Global Arc

The course examines the history of fascism, with a focus on Italy and Germany. It also asks whether the concept of fascism is still useful for understanding contemporary developments. Special emphasis is placed on the evolution of fascism as a form of political ideology, on the expression of fascist ideas in film and architecture, and on the question whether fascism can be understood as a matter of individual and collective psychology. Students will become familiar with a range of theories of fascism, as well as larger trends in twentieth-century visual culture and literature.

Since its advent in the 19th century, photography has been a privileged figure in literature's efforts to reflect upon its own modes of representation. This seminar will trace the history of the rapport between literature and photography by looking closely at a number of literary and theoretical texts that differently address questions central to both literature and photography: questions about the nature of representation, reproduction, memory and forgetting, history, images, perception, and knowledge.

The course examines the interplay between architecture and the built environment on the one hand and political belief ideas on the other. Our focus is on the twentieth century, sometimes dubbed an "age of ideologies." We will not assume that ideas are in uncomplicated ways reflected in architecture, nor that the descriptions architects give of their own work and intentions can be taken at face value. Students will become familiar with major architectural theories, different approaches in political theory, and also learn how to craft arguments at the intersection of politics and aesthetics.

A study of the fantastic in nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction and in a selection of theoretical texts. Issues to be discussed include the relation of the fantastic to neighboring genres such as magical realism, the cognitive challenges it poses, thematic preoccupations such as the double and altered sensory states, the importance of reception, and interdisciplinary approaches drawing on philosophy, psychoanalysis, and literary theory.

This course will offer an intensive introduction to the history of the making, distribution and reading of books in the West, from ancient Greece to modern America. By examining a series of case studies, we will see how writers, producers, and readers of books have interacted, and how the conditions of production and consumption have changed over time.

When the sum of our pains surpasses that of our pleasures, non-existence becomes preferable to existence. This argument became ubiquitous in Enlightenment philosophical debates. Many used it to discuss the rationality of suicide, God's creation, religious faith, as well as the metaphysical grounds of human existence and the idea of progress. Some criticized the quantitative premises of the argument and questioned the idea that pain could change the positive value of human existence into a negative one. We will examine those debates in philosophical and literary texts and discuss their later and contemporary echoes in ethics.

Following Italian unification Massimo d'Azaglio remarked, "Italy has been made; now it remains to make Italians." This course examines the art and architectural movements of the roughly 100 years between the1848 uprising and the beginning of the World War II, a critical period for defining italianità. Topics include the paintings of the Macchiaioli, reactions to the 1848 uprisings and the Italian Independendence Wars, the politics of 19th Century architectural restoration in Italy, the re-urbanization of Italy's new capital Rome, Fascist architecture and urbanism, and the architecture of Italy's African colonies.

This course is designed to introduce students to Central European literature, culture and history. We will focus on texts from Poland, ex-Czechoslovakia and Hungary, and the impact of Jewish culture on the region as a whole. The course will begin with the interwar period (1918-1939) and the immediate postwar part of the course is dominated by fictional and nonfictional accounts of World War II, the Holocaust and Communism. We will discuss literature as an opposition tool, the writer in exile, and the post-communist accounting for the past.

This course examines how politics and culture play out in that most refined of art forms: opera. The course will introduce students to the history of European opera, focusing on 19th century composers in France, Germany, and Italy. We will closely examine three operas: one French (Bizet's Carmen), one Italian (Verdi's Aida) and one German (Wagner's Die Meistersinger). Following Edward Said's work, we will examine how politics and culture play out in these works: European colonialism in Aida; the question of antisemitism in Wagner; stereotypes of Spain in Carmen. Includes excursions to the Metropolitan Opera.

Weber taught that scientific rationality had disenchanted the world. It dispelled myths and made the natural and social worlds transparent and prosaic. Religious and supernatural accounts of the universe lost credibility. An old magical picture of reality made way for a new one: gods and spirits fled, leaving material processes behind them. This course looks at the historical process that Weber described as one of disenchantment. We will watch gods and demons being expelled from the heights of western culture - and reappearing there in new forms. By the end we may wonder if they ever left - and if we were ever modern.