We offer our students a college preparatory humanities curriculum in a different format from that of many schools. Our courses are generally offered by semester, and conducted in small, multi-age seminars. While we do target specific developmental skills for underclassmen in more conventional courses such as American History or Expository Writing, most classes contain both literary and social science content so that students are required to approach the course’s subject from a variety of academic perspectives. Critical writing, independent research, seminar discussion and close reading are all emphasized.
Students are required to take classes in which they encounter several cultural regions (including, specifically, the United States, Latin America, the Caribbean, Sub-Saharan Africa, Arabia, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Eastern Asia, Southern Asia) and eras (which divide by region). No class could reasonably contain all modes of inquiry—archaeology is more applicable in some courses, political science in others, for example—but over the course of their time at the school, students will be exposed to the research methodologies of a wide variety of social sciences. Similarly, students will be exposed to a wide variety of literary forms that we believe are too often neglected in conventional English classes. These are not presented abstractly, but in their appropriate historical, formal, and cultural contexts. In aggregate, students master much of the same material they might have encountered in broad survey courses, but by approaching that material in a thematically centered, intensive, and cross-curricular fashion, students learn to make different connections, to examine and deliberate and to independently investigate as scholars do.
Current Courses (Spring 2024) are marked with an *
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Theater as is its custom reflects and comments on social concerns of its time, and the 1960s was no exception. In this case theater tackled Civil Rights, the Vietnam War and more. Radio airwaves introduced traditional musical forms with greater political teeth; even Broadway and Off-Broadway theaters reached to embrace revolutionary work like Hair and Megan Terry’s Viet Rock. This course examines theatrical movements like the El Teatro Campesino in California and the BRT in New York, and the lasting impact they have on the theater world to this day. The course will look at some of the roots of Protest Theater and early examples before examining theater troupes like the El Teatro Campesino and the Black Revolutionary Theater seeking to make social change. Writers covered include Clifford Odetts, Loraine Hansberry, Luis Valdez, Terence McNally, Mart Crowley, Amira Baraka and Megan Terry.
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The Korean peninsula endured a series of profound transformations in the twentieth century. Throughout the century Korean writers have, consciously or not, helped socialize generations of Korean readers into the harsh realities of the nation’s modern history. This course will focus on Korean Literature (in English translation) which examines Japanese colonization, territorial division, civil protests, military rule, and the strains of headlong industrialization. Students will also be introduced to Korean culture: though an examination of its history, religions, film and traditions.
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The Romans hate kings, and the Roman Republic is no longer sustainable. So, who do you call? Augustus is your man, or at least he can make you think so! The first Roman Emperor had to be a master propagandist, and he used architects, historians, and poets to build the foundations upon which he would establish the legitimacy for his rule. This class will read Virgil’s Aeneid; an epic poem in 12 books (each about 30 pages in length) commissioned by Augustus to link Augustus to the mythical origins of Rome. We will also read excerpts from Homer, Horace, Livy, Ovid, and Suetonius. The asynchronous content /lectures component for this class will be selected from scholarly YouTube videos, podcasts, and some academic websites. Synchronous zoom classes will function like a book club/ seminar discussion. The objective of this course is to develop the close reading and analytical skills needed to interpret and critique historical texts within historical contextually reasoned thinking to express, and to develop good conversational etiquette and strong oral presentation skills.
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We will watch as a new city, Alexandria, is founded as a hybrid of North African and Southern European culture; we will learn how new concepts of culture, knowledge, and power were tested; we will explore the wonders of the world’s first library, museum, and scientific research institution. We will see how vastly different cultures merged and mingled in a 1000-year attempt at a multicultural utopia. Then we’ll watch it all come crashing down. Students will explore how the city’s vibrant intellectual culture changed under the successive regimes of the Ptolemies, and how it related to ideas both of tolerance and of empire-building and governance. In the process, they will explore the roots of our modern ideas on science, philosophy, mathematics, religion, history, poetry, technology, geography and more.
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Though the American Civil Rights Movement is not an easily contained piece of history, it is easy to argue that the entire history of the United States has been marred with inequalities based solely on superficial differences. In this class the students will look at a span of the Civil Rights Movement from post WWII to the present. They will read, watch and listen to prominent documents, speeches and art from this era to help them see the complexities inherent in the struggle to obtain equality.
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Starting with a writer organizing the celebrated work with the Provincetown Players, this course surveys the contributions women playwrights have made to the American stage. In addition to their theater works, the course will have a dramaturgical approach. Students will examine the historical context in which the plays appeared, analyze reviews and interviews as well as play structure and voice. Writers include Susan Glaspell, Loraine Hansberry, Suzy Lori Parks, Carson McCullers, Maria Irene Fornés, Wendy Wasserstein and Lynn Nottage. The course will also celebrate those writing musical theater like Betty Comden, Mary Rodgers and Lucy Simon.
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Ancient American Civilizations is an exploration of the foundational, empirical cultures of Mesoamerica, the Maya and the Aztecs, through the lens of Archaeology. We will be using three common college texts: Coe and Koontz’s Mexico: From the Olmecs to the Aztecs, Coe and Houston’s The Maya and Renfrew and Bahn’s Archaeology: Theories, Methods and Practice. Evaluation will primarily be through testing, including a substantial exam, and through class discussion and projects undertaken throughout the semester.
