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Humanities
First-year Common Core courses seek to engage students in the challenges
and pleasures of humanistic works through close reading of a broad range
of texts--literary, historical, and philosophical. They are not survey courses;
they try, rather, to focus on the methods and habits of analyzing and experiencing
exemplary texts. Improvement in students' skills in writing, frequently
through special tutorial sessions, constitutes an essential goal of these
courses.
The 200-level Collegiate courses in humanities seek to extend humanistic
inquiry beyond the scope of the Common Core. A few of them also serve as
parts of special degree programs. All of these courses are open as electives
to students from any Collegiate Division.
Courses
Common Core Sequences
101 Drama: Embodiment and Transformation. Staff. Winter and Spring.
110-111-112. Readings in World Literature. This course examines
the relationship of the individual and society in literary texts from across
the globe. Writers studied range from Austen to Toni Morrison, from Voltaire
to the Egyptian Nawal El Sadaawi, from Gogol to the Brazilian Clarice Lispector,
from Flaubert to Salman Rushdie. In the autumn, the class surveys prose
works from the Renaissance to the 1980s, in which individuals learn--or
struggle--to situate themselves in a society that is often unaccepting of
individuality. In the winter, students consider the problem of evil through
an analysis of authors as diverse as Dostoevksy, Hardy, Lispector, Cela,
Weiss, and Arendt. In the spring, the class explores the issue of alienation,
using Kafka as a point of departure, and eventually moving on to the autobiography
of Maya Angelou. Students in this course work closely with a writing tutor
and participate in weekly writing workshops. Staff. Autumn, Winter, Spring.
115-116-117. Philosophical Perspectives on the Humanities. This sequence
studies philosophy both as an ongoing series of arguments, mainly but not
exclusively concerning ethics and knowledge, and as a discipline interacting
with and responding to developments in the natural sciences, history, and
literature. Papers are assigned throughout the course to help students develop
their writing and reasoning skills. Readings may vary from section to section,
although the year is organized around several common themes. The autumn
quarter focuses on Greek conceptions of ethics and epistemology, primarily
through analysis of Platonic dialogues, but readings may also come from
Aristotle and the Greek dramatists. The winter quarter focuses on questions
and challenges raised by the intellectual revolution of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, with readings from Montaigne, Bacon, Descartes, Pascal,
Galileo, and Shakespeare. The spring quarter focuses on modern moral philosophy,
and on the relation of philosophy to literature, with readings from Hume,
Kant, Diderot, Melville, Conrad, and Nietzsche. Staff. Autumn, Winter,
Spring.
120-121-122. Greek Thought and Literature. This sequence approaches
its subject matter in two ways: generically and historically. First, it
offers an introduction to the methods of humanistic inquiry in three broadly
defined areas: history, philosophy, and imaginative literature. The works
of Herodotus and Thucydides are studied as examples of historiography; the
dialogues of Plato exemplify philosophy; imaginative literature is exemplified
by Homer's epic poetry, the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides,
and the comedies of Aristophanes. Second, the sequence is concerned with
ancient Greek culture as a system of related activities and
attitudes. By following the creative phases of Greek culture in roughly
chronological order, beginning with Homer and ending with Plato, we aim
at understanding what ancient works meant to their original authors and
audiences and how each work reflects the specific conditions of its composition.
We study exemplary texts and cultural development in ancient Greece because
of the Greeks' unique influence upon the history of civilization in the
western hemisphere. Importantly, this is also a class in how to write an
effective essay. We place considerable stress on how to construct an argument,
how to reason cogently with a philosophical or literary text. Because the
course is cross-disciplinary, we consider how to ask literary questions
of a historical text, philosophical questions of a literary text, and the
like. The course is not conceived of at all as a prerequisite for a prospective
classics major, though it does introduce students to great classical texts;
it is meant to be a course in humanities, sharing with other courses in
the core sequence an interest in exploring the spirit of human greatness.
Staff. Autumn, Winter, Spring.
