2022-2023 Catalog 
    
    May 10, 2024  
HELP
2022-2023 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.
 

Literature
  

  • LIT096 CM - Wallace Stevens

    This will be an in-depth study of one of the greatest American poets, Wallace Stevens. We will follow Stevens’s career from his first collection, Harmonium (1923), to his last, Auroras of Autumn (1950). We will read Stevens’s letters, essays and lectures, though our focus will be on close reading and nuanced understanding of his poetry. To a get a sense of the poetic context in which Stevens is working we will look at the poetry of American contemporaries such as T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams and H.D. We will read critical treatments of Stevens’s poetry by Helen Vendler, Harold Bloom, Simon Critchley, Northrop Frye, Guy Davenport, Mary Ruefle and others.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 096 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
  

  • LIT103 CM - The Idea of Poetry

    The course is first and foremost a course in the reading of poetry and its focus will thus be on poets such as Wallace Stevens, Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, Sappho, Homer, Rainer Maria Rilke, Elizabeth Bishop and others. It will pay, however, special attention to the idea of poetry as such. What is poetry? What accounts for poets’ different definitions of the activity? Does the nature of poetry change over time and across cultures? These will be the questions of the course and they will be explored through theoretical readings on poetry.

    Offered: Every year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 103 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
  

  • LIT106 CM - Gay Poets, Poems, Poetry

    This class is a survey of 20th century American gay poets, with a look back at Whitman, Cavafy, Lorca, Pasolini, and Sappho. There will be close readings of poems by W. H. Auden, H.D. Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Hart Crane, James Baldwin, Frank O’Hara, Robert Hayden, Elizabeth Bishop, James Merrill, Robert Duncan, Allen Ginsberg, Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Thom Gunn, May Swenson, James Schuyler, Mary Oliver, Kay Ryan, Frank Bidart and others. The class will consider questions such as: Do social identities change the words we write? Do same-sex affinities affect poetic composition. Are gay poets alike, with a unique gay perspective, language, and style? The answer, we may find, is a resounding NO, but the study of these American poets (with consideration of earlier gay poetry) will illuminate a remarkable river of literature about the body, sexuality, desire, and same-sex love.

    Offered: Every other year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 106 CM
  

  • LIT107 CM - African American Poetry

    Through reading, writing, and discussion, this course will introduce students to some of the most influential literary and vernacular poetry emerging from the African American cultural context. For the most part, these literary and vernacular works will be considered in relation to the historical moments in which they were produced. This historicized approach will enable class discussions to focus on the way in which black poetics has chronicled, reflected, and contributed to African America’s varied, vexed relation to the American “democratic project.” Attention to history will also lead students into considerations of the intimate connection between the aesthetic choices of African American poets and the evolving legal, economic, and social statuses of black people in America.

    Offered: Every other year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 107 CM
  

  • LIT108 CM - Poetry and Philosophy

    This course will give an overview of the main conceptions of the relationship between poetry and philosophy in Western culture, from classical antiquity to the present. It will proceed through a series of questions. The first of these are: What is poetry? What is philosophy? How might they best relate to one another? Why does Plato refer to an “ancient enmity” between poetry and philosophy? Why might there be tension between the two activities? How might they be harmonized? What is the relation of reason to imagination?

    Offered: Every year

    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
  

  • LIT114 CM - Politics, Violence, and Early Modern Literature

    What constitutes the ideal state? The ideal ruler? These questions lie at the center of the extraordinary flourishing of political thought in Europe between 1500 and 1700. At the same time, they deeply engaged the literary imagination of the period, as authors held the mirror up to their own societies, reconstructed societies of the past, and described societies of their own imaginative making. In this course we will explore the complex and compelling intersection between early modern politics and literature, paying particular attention to the uses and representations of violence. Our readings will include works by Shakespeare, Machiavelli, Elizabeth I, Montaigne, Milton, Hobbes, and others.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 114 CM
  

  • LIT115 CM - Shakespeare and His Rivals

    The longstanding tradition of bardolatry, or Shakespeare worship, has given us a mythical figure that bestrides the narrow world like a colossus. But the historical Shakespeare was once a young writer trying to make a name for himself in the bustling world of London theater. There he had not only contemporaries but also competitors. In this course we will read a group of Shakespeare’s plays next to and against those of his rivals, including Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson. We will carefully consider such matters as style, stagecraft, genre, history, moral philosophy, and the representation of difference.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 115 CM
  

  • LIT116 CM - Autobiography and Literary Imagination

    In this seminar we will explore the ways in which individuals take possession of and authority over their lives through the act of writing. The impulse behind this act varies: sometimes it might be to justify the life that has been lived so far; sometimes it might be to explore the life not lived at all, an expression of regret; sometimes it might be an attempt to conceal events consciously or not, from both the reader and the author.

