquest of the Himalayan region by Europeans, and the journal of the poet Louise Bogan, among others.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 078 CM
  

  • LIT080 CM - 19th-Century American Fiction

    A study of the short stories and novels of selected authors, including Irving, Hawthorne, Poe, Twain, Melville, and James. Particular attention will be given to the tension in these works between domesticity and the adventure far from home. We will also explore the various ways in which the past intrudes upon characters’ new worlds.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 080 CM
  

  • LIT081 CM - Melville

    This seminar will examine the work and life of Herman Melville, one of the most complex and influential of American writers. After attention to several of the early novels, particularly Typee and Redburn, the focus will turn to the major novels, Moby Dick, Pierre, The Confidence Man, and Billy Budd, as well as the stories of The Piazza Tales. Melville’s poetry, including the epic pilgrimage Clarel, will be considered in depth in the context of the Civil War and in relation to its ongoing spiritual occupations. Literary, religious, scientific, and political contexts will structure readings and discussions. Students are encouraged, though not required, to have taken a course in Shakespeare, the Bible, or Milton prior to enrollment.

    Offered: Every other year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 081 CM
  

  • LIT084 CM - Lyric Voice & Vision in Modern American Literature and Film

    This course examines currents in American literature and film from World War II to the present. Though the course surveys key trends over this period – especially against the backgrounds of modernism and post-modernism – we will concentrate in particular on the “lyric” impulse in American culture, studying works concerned with ideas of epiphany, meditation, contemplation, transcendence, a general conception of the “poetic” and the role of feeling and the emotions in modern life. With a primary focus on short forms, we will pay special attention to work that confronts the question of how to maintain “lyric” artistic standpoints amid cultural and social developments often inimical to them.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 084 CM
  

  • LIT085 CM - Contemporary American Fiction

    This class will explore major American novels and short fiction since 1945. We will examine the work of various authors in terms of their art and personal vision as well as their relation to particular literary movements and social and political circumstances. Texts will include Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, John Barth’s Lost in the Funhouse, Don Delillo’s White Noise, Jessica Hagendorn’s Dogeaters, Sandra Cisnero’s Women Hollering Creek, Marilyn Robinson’s Housekeeping, Leslie Marmon’s Silk’s Ceremony, among others.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 085 CM
  

  • LIT088 CM - War and Peace

    War and Peace is arguably the world’s most famous novel. Yet its author denied that it was a novel at all, declaring it to lie beyond the scope of conventional literary classification. Whatever we call it, War and Peace remains one of the most stimulating works of literature ever written, dazzling and dizzying readers with its vast array of characters, situations, and events. This course examines Tolstoy’s best-known book as a masterpiece of verbal art and as a profound meditation on war, religious belief, social class, love, death, and the relationship of fiction to philosophy and history.

    Prerequisite: FWS 010 CM  or permission of instructor

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 088 CM
  

  • LIT089 CM - The English Enlightenment: Dryden, Pope, and Johnson

    The course will focus on poets whose poems display many of the virtues of memorable prose-clarity, vigor, sense, civility. These poets were engaged by the events of their time and wrote for literate readers who prized the sense of what they read-a general audience. The course will represent these poets’ literary achievements, with special attention given to Pope’s Essay on Man and Johnson’s “The Vanity of Human Wishes.” All three poets left their mark, too, on the history of literary criticism. We will discuss Dryden’s essays and prefaces, Pope’s Essay on Criticism, and Johnson’s Lives of the Poets.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 089 CM
  

  • LIT090 CM - Emily Dickinson

    Emily Dickinson wrote more than 1,500 short poems, but not a single long poem, nor an essay. Her poems were unknown by nearly all her contemporaries. The poems have had immense impact, however, on later poets, and she has reached a very broad readership. She and Walt Whitman-altogether different from one another-are the most canonical of American poets. Her poems have come to stand for privacy, intensity, compression, and intellectuality. She wrote in a meter familiar to all those who have sung hymns in Christian churches. Her syntax and diction, though, are often peculiar, like that of no other English-language poet.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 090 CM
  

  • LIT091 CM - American Poetry: Tradition and Experiment

    An introduction to major American poets including Emerson, Whitman, Melville, Dickinson, Frost, Stevens, Eliot, Lowell, and others. Emphasis will be on basic concepts of metaphor, prosody, and myth and their relation to American thought.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 091 CM
  

  • LIT092 CM - Close Reading

    Close reading is what students and scholars of literature do, and have always done. This course will present an overview of the history of textual interpretation, from its roots in Biblical study and ancient philosophy to more modern approaches such as Marxist literary criticism, psychoanalytic literary criticism, hermeneutics, structuralism, post-structuralism, and deconstruction. To this end we will read theoretical texts by Erich Auerbach, Roland Barthes, William Empson, I. A. Richards, Jacques Derrida and others. The main focus of the class, however, will be individual readings of poetic texts. Poets studied include, but are not limited to, Shakespeare, Keats, Wallace Stevens, T. S. Eliot, Elizabeth Bishop, William Carlos Williams, and Yeats.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 092 CM
  

  • LIT093 CM - Postwar American Poetry

    This course is an introduction to major American poets of the last half century, from Lowell and Olson to Rich and Howe. We will consider poets and poems both individually and in their literary and socio-historical contexts, examining poetic movements (New York School, Beats, Black Mountain, Language), the relationship of poetry to the other arts, and the role of poetry in late-20th- and 21st-century culture. We will explore the formal experimentalism of postwar American poetry, its major thematic concerns (relations between art and politics, modernity and history, public and private), and its treatment of race, class, gender, sexuality, and nation.