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Art has been stolen throughout its history: as war booty, colonial spoils, grave goods, and increasingly today, for political advantage or personal profit. On their surface art crimes are scandalous and fun, the stuff of pop thriller movies. But an in depth look at modern art crimes reveals a much more subtle picture than painted by Hollywood: cat-burgling connoisseurs foiled by art snob sleuths. Students will learn expository writing, presentation, and critical thinking skills as we examine the perspectives of art makers, administrators, collectors, dealers, thieves, forgers, vandals, detectives, and jurists. In lecture and seminar students will examine the context, aesthetics, and theft of works by Rembrandt van Rijn, Johannes Vermeer, Jan van Eyck, and others.
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King Arthur may have been the greatest, most important king of England for centuries; or, he may never have existed at all. Real or not, he has influenced our culture through the hundreds of versions of his life in a 1500-year fanfic tradition. That huge body of literature constitutes one of the most diverse and expansive sagas in Western culture. This course explores the contours, historical framework, and major themes of Arthurian mythos as it developed. Through literary analysis, class discussion, research and creative projects students will investigate the Dark-Age context of the possible historical Arthur, the history of the medieval writers who developed the legends of Arthur and his court, and the late medieval world that exploded with Arthur-inspired chivalric culture.
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The “golden age” of Greece lasted for little more than a century but it laid the foundations of western civilization. The age began with the unlikely defeat of a vast Persian army by vastly outnumbered Greeks, and it ended with an inglorious and lengthy war between Athens and Sparta. It is the era of great Athenian statesmen like Solon, Cleisthenes, and Ephialtes who contributed to the development of Athenian democracy. Cleisthenes broke up the unlimited power of the nobility, while Pericles oversaw the growth of the incredibly wealthy Athenian empire, the building of the Acropolis to display that power and he maintained its position as the dominant naval power in the Greek world. In this era Athens produced some of the most influential and enduring cultural artifacts of the Western tradition. The playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides all lived and worked in 5th-century BC Athens, as did the historians Herodotus and Thucydides, the physician Hippocrates and the philosophers Plato and Socrates. In this class we will focus primarily on the theater competitions at the “Great Dionysia” because the ceremonies and plays that this Athenian spring festival contain the civic ideology and reflect the political events that preoccupied and defined democratic Athens.
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“Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game – and do it by watching first some high school or small-town teams.” So wrote the great historian, Jacques Barzun. This course will examine this very notion. The game has its legends and myths; but it also as a pastime, a sport, a business has collided and colluded with American prejudices and barriers. This course will explore the game’s mythology while also exploring the various Negro Leagues and the events that transpired along the way to integration of the Major Leagues, hearing the voices of those who carry scars precipitated by racism and abandonment. “Baseball in Literature” explores these themes and characters through works by Ernest Lawrence Thayer, Ring Lardner, Donald Hall, William Carlos Williams, August Wilson, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Robert Peterson, among others.
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Medieval Europe was a fractured and unpredictable society where the lines between entertainment, fake news, propaganda, rumor, and mysticism were rarely clear. Through the best-selling novel Baudelino by Umberto Eco, supplemented with short readings of related primary sources from Livy to Rabelais to the Sepher Yetzirah, the pathological liar Baudolino will be our guide to the gritty, weird, and often hilarious complexities of Medieval Europe. We will explore the Medieval worldview in all its many contradictions, discovering both how disorienting different and yet uncannily familiar it is. Students will be immersed first in the political and intellectual world of the 12th Century Holy Roman Empire, then examine Europe’s relations with the Eastern Orthodox and Ottoman Empires, India, and China. We will find that this history was largely determined by an oral culture in which the distinctions between entertainment, news, propaganda, rumor, and mysticism are rarely clear. We will encounter intricate cultural fantasies and utopias projected by Europeans upon the rest of the world, which are then often used as pretexts for conquest. Perhaps more surprisingly, we will discover that to the medieval consciousness, the very ideas of Truth and Reality, Artifice and Faith, functioned quite differently than they did in the 20th Century – yet perhaps not so differently from the 21st.
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Not just a good yarn about heroes and dragons, Beowulf is an epic kaleidoscope of universal passions and fears, a mysterious puzzle piece the Northern European myths, a window into the changing beliefs of Early Middle Ages England. What can the textual, historic, and poetic evidence in this masterpiece reveal about the people who enjoyed it? And what does the poem’s irrepressible popularity throughout the world today say about us? We will focus on building seminar discussion, close reading, research, and textual analysis skills; students will use Beowulf and other works in Old English as the subject of literary criticism and literary history. Core essay writing and formatting skills will receive particular focus. Students will read 10 to 30 pages a week, work closely with Old English to translate their own passage of the poem, write one critical or research paper, and complete a creative project.
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Before Google, Amazon, and the Internet Archive existed, there were Bibliographers: people who could always help you fgure out what books you needed and how to fnd them, for any research topic in their area of passion – even if they’d never seen those books themselves. How? In this student-driven course, we will learn how to begin a long-term or life-long research project, and “map the territory” for others to explore too. As students create online library catalogues and research blogs about their chosen topics, they will learn how to use books they have not read yet, decide which to read, help others use information the students have not yet found, and how to get to know the context that will give the details meaning. Along the way we will learn about the intellectual traditions and market forces that shape book culture, publishing, and DIY learning communities, while taking the first steps in becoming “the one who knows where to look” for the topic that each student loves.
