Download Course Listing and Descriptions for Summer 2008 (pdf)
Studies: The Criminal as Hero
Paul Gordon
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HUMN 4093
 Syllabus |
In this comparative, interdisciplinary course we will examine Freud’s, Nietzsche’s, and other theories of criminality and apply those to the study of a number of films and literary works which focus on heroic figures who are also, paradoxically, criminals.
In addition to Nietzsche (The Gay Science) and Freud (“Character-Types Met in Psychoanalytical Work”), other works to be studied include: Antigone, Macbeth, Notes from Underground, A Good Man is Hard to Find (Flannery O’Conner), The Stranger, and The Executioner’s Song. Films include Herzog’s Aguirre the Wrath of God, and the films of Scorsese (Taxi Driver, Cape Fear, etc).
Prerequisite: HUMN 2000 or junior/senior standing.
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Melodrama has often been dismissed as overwrought with emotion, moralizing, and sensationalism. Film studies, however, has come up with ways to understand melodrama as an intriguing "mode of excess" which has powerful resonance for film audiences. This course will examine how and to what purposes melodrama has been used in cinema. We will look at different aspects of melodrama: its pictorialism, acting style, and music; its uses of paranoia and entrapment, and also fast-paced action. This course will examine the form and function of film melodrama in different historical periods, asking questions such as: How does melodrama affect and "move" its spectators? How does it address questions of social justice? Why is music so important to the genre? How does it allow space for the representation of marginalized voices (women and African Americans, for example), and yet how does it also contain those voices within conventional ideology? How has melodrama been viewed by oppositional audiences and fan cultures? What are the implications of film style for melodrama, and why is music so important to the genre? Films may include: Way Down East, Body and Soul, Show Boat, Stella Dallas, Letter From An Unknown Woman, Imitation of Life, Rebel Without A Cause, Kramer vs. Kramer, Brokeback Mountain.
Prerequisite FILM 1502. Same as FILM 3104.
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By questioning long-standing assumptions and traditions, Enlightenment thinkers achieved a reformulation of ideals and values which has been of lasting influence on modern society. In the context of the Enlightenment emphasis on reason and humanity, this course examines eighteenth-century European arguments for (and against) freedom of religion, the abolition of slavery, and the emancipation of women, as well as eighteenth-century views on science, education, and government. Texts by Leibniz, Lessing, Kant, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot, Graffigny, Locke, Hume, Wollstonecraft, and others.
Same as GRMN 3505.
Approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: ideals and values
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This class will apply Freud’s psychoanalytic method of interpreting works of art to the films of Alfred Hitchcock. Although Hitchcock is often self-consciously Freudian in his art (eg. in Vertigo, Spellbound, etc.), the true “latent content” of the films is only to be revealed by an application of Freud’s theories of narcissism, the Oedipus-complex, the uncanny, etc. “against the grain” of the manifest content of Hitchcock’s works themselves. For example, we will seek to explain Hitchcock’s recurrent and complicated use of “maternal super-egos” (as in Psycho), of male narcissism (as in Rear Window), of a violent “male protest” (Shadow of a Doubt) and of a female and trans-gendered violence of nature and the unconscious (Marnie, The Birds). And above all, we will examine the persistence figure of “Mother” in Hitchcock’s films as it informs all of his leading female characters.
Requirements: Weekly viewing of the films will be accompanied by class presentations and discussions, culminating in a final research project involving the psychoanalytical interpretation of at least one of Hitchcock’s films.
Prerequisite: HUMN 2000 or junior/senior standing.
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We will be reading a selection of the surviving works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides (all works written at Athens in the 5th c. BCE) and Seneca (whose 1st century CE tragedies represent the sole examples of the genre at Rome surviving in non-fragmentary form). There will also be substantial secondary or background reading to guide the development of an understanding of the religious and moral dimensions of tragic drama in context. In this course, the aim will be to develop skills and habits of close observation, analysis and argument, as well as respect for ideas, nuances and differences. As we read, we will attend to the importance of the texts in the literary historical tradition and their role in shaping cultural norms, habits of thought and the imaginative landscape of western civilization. We will also consider what they tell us of what it is to be human in a complex and ever-changing world. There is no formal prerequisite, but experience writing and talking about literature will be helpful.