    Offered: Every other year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 093 CM
  

  • LIT094 CM - American Women Poets

    The history of American poetry is unthinkable without the contribution of a central lineage of female poets. This course offers an in-depth examination of their work; we will open with the beginnings of the American literary tradition (Anne Bradstreet) and the nineteenth century (Emily Dickinson), then focus on twentieth-century poetry (from modernists Gertrude Stein and Marianne Moore to postwar poets Elizabeth Bishop and Sylvia Plath), and conclude by looking at exciting contemporary voices. We will consider poets and poems both individually and in their literary and socio-historical contexts, examining poetic movements (Imagism, Objectivism, the New York School, Confessionalism, Black Mountain, Language), the relationship of poetry to the other arts, and the role of poetry in American culture. While we will home in on gender poetics and politics, we will also explore broader questions of poetic form, the relations between modernity and history, and America and the world, as well as the poetic treatment of race, class, sexuality, and nation.

    Offered: Every other year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 094 CM
  

  • LIT095 CM - Becoming a Poet: Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, and Marianne Moore

    This course will explore the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop and that of her two most important literary influences: the modernist poet and editor, Marianne Moore, who was her mentor; and her close literary peer, and fellow New Englander, Robert Lowell. While still a student at Vassar in the early thirties, Bishop met Moore and their friendship began. She and Lowell met in the mid-forties when they were both already established writers. Through close readings of the poems of these major American poets, students will open an inquiry into how friendship, in addition to artistic and temperamental differences, can influence and shape style.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 095 CM
  

  • LIT097 CM - T.S. Eliot and His Circle

    This course offers an examination of T.S. Eliot, one of the preeminent poets of the twentieth century. We will consider the entirety of Eliot’s small output of poems and plays and many of his seminal critical essays, studying his relation to traditions of British, European, and classical poetry and his engagement with philosophical, moral, metaphysical, and religious questions. We will pay special attention to issues of modernism, poetic form, and intertextuality, to the idea of a poetic canon, and to the links between poetry and the other arts (music, painting, sculpture). We will also situate Eliot’s work in the context of the broader sociocultural crisis of modernity in the first half of the twentieth century, as well as in its contemporary literary context, spending time on other poets whom Eliot admired and was influenced by, such as Pound and Yeats, but also on poets who rebelled against his influence, such as William Carlos Williams. 

    Offered: Every other year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 097 CM
  

  • LIT098 CM - News from the Delphic Oracle: Ancient Greek Literature and Culture

    In this course we will examine ancient Greek literature in the context of its culture, starting with the traditional foundations of Greek religion and heroic ideals embodied in epic, lyric, comedy, and tragedy. Then we will progress to the great period of questioning that followed, exemplified by the figure of Socrates, and expressed in the writings of philosophers and historians. Authors will include Homer, Simonides, Sappho, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, and Aristotle.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 098 CM
  

  • LIT099 CM - Special Topics in Literature

    Selected topics in Literature.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 099 CM
  

  • LIT100 CM - Literary Theory Since Plato

    What is a good book? How do we decide whether a work of literature is worth reading? What is the basis of literary judgment? How do we bring history, religion, and myth to bear on our understanding of literary texts? How does imaginative literature differ from other forms of discourse? These are among the fundamental questions explored in this course through the eyes of major literary thinkers. The course examines literary criticism as a discipline with unique traditions of inquiry beginning with classical debates about form and reality and the tensions between the moral and aesthetic dimensions of literature as they have been engaged by such writers as Plato and Aristotle, Sidney, Johnson, Wordsworth and Coleridge, Arnold and Pater, Woolf, and Eliot.

    Offered: Every year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 100 CM
  

  • LIT101 CM - Translation in Theory and Practice

    “Every allegedly great age is an age of translations”: In this course we will test Ezra Pound’s dictum by examining the history, theory, and practice of translation. What do translators-and translations-do? What is translation’s role in the formation and transmission of culture? What is lost in translation and what may be gained? Bringing together readings from linguistics, literary criticism, philosophy, and anthropology, we will focus on case studies from ancient languages (the Bible, Greek classics) and pay special attention to literary translation in the 20th and 21st centuries. By also working on translations of their own, students will explore hands-on the interpretive and creative nature of the translator’s task and the specific challenges that different types of translation pose; familiarity with a foreign language is welcome but not required.