    Offered: Every third year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 116 CM
  

  • LIT117 CM - Literature of Late Medieval England

    From the plague to the peasants’ revolt, this course examines critical moments in the cultural history of England by looking at the literature of the court, the city, the church, and the countryside. Key topics addressed over the course of the semester will include urbanization, lay piety, anticlericalism, literacy, cosmopolitanism, gender politics, labor, and national identity. Students will read a wide range of genres including epic poetry, fabliau, sermons, saints’ lives, dream visions, and drama Readings will include Pearl, Gower’s Confessio Amantis, Langland’s Piers Plowman, and excerpts from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and shorter poems.

    Offered: Every third year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 117 CM
  

  • LIT118 CM - The Romantic Revolution

    A study of the revolution in human consciousness known as Romanticism. The course concentrates on the British Romantics, but also studies Romanticism as an international phenomenon. Writers studied include Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Rousseau, Goethe, Schiller, Emerson, Thoreau, Lermontov.

    Offered: Every third year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 118 CM
  

  • LIT119 CM - 19th-Century Russian Novel

    This course examines the explosive growth of the Russian novel. Students will read major works by Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy and will become familiar with such themes as Slavophilism, realism, revolution versus tradition, and national identity.

    Offered: Every third year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 119 CM
  

  • LIT121 CM - British Modernism

    Modernism was characterized by radical experiments in form that altered the conventions of what we think of as literature. Inseparable from these technical innovations were the cultural forces that shaped writers of the period, including the trauma of war, the rise of mass culture, new technologies such as radio, cinema, and photography, and changed patterns of mobility, urban experience, and sexual freedom. But modernism’s relentless quest for the new was accompanied by an attraction to the very old, as writers turned to Greek antiquity and the Celtic past to forge their aesthetics. This course approaches the modernist movement through some of its most prominent figures (Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot) and examines distinctive techniques including Imagism, stream-of-consciousness, and the mythic method.

    Offered: Every other year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 121 CM
  

  • LIT122 CM - European Modernist Fiction

    The first half of the 20th century produced an exceptional body of powerful and innovative fiction. Modernist fiction is notable for its stylistic originality, formal experimentation, psychological depth, sensuality, wit, nostalgia, and irony. Authors will include Conrad, Joyce, Ford, Woolf, Lawrence, Kafka, Proust, Gide, Mann, and others.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 122 CM
  

  • LIT124 CM - Literature and War

    War pervades literature as thoroughly as it has pervaded human history. This course studies the depiction of war from the American Civil War to the recent past in selected works of literature and film. While the course examines the many-sided nature of war, its main emphasis is on the following three areas: ethics in war; military leadership; and the tension between idealism and disillusionment. Texts to be studied include Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage, Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, Babel’s Red Cavalry, Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia, Jones’s The Thin Red Line, as well as the work of various poets and essayists.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 124 CM
  

  • LIT125 CM - 20th-Century English and Irish Poetry

    This course will introduce English and Irish poetry of the 20th century, with special attention to the central figures of Hardy, Yeats, and Auden, but also including, among others, Houseman, Hopkins, the poets of World War One, Dylan Thomas, Larkin, Hughes, and Heaney.

    Offered: Every other year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 125 CM
  

  • LIT126 CM - Poetry and Painting

    The course will explore the thematic and structural affinities between poetry and painting from classical antiquity to the present day. Each class will be structured around the study and discussion of a single painting or poem selected from among the materials for that week. The class will cultivate the practice of careful, slow reading and seeing. Readings for the course will discuss the relationship between the two arts, the notion of arts being connected, and notions of what role art might play in life.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 126 CM
  

  • LIT127 CM - The Novel Since World War II

    Since 1945 the novel has increasingly become an international genre, with a reading public and lines of influence between writers that transcend the boundaries of language and nation. This course will consider a selection of the most important and influential works written in this period in America and abroad. Texts will include Invisible Man, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Go Down, Moses, On a Winter’s Night a Traveler…, The Kiss of the Spider Woman, A Clockwork Orange, Labyrinths, Beloved, V., Midnight’s Children, and Pale Fire.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 127 CM
  

  • LIT129 CM - African American Literature

    This course introduces students to some of the most influential literary and vernacular texts emerging from the African American cultural context. For the most part, these literary and vernacular works will be considered in relation to the historical moments in which they were produced. This historicized approach will provoke class discussions primarily focused on the way in which black literary production chronicled, reflected, and contributed to African America’s varied, vexed relation to the American “democratic project.” Attention to history will also lead students into considerations of the intimate connection between the aesthetic choices of African American writers and the evolving legal and social statuses of black people in America.

    Offered: Every year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 129 CM
  

  • LIT130 CM - Introduction to Film

    We will begin with a close analysis of a contemporary popular film, in an effort to determine typical conventions of cinematic expression, and then proceed through a study of multiple movements and genres in the history of film, from German Expressionism to the French New Wave, from Hollywood to documentary to avant-garde and independent film-making. Overall, the course is intended to provide students with a broad introduction to film analysis and to the field of Film Studies.