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We are going to read fairytales in this class, but be warned these tales are dark, often bizarre, and occasionally disturbing. The brothers collected folk tales, studied the Indo-European roots of the Germanic languages, and were committed to building a German national identity before Germany became a country. The objective of the course is to assist students in gaining important high school skills and self-direction, while introducing them to literary, psychological and historical resources. Students will be encouraged to consistently step outside of their comfort area, to be prepared to try things they are not good at, to explore ideas beyond those which were assigned, and to seek the uncanny valley to ultimately create a fairy tale of their very own.
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This class studies the American nation from its first post-independence war in 1812 to America’s rise to a world power at the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. The challenge of the class is to learn to think about those events like a historian. You will not be asked to memorize names, dates, and facts, but you will instead be tasked to think about broader questions such as the causes and consequences of economic growth, the origins and nature of racism, and the processes through which this nation has sought to solve its internal and external problems. The answers to these and other questions cannot be memorized because intelligent people can honestly disagree over them. Instead, they must be analyzed using a variety of different types of historical evidence. So, in this class we will look at those different types of evidence and learn how to think about them creatively.
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Serfs up! Be they visionary warriors like Jean d’Arc (burnt at the stake), rebel leaders like Wat Tyler (stabbed, hospitalized, then beheaded) and Jacques Bonhomme (tortured and beheaded), or radical priests like John Ball (hanged, then drawn and quartered), many commoners help drive social change during the Hundred Years War (1337–1453). Often viewed historically as an endless slaughters of dynastic succession between French and English elites, upon closer examination the Hundred Years War period shows common people sowing the seeds of national identity and class consciousness in both countries. Students will research the changing military, political, and cultural phenomena of the era, beef up expository writing skills, and devise a creative project.
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Serfs up! Be they visionary warriors like Jean d’Arc (burnt at the stake), rebel leaders like Wat Tyler (stabbed, hospitalized, then beheaded) and Jacques Bonhomme (tortured and beheaded), or radical priests like John Ball (hanged, then drawn and quartered), many commoners help drive social change during the Hundred Years War (1337–1453). Often viewed historically as an endless slaughters of dynastic succession between French and English elites, upon closer examination the Hundred Years War period shows common people sowing the seeds of national identity and class consciousness in both countries. Students will research the changing military, political, and cultural phenomena of the era, beef up expository writing skills, and devise a creative project.
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In Comparative Religions, the students will explore the seven religions laid out in Houston Smith’s The World’s Religions. They will get an opportunity to read scripture from a scholarly perspective in order to better understand how religion influences the world, as well as gain empathy for those of different belief systems. They will also gain an understanding of how these belief systems are structured and the historical context from which they came. The class will look at different forms of art, including literature that is influenced by religion. This is to help the student be able to grasp referential material within art when it pertains to religion.
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In this course we will explore the process and multiple cultures of colonization in what became the United States, examining the indigenous societies existing here at the beginning of the 16th Century and the various groups of colonists, enslaved people, and others who transformed the political, economic, cultural and ethnic landscape up through the War of 1812. While tracking the developments that led to the establishment of slavery, imperialism, expropriation of indigenous lands, and the United States as we know it, we will also follow many other ideas of what “America” could have been, looking down paths not taken by the ‘founding fathers’ – meeting abolitionists, anti-authoritarian heretics, multi-racial societies, alternative economies, spiritualists, utopian communes, pacifists, feminists, and other communities of nonconformists.
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Though hardly a new problem, recent events have shown a dramatic rise in Anti-Asian rhetoric and instances of hate crimes against Asian Americans. This course will address these crimes by examining contemporary Asian American writers – prose, poems and plays that have appeared since 2010. Being only a semester length course, readings will address writers of south East Asian ancestry, exploring culture and identity. Readings and discussion will explore images of men and women in film and in other forms of popular culture as well as in sociopolitical frameworks, including a survey of how Asian American communities evolved over the centuries. Authors will include Nicole Chung, Cathy Park Hong, Ocean Vuong, Franny Choi, Erika Lee, Andrew Lam and Viet Thanh Nguyen.
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Before there were flash mobs and memes there were constructed situations and détournement; radical thinkers like the Situationist International (SI) used these and other techniques to successfully disrupt everyday life in post-WWII Europe. Join an international band of theorists and creative workers as they flow through public space, create art making machines, and use viral slogans, mimeographs and wheatpaste to advocate for change. With a particular focus on the SI, students will encounter readings from Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle and Raoul Vaneigem’s The Revolution of Everyday Life, among other theory, primary documents, eyewitness accounts, art, and literature from Western Europe. Students will apply SI methods, push research writing and seminar skills, and devise a collective creative project.