123-124-125. Human Being and Citizen. "Who is a knower of such
excellence, of a human being and of a citizen?" As both human beings
and citizens, we are concerned to discover what it means to be an excellent
human being and an excellent citizen, and to learn what a just community
is. This course seeks to explore these questions and related matters, and
to examine critically our opinions about them. To this end, we read closely
and discuss critically seminal works of the Western tradition, selected
partly because they richly reveal the central questions and partly because,
read together, they force us to consider different and competing ways of
asking and answering questions about human and civic excellence. The diverse
and even competing excellences of which we are capable, to which we are
drawn, and among which we may have to choose make it impossible for us to
approach these great writings as detached or indifferent spectators, especially
as these books are both the originators and the most exacting critics of
our common opinions--opinions by which we explicitly or implicitly guide
our lives. Thus we seek not only an understanding of certain enduring questions,
but also a deeper appreciation of who we are, here and now, all in the service
of a more thoughtful consideration of our lives as human beings and citizens.
This course also aims to cultivate the liberating skills of careful reading,
writing, speaking, and listening. Reading list (1996-97): Plato, Apology
of Socrates; Homer, Iliad; Genesis; Sophocles, Philoctetes;
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics; the Gospel according to St. Matthew;
Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part One and Part Two; selected American
documents; Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals; and Dostoevsky,
The Brothers Karamazov. A. Kass, Staff. Autumn, Winter, Spring.
130-131-132. Strategies of Interpretation: Form, Problem, and Event.
"There are no magics or elves or timely godmothers to guide us"
(Gwendolyn Brooks). We must create our own paths through the world. Interpretation
is not a passive, safe, or merely academic activity; it is our power to
create new paths or reshape old paths through the world. Interpretation
involves intellectual risk, as well as well-honed persuasive skills. The
interpretations of others always challenge our own, so we must gain experience
in different methods or strategies of interpretation in order to complicate
and clarify our own positions while recognizing the merits and faults of
others. We encourage vigorous debate and disagreement in the different sections
of this course. By focusing on literary, philosophical, and historical analyses
as strategies of interpretation, we come to a better understanding of forms,
problems, and events. The complex structures of literary texts, the difficult
questions posed by philosophical inquiries, and the intricate patterns of
historical accounts all make demands on the ways we see ourselves and the
world around us. Our aim in the course is to culminate in an appreciation
of how these different strategies of interpretation interact with one another
and contribute together to a critical understanding of human experience.
Thus in each quarter we read literary, philosophical, and historical texts,
showing how each kind of writing may be submitted to each style of interpretation.
At the same time, the course's emphasis on students' critical writing is
designed to sharpen their skills in thinking and expression. Staff. Autumn,
Winter, Spring.
130. Strategies of Interpretation: Form. How is a human life shaped
in writing? In what ways does the literary form of autobiography limit or
expand the possibilities of selfhood? During this quarter we address not
only the formal or structural features that autobiographical works have
in common but also how those works' formal differences embody changing conceptions
of the self. Readings include Augustine's Confessions, Descartes's
Discourse on Method, Kingston's Woman Warrior, and Mishima's
Sun and Steel.
** CANCELLED ** 131. Strategies of Interpretation: Problem. PQ: Hum
130. How is gender important for philosophical understanding? Are the
masculine and the feminine eternal categories of being or cultural conventions?
This quarter we examine gender as a philosophical question, as well as the
relevance of gender to traditional philosophical problems. Readings include
Plato's Symposium, Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well,
Freud's Schreber case, Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights
of Woman, and Woolf's A Room of One's Own. ** CANCELLED
**
** CANCELLED **132. Strategies of Interpretation: Event. PQ: Hum
131. How do we understand emancipation historically? In what ways was
the end of slavery a defining moment for the United States? This quarter
investigates texts centered on a discrete historical event--the proclamation
of emancipation in 1863--but asks also whether emancipation ought to be
understood differently, as a process perhaps not yet completed. Readings
include Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk, Stowe's Uncle Tom's
Cabin, Douglass's Narrative of the Life of an American Slave, and
the Lincoln-Douglas debates. ** CANCELLED **
140-141-142. Reading Cultures: Collecting, Traveling, and Capitalist Cultures.
Introducing students to methods of literary, visual, and social analysis,
this course addresses the formation and transformation of cultures across
a broad chronological and geographic field. Our objects of study range from
the Renaissance epic to contemporary film, the fairy tale to the museum.
Hardly presuming that we know definitively what "culture" means,
we examine paradigms of reading within which the very idea of culture emerged
and changed. Staff. Autumn, Winter, Spring.
140. Reading Cultures: Collecting. This quarter focuses on the way both
objects and stories are selected and rearranged to produce cultural identities.
We examine exhibition practices of the past and present, including the 1893
World's Columbian Exposition and the University's own Oriental Institute.