    Offered: Every year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 130 CM
  

  • LIT131 CM - Film History I (1925-1965)

    This course surveys the history of cinema as art and mass medium, from the introduction of sound to the rise of the “New Hollywood.” Topics such as cinematic response to World War II, the decline of the studio system, and “new waves” of European film-making are studied in social, cultural, and aesthetic perspectives.

    Offered: Every other year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 131 CM
  

  • LIT132 CM - Film History II (1965-Present)

    This course surveys the history of cinema as art and mass medium, from 1965 to the present. Topics such as the rise of independent filmmaking in America, the conglomeration of the studios, and European resistance to Hollywood’s domination on the world market are considered in social, cultural, and aesthetic terms.

    Offered: Every other year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 132 CM
  

  • LIT133 CM - Film and Literature

    This course examines correspondences and affinities between literature and film in aesthetic, cultural, and social contexts. Throughout, we will look not only at specific case studies of literary adaptation or cross-reference, but consider the larger questions of cultural value implied in these transactions. Writers and film-makers to be considered include Henry James, Virginia Woolf, Carson McCullers, Stephen King, Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock, Roman Polanski, and Robert Altman.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 133 CM
  

  • LIT134 CM - Special Studies in Film

    A seminar designed to explore the aesthetic achievement and social impact of film as an art form. Subjects for study include such topics as specific film genres, the work of individual film-makers, and recurring themes in film. Each year the seminar concentrates on a different area - for example, “Film and Politics,” “The Director as Author,” or “Violence and the Hero in American Films.”

    Offered: Every other year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 134 CM
  

  • LIT135 CM - Alfred Hitchcock

    This course examines the work and legacy of Alfred Hitchcock from cultural, social, historical and artistic perspectives. Special attention will be paid to Hitchcock’s work in relation to cultural modernism and social modernity, and to his influence on both avant-garde and commercial cinemas, including the French New Wave (1959-1968) and the New Hollywood (1967-1975).

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 135 CM
  

  • LIT136 CM - American Film Genres

    Mainstream genres can be seen as expressions of American culture’s popular mythology. This course will concentrate on selected genres to examine the social values, issues, and tensions that underlie these narratives and their characteristic ways of resolving fundamental societal conflicts.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 136 CM
  

  • LIT137 CM - Gay and Lesbian Cinema in the U.S.

    This is a survey of gay and lesbian cinema in the U.S. from the early 20th century to the present. The course examines depictions of gay/lesbian themes in Classical Hollywood cinema of the 20s-60s, as well as more recent examples including Sylvia Scarlett, Tea and Sympathy, The Children’s Hour, The Killing of Sister George, Poison, Swoon, Watermelon Woman, and Brokeback Mountain.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 137 CM
  

  • LIT138 CM - Film and Mass Culture

    This course will examine film as art and as medium in the context of the rise of 20th-century “mass culture.” We will take up such topics as the role of film in producing the ideas of “mass culture”, the cinematic representation of the “masses”, film as an instrument of the standardization of culture and as a mode of resistance to it, film and modernism, film and postmodernism, representations of fascism in cinema, and “subculture” considered as an effect of mass culture.

    Offered: Every third year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 138 CM
  

  • LIT139 CM - Film Theory

    This course investigates the major film theories from the beginnings of cinema to the present. We begin with a study of classical film theory (1900-1960) that attempts to define the essence of the form, its relation to reality, and its status as mass medium and/or art. We then move on to more recent work that examines film from ideological, sociological, or psychological perspectives, or considers the changing nature of cinema in the digital age.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 139 CM
  

  • LIT144 CM - W.B. Yeats

    The Irish poet William Butler Yeats, one of the “last romantics,” as he called himself, was considered by T. S. Eliot to be “the greatest poet of our time — certainly the greatest in this language, and as far as I am able to judge, in any language.” Love, art, history, politics, and the supernatural are his central themes. Yeats is a central figure of High Modernism, but among modernists his poetry remains distinctively personal. In this course we will trace Yeats’ fifty-year career, from the early days of the Celtic Twilight in the 1890s to the great poems of old age written on the brink of World War II and including Yeats’s contribution to the Irish national theater.

    Offered: Every other year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 144 CM
  

  • LIT152 CM - Utopia/Dystopia: The Political Imagination in Literature and Film

    Utopia is a literary genre that attempts to imagine how human societies can be reformed to eliminate violence, irrationality, waste, and chaos. Utopias attempt, in other words, to eliminate everything that makes literature-and life-interesting. Is that why utopia so often leads to dystopia? In this course, we will follow utopian and dystopian thinking and writing from classical times into the late twentieth century. Works will include More’s Utopia, New Atlantis, Gulliver’s Travels, Candide, Looking Backward, Brave New World, 1984, A Clockwork Orange (book and film), The Handmaid’s Tale, and The Matrix (film).