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“Have you no decency, sir?” Joseph Welch’s question to Wisconsin senator Joseph McCarthy heralded the end of the second Red Scare, a period of anticommunist defamation and witch-hunts that targeted soldiers, artists and LGBTQ people, destroying thousands of lives. How could the United States, perceived as a beacon of liberty to the world, so easily succumb to totalitarian thinking? Playwright Arthur Miller found echoes of this hysteria in the country’s distant past: the Salem witch trials, which he dramatized in ‘The Crucible’. Similar contradictions were violently laid bare during the Civil Rights, peace and women’s movements, and continue to this day. From Don’t Ask Don’t Tell to Trans Rights Are Human Rights, from I Am A Man to I Can’t Breath, students will research and present multiple perspectives on a significant issue of contemporary US life.
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This class will explore the impact affluence may have on mental health. Through exploring social stratification theory and other sociological impacts of wealth, as well as case studies from Ethan Couch to John Paul Getty III, we will ask the question if having too much creates an environment in which social norms cannot be expected.
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The Divine Comedy was written during Europe’s Middle Ages when 14th century Florence was giving birth to the Renaissance. When Dante ultimately fell out of political favor, he went on to write this monumental epic poem, in the speech of common people, which served both as an allegory of his times and as a deep spiritual self-reflection. This course will close-read Dante’s Inferno and supplementary lectures and essays will be provided on heretics, Troubadours, the crusades, and a troubled Papacy, and we will read excerpts from Virgil’s Aeneid. Student assessment will be based on weekly written journals and a final lengthy research paper.
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This course will close-read Dante’s Inferno and Milton’s Paradise Lost beginning with an overview of the European “Dark Ages”, and later with a similar overview of post Reformation European and English politics. The Inferno and Paradise Lost are epic poems written by literary giants who lived in early and war-torn republics. Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy was written during Europe’s Middle Ages when 14th century Florence was giving birth to the Renaissance. John Milton’s 17th century Puritans, after a bloody civil war, overthrew their English king and established a Commonwealth Republic. When they both ultimately failed in their political lives they went on to write these monumental epic poems, in the speech of common people, which served both as allegories of their times and as deep spiritual self-reflections.
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Who was the samurai: a warrior, a ruler and an artist, but also a bureaucrat and, by the end of his era, more often than not, an unemployed debtor. The image of brave, honorable warriors handed down in the Tale of Heike, and made concrete by the Chūshingura (inspiration for the national epic popularly known as the 47 Ronin) and countless other works from the vibrant print, theater and puppetry culture of the Edo period (1600 – 1868), begins to weaken upon closer inspection. Through puppet plays, print-books, state documents, and the autobiography of Musiu – a lazy, jobless samurai who hawked swords on the side – we will interrogate the Samurai and his family from multiple perspectives, revealed as a reflection of both change and stagnation in elite Japanese society. Students will choose a work of Edo Period fiction, visual culture, or political writing to closely read and analyze in writing.
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The Dominican Republic introduces students to many aspects of that Caribbean nation. These include its history, government and art forms, which helps young people gain a rich understanding of the DR’s role in the past and present. Students complete a variety of assignments, and witness or take part in presentations on the country’s politics, music and other facets.
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Miguel de Cervantes’ groundbreaking comedy Don Quixote was written at a time of great, deep-seated change in European culture, and had a great impact not only on the future of literature, but how people view the relationships between the individual and society, reason and imagination. It is also one of the great comedies in history, and is still constantly parodied in cartoons, movies, and books today. After thoroughly sampling the medieval literary genres which Don Quixote ridiculed, we will explore all the novels in-depth. We will see how the book reflects Spain’s rich medieval society, the unique effects of Islam and Judaism on Spanish culture, and the rapid political, social, and intellectual changes that were shifting Spain and Europe into the beginnings of the Modern age. We will also see how Cervantes responded and shaped the literary forms that he inherited, to create what is often considered to be the first modern Novel, and apply some of those lessons to create parodies of contemporary genres.
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Using Benedict Anderson’s seminal work Imagined Communities as well as a number of original source documents, we will explore the various ways America forged an identity through cultural production in the days of the early republic. Among the many works considered will be newspapers, magazines, political cartoons, portraiture, fiction and theater pieces.
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American letters found its voice in the middle of the 19 th century, in part due to the essays and poetry of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Their impact on American politics (e.g. abolitionism) was tremendous and can be felt today through pressing ecological and communal matters. “Emerson & Thoreau” examines notions of Transcendentalism and literary Romanticism as well as political activism. Along this path, we’ll explore these beloved writers’ ties to such historical events as the Mexican American War, the Missouri Compromise, The Fugitive Slave Act, John Brown’s raids as well as the rise of the Industrial Revolution.
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This course will use a variety of art forms, from literature to textiles to explore historical uses of fashion as a tool of resistance. We will explore contemporary topics, such as the protests in Iran to those more historical in nature, such as the white clothing of the suffragettes. Students will be tasked with a number of research projects and presentations, as well as curating an end of semester fashion show.
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This class will use literature and film to explore the trope of the femme fatale in noir. Noir is a genre of crime film or fiction characterized by cynicism, fatalism, and moral ambiguity. We will be reading Megan Abbott, Elena Ferrante and Oyinkan Braithwaite, as well as looking at James Ellroy’s Black Dahlia as a jumping off point. Historical and sociological contexts will be explored along the way, to further enhance students’ understanding and critical thinking. There will be 4 novels (1 graphic) read during the semester, and each student will be responsible for a thesis-driven critical essay, along with 3 other long-term projects over the course of the semester.