We read Ovid's Metamorphoses, The Arabian Nights, and collections
of African-American folk tales. We conclude by considering modernist modes
of fragmentation and reconstellation in Cubism, T. S. Eliot's The Waste
Land, and Orson Welles's Citizen Kane.
141. Reading Cultures: Traveling. Focusing on the literary conventions
of cross-cultural encounter, this quarter concentrates on how individual
subjects are formed and transformed through narrative. We investigate both
the longing to travel and the trails of displacement. We read several forms
of travel literature, from the Renaissance to the present, including Columbus's
Diario, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or
Gustavus Vassa the African, Conrad's Nostromo, and contemporary
tourist literature.
142. Reading Cultures: Capitalist Cultures. This quarter works toward
understanding the relation--in the modern and post-modern periods--between
economic development and processes of cultural transformation. We examine
literary and visual texts that both celebrate and criticize modernization
and urbanization. Beginning with Baudelaire's response to Paris in his prose
poems, we then concentrate on three novels that address economic, social,
and cultural change in the 1930s: Modikwe Dikobe's Marabi Dance, Abdelrahman
Munif's Cities of Salt, and Richard Wright's Native Son. As
the quarter concludes, students develop projects that investigate the urban
fabric of Chicago itself.
150-151-152. Perspectives on Language in the Humanities. This course
considers fundamentals of language and its relation to other aspects of
humanistic studies, including philosophy, history, and social structure.
The first quarter is devoted to a careful reading of foundational texts
in linguistics, including excerpts from Aristotle; Plato, The Cratylus;
Hobbes, Leviathan; Saussure, General Course in Linguistics;
and Sapir, Language. The second quarter examines language and history:
studies of the history and prehistory of languages, how the history and
culture of a speech community can be revealed through linguistic reconstruction,
and the role of texts in historical studies. In the third quarter we consider
language in relation to its speakers as members of society--considering
problems of language and gender, language and ethnicity, and language and
race. Staff. Autumn, Winter, Spring.
151. Language and History: Text and Context. PQ: Hum 150. A.
Buccini and A. Dahlstrom. Winter.
152. Language and the Construction of Identity. PQ: Hum 151. G.
Gragg, K. Kazazis. Spring.
200. Judaic Civilization I: Biblical Literature and Religion (=JewStd 200).
This course provides an overall introduction to the Hebrew Bible (Old
Testament), with specific attention to its literary, religious, and ideological
contents. The diversity of thought and theology in ancient Israel is explored,
along with its notions of text, teaching, and tradition. Revision and reinterpretation
is found within the Bible itself. Portions of the earliest postbiblical
interpretation (in Philo, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and selected Pseudepigrapha)
are also considered. J. Collins. Autumn.
201. Judaic Civilization II: Rabbinic Judaism from the Mishneh to Maimonides
(=JewStd 201). Study of the primary texts in the development of classical
and medieval rabbinic Judaism from roughly 70 C.E. to the twelfth century.
The course centers around selections (in translation) from the Mishneh and
tannaitic midrash, the Babylonian Talmud, Geonic and Karaite writing, the
Judaeo-Arabic and Hebrew literature of Andalusia, and Maimonides' legal
and philosophical compositions. Topics include different conceptions of
the Hebrew Bible and its interpretation; the origins and development of
the Oral Law; relations between Judaism and both Christianity and Islam;
sectarianism; rationalist and antirationalist trends in rabbinic thought;
and the emergence of secular pursuits in the rabbinic tradition. J. Stern.
Winter.
202. Judaic Civilization III: The German-Jewish Experience (=German 243,
JewStd 202). PQ: Reading knowledge of German helpful but not required.
This quarter course, last in a sequence that fulfills the Common Core
requirement in civilizational studies, is designed as an exploration of
interaction between Jews and Christians within sixteenth through twentieth
century Germany. Such interactions helped define the German-Jewish experience:
its modes of thought, action, and cultural creativity; and its assimilation
to, and difference from, a sometimes friendly, sometimes hostile, ever ambivalent
societal environment. Readings include selections from authors, non-Jewish
as well as Jewish, such as Reuchlin, Mendelssohn, Kant, Lessing, Herder,
Goethe, Borne, Heine, Hermann Cohen, Marx, Freud, Mann, Arendt, Buber, and
Scholem. S. Jaffe. Spring.