    Offered: Every other year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 152 CM
  

  • LIT160 AF - Caribbean Literature

    Reading and analysis of novels, poetry, and essays representing the most important trends in modern Caribbean literature.

    Offered: Every other year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 160 AF
  

  • LIT160 CM - Science and Faith in Modern Literature

    A study of the origins and impact of nihilism in modern literature. Beginning with Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, and James, the course will look at major 20th-century authors as a battleground between scientific realism and faith. T. S. Eliot, Frost, Hardy, Auden, Camus, Mann, Milosz, and Simone Weil will be among the major authors considered against the background of biology, psychology, and physical science.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 160 CM
  

  • LIT162 AF - African Literature

    Reading and analysis of novels, poetry, and essays representing the most important trends in modern African literature.

    Offered: Every other year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 162 AF
  

  • LIT163 AF - North African Literature and Culture in Text, Film, and Music

    This course is an introduction to North African Studies which offers an overview of North African literature and culture, through a selection of the works of some of the most important North African authors from diverse ethnic backgrounds (Arab, Berber, French, and Jewish). In addition, we will consider a selection of films, photographs, and other visual culture which will provide further insights into the complex social political and religious fabric of each country and the region as a whole. And, of course, we will consider music, which, along with poetry, is a cultural practice and form which is oral and an essential aspect of the everyday life in North Africa.

    Offered: Every year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 163 AF
  

  • LIT165 AF - Caribbean Women Writers: Writing Between Borders

    Examination of works by women writers from the Caribbean. Seeks to uncover the complex nature of cross-cultural encounters. Explores the strategies used by these writers to define themselves both inside and outside the body politic of two societies. Attention given to questions of identity, exile, history, memory, and language. Authors include Jean Rhys, Paule Marshall, Maryse Conde, Jamaica Kincaid, Edwidge Danticat, and Michelle Cliff.

    Prerequisite: Upper-division literature course or permission of instructor.

    Offered: Every other year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 165 AF
  

  • LIT165 CM - Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud

    Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud have exerted a dominant influence not only upon literary criticism but upon the entire intellectual culture of advanced modernity. We will study a selection of their works in a broad cultural context, beginning with Enlightenment precursors like Voltaire and Rousseau, taking account of important contemporaries like Darwin, and ending with postmodernist disciples like Thomas Pynchon and Michel Foucault.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 165 CM
  

  • LIT169 CM - Freud, Kafka and Musil

    In the writings of the psychologist Sigmund Freud, the fabulist Franz Kafka, and the novelist Robert Musil, twentieth century German-language culture produced three of the most significant expressions of modernity in crisis. We will study each of these challenging modernists in their historical context, paying special attention to the different forms in which they work and the different modes of interpretation they foster. 

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 169 CM
  

  • LIT177 CM - The Art of Oratory

    Great speeches have changed history. This course will explore the art of oratory from ancient Greece to modern America. Examination of speeches of Demosthenes, Pericles, Cicero, Burke, Webster, Lincoln, Churchill, Martin Luther King, and others will be combined with study of theories of oratory and rhetoric from Aristotle to Wayne Booth. Major speeches from classical and modern drama and epic including Shakespeare, Milton, and Melville will also be studied along with films and recordings of 20th-century political oratory. Speech writing and performance will form a practical component of this course.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 177 CM
  

  • LIT181 CM - Advanced Creative Writing

    This is a class for the student who is serious about writing fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. There will be frequent short assignments for workshop discussion and a longer final one.

    Prerequisites: Writing sample and instructor permission

    Offered: Every year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 181 CM
  

  • LIT182 CM - James Joyce

    In this seminar we will read the major writings of the Irish author James Joyce, whose work was immensely influential on all 20th-century literature, in English and in other languages. We will begin with his collection of short stories, Dubliners, and with his quasi-autobiographical novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The greater part of our class will be devoted to a detailed reading of Ulysses, his epic of the modern world. Time permitting, we will study excerpts of Finnegans Wake to establish strategies for reading this compendium of language and history.

    Offered: Every other year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 182 CM
  

  • LIT183 CM - Advanced Fiction Writing

    This advanced fiction workshop is intended for people who have taken at least one semester of Fiction Writing (LIT 038 CM ). Each student will submit two stories or novel excerpts for workshop, where they will be carefully critiqued by the class. We’ll also read short fiction by well-known contemporary writers, with an eye toward what makes these stories original, entertaining, and complex. In class, we’ll look beyond basic elements of craft and address issues of concern for the experienced writer. How do we avoid cliché? Create narrative drive? Take risks with form, language, and subject matter? Written exercises will focus on these issues while challenging students to push their writing in unexpected directions.