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In contemporary Western society, social class differences in food consumption follow a general pattern. Upper class groups consume foods that signify exclusivity and access to rare goods; while lower class groups, on the other hand, consume foods that are readily available. This concept is observable in many ways, from sociological observation to food’s place within popular literature. We will explore this conceit utilizing sociological text, documentary films, as well as a wide variety of litrature.
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This course will tackle four maritime works that examines the ocean world and shipping as metaphor, genre, literary movements, as well as an exploration of humanity mortality and signal for environmental despair and trouble. Readings will cover American Romanticism with Edgar Allan Poe’s Narrative of A. Gordon Pym and Melville’s Billy Budd, American Modernism through Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea, and ideas on spirituality and survival in Yann Martell’s Man Booker prize winning novel, Life of Pi. This course will examine how these works coincided with their sociopolitical environment and question how they register with audiences today.
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In 1830, the future of France and European culture seemed up for grabs: the economic system of the past two centuries was in collapse, massive street protests descended into massacres and riots, new ideas of freedom motivated the youth, emerging media technologies were transforming culture in unpredictable ways, and insurrections were becoming regular events. In this situation bearing so many parallels with our own, a community of cultural dissidents, under the banner of Romanticism, launched a coordinated assault on conservative culture that revolutionized European society. Beyond the “big names” of Romanticism, an underground subculture of radically progressive youth, calling themselves the “avant-garde” of Romanticism, went farther to create not only new ways to create art, literature, music, theatre, and dance, but new ways of living and experiencing the Self. This course will examine the tumultuous first half of the 19th Century in France through the lens of the French underground, using a wide variety of primary sources and calling on the skills of literary, artistic, and musical literacy to explore relationships of artistic communities to society, politics, economics – and the re-imagining of human life.
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This course will ask students to explore Haitian culture and literature. We will study the geography of Haiti, as well as its history of colonialization, slavery and revolution. The class will also explore the current state of Haiti’s reputation as being the poorest country economically in the world, and investigate why this is. We will conclude the class by sampling Haiti’s rich resources of literature, visual arts, music and food, as well as delve into how religion plays into it all.
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For nearly a millennium, Western society has trended toward increasingly logical rationality, scientific objectivity, and technological progress – as well as colonialism, economic disparity and institutional violence. Yet a persistent undercurrent of absurdity and gleeful irrationality has contested this development both in pop culture and intellectual communities. What happens when writers, philosophers, comedians, and activists use logic and reason against themselves, to question the very foundations of our assumptions about the relationships between knowledge, creativity, and the world? A lot of fun, of course – but also much, much more which we will find ways of exploring. We will develop ways to analyze what seems un-analyzable, look at how nonsense has made its appearance in philosophy, comedy, poetry, children’s literature, theatre, activism, and music. We will experiment with integrating the irrational into our own lives with class activities and experiments, culminating in an absurd event presented to the school community.
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Chinese legend sets the story of tea’s discovery to 2737 BCE. From its earliest days tea was used as a medicine with magical powers, an essential source of nutrition for the poor, a tribute paid to emperors, a commodity which garnered enormous wealth and created empires. Tea eventually became the spark for cultural and political revolutions and was the cause for wars that continue to affect us to this day. This course will trace the history and culture of tea from its origins in China to its consumption in the West. Over the duration of this class we will learn something of the history and geography of China, read Asian poetry and excerpts from Western literature and art that were inspired by the leaf. And of course, we will brew and taste teas, learn about tea ceremonies and conclude with an English style tea party.
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The Iliad would take three days to perform as an oral recitation, and yet only covers several weeks of the ten year long Trojan War. We will read the Iliad, learn the necessary backstories of the Trojan War, and will examine the homecoming tales of some key survivors. We will close read the Iliad, and examine the culture, language, religion and humanity expressed in this epic poem. The objective of this class is to explore close reading strategies, develop effective note taking and learn the ancient persuasive argument methods.
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India is enormous, a subcontinent-sized country with a long, complex history and a mindboggling diversity of religions, languages and ethnicities. We cannot hope to cover all, or even a fraction, of it in a semester. What we can do is figure out how to approach a place so overwhelmingly big and rich. Contemporary Anglophone Indian Literature, due in part to British colonial history, is central to India’s rich heritage. Much of our exploration will be through that literature. We will also read excerpts of major religious texts, watch films, and otherwise delve into the culture. This class is meant to be a broad survey. The teachers are not themselves Indian (obviously) or content experts. Our job is to serve as guides to the process of self-education, to finding one’s way into a culture, to moving from source to source, text to text, to becoming a more literate global citizen.
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Russian science fiction authors of the 1920s, influenced by Taylorism, Cosmism, Futurism and other currents, projected conflicting visions of the post-revolutionary future. Alexander Bogdanov, an architect of Soviet state culture, built a technocratic utopia run by Martians in his Red Star series. Others were skeptical. In Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We, life and love itself are dictated by the machine control of the One State — where everyone lives in glass apartments, separated from nature by a giant Green Wall. Zamyatin, himself a former Bolshevik, was driven from Russia by the cultural suppression of the Soviet state. Students will read these authors and others, discuss them in weekly seminars, and write critically about their work.
