Global Arc

What does it mean to have a crisis? How do we overcome one? This course explores the idea of crisis as a defining feature of Italian culture and history from Dante to the present, spanning the individual, political, and society. Through the examination of the most relevant intellectual, historic, and artistic movements, we study how crises have lead both to some of Italy's most spectacular achievements, and to the rise and fall of Fascism. This will allow us to reflect on today's personal and global crises, such as the atrocities of war and climate change.

Beginning as early as Don Quixote, experiments with translation have long accompanied Hispanic literary innovation and, often, political subversion. In this course, we will consider Latin American and Latinx texts from across much of 20th and 21st centuries that engage translation as trope, form, or material rearrangements (including translation narratives, fake translations, mistranslations, transcreations, conceptual experiments) and those that rewrite established texts from the margins. We will read these materials alongside translation theory and criticism to tease out the aesthetics and politics of translation in each undertaking.

This courses provides an overview of classic theories of state building, resistance, and political violence, as well as contemporary challenges to these theories and how they apply to Latin America. Drawing on a range of methodological traditions and examples from around the region, and a few from elsewhere, this course offers a look at the complex relationship between political authority and violence. The class examines this relationship at different scales, from the state to the street gang and everything in between.

How are social rights won in Latin America? After decades of increasing income inequalities, Latin America experienced an impressive and unexpected expansion in social policy. The arrival to government of Left parties across the continent in the early 21st century raised hopes of progress toward universalism in social policy. Yet, persistent inequities across sectors of the population undermined progress toward a universalist welfare regime. This course offers an overview of the general trends, achievements, and shortcomings of these developments, as well as the social forces and historical circumstances that determined these changes.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, Ethiopia underwent rapid processes of expansion and modernization in the highlands of Northeast Africa, and at the same time became a beacon of hope for global Black movements, perhaps made most visible through Rastafarian culture and beliefs. This course introduces students to the history of the modern Ethiopian state and its role shaping moments and movements in global history. It highlights the way African histories are essential to, but often ignored (or erased) in the telling of modern world history. Students will engage with primary and secondary historical texts, literature, and film.

This course studies contemporary representations of Black Europeans in film, music, and popular culture in dialogue with critical works about diaspora, citizenship, and transnational blackness. We will read critical works by scholars who focus on Black Europe including,Tiffany Florvil (Germany), Grada Kilomba (Portugal), SA Smythe (Italy) among others as we explore different ways in which Black European artists engage with questions of national and transnational belonging. Students will write, conduct research, and engage in hands-on creative film and media projects as they think critically along with the various cultural and critical texts.

Designed for students with advanced training in modern Chinese, this course will further develop their language comprehension, communication skills, and cultural understanding. Students will improve their spoken Chinese in various situations, from informal conversations to professional presentations suitable for business and academic settings. Students will also develop their ability to speak and write Chinese using more engaging, complex, and occasion-appropriate language. Course topics will focus on contemporary Chinese society, including cultural identities, pop culture, the economy, environmentalism, law, and social discourse.

When the name of Miguel de Cervantes is mentioned, readers tend to think of the character Don Quijote -most often his idealism or madness. But far beyond that, the radically new work that is Don Quijote - along with several of Cervantes - other creations -offer unorthodox and challenging perspectives on race, ethnicity, gender, class, and human nature. His theater, his highly experimental Exemplary Stories, and the Persiles all offer Mediterranean dramas of exiles, slaves, captives, renegades and male and female protagonists in the confrontation of identity and the hegemonic categories of the Spanish empire.

How have French writers, thinkers, and activists addressed the growing environmental crisis in recent decades? In what ways does their work converge? We look here at how fiction and thought-often inspired by the work of activists-have confronted this challenge. Themes include climate change; agribusiness and factory farming; development and (de)growth; nuclear risk; environmental justice and health; species extinction; the attention economy; and ecofeminist and decolonial thought. Novels, essays, and BDs paired with landmark works by thinkers such as Gorz, Guattari, Serres, Latour, Descola, Zask, Morizot, Pelluchon, and Ferdinand.

This course will explore the intellectual history of race, gender, and sexuality in Latin America. We will first analyze the representation of these intersections in reggaetón and Latin trap. Students will then examine the impact of conquest, colonization, and slavery in the rise of racial categories and heteronormative gender norms in the history of Latin America. Furthermore, we will focus on multiple case studies, such as the legacies of the Haitian Revolution, the history of racial genocide in Puerto Rico, the Hollywood representation of Latin America, and colorist beauty standards in Brazil and Mexico.