212. Myths and Symbols of Evil (=Fndmtl 223, RelHum 223). This course
examines in depth Martin Buber's Good and Evil and Paul Ricoeur's
Symbolism of Evil. There are a few brief lectures, but emphasis is
on seminar discussion and student participation. A. Carr. Winter.
213. The Detective and the Judge: Crime Fiction in English and Chinese (=ComLit
321, EALC 225, Eng 222). The aim of this course is to juxtapose two
genes from different traditions (Western detective fiction and Chinese court
case fiction) and explore the issues that arise from reading them together.
The point is not to try to conflate the two or subsume them in one, larger
or universal genre but to help students come to a better understanding of
each through attention to the questions raised between them. Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle and his contemporaries, writing between 1890 and 1914, furnish
most of our readings in English. One anonymous collection, the Bao Longtu
Pan Baijia Gongan (Bao Longtu Adjudicates 100 Court Cases) and a few
other collections from the late Ming (ca. 1590-1640 C.E.) furnish most of
the Chinese stories. J. St. André. Winter.
214. Rhetorical Theories of Legal and Political Reasoning (=Id/Met 324,
LL/Soc 224). This course uses Plato's Gorgias to raise the question
of whether practical thinking is possible and considers responses to this
question by such writers as Aristotle, Cicero, and Machiavelli. We study
the methods and concepts that each writer uses to defend the cogency of
legal, deliberative, or more generally political prudence against explicit
or implicit charges that practical thinking is merely a knack or form of
cleverness. W. Olmsted. Autumn.
216. Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Emma (=Fndmtl 255,
Id/Met 355). This course consists of a close reading of two novels,
Pride and Prejudice and Emma, with attention to how they represent
the relations between individual autonomy, the roles of men and women within
the family, the town, and the larger world, and the work of imagination
in fashioning identity. We examine how the novels treat the phenomenon of
development in characters as it is fostered or hindered by travel, by change
in socioeconomic circumstances, and by love and friendship. W. Olmsted.
Winter.
219. Melville: Moby-Dick or, The White Whale (=Fndmtl 216, SocSci
203). PQ: Common Core humanities and social sciences. Class
limited to twenty students. We do a close reading of Melville's work.
In addition to discussing the text as it unfolds, special attention is given
to the questions of whether and how this American epic is especially American.
R. Lerner, A. Kass. Winter.
222. Constitution of Community (=Fndmtl 237, Id/Met 311, LL/Soc 217).
Attention is once again being directed to how a "we," a community,
establishes itself. This interest often assumes that discussion will play
a major, if not the major, role and often coincides with the notion
that the organization of the community should be through government by discussion.
This course is concerned with one major example of the constitution of a
community, the United States. Texts of the Articles of Confederation, the
"debates" in Philadelphia in 1787 (especially Madison's Notes),
the ratification conventions (especially the Federalist), and
the actions in the newly formed Congress, especially the House, are discussed
with special consideration to how what these people do enables fruitful
conversation and thus is itself an example of community. D. Smigelskis.
Autumn.
227. Women's Cinema in Germany: Feminism and Female Spectatorship (=CMS
227, GS Hum 209, German 219). This course is designed to offer students
an introduction to both feminist film theory and feminist filmmaking in
Germany. By bringing together questions of gender and representation with
questions of spectatorship and the cinema (as an institution), the syllabus
aims to challenge how we think about concepts such as women's cinema and
feminism in general and more specifically in the Federal Republic. We consider
a range of issues in postwar German history as well as various formal experiments
with genre (e.g., documentary, melodrama, the essay film, and comedy) and
consider the "feminism" of certain filmic approaches to topics
such as World War II, the consumer culture of the fifties, the student movement,
the women's movement, terrorism, and the situation of "foreigners."
Films in German with English subtitles. T. Caprio. Autumn.
228-229. Problems in Gender Studies (=Eng 102-103, GS Hum 205-206, Hist
180-181, SocSci 282-283; Eng 103=ArtH 171). PQ: Second- or third-year
standing and completion of a Common Core social science or humanities course
or the equivalent. This two-quarter interdisciplinary sequence is designed
as an introduction to theories and critical practices in the study of feminism,
gender, and sexuality. Both classic texts and recent reconceptualizations
of these contested fields are examined. Problems and cases from a variety
of cultures and historical periods are considered, and the course pursues
their differing implications for local, national, and global politics. Topics
might include the politics of reproduction; gender and post colonialism;
women, sexual scandal, and the law; race and sexual paranoia; and sexual
subcultures. E. Alexander, L. Berlant, Staff, Autumn; P. Rogers, C. Vogler,
Staff, Winter.
230-231-232. Medieval Jewish History I, II, III (=NELC 380-381-382). A
three-quarter sequence dealing with the history of Jews over a wide geographical
and historical range. First-quarter work is concerned with the rise of early
rabbinical Judaism and development of the Jewish community in Palestine
and the eastern and western Diaspora during the first several centuries
A.D. Topics include the legal status of the Jews in the Roman world; the
rise of rabbinical Judaism; the rabbinical literature of Palestine in that
context; the spread of rabbinical Judaism; the rise and decline of competing
centers of Jewish hegemony; the introduction of Hebrew language and culture
beyond the confines of their original home; and the impact of the birth
of Islam on the political and cultural status of the Jews. An attempt is
made to evaluate the main characteristics of Jewish belief and social concepts
in the formative periods of Judaism as it developed beyond its original
geographical boundaries. Second-quarter work is concerned with the Jews
under Islam, both in Eastern and Western Caliphates. Third-quarter work
is concerned with the Jews of Western Europe into the time of the first
crusade. N. Golb. Autumn, Winter, Spring.
234. The World of the Biblical Prophets (=JewStd 234, NCD 280). This
course offers an in-depth analysis of the biblical prophets. Each prophet
is set in historical time and within a particular societal context, and
against this background a profile of the man is drawn. What was he like
as a social reformer and religious thinker? What did he say no to in society
and no to in organized worship? And to what did he say yes? How was his
message received, and what influence did it have in its day? Finally, are
the prophets merely historical figures, curiosities of antiquity, or do
they speak to us in our age? H. Moltz. Autumn.
235. The Radicalism of Job and Ecclesiastes (=Fndmtl 246, JewStd 235, NCD
277). Both Job and Ecclesiastes dispute a central doctrine of the Hebrew
Bible, namely, the doctrine of retributive justice. Each book argues that
a person's fate is not a consequence of his or her religio-moral acts and
thus the piety, whatever else it is, must be disinterested. In brief, the
authors of Job and Ecclesiates, each in his own way, not only "de-mythologizes,"
but "de-moralizes" the world. The students read the books in translation
and discuss their theological and philosophical implications. H. Moltz.
Spring.
236. Images of Women and Chinese Modernity (=CMS 245, EALC 236). This
course focuses on the production of images of women in twentieth-century
Chinese literature and cinema, and its impuedness in the question of modernity.
Examining a wide range of texts, including poetry, fiction, autobiography,
and silent and sound films), students confront issues such as "the
woman question" and the modern vernacular imagination; the imagery
of the "New Woman" and the city; and gender performance under
socialism and/or market economy. We also explore how different media, genre,
space, and gender affect rhetorical and formal strategies and how they help
shape or refigure visions of modernity. Z. Zhang. Spring.
237. Fantastic Voyages in the Ancient World (=ClCiv 237, Geog 237). This
course surveys ancient Greek and Roman geographical literature that describes
actual and imaginary lands and journeys. Readings (in translation) are drawn
from the mythological and fictional travel narratives of Homer, Pindar,
Appolodorus, and Lucian; philosophic utopias and cosmogonies of the pre-Socratics,
Plato, and Plutarch; and the ethnography of Herodotus, Hanno, Tacitus, Pliny,
and Strabo. Discussion emphasizes the psychic as well as physical dislocation
of fictional travelers, the methodological considerations of abstract speculation
versus regional exploration, changes in schematic representations of the
world, and questions of bias, ethnocentrism, and geographical determinism.
A. Mori. Autumn.
240. Introduction to Russian Literature II: 1850-1900 (=Russ 256/356). This
is a survey covering the second half of the nineteenth century. Major figures
studied are Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Leskov, Saltykov-Shchedrin, and Chekhov.
Representative works are read for their literary value and against their
historical, cultural, and intellectual background. Class discussion is encouraged.
All readings in English. M. Ehre. Winter.
241. Dostoevsky (=Russ 275/375). A close reading of Dostoevsky's principal
works. Each work is treated as an aesthetic whole and seen in the development
of Dostoevsky's ideological, moral, and aesthetic views. All readings in
English. A. L. Crone. Winter.
242. Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary (=Fndmtl 228). This
course consists of a close reading and discussion of two magnificent novels
about extraordinary women. Both break the bonds of convention, love passionately,
and die tragically. The novels are a reflection of the status of women in
the nineteenth century, as well as a timeless comment on love, marriage,
and society. Madame Bovary is one of the jewels of French literature,
and Anna Karenina is a pinnacle of Tolstoy's literary art. E.
Wasiolek. Autumn.
245. Kant: Ethics, Politics, History, and Religion (=Fndmtl 272, Id/Met
370). Kant's writings on the practical are often called formalist and
deontic. This reading is usually based solely on the Grundlegung
(the English title of which is normally either Fundamental Principles
or Groundwork), an early "critical" work written for a
very specific purpose. The assumption in this course is that Kant is much
more interesting than this reading indicates and than attention to the Grundlegung
alone allows. Some of the course readings consequently are his Metaphysics
of Morals, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, and various
essays on "history." These in combination provide subtle and consciously
interrelated reflections on the problems of practice. D. Smigelskis.
Spring.
247. Hegel's Philosophy of Right (=Fndmtl 230, Id/Met 369). The
course first focuses on "translating"--becoming more familiar
with--what is to many the peculiar language of Hegel, a language which has
set and still sets the most important boundaries and questions for many
thinkers, not merely about politics but also about economics, sociology,
and jurisprudence. More importantly, a concern with particular arguments
and the general strategies of his argument understood broadly is also stressed
and pushed as far as time and student interest permit. In particular, once
some comfort with the language is attained, a somewhat critical stance is
adopted, if for no other reason than to guard against the possible bewitchment
by what will probably be for many a somewhat new language of thought. D.
Smigelskis. Autumn.
254. Poetry of the Jews, Germans, and Other "Others" (=GS Hum
279/379, German 275/375, JewStd 275). PQ: Reading knowledge of German
helpful but not required. The course consists of a series of close readings
in several subgenres of verse, mostly from the modern period. Its aim is
to explore how problematic identities such as those of Germans, of Jews,
and of other "Others" creatively reinvent and reinscribe themselves
within that most personal and intimate of canonical genres, lyric poetry.
Poets read include Heine, Lazarus, Bialik, Lasker-Schüler, Celan, Reznikoff,
Shapiro, McElroy, Amichai, Pagis, and Percy. Suggestions for poems are welcome.
Texts in English and the original. S. Jaffe. Winter.
262. Aristotle's Poetics (=Fndmtl 290, Id/Met 352). Courses about
art are usually concerned with aesthetic and critical questions and rarely
pause to consider questions about how to make works of art. Aristotle's
Poetics would seem to be, in large part at least, about the latter
with the primary focus being certain types of stories. The relation between
aesthetic/critical and poetic strategies is discussed. In addition, the
text we have is filled with ambiguities. Rather than being a liability,
these ambiguities are an occasion to explore various possibilities of what
a poetic enterprise might involve. Furthermore, various types of stories
either mentioned by Aristotle or which are seeming counterexamples to what
he says are also part of the course readings and class discussion. D.
Smigelskis. Spring.
263. Native American Literature (=Eng 261). This course is a broad introduction
to literature by and about native Americans. Readings cluster around three
historical/cultural moments: eastern Indian removal, the closing of the
western frontier, and the contemporary native America literary renaissance.
Readings include novels from the Last of the Mohicans to Ceremony,
autobiographies by William Apess, Black Hawk, and others, and ethnographic
texts such as Black Elk Speaks. These readings are occasionally supplemented
by film screenings. The focus of the course is on the ways in which a native
American tradition of writing in English can be constructed as both separate
from and engaged with the "main currents" of American literature
and mass culture. P. Gilmore. Spring.
274. Language, Power, and Identity in Southeastern Europe: A Linguistic
View of the Balkan Crisis (=Anthro 274, GnSlav 230, LngLin 230). Language
is a key issue in the articulation of ethnicity and the struggle for power
in Southeastern Europe. This course familiarizes students with the linguistic
histories and structure that have served as bases for the formation of modern
Balkan ethnic identities and that are being manipulated to shape current
and future events. The course is informed by the instructor's twenty years
of
linguistic fieldwork in the Balkans, as well as his experience as an adviser
for the United Nations Protection forces in the former Yugoslavia. V.
Friedman. Autumn.
299. Reading Course. PQ: Consent of instructor and senior adviser.
Students are required to submit the College Reading and Research Course
Form. Staff. Autumn, Winter, Spring. Go
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