    Offered: Every year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 183 CM
  

  • LIT185 CM - Poetry Writing II

    This is an intermediate and advanced undergraduate poetry writing workshop for those who wish to improve their craft as poets while broadening their knowledge of poetry. Much of the term will be devoted to weekly exercises as preparation for later “free-assignments.” 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 six thoroughly revised poems will be required for completion of the course.

    Prerequisite: LIT 037 CM  or instructor permission.

    Offered: Every year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 185 CM
  

  • LIT195 CM - Robert Frost

    An examination of the poetry and prose of Robert Frost, one of the preeminent American poets. Consideration will be given to Frost’s work in relation to traditions of pastoral poetry and classical authors, his innovations in blank verse and English metrics, his dialogue with science and pragmatism, and his thinking about the nature of metaphor and poetic drama. Careful attention will be given to Frost’s ambivalent relationship to literary modernism, American predecessors, especially Emerson, Thoreau, and Dickinson, his reaction to the New Deal and the Cold War, and the complex history of Frost biography.

    Offered: Every other year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: LIT 195 CM
  

  • LIT199 CM - Independent Study in Literature

    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: LIT 199 CM

Master of Arts in Finance
  

  • FIN300 CM - Seminar in Finance and Accounting Practices

    This is a two-week lab course taken prior to the start of the fall semester that provides an intensive review of key practices in finance and accounting. The sessions include networking opportunities and workshops to help students improve their professional conduct and develop their networking, communication and career management skills. In the event that students are unable to complete FIN 300 during the usual fall pre-session due to a conflict with athletics or another similar obligation, the Robert Day School may offer the second part of this course to those students during a special January pre-session term that takes place prior to the spring semester. High-Pass/Pass/No-Pass grading only.

    Offered: Every year

    Credit: 0.5

    Course Number: FIN 300 CM
  

  • FIN301A CM - Leadership Development in Finance and Accounting

    Throughout the semester, students will enhance their leadership skills by participating in a series of leadership activities. By combining experiential leadership training with workshops emphasizing ethics, entrepreneurship, and oral and written communication, students develop a foundation for future success in leadership positions in finance and accounting. High-Pass/Pass/No-Pass grading only.

    Offered: Every Fall

    Credit: 0.25

    Course Number: FIN 301A CM
  
  

  • FIN320 CM - Financial Econometrics

    This is an advanced course in econometrics that focuses on statistical tools for undertaking empirical research in finance. Topics include asset pricing model tests, event-study methodology, tests of long-run predictability, and high-frequency data analysis.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: FIN 320 CM
  

  • FIN330 CM - Corporate Financial Management

    This course helps students build the foundational knowledge and skills critical to making prudent business decisions in areas ranging from investments to valuations to risk management. The class uses both case studies and lectures, and coursework includes team projects and writing assignments.

    Offered: Every fall

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: FIN 330 CM
  

  • FIN340 CM - Investments

    This course develops the financial economic basis of investment and portfolio management, including portfolio theory, asset pricing theory, bond pricing, and portfolio performance evaluation.

    Offered: Every fall

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: FIN 340 CM
  

  • FIN350 CM - International Finance

    This course examines the theoretical and applied approach to international financial management or an individual or firm exposed to global competition. Topics include the basics of foreign exchange and global markets; foreign exchange exposure management; financing and investment decisions in multi-national corporations; institutions and finance.
     

    Offered: Every year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: FIN 350 CM
  

  • FIN360 CM - Corporate Governance and Ethics

    This course will equip students with the tools and analytical frameworks to understand the roles, responsibilities, reporting obligations, liabilities and effectiveness of boards of directors, managers, advisors (e.g., lawyers, auditors, compensation consultants, etc.), shareholders, regulators and other corporate stakeholders (e.g., labor, consumers, creditors, local communities and the environment). The course will prepare students for leadership roles in firms as entrepreneurs, CEOs or senior managers, venture capital and private equity investors as well as senior positions in consultancy, regulatory, and non-profit sectors.

    Offered: Every fall

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: FIN 360 CM
  

  • FIN386 CM - Financial Reporting and Communication

    This course will introduce students to the language of business and finance (accounting). Financial accounting is concerned with how firms report the results of their operations to outsiders such as investors, analysts, and regulatory agencies. An appreciation of the role of financial reporting in our economic system and insights into how financial accounting information is used by decision-makers both inside and outside the firm are essential for those who are seeking careers in finance. The emphasis is more on concepts than on procedures. The course will discuss some of the recent accounting scandals, the reasons behind them and how we can eliminate such problems. The course will also introduce the students to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) as well as the debate about the role of accounting in the financial crisis.