Same as CLAS 4120.
This course is approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: literature and the arts.
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Emphasis is placed on Nietzsche's major writings spanning the years 1872 - 1888, with particular attention to the critique of Western values. A systematic exploration of doctrines, concepts, and ideas leading to the values of creativity.
Restricted to sophomores/juniors/seniors. Same as GRMN 4502.
Approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: ideals and values.
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Download Course Listing and Descriptions for Spring 2008 (pdf)
This course provides an analytical, chronological, comparative and integrated study of works in literature, music and visual arts from the Baroque to contemporary eras. While students are reading Racine and Moliere, for example, the art and music lectures examine the architecture of Versailles and compositions of Lully and other court composers. In the appropriate context with the literature, such composers as Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, and Stravinsky are studied, along with such artists as Fragonard, Goya, Monet, and Picasso.
This course is approved for arts and sciences core curriculum in 2 areas: historical context or literature and the arts.
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In Africa, they say, “If Elvis is King, then James Brown must be God!” I bet they think the same thing now of Tupac Shakur. Yet even Bill Cosby says he can’t understand the way urban Black youths dress or speak. There is a Guinean proverb that links knowledge and love: “We cannot love that which we do not know.” The aim of this course is to achieve this dual task, focusing especially on Black folk, vernacular, and popular culture.
African American culture is a performative culture with roots in Africa. We will assume that this African culture was transmitted to and transformed in America. We will assume that African cultural practices survived and were passed down and that the elaborate and complex world views or cosmologies encoding social, political, and cultural ideas and systems survived inside these performative practices.
We will examine African American expressive culture as polygenre, polyvocal, polyfocus performance. We will also examine African American arts in a full complex cultural context that avoids and even demolishes any stereotyping and is in cultural clash against a myopic mainstream culture. Finally, we will examine how African American culture aspires to the West and Central African understanding that can be summarized as Performance for Power and the Power of Performance.
Approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: cultural and gender diversity or United States context.
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For more than two millennia, the alluring figure of Krishna — the dark-skinned flute-player — has been central to the religious experience of many Indians. His diverse roles as mischievous divine child, adolescent cowherd, and adult statesman and philosopher have been celebrated in poetry and prose, painting and sculpture, and through music, dance, and drama. Using literary and visual sources as well as performances, this course explores multiple facets of Krishna’s character as experienced by his devotees, paying special attention to Indian interpretations of the erotic imagery that are so prominent in his story, and to the figure of Radha, Krishna’s mistress and beloved. Featured texts, most of which are translated from Sanskrit, Bengali, and Hindi, include Book Ten of the Bhagavata Purana, the spiritual classic Bhagavad-Gita, Jayadeva’s song-cycle Gita Govinda, and Journey Through the Twelve Forests, a modern Westerner’s lyrical yet scholarly account of a walking pilgrimage through the landscape of Krishna’s youth, as well as excerpts from anthologies of the devotional songs of celebrated pre-modern saint-poets. Several documentary and feature films will be screened during class sessions. Requirements include a series of short “reaction papers” (roughly every other week), a concluding research paper, and a final exam. This course assumes no prior knowledge of India or Hinduism, and is intended to supplement existing courses in East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Religious Studies, and Anthropology.
Same as HNDI 3831.
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The course explores detective fiction, with special emphasis on the murder mystery, from ancient Greece and Shakespeare through the Romantics (E.T.A. Hoffman, Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe) to the post-Romantic “modernities” of such crucial representatives as Charles Dickens, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Raymond Chandler, John Le Carré, and Walter Mosley. Themes include the genre’s links to the “uncanny” and the “fantastic,” its experiments with semiotic, hermeneutic, and Freudian models of reading, and its telltale relation to the buried forms of violence defining its wider social context.