    Offered: Every other year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 101 CM
  

  • LIT102 CM - Exploring Poetry

    This course is designed to introduce students to the thorough, systematic study of poetry, thus increasing students’ enjoyment of poetry and preparing them for advanced study of poetry in other courses. We will examine such issues as theories of poetry, form, poetic voice, symbolism and metaphorical language, irony, meter, and recurring themes as treated by poets of different backgrounds, in different cultural and historical contexts. The course will be organized thematically, but will include work by poets from the middle ages to the present.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 102 CM
  

  • LIT104 CM - The Tragedies of Sophocles

    Sophocles is regarded as the greatest of the Greek tragedians, in part because he could evoke such powerful tragic figures–Oedipus, Ajax, Antigone, Heracles, Philoctetes. Based on the plays that have come down to us we will follow the arc of his career, comparing him with his great model, Aeschylus, and his chief rival, Euripides. The plays will be our window onto Athenian culture and the Dionysian festival for which they were written. They will lead us to consider the “paradox of tragedy”–that we derive the most intense aesthetic pleasure from seeing the worst things happen to the best people.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 104 CM
  

  • LIT105 CM - Gender and Family in Medieval Literature

    The family was in flux in the Middle Ages: cities were growing, women were working in greater numbers, and people were starting to enjoy the benefits of privacy in domestic space. This course explores family dynamics and the household in a wide range of medieval literary texts and visual sources including cycle drama, illustrated books of hours, The Canterbury Tales, and The Book of Margery Kempe. Over the course of the semester, we’ll consider questions related to gender, labor, housing, and the changing household economy.

    Offered: Every other year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 105 CM
  

  • LIT107 CM - Modern Drama

    This course is a survey of modern dramatic literature beginning with the late-19th century plays of Ibsen, Strindberg, and Chekhov, and continuing to the present day. Students will be introduced to works from a variety of avant-garde movements including Symbolism (Maeterlinck), Dadaism (Jarry), Expressionism (Treadwell), Surrealism (Artaud), Epic Theatre (Brecht), and Theatre of the Absurd (Beckett). We will also become familiar with dramatists of the post-1945 period, including Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Wole Soyinka, Caryl Churchill, and Sarah Kane.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 107 CM
  

  • LIT107B CM - Medieval Drama

    This course provides a survey of medieval dramatic literature including liturgical drama, morality plays, the drama of saints and conversion, the raucous tavern plays of Arras, France, and the epic cycles performed in York, Chester, and Wakefield. Questions related to theatricality and performance will be central to our examination of these plays: how, where, and in what contexts were they performed, and who were the actors? Readings will be supplemented with a wide range of interdisciplinary materials including visual media, financial accounts, props lists, anti-theatrical treatises, and modern performances.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 107B CM
  

  • LIT108 CM - Medieval Women Writers

    This survey of women writers begins in the 12th century with Marie de France, who famously claimed that “anyone who has received from God the gift of knowledge and true eloquence has a duty not to remain silent.” The work of medieval women writers is wide-ranging and diverse, from chivalric romance and visionary poetry to utopian fiction. In addition to work by such authors as Christine de Pisan, Margery Kempe, Julian of Norwich, Angela of Foligno, and Hildegard of Bingen, we’ll read the letters of Abelard and Héloise, and the trial of Joan of Arc.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 108 CM
  

  • LIT110 CM - The Age of Chivalry

    The chivalric ideal was a complex social and behavioral code that governed the life of the medieval court, from the battlefield to the bedroom. In addition to the early legends of Tristan, Parzival, and Lancelot, we’ll examine late medieval practical guides for aspiring knights written by Raymon Lull, Geoffrey de Charny, and Andreas Capellanus. Other readings will include Marie de France’s fanciful Arthurian Lais, Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale, and Malory’s Mort D’Arthur. Key issues to be examined include the chivalric ethos, changing definitions of medieval masculinity, representations of women in chivalric texts, medieval identity performance in tournaments and pageants, and contemporary medievalisms, from Camelot to Monty Python.

    Offered: Every third year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 110 CM
  

  • LIT111 CM - Dante

    This course introduces students to one of the most influential authors of medieval Europe. We’ll explore themes related to sin and punishment, love and lust, commerce and trade, and the complicated relationship between author and text. We’ll also meet corrupt friars, lusty nuns, shady merchants, and even a person described as “the worst man in the world.” In addition to reading Dante’s Vita Nuova, Divine Comedy (Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso), and excerpts from the Convivio and Monarchia, students will also read Giovanni Boccaccio’s riotous Life of Dante, written just decades after Dante’s death. At the end of the course, we’ll emerge from the depths of hell onto the bustling streets of Florence with selected stories from Boccaccio’s Decameron. All readings will be in English translation.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 111 CM
 

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