    Offered: Every fall

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: FIN 386 CM
  

  • FIN398 CM - Independent Study and Research

    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. See General Education Requirements  for details.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 0.5 or 1

    Course Number: FIN 398 CM
  

  • FIN399 CM - Internship

    Internship credit is available for qualifying graduate students. Students may receive course credit in the fall semester for internships completed in the preceding summer, as needed. See CMC’s undergraduate internship policy  for more information.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 0.5 or 1

    Course Number: FIN 399 CM
  

  • FIN410 CM - Portfolio Management

    This advanced course focuses on the theory and practice of asset management. Students develop an understanding of the return and risk of different securities and the money management industry.

    Prerequisite: FIN 340 CM  

    Offered: Every spring

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: FIN 410 CM
  

  • FIN420 CM - Asset Pricing and Derivatives

    This course enables students to evaluate derivative securities. Topics covered include pricing of futures, swaps, and options; risk management using derivative securities; value at risk (VAR); numerical options pricing techniques; and simulation methods.

    Offered: Every spring

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: FIN 420 CM
  

  • FIN425 CM - Fixed Income

    This course is intended to provide students with the necessary foundation to analyze and implement investment strategies involving fixed income securities. Although bonds, both sovereign and corporate, are examined in detail, interest rate dependent securities such as forward rate agreements, bond futures and their options, interest rate swaps, caps, and floors are also covered extensively the course. The use of securitization to create fixed income products such as mortgage backed securities will also be studied. Techniques to manage interest rate risk as well as credit risk will be covered. While knowledge of equity option pricing theory is beneficial, Finance 420 (Asset Pricing and Derivatives) is not required for the course.

    Prerequisite: FIN 340 CM  

    Offered: Every Year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: FIN 425 CM
  

  • FIN440 CM - Advanced Accounting Analysis

    The focus of this course is the connection between accounting analysis and issues in finance, including performance evaluation, cash flow analysis, pro forma construction, risk analysis, and valuation. This course assumes a working knowledge of Intermediate Accounting.

    Offered: Every spring

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: FIN 440 CM
  

  • FIN450 CM - Entrepreneurial Finance and Venture Capital

    The course provides students an understanding of the economics of entrepreneurial finance and private equity, especially venture capital. We will address financing and strategic issues faced by entrepreneurs in the early stage of a firm. Financial modeling will be used to determine how much money can and should be raised and from what source, and how the funding should be structured. Specific topics include: methods of valuing private firms, simulation to make better strategic choices, financial forecasting, financial modeling, economics of contracts (venture capital partnerships agreements, term sheets, etc.), financing sources, creating value through financing contracting, and exit strategies (initial public offerings, merger, other).

    Prerequisite: FIN 330 CM  

    Offered: Every spring

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: FIN 450 CM
  

  • FIN460 CM - Advanced Topics in Finance

    This course provides students with the opportunity to develop skills and understanding of the theory and practice that underlie corporate financial policy, corporate governance, and complex financial transactions. The course consists of three modules: i) The Economics of Venture Capital Financing; ii) Corporate Governance; and iii) Financial Restructuring, Reorganization, & The Market for Corporate Control. The course synthesizes cutting-edge research in financial economics with cases based on real-world events.

    Offered: Every spring

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: FIN 460 CM

Mathematics
  

  • MATH030 CM - Calculus I

    Single variable Calculus. Sequences and limits, continuity, differentiation and integration of algebraic and transcendental functions.

    Offered: Every semester

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: MATH030 CM
  

  • MATH030A CM - Calculus I-A

    This is a one semester course in Calculus intended to introduce students to the subject, together with some of the most important applications to probability, statistics, and differential equations. A student taking this course will be prepared to take either MATH031 CM - Calculus II  or MATH031A CM - Calculus II-A  upon completion.

    Prerequisite: Pre-calculus in high school

    Offered: Every fall

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: MATH030A CM
  

  • MATH031 CM - Calculus II

    A continuation of MATH 030 CM . Techniques and applications of integration, introduction to differential equations, improper integrals and indeterminate forms, infinite series and power series representation of a function.

    Prerequisite: MATH 030 CM  or placement.

    Offered: Every semester

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: MATH031 CM
  

  • MATH031A CM - Calculus II-A

    This is the version of Calculus II intended for incoming students who have had one year of AP or IB Calculus. Rigorous definitions of limits, sequences, derivatives, integrals, and infinite series. Also contains techniques and applications of integration, introduction to differential equations, improper integrals and indeterminate forms, infinite series and power series representation of a function. Requires one year of AP or IB Calculus. Students may not take both MATH 031 CM  and MATH031A CM.

    Offered: Every semester

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: MATH031A CM
  

  • MATH032 CM - Calculus III

    Multivariable calculus and vector analysis with applications to physical and social sciences. Functions of several variables; polar coordinates and parametric representation of curves; partial differentiation, the method of Lagrange multipliers; multiple integration; calculus of vector functions.