Restricted to sophomores/juniors/seniors.
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From 1848 to 1914, France experienced intense socio-political tension and transformation. Against a backdrop of imperial and republican struggles for power, its cities grew into sprawling urban centers populated by a working class inspired by the ideals of socialism, and by a growing bourgeoisie with expendable income and leisure time. At the frontline of society was the avant-garde: the painters, musicians, and authors whose self-imposed task it was to translate this new state of modernity into their chosen media. This class will study the Parisian avant-garde – its artistic personalities and movements – to investigate the notion of the artist as cultural commentator and to inquire how it built the foundations for twentieth century modernism. Though we will focus primarily on the visual arts, works of literature and music will also be used to enrich our understanding of this era.
Restricted to sophomores/juniors/seniors.
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Against the background of nineteenth-century literary effusions about music, we will explore the work of early Romantic composers, often writers of words themselves, always absorbed by the universe of inner emotions and the endless possibilities of the imagination. Among the musical works we will study: Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony; Weber’s Romantic opera Der Freischütz; Mendelssohn’s Fingal’s Cave Overture; Schubert’s song cycle Die Winterreise; Robert Schumann’s piano set, Papillons; Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique and his symphonies based on Shakespeare and Byron. Among the literary sources: writings by James Macpherson, Schiller, Schlegel, Schopenhauer, Jean Paul, Byron, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Robert Schumann, Weber, and Berlioz.
Restricted to sophomores/juniors/seniors.
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Surveys the range and function of film criticism, introduces major positions and concepts of film theory, and focuses on students' abilities to write about film. Prerequisite FILM 1502. Same as FILM 3104.
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A study of classical theory, emphasizing the issue of realism (including the differences between film and reality, what happens when an object is photographed, whether film is inherently photographic, psychological reality, etc.), and the effects of narrative framing, emphasizing contemporary theories of reflexive aesthetics and structures (including films by Kurosawa, Bergman, and Godard and studies of works that appear to be aware they are works of art or may appear to have narrating minds).
Restricted to senior HUMN/FILM/FMST majors. Prerequisite FILM 3104 or instructor consent.
Same as FILM 4004 and ARTF 5004. This course is approved for Arts & Sciences core curriculum: critical thinking.
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This course will examine the place of theory within 20th century critical discourse. It will explore the extent to which every theoretical text is constituted around a central difficulty in the concept of theory itself. Readings from Freud, Benjamin, Lévi-Strauss, Genette, Derrida, Butler, Bhabba, and de Man.
Prerequisite: HUMN 2000 or junior/senior standing.
This course is approved for Arts & Sciences core curriculum: critical thinking.
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This course is an interdisciplinary one intended to examine the art of travel: not where to go and what to do, but rather philosophical concepts about why people travel. Likely areas of discussion will include Exploration, Discovery, Escape, Pilgrimage, the Grand Tour, Expatriotism, Exile, Nomadism, Armchair Travel, and the Sense of Home. Materials will include books by travel writers, novels, films, essays, short stories, art, music, and historical documents.
Prerequisite: HUMN 2000 or junior/senior standing.
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In what ways do artistic representations mediate actual social identities? Is art a “when” rather than a “what”? How does “art” function in the contemporary era of a neo-colonial global economy dominated by transnational corporations? What differentiates “high art” from tourist souvenirs or from commodities in general? What has been and what should or could be the role of artists, art historians, and cultural critics in maintaining or collapsing distinctions between these categories? These fundamental questions about the effects of the kinds of knowledge that art produces will be explored through a series of readings dealing with art and social identity. This course examines art as a form of knowledge production in a contemporary framework of thought about the ethical responsibilities of intellectuals to society. Using a variety of analytical strategies, the course is organized around class discussion and course readings.
Prerequisite: HUMN 2000 or junior/senior standing. Meets with ARTH 4919-003.
