Global Arc

This course tells the epic story of the people, ideas, and institutions that made the first Chinese empires, ca. third century BCE to the first century BCE. The course looks at the rise and fall of the Qin empire as well as the way Qin institutions and ideas reverberated through the succeeding Han dynasty--and beyond. Course will cover most recent archeological materials and excavated texts (in translation), including ongoing excavations of the terracotta warriors, funerary art, excavated legal codes, legal cases, religious and philosophical texts, and much more. Finally, we ask: did the Qin empire ever end?

In telling histories of East Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, various groups of nomadic people often loomed large in the background and served as the foil to the travail of their sedentary neighbors. In this course we put the nomadic peoples of Inner Asia front and center, and ask how the nomadic way of life and mode of state building served as agents of change in pre-modern Eurasia.

The Caribbean is an archipelago made up of islands that both link and separate the Americas - islands that have weathered various waves of colonization, migration, and revolution. How do narratives of the Caribbean represent the collision of political forces and natural environments? Looking to the many abyssal histories of the Caribbean, we will explore questions of indigeneity, colonial contact, iterations of enslavement, and the plantation matrix in literary texts. How do island-writers evoke gender and a poetics of relation that exceeds tourist desire and forceful extraction?

The Modern movement in English fiction, from Conrad and Joyce to the present. Two lectures, one preceptorial.

Think Space asks whether our tendency to think space via language, narrative, desire, subjectivity, and the condition of "being in time" is useful or exhaustive. This class is an experiment in what it means to "be" in space, inhabit a place.

The Bible will be read closely in its own right and as an enduring resource for literature and commentary. The course will cover its forms and genres, including historical narrative, uncanny tales, prophecy, lyric, lament, commandment, sacred biography, and apocalypse; its pageant of weird and extraordinary characters; and its brooding intertextuality. Students will become familiar with a wide variety of biblical interpretations, from the Rabbis to Augustine, Kafka and Kierkegaard. Cinematic commentary will be included--Bible films, from the campy to the sublime. Two lectures, one preceptorial.

Each term course will be offered in special topics of English and American literature. One three-hour seminar.

Each term course will be offered in special topics of English and American literature. One three-hour seminar.

A focused view of a problem or issue in poetry, changing from year to year. Recent topics have emphasized problems of poetic language, metrics, poetry and social life, poetic influence and canonization, and the relations between poetry and other art forms. One three-hour seminar.

Is comedy necessary? What calls for comedy? Why does comedy often deal with topics that we think are no laughing matters? When does comedy become obsolete, and how do new comedic voices and figures emerge? We will look at comedies from various historical periods (ancient to contemporary), cultural traditions, and artforms (drama, fiction, film, stand-up). We will study their conventions, plots, props, jokes, and running gags (both physical and verbal) and also read theoretical writings on comedy as we consider its perils and promises.