    Prerequisite: MATH 031 CM  or placement

    Offered: Every semester

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: MATH032 CM
  

  • MATH032H CM - Honors Seminar in Calculus III

    Open by invitation only to first-years, this course is an introduction to rigorous mathematics for students having a substantial background and demonstrated interest in mathematics. The topics covered will be those of Calculus III (MATH 032 CM ) with more emphasis on rigor and deeper understanding of the underlying mathematics.

    Offered: Every fall

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: MATH032H CM
  

  • MATH038 CM - Calculus and Discrete Models for Applications

    This course provides a broad view of applied mathematics, with particular emphasis on creation, analysis, and computer simulation of mathematical models. Topics include Petri Nets, Markov chains, differential equations, discrete and continuous numerical methods, networks, linear programming, statistical modeling, Monte Carlo methods, and financial models with an introduction to Calculus.  This course is not available to students who have already completed a course in the calculus sequence without departmental permission.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: MATH038 CM
  

  • MATH052 CM - Introduction to Statistics

    This course introduces techniques of statistical inference and methods of data analysis from a mathematical point of view. Emphasis will be placed on understanding the theory underlying specific methods used in examples drawn from the natural sciences and the social sciences. Topics may include: probability, densities and distributions, data description, correlation, least square regression, multiple regression, non-parametric methods, Bayesian methods, and the analysis of variance. This course may not be used as a substitute for PSYC 109 CM  for Psychology majors. Students completing this course may not subsequently enroll in GOVT 055 CM  or ECON 120 CM .

    Offered: Every year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: MATH052 CM
  

  • MATH055 CM - Discrete Mathematics

    Topics include combinatorics (the mathematics of finite objects), number theory, and graph theory with an emphasis on creative problem solving and learning to read and write rigorous proofs. Applications include probability, analysis of algorithms, and cryptography. Serves as a prerequisite for any CMC course requiring CSCI 055 CM  

    Offered: Every semester

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: MATH055 CM
  
  

  • MATH060 CM - Linear Algebra

    An introduction to the methods of linear algebra with applications to the physical and social sciences. Topics will include: Linear equations and matrices, determinants, vector spaces, linear transformations, inner product spaces and quadratic forms, eigenvalues and eigenvectors, and canonical forms.

    Prerequisite: MATH 031 CM  or instructor permission; MATH 032 CM  recommended

    Offered: Every semester

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: MATH060 CM
  

  • MATH060C CM - Linear Algebra with Computing

    An introduction to the methods of linear algebra. Topics include: Linear equations and matrices, determinants, vector spaces, linear transformations, inner product spaces and quadratic forms, eigenvalues and eigenvectors, canonical forms, with an introduction to a numerical linear algebra system such as MATLAB. Equivalent to MATH 060 CM  for prerequisite and major requirement purposes.

    Prerequisites: MATH 031 CM  or instructor permission; MATH 032 CM  recommended.

    Offered: Every year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: MATH060C CM
  

  • MATH103 CM - Combinatorics

    An introduction to combinatorial mathematics. Topics may include enumerative combinatorics, set theory, graph theory, generating functions, matroids and algebraic combinatorics.

    Prerequisite: MATH 060 CM .

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: MATH103 CM
  

  • MATH109 CM - Introduction to Mathematics of Finance

    This is a first course in Mathematical Finance sequence. This course introduces the concepts of arbitrage and risk-neutral pricing within the context of single- and multi-period financial models. Key elements of stochastic calculus such as Markov processes, martingales, filtration and stopping times will be developed within this context. Pricing by replication is studied in a multi-period binomial model. Within this model, the replicating strategies for European and American options are determined.

    Prerequisite: MATH 060 CM  or instructor permission

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: MATH109 CM
  

  • MATH111 CM - Differential Equations

    An introduction to the general theory and applications of differential equations. Linear systems, nonlinear systems, and stability.

    Prerequisite: MATH 032 CM  and MATH 060 CM  

    Offered: Every semester

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: MATH111 CM
  

  • MATH131 CM - Math Analysis I

    Countable sets, least upper bound, and metric space topology including compactness, completeness, connectivity, and uniform convergence. Related topics as time permits. Offered jointly by CMC and Pomona.

    Prerequisite: MATH 060 CM 

    Offered: Every spring

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: MATH131 CM
  

  • MATH132 CM - Math Analysis II

    A rigorous study of calculus in Euclidean Spaces including Riemann Integrals, derivatives of transformations, and the inverse function theorem. Offered jointly by CMC and Pomona.