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This course will examine foundational aspects of global political geography. Taking the Peace of Westphalia (1648) as our starting point, we will devote extensive time to studying the concept of the modern nation-state, primarily through the lenses of realism and liberalism, the canonical theories of International Relations. There will also be a foray into critical International Relations theories at the end of the course. Special attention will be devoted to cultivating note-taking, testing, class participation, and core writing skills. This course may be especially germane for students with budding interests in geography, political theory, and global studies.
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Irish Mythology is more dreamlike and less linear than Greek and Roman Myth. The gods transmute through death into new forms, the physical world vacillates inexplicably and exponentially in scale, time is cyclical and even the landscape is alive and in a constant state of flux. In this class we will look at the sources of Irish myth, examine the motivation of the scribes who recorded them, and the motivations of the 19th writers who revived this Mythology. We will also explore monuments and artifacts from pre-Celtic Ireland to learn more about the culture and people of an ancient Ireland that created these myths. Students will produce work every week in response to the readings.
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Absurd or Righteous? Who’s right? Who’s not right? What side? Which side? As this course attempts not to edge to one side, it shall examine the Israeli/Palestinian conflict as an ancient feud, one of which a solution seems obvious but how to get all sides to agree. Over the semester, this class will look at the conflict through the lens of memoir, journalistic reports, fiction, and poetry. Its goal: to forge an empathetic understanding of the conflict and to see those directly impacted as human.
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You may have heard of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, but the Italian Renaissance was so much bigger than these giants of art history. For over two hundred years Italy was divided into independent city-states, each with a different form of government, in perpetual war with each other. Some states were commercial and banking capitals which gave rise to individuals wealthier than the Kings of France and England. These people and states flaunted their money and power by becoming patrons of artists and intellectuals to such an extent that Italy divided became the cultural center of Europe for hundreds of years. This class will examine the economic, historical, political and philosophical origins of the Renaissance by looking at art, reading Machiavelli, Vasari, Bocaccio, Dante, and virtually visiting the Medici offices “Uffizi” which are the first (and arguably the finest) art museum in the world: Asynchronous content will also be delivered through YouTube videos and scholarly podcasts.
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Jane Austen & Novels of Manners is a semester survey of her work, with the goal of developing a greater understanding of the social and political circumstances that guided and inspired Austen’s work from 1797 until her untimely death in 1818. In addition to her often satiric appraisal of the social limitations placed on women in late Georgian England, the course will consider other socio-political ideas impacting the Austen family living through a rather turbulent era: The French Revolution, English defeat in the Americas, the Napoleonic Wars, efforts of the English to erase the bawdiness so evident in 18th century England. Participants will identify the qualities that make up a genre known as “Novel of Manners.” The course will be framed by looking at one short, often neglected, work Sanditon, and longer works like Pride & Prejudice, Emma, and her gothic inspired Northanger Abbey.
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This course explores ve Japanese religious and philosophical traditions—Shintoism, Shugendō, Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. We will read mythological, philosophical, and literary texts from these traditions such as the Tao te Ching, Analects of Confucius, Lotus Sutra, and many others, with special attention given to key concepts, problems in translation, and similarities to or differences from western philosophies.
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“Man alone of all animals possesses speech” – so spoke Aristotle, anyway; and human thought, culture, identity, and society are literally unthinkable without the faculty of language. We will explore how language works and is affected by the societies and individuals who use it, and also ways in which it has been re-thought and re-purposed to change those who use it and the world we live in. In the process, we will sample texts and ideas from many intellectual disciplines including Linguistics, Semiotics, Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, Critical Theory, Theology, and experimental Poetics. Alongside our studies, we will each design the basis for our own constructed language, putting the principles of linguistics into play in imaginative, innovative ways.
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In the first decades of the nineteenth century Spanish Americans took revolutionary actions against their colonial masters just as the North American British colonists had done in 1776. But the struggle for South American continues to be a very protracted struggle. South American independence movements were civil wars because those who started and led the independence movements sought to replace Spanish rule with their own control and were not interested in social change. The movements were also revolutionary wars because they set into motion both short- and long-term changes in social relationship which continue to this day.
This will be a project-based class, in which students will research assigned topics, and lead seminar discussion. All students in this class will read “The General in his Labyrinth” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and other short fictional works. In addition to the research and presentation, students will be given a mid-term and final exam.
The objective of this class is that students will expand their US History knowledge by learning of similar and concurrent events which happened on the American Continent(s). Students will learn to compare and contrast political and social events which have shaped the Western hemisphere for the past two centuries. -
So you want to be in charge? Leadership is learned by observing and analyzing the thoughts and actions of other leaders. In this class we will examine the leadership styles and decisions of a variety of historical and fictional figures drawn from texts by Virgil, Shakespeare, Michael Sharra, Philip Roth, and Toni Morrison, and visual representations ranging from Saving Private Ryan, The West Wing, The Devil Wears Prada, and Bonfire of the Vanities. Then we will apply what we have learned in a series of increasingly complex simulations in which you will have to make your own decisions and figure out how to get the best out of your classmates.