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Students read in English translation the major epics of Greco-Roman antiquity such as the Iliad, Odyssey, Argonautica, Aeneid, and Metamorphoses. Topics discussed may include the nature of classical epic, its relation to the novel, and its legacy. No Greek or Latin required.
Same as CLAS 4110.
Approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: literature and the arts.
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Analyzes the rise of realism in 13th and 14th century Italian literature and parallel manifestations in the visual arts. Focuses on Boccaccio's Decameron and contemporary realistic prose and poetry with emphasis on gender issues and medieval cultural diversity. Taught in English. Same as ITAL 4150.
Prerequisite: junior standing or instructor consent.
Approved for arts and science core curriculum: literature and the arts, or cultural and gender diversity.
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Emphasis is placed on Nietzsche's major writings spanning the years 1872 - 1888, with particular attention to the critique of Western values. A systematic exploration of doctrines, concepts, and ideas leading to the values of creativity.
Restricted to sophomores/juniors/seniors.
Same as GRMN 4502. Approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: ideals and values.
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Introduces various hermeneutical methodologies (literary/philosophical criticism, biblical exegesis, art history, etc.) with which to examine the question of interpretation. Methodologies are studied in close conjunction with particular works of art.
Prerequisites: HUMN 2000 or junior/senior standing.
Approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: critical thinking.
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Studies Italian women writers, artists, and film makers of this century. Literary and visual texts are analyzed in dialogue with readings of leading Italian gender theorists. Italian history and culture is reread by following the development of a discourse about women. Taught in English; readings in Italian for Italian majors. Same as ITAL 4730.
Approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: cultural and gender diversity, or literature and the arts.
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Interdisciplinary course emphasizing the influence of art in 20th century Russian literature. Follows the changing cultural landscape from the time when Russia was in the vanguard of modern European literature to the gradual cultural relaxation that culminated in perestroika and glasnost. Same as RUSS 4821.
Approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: literature and the arts.
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Download Course Listing and Descriptions for Fall 2007 (pdf)
**Section 002 is restricted to Humanities majors.
***Honors section, 3.3 cumulative GPA required.
Recitation Schedule
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| 011 |
76930 |
9:00-9:50 AM |
MWF |
KTCH 301 |
F.J. Voss |
| 021 |
76931 |
9:00-9:50 AM |
MWF |
KTCH 303 |
M. Vicks |
| 031 |
76932 |
10:00-10:50 AM |
MWF |
KTCH 301 |
F.J. Voss |
| 041 |
76933 |
10:00-10:50 AM |
MWF |
KTCH 303 |
L. Popovich |
| 051 |
76934 |
11:00-11:50 AM |
MWF |
KTCH 301 |
M. Vicks |
| 061 |
76935 |
11:00-11:50 AM |
MWF |
KTCH 303 |
L. Popovich |
| 071 |
76936 |
1:00-1:50 PM |
MWF |
KTCH 303 |
A. Fobes |
| 081 |
76937 |
2:00-2:50 PM |
MWF |
KTCH 303 |
D. Stockton |
| 091 |
76938 |
3:00-3:50 PM |
MWF |
KTCH 303 |
A. Fobes |
| 101 |
84976 |
1:00-1:50 PM |
MWF |
RAMY N1B31 |
S. Green |
| 733* |
***** |
10:00-10:50 AM |
MWF |
FARR CRAV |
S. Carnahan |
| 743* |
***** |
11:00-11:50 AM |
MWF |
FARR CRAV |
S. Carnahan |
| 747* |
***** |
9:00-9:50 AM |
MWF |
FARR CRAV |
|
| 881* |
76942 |
11:00-12:15 PM |
TR |
KTCH 231 |
P. Gordon |
*For more information on sections 733, 743 and 747 please contact the Farrand Residential Academic Program (303-492-8848)
**Honors section, 3.3 cumulative GPA required. |
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Recitation Syllabi
 Section 011
Section 021
Section 031
Section 041
Section 051
Section 061
Section 071
Section 081
Section 091
Section 101
Section 733
Section 743
Section 881
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Humanities 1010 is a 6 credit hour course that meets six times a week (three literature discussion classes and three lecture-demonstrations in art and music). The course provides an analytical and comparative study of works in literature, music, and visual arts from Antiquity to the 17th century.
Approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: historical context or literature and the arts.
Music: The music lectures will cover the basic elements of musical compositions, providing those without a music background a solid foundation from which to build upon. The class studies the music found in a number of different time periods starting with Antiquity, then moving on to Medieval, followed by Renaissance vocal/instrumental music and dance, as well as the Reformation and Counter-Reformation periods. Readings and listening assignments will be assigned on a regular basis (an audio CD is included in the textbook).
Art: The Art lectures will begin by studying the Sculpture and Architecture of the various Greek time periods, including Classical, Late Classical, and the Hellenistic eras. From that point, the course will examine the various works of art produced during the time of the Roman civilization before moving on to Romanesque and early Gothic architecture. In addition, Renaissance portraits and the technique of perspective will be analyzed during lecture, with an emphasis on the works of Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michelangelo. Students are expected to complete weekly readings from Art Through the Ages and Art History’s History as well as study the works listed on the course website.
Literature: The literature section includes works such as Homer’s Odyssey, Greek tragedy, Plato’s Symposium, Dante’s Inferno, Cervantes Don Quixote, Boccaccio’s Decameron, a Shakespearean tragedy, selections from Montaigne’s Essais. When registering for Humanities 1010, students should sign up for a literature section. These sections meet three times a week, MWF.
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Humanities 2000 will be team-taught by various members of the Comparative Literature and Humanities Department faculty who will each offer a separate "mini-course" on one of the essential issues or methodological concerns which students can expect to encounter in their future coursework for the Humanities major. Although the subject of each mini-course may be expected to vary from year to year, topics proposed by faculty in the past include: word/image studies; rhetoric; translation; the canon; gender studies; cultural studies; literature and the other arts; literary theory; philosophy and literature; etc.
Prerequisite HUMN 1010 or 1020. Restricted to Humanities Majors.
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Introduces interrelationships in the arts of African Americans and the African American contribution into American culture as a whole. Approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: cultural and gender diversity or United States context.
For information on this course, please contact Libby Residential Academic Program (303-735-4211).
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The basic themes of C.G. Jung's archetypal psychology (shadow, anima/animus, character, typology, and individuation) are studied and applied as tools of critical analysis to selected films and literary texts of the modern period. Prerequisite, instuctor consent. Same as FILM 3022.
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In this course we will examine theories of tragedy (Aristotle, Hegel, Nietzsche) and apply those theories, in order to examine their potential efficacy, to various works of art. After a careful examination of Greek tragedy, beginning with Aeschylus and Sophocles and concluding with Euripides’ last play on The Bacchae, the only extant tragedy which deals with Dionysus and the "birth of tragedy," we will examine the survival of tragedy in 19th and 20th century works of art—specifically, the works of the William Butler Yeats, Ibsen (Hedda Gabler), Chekhov (The Cherry Orchard), and Tennessee Williams (A Streetcar Named Desire).
Restricted to Sophs/Jrs/Srs.
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As the scene of sinking, the sea is the mise-en-abîme par excellence of human history. But it is also the stage for a variety of other catastrophic events: mutinies, discoveries, acts of piracy, deadly confrontations with marine creatures, natural and supernatural. This course will consider the conditions under which history stages its own catastrophe against the background of the sea, the most archetypical symbol of human destiny, and then sacralizes the wreckage as relic.
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Focuses on the religious, cultural, philosopical, and literary aspects of ancient Chinese civilization (1500 B.C. - A.D. 200).
Special attention is paid to foundational works that influenced later developments in Chinese culture. All readings are in English. Recommended prerequisite EALC 1011 or CHIN 1051. Same as Chin 3321.