    Prerequisite: MATH 131 CM   

    Offered: Every other year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: MATH132 CM
  

  • MATH135 CM - Complex Analysis

    An introduction to the theory and application of analytic functions of a complex variable. Topics may include: Mobius transformation, multiple-valued functions, Cauchy-Riemann equations, harmonic functions, Cauchy’s Theorem, Liouville’s Theorem, Cauchy’s Integral Formula, Maximum Modulus Principle, Argument Principle, Rouche’s Theorem, series expansions, isolated singularities, calculus of residues, conformal mapping. Additional topics at the discretion of the instructor. Offered jointly by CMC and Pomona.

    Prerequisite: MATH 060 CM ; a proof-based course above 100 recommended

    Offered: Every year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: MATH135 CM
  

  • MATH137 CM - Real Analysis I

    Abstract measures, Lebesque measure, on Rn, and Lebesgue-Stieljes measure on R. The Lebesgue integral and limit theorems. Product measures and the Fubini Theorem. Additional related topics as time permits. Offered jointly by CMC, Claremont Graduate University, and Pomona.

    Prerequisites: MATH 131 CM  and MATH 132 CM 

    Offered: Every year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: MATH137 CM
  

  • MATH138 CM - Real Analysis II

    Continuation of MATH 137 CM . Some of the topics covered will be: Banach and Hilbert spaces, Lp spaces, complex measures, and Radon-Nikodym theorem. Offered jointly by CMC, Claremont Graduate University, and Pomona.

    Prerequisite: MATH 137 CM 

    Offered: Every year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: MATH138 CM
  

  • MATH140 CM - Modern Geometry

    Geometry from a modern viewpoint. Euclidean geometry, discrete geometry, hyperbolic geometry, elliptical geometry, projective geometry, and fractal geometry. Additional topics may include algebraic varieties, differential forms, or Lie groups.

    Prerequisites: MATH 032 CM  and MATH 060 CM 

    Offered: Every year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: MATH140 CM
  

  • MATH141 CM - Hyperbolic Geometry

    Introduction to hyperbolic geometry in dimensions 2 and 3, including different models for the hyperbolic metric, isometries, linear fractional transformations, and geodesics. Gluing constructions to obtain hyperbolic manifolds. Additional topics may include hyperbolic knots, hyperbolic graphs, hyperbolic geometry in art, and applications.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: MATH141 CM
  

  • MATH144 CM - Algebraic Topology

    An introduction to algebraic topology. Basics of category theory, simplicial homology and cohomology, relative homology, exact sequences, Poincare duality, CW complexes, DeRahm cohomology, applications to knot theory.

    Prerequisite: MATH 060 CM  

    Offered: Every other year

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: MATH144 CM
  

  • MATH148 CM - Knot Theory

    An introduction to the theory of knots, links and other knotted objects from combinatorial, algebraic and geometric perspectives. Topics may include knot diagrams, p-colorings, Alexander, Jones and HOMFLY polynomials, Seifert surfaces, genus, the fundamental group, representations of knot groups, quandles, quandle cocycle invariants, tangles and braids, spatial graphs, surface-links and virtual knots.

    Prerequisite: MATH 060 CM  

    Offered: Every other fall

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: MATH148 CM
  

  • MATH149 CM - Discrete Geometry

    The goal of this course is to introduce students to the basics of discrete and convex geometry.  Topics covered will include convex bodies, lattices, quadratic forms, and interactions between them, such as the fundamentals of Minkowski’s theory, shortest vector problem, reduction algorithms, LLL, and connections to computational complexity and theoretical computer science.  Additional topics may include an introduction to optimization questions, such as packing, and covering problems.

    Prerequisites: MATH 032 CM  and  MATH 060 CM  

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: MATH149 CM
  

  • MATH149B CM - Topics in Mathematics

    Topic varies by semester and instructor.

    Offered: Occasionally

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: MATH149B CM
  

  • MATH151 CM - Probability

    Discrete and continuous random variables, conditional and marginal distributions, independence, expectations, generating functions, transformations, central limit theorem. Applications to the social and physical sciences. 

    Prerequisites: MATH 032 CM , and either MATH 060 CM  or CSCI 048 CM  

    Offered: Every fall

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: MATH151 CM
  

  • MATH152 CM - Statistical Inference

    An introduction to statistical inference. Topics may include sampling, parameter estimation, hypothesis testing, graphical methods of data analysis using software, comparison of two samples by parametric and non-parametric methods, Bayesian methods, linear regression. The course will present the mathematical theory behind the techniques of statistical inference. At the same time, students will gain experience in applying the techniques to data sets drawn from real world examples. Offered jointly by CMC and Pomona.

    Prerequisite: MATH 151 CM 

    Offered: Every spring

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: MATH152 CM
  

  • MATH152 PO - Statistical Theory

    See Pomona College Catalog for course description.

    Credit: 1

    Course Number: MATH152 PO
  
 

Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11

Catalog Navigation
  Catalog Home
  About Claremont McKenna College
  Admission
  Financial Information
  Campus Life
  Academics
  Majors & Sequences
  Courses
  Archived Catalogs