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For over 200 years, writers and readers have joyfully immersed themselves in a genre defined by its obsession with death, terror, sadness, black magic, and the irrational. Why do so many people find this genre irresistible and life-affirming? What does it say about modern society? How is the feeling of dread created and maintained by writers, and how does literary horror differ from film horror? We will read a wide range of horror stories from 1764 to the present, and explore the literary, psychological, and social aspects of supernatural horror.
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In 1986 Canadian poet, essayist and novelist Margaret Atwood published perhaps one of the English language’s most significant 20th century novels—The Handmaid’s Tale. This dystopian tale registers an even louder cultural bell in the 21st century as Offred’s story has been adapted into a long running television series, its alarming bonnets (wings) and robes becoming iconic imagery representing oppression. Now an early work in the Atwood’s amazing career, this course examines Atwood’s development as a thinker, poet novelist and, how her use of myth, dystopia and the Gothic make commentary on ideology and sexual politics. In addition to her essays, poems and fiction, this course will take a side step to see what Atwood’s contemporaries were working on simultaneously and the semester concludes with selections from Atwood’s most recent collection of poems, Dearly.
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The “golden age” of Greece lasted for little more than a century but it laid the foundations of western civilization. The age began with the unlikely defeat of a vast Persian army by vastly outnumbered Greeks, and it ended with an inglorious and lengthy war between Athens and Sparta. It is the era of great Athenian statesmen like Solon, Cleisthenes, and Ephialtes who contributed to the development of Athenian democracy. Cleisthenes broke up the unlimited power of the nobility, while Pericles oversaw the growth of the incredibly wealthy Athenian empire, the building of the Acropolis to display that power and he maintained its position as the dominant naval power in the Greek world. In this era Athens produced some of the most influential and enduring cultural artifacts of the Western tradition. The playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides all lived and worked in 5th-century BC Athens, as did the historians Herodotus and Thucydides, the physician Hippocrates and the philosophers Plato and Socrates. In this class we will focus primarily on the theater competitions at the “Great Dionysia” because the ceremonies and plays that this Athenian spring festival contain the civic ideology and reflect the political events that preoccupied and defined democratic Athens.
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Alongside Jazz, the musical is a great American art form. But its genesis ties in with European forms of ballad opera, grand opera and operetta. This course traces the development of what has become known as the “Broadway Musical,” from John Gay’s landmark, Beggar’s Opera, through explorations of opera, operetta, the much maligned “musical comedy,” Broadway’s Golden Age as well as more contemporary works. In several cases, musicals will be matched side by side with their original literary sources, examining musicals as social commentary and at times a push for Nativism or Americanism.
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Medieval Scandinavians left a rich portrait of their pre-Christian beliefs in hundreds of ornate poems, stories, and sagas. As students explore the literature of Norse Mythology in weekly seminars on the Eddas, as well as modern tellings by Neil Gaiman, Daniel McCoy, and others, we will ask what these tales can tell us about our own past and present. Contemporary adaptations and primary documents from the Viking Age will also be examined to find resonance between Norse mythology, Northern European history, and everyday life. Writing, research, and creative thinking skills will be strengthened through essay writing, seminar participation, and a creative project.
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We will explore women’s movements in America using various primary and secondary sources. We will challenge the social perceptions of feminism and what it means to be a feminist. Students will bring in different contemporary issues and sources and lead students in class discussions. We will question the historical interplay between gender and culture. We will engage with various pieces of literature by writers such as Adichie, O’Connor, Atwood, and Alderman. Warning -this will be a reading-intensive course.
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By the turn of the 17th century the Ottomans had seen three-hundred years of stability and growth, but an uncertain future loomed. Their grip on frontier colonies was weakening; radicals at home were intensifying their criticism; inflation and war costs mounted; and their multicultural foundation, a patchwork of Byzantine, Persian, and Arab influences were strained under new pressure from the West. In this class we will explore 16th century Ottoman culture and history through art analysis, game design, and closely reading Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red – a tale of art and love that begins with the mysterious disappearance of one of the Sultan’s prized miniature painters.
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It’s hard being a teenage girl in war-torn 80’s Tehran. Overprotective activist parents on one side, tyrannical teachers and the morality police on the other – what’s a promising young graphic novelist to do? In Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi, feminism, free expression, and Persian identity become a form of personal resistance, even to the march of history itself. More than a formidable graphic memoir of the Iranian Revolution and Iran-Iraq War, Persepolis, and other works by Iranian women, show the critical role suppressed individuals can fulfill during mass social change, however invisible power tries to make them. Students will explore mid 20th century Iranian history and culture in weekly seminar discussions, close readings, and writing assignments. They will conduct critical analyses, sharpen close reading and visual comprehension skills, read roughly thirty pages a week, and complete several writing assignments geared toward their unique needs as developing writers.