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We will be reading a selection of the surviving works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides (all works written at Athens in the 5th c. BCE) and Seneca (whose 1st c. CE tragedies represent the sole examples of the genre at Rome surviving in non-fragmentary form). There will also be substantial secondary or background reading to guide the development of an understanding of the religious and moral dimensions of tragic drama in context. In this course, the aim will be to develop skills and habits of close observation, analysis and argument, as well as respect for ideas, nuances and differences. As we read, we will attend to the importance of the texts in the literary historical tradition and their role in shaping cultural norms, habits of thought and the imaginative landscape of western civilization. We will also consider what they tell us of what it is to be human in a complex and ever-changing world. There is no formal prerequisite, but experience writing and talking about literature will be helpful.
This course is approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: literature and the arts.
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Surveys the major works, authors and genres of literature from the late Meiji period and 20th century in their historical and cultural contexts. Attention is given to various approaches of literary analysis and interpretation. Taught in English.
Recommended prerequisite JPNS 1051. Same as JPNS 3841. Approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: critical thinking.
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This course places a major emphasis on French, German, and British writers and artists of the 19th century.
Prerequisite HUMN 2000 or Jr/Sr standing. Same as ENGL 4574-002
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"Perhaps the most sublime utterance is that inscribed on the temple of Isis: "I am all that is, that was, and that will ever be; no mortal has lifted my veil." (Kant) In this course we will examine theories of the sublime and apply those same theories to various works of art. Beginning with Longinus, we will then move to the beginning of modern discussions of the sublime in Burke and Kant before proceeding to the "golden age" of sublimity, 18-19th century German and English romanticism. After a study of sublimity in Goethe’s Faust we will then turn our attention to the writings of the English romantic poets (Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge), as well to the early 19th-century novel, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. After an examination of the sublime paintings of Turner (and his predecessors) we will move, in the final section of the course, to an examination of the survival of the sublime in the 20th century paintings and films of Barnett Newman, Georgia O’Keefe, Werner Herzog, and John Carpenter.
This course is approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: critical thinking or ideals and value. Prerequisite HUMN 2000 or Jr/Sr standing. Restricted to Humanities majors.
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We emphasize Goethe's Faust parts I and II, but the course begins with Marlowe's reworking of the original Faust material, includes Byron's Manfred and selections from Dostoevsky and Nietzsche, before concluding with Thomas Mann's novel Doctor Faustus. The Faust theme has intrigued students of literature and thought for many centuries, and it serves as a metaphor for the modern condition. How does one assign a value to the human soul, if Christianity is not accepted as the supreme authority? What happens to notions of the good life in the age of Enlightenment? How are human beings disposed to conceive of their essence "after the death of God?" How does evil manifest itself in the twentieth century? How does the dualism of the here and now versus the here-after influence humanity's habitation of the Earth? Requirements include short papers on the three main readings, midterm, and final or research paper.
Same as COML 5504 and GRMN 4504/5504.
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The 19th century was a turbulent time in Russian society, and nowhere are the heated debates over the future and welfare of the country more acutely revealed than in the literature produced in that period. Such issues as "the women question," the liberation of the serfs, radicalism, and nihilism all find expression through the various writers who dominate the literary scene - Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontov, Turgenev, and Dostoevsky, among others. This course is intended to introduce students to not only the social movements, but the cultural movements as well. Aside from the topics listed above, we will explore the sentimentalism and romanticism that reflected the Western influence on the Russian novel in the first half of the 19th century, and move on to novels of realism exemplified by the literary giants of the second half of the century. Grades for this course will be determined by quizzes, short papers, and a final, as well as participation in class discussions. No prior experience with Russian language or literature is required.
Same as RUSS 4811-001. Approved for the arts and sciences core curriculm: literature and the arts.
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Provides a theoretical understanding of heightened awareness arising from literary and sociological investigations of contemporary sources of social violence (gang culture, racism, domestic violence), combined with the concrete knowledge offered by an internship in a social service agency. Optional internship credit is available. Please contact the Honors Department for more information.
Restricted to Sophs/Jrs/Srs. This course is approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: contemporary societies.
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