Global Arc

Well before other medieval societies (both Christian and Muslim), Byzantium was flourishing in the 4th century. Greek-speaking (though bilingual with Latin until the 6th century), this self-proclaimed, New Rome, faced unprecedented challenges. It grew into an immense empire, an empire, paradoxically, whose cultural influence spread over the centuries in inverse proportion to its political strength. Topics we will consider include: definitions of empire, definitions of Byzantium over its 1,100-year evolution, issues of ethnicity and race and the inextricable relationship of historiography and fiction.

The First Amendment protection of free expression was only extended to motion pictures in 1952, yet from the beginning of its history film was caught up in the paradox of free speech and civil rights. We will examine the paradoxical effects of local, state, market and self-censorship on filmmaking and cinematic innovation. We will search for the aesthetic criteria that can separate propaganda film from genuine art through close reading of some of the most scandalous films of cinema history.

This course focuses on Thomas Mann's great novels, The Magic Mountain and Doctor Faustus, and the world that produced them--both Mann's own turbulent times and the tradition he inherited. We will explore Mann's artistic sources (Goethe, Dante, Dürer, Beethoven) and theoretical influences (Nietzsche, Adorno, Lukács). Themes include time and narrative; Mann as a queer author; medicine; music; and Mann's languages. Self-exiled from Germany, Mann spent part of World War II in Princeton. We will learn about his stay here and consider his reflections on war, culture, and psychology, with implications not just for his own times, but also for ours.

In this seminar we will read major works by the three philosophers whose formulations of thinking and experience continue to provide the basis for modern critical and theoretical thought. We will elucidate these works both individually and in their historical and conceptual relationship to each other considering their extension to the major disciplines whose bases they transformed (epistemology, aesthetic theory, moral philosophy, political and economic theory, and historiography, among others) and the basis of their own conception in specific discursive and, thus, literary forms.

This course explores the history of gender and sexuality in Africa. By reading an eclectic range of historical sources (including films, novels, and anthropological works) alongside recent secondary literature, students will explore several important questions. How have African cultures, religions, experiences of colonialism, political formations, medicines, and youth, shaped, and been shaped by, understandings of gender and sexuality? What link is there between contemporary LGBTQ activism and African history? Why do debates about Africa often center on issues of gender and sexuality? Is "queer" a meaningful method for African studies?

What is "passing" and why is it such a persistent obsession of great literature and film? Why does the act of changing one's identity fascinate, excite, and repel us? At once a universal phenomenon and the most intensely personal of experiences, passing is a site where history, culture, law and society collide with individual identity and desire. This course examines narratives from the African-American, Jewish-American, and LGBTQ contexts in order to explore the idea of passing through the lenses of race, ethnicity, and gender. We will consider both the promise and the limits of comparison in working in and between these multiple frames.

The age-old relationship between literature and war is fundamentally a problem of ethics. This course is centrally concerned with ethics and aesthetics: the ethics of war, the aesthetics of war literature and film, and the ethics of making art about war. It explores the triangulation of warfare, literature, and ethics in the 20th-21st centuries, approaching this relationship through multiple thematic frames and genres (poetry, fiction, film, photography, and critical essays), with texts drawn from a diverse array of world cultures. Topics include total war, memory and trauma, translation, partition, war and comics, and virtual warfare.

What does it mean to say (or think) "I"? What accounts for the unified character of our experience? What disruptions and gaps in experience can be made perceptible through philosophical scrutiny and daring literary experimentation? This interdisciplinary course for undergraduates as well as graduate students explores central problems of point of view and consciousness by focusing on first-person representation. Pairing lyric poetry and first-person prose fiction with key readings in the history of the philosophy of mind, we will follow the intersecting paths of inquiry developed by both disciplines.

Theory and philosophy of formal educational practice with specific attention to ethical questions and political implications. How have ideals and practices of education changed over time, especially with the unprecedented emergence of common or universal public education in the last two centuries? How is learning braided with power and desire; with nations and subjectivities; with class, race and gender; with colonial structures; with the reproduction of norms, and challenges to them? This course is not a survey of all educational philosophies, but a selection of critical writings that we will study intensively in the classroom.

This seminar will investigate how literary authors use language both to create a sense of "the real" and to question what "the real" may be. Looking closely at forms of description and narration including verbal tense, figural patterns (such as repetition, simile and metonymy), vocabulary, voice, irony, and grammatical construction and syntax, we will study some of extraordinarily complex ways fictions generically termed "realist" bring about an "effect" or apprehension of the real we could not otherwise perceive, including its relation to temporality, causality, historicity and historical reflection in general.