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The concept of piracy in popular culture is bursting with vivid yet contradictory stereotypes: murderous criminals, heroic underdogs, drunken ne’er-do-wells, expert seamen, cowardly smugglers, and misunderstood freedom ghters. We will examine these stereotypes, the history, and theories of piracy, and explore many of the forms piracy has taken, from Viking raids to the Buccaneers to pirate publishing and intellectual property to piracy along the coasts of contemporary Africa. In the process, we will nd that history and legend cannot always be distinguished and that our subject raises important and thorny questions about historical methodology and the status of historical truth itself. Behind the legends, we will look at the economic and political dimensions of Piracy, and the important roles it played in dening, through opposition, the modern concepts of Property and the Nation-State. We will be presented with a tricky paradox: on one hand, it will be conrmed that most pirates have been motivated by self- interest and many have been guilty of murder, rape, and sometimes torture to remarkable degrees; on the other hand, we will nd that most pirate communities were democratic long before “legitimate” society and that at many times and places in history, pirate society has offered a refuge to those marginalized or brutalized by mainstream society, offering degrees of social, racial, and political justice unrivaled in the world of Law. Together we will explore what these paradoxes can tell us about history, society, economics, and human nature itself.
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This class will explore the creative and civic activity of post-war countercultures in the United States. Weekly readings including primary accounts, news articles, interviews, videos, music, poetry, and literature will provide context for key historical concepts and a loose survey of the social history of the era – with a primary focus on the Civil Rights and Anti-War Movements. Students will read weekly packets, write a critical or research paper, and complete a creative project.
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This course will explore German society from the end of the Second World War to today. Students will not only trace important political developments, but will also study cultural, literary, and philosophical sources to gain an appreciation of different approaches to understanding society. Special attention will be devoted to Vergangenheitsbewältigung, roughly translated as “coming to terms with the past,” in relation to the Nazi regime. Additional topics we will cover include rubble literature, East vs West Germany, the Frankfurt School of critical theory, 1968 protest movements, immigration, German reunification, the European Union, and German cinema and music. Students will be expected to read and view a variety of sources, participate in seminar discussions, and write essays.
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How did Roanoke come to be the way it is? In Race and Class in Roanoke and the USA from 1877 to 1970, students will study our hometown, its economy, cultures, laws and settlement patterns, as exemplary of the United States as a whole between the end of Reconstruction and the end of school segregation. As they examine these issues, students will be introduced to a wide array of skills, focusing on archival and primary-document research. Students will nish the course with a strong and condent grasp of research, discussion and writing, preparing them for future success in the Humanities. Also: lots of field trips.
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Ralph Ellison: a look at the life, work and times of the man who authored one of 20th-century America’s most acclaimed novels.
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In this student-driven course, we will learn how to begin a long-term or life-long research project, and “map the territory” for others to explore too. Along the way we will learn about the intellectual traditions and market forces that shape book culture, publishing, and DIY learning communities. Each student will choose your own topic that fascinates you and spend the semester exploring it through a series of zines, talks, podcasts, blog, book, or other publication format as you decide. Perfect for experienced students who want to push your research skills to the next level, or for less confident students to focus on those skills at a slower pace with a topic of your choice.
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Russian Absurdists explores the turbulent culture of early 20th century Russia from from the perspective of the OBERIU (The Union of Real Art), the direct successors of Russian Futurism. As cultural “trouble makers”, OBERIU sought to shakeup culture and destabilize language, to seek “an organically new concept of life and approach to things.” Their fun, daring, dark and mysterious work was part of a revolutionary struggle between “left” experimentalism and the socialist realism championed by the state. Students will closely read and discuss poetry, prose, drama, and visual art to build their close reading, contextual interpretation, and critical analysis skills. Students will read twenty pages a week, participate in weekly seminars, write a critical essay, and complete a creative project.
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This course is a cross between an introduction to Shakespeare and a survey course. We will read or experience seven plays, investigating histories, comedies, and tragedies. We intend to use the same format to look at each play. We will explore the structure of the play – the dramatic composition, the characterizations, and the poetry and images – the verbal texture. The overarching questions we will be asking throughout are: what did play say to the original audience about what it means to be human? What does/ can the play say to us today about our human condition? This course will be conducted as a seminar. We request that you leave your own preconceptions and prejudices at the door of the classroom. We will be looking at a different world, a different perspective on the world and must adjust our lenses to accommodate the reality of the period we are studying. It may be said that Shakespeare was the first writer to demonstrate a character’s growth and development. We wish this experience to provide you the same opportunity. Judgement is important but empathy and an open mind much more so.
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Welcome to the amazing world of William Shakespeare. This course will be exploring three of the four main types of plays he wrote for theaters like the Globe and the Blackfriars: comedy, tragedy and historical. In each of the plays selected, we will examine how characters are developed and expressed through verse and prose, and, specifically, how Shakespeare’s theatrics express family dynamics. In addition to the Bard’s family moments, this course will take a look at life in jolly old England as Shakespeare penned these fantastic plays. Be not ‘afeared’; we shall cover the plays as pieces of theater and work on how to read Shakespeare and how to write in response to his work. The reading list covers A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, Hamlet and Henry the Fourth, Part I.
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Before the Holocaust of the Second World War, a Jewish art scene thrived throughout Polish cities. Two brothers—Isaac Bashevis Singer and Israel Joshua Singer—stood at the forefront of community literary circles. On particular, the Warsaw literary scene featured the Warsaw Writer’s Club or Lieratn-farayn, a group I.B. Singer called the “the Temple of Yiddