Global Arc

We will examine moments of change at different crucial stages in the life cycle (childhood, adolescence, courtship and marriage, work, maturity, and finally death) as they are portrayed in outstanding short stories and one novella. We'll attempt to discover how this change is conveyed convincingly and compellingly, to delineate the nature of the conflict at each stage, and how much of the change comes from without and within, and what the story has to tell us about the essence of each time of life.

Whether we like it or not, the algorithm directs how we perform ourselves in person and online. Students will engage with hybrid media and performance practices through which artists consider the body in public space, onstage, and digitally. The course will explore various sites of cutting-edge art practices from scenes of political theater to experimental staged performances. Texts will include live and recorded performances, as well as historical and theoretical secondary sources. The class will host a guest artist talk series on the ever-shifting cultural climate.

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Our way of speaking is an essential part of our identity. Our particular language variety gives information to the listeners about where we were born, how old we are, our social class and even our race or ethnicity. However, since not all dialects are equally accepted, some speakers might feel judged because of their way of talking. In this seminar, we will analyze the reasons behind the belief that some language varieties are better than the rest, and debunk that myth. We will look at several examples of dialects around the globe and especially here in the US and we will study linguistic situations like multilingualism in our society.

Explores the creative output of one of the most exceptional figures in European history: Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), composer, dramatist, poet, mystic, healer. Hildegard's staggeringly original corpus of works across media was uniquely directed toward the cultivation and care of her fellow creatures. A millennium out, when society's failure to care has proven catastrophic, Hildegard's vision of cosmic connectedness provides a historical counter-case. Class activities move between medieval and modern, historical and hands-on, using workshops in medieval medicinal gardening, baking, and singing as springboards to Hildegard's complex works.

Scholars trying to explain the human past are confronted with some major problems: To what degree can objectivity be achieved in the analysis of history? Is there anything such as 'historical truth'? What 'literary' constraints are imposed upon historiographic writings? Can narration on its own provide a real understanding of the past? Is a 'scientific' history possible? We will study how historians have approached these questions and envisioned the study of history. In addition, we will deal with a highly controversial case study - Nazi Germany- which tests the relevance of historians' debates.

We will explore magic ("fairy") tales from around the world, focusing on traditional narrative patterns and their meanings. Viewing them as stories that reflect significant events of the life cycle, we will treat symbolic journeys (e.g., of initiation), the Other World, and family relationships as well as oral composition, variants, multiforms, storytellers, performance, critical approaches to the study of the genre, and how magic tales inform other types of narrative in literature and film. Our goal is to "read" the "texts" of magic tales and understand how and why they so vividly express the human experience.

War, disease, environmental collapse, and other disasters remain as relevant now as they were for ancient societies. Apocalyptic literature, which claims to reveal knowledge regarding the cosmos and history, has offered powerful accounts of the end of the world in many historical contexts. This course will trace how apocalyptic ideas and idioms forged in the ancient and medieval worlds continue to inform modern speculation about the end times. It will illuminate the flexibility of apocalyptic language, its ability to interpret changing historical situations, and its ongoing power to move people, whether to acceptance or to radical action.

This seminar will explore the challenges and opportunities that today's rapidly evolving media landscape presents to freedom of the press, and to the democracy that the media serve. Discussion will focus on where news comes from and how citizens can best assess the credibility of individual news reports. Students will evaluate how successful traditional mass-media outlets and emerging digital media have been at accomplishing the lofty goals embodied in the First Amendment. They will craft strategies for determining their own personal media diet and work to develop new models for serious, sustainable news ventures.

This seminar will study the history and nature of fairy tales, legends, classical myths, and urban myths, particularly in regard to the way that they reflect the concerns and fears of society. We will examine the ways in which myths differ from folk tales, fairy tales and superstition, and the means by which entire communities, seized with conviction often for generations, disseminate and fortify them. The collective unconscious is often manifested in metaphor, particularly in literature and film, and the legitimate anxieties, fears (and guilt) that it reflects will be the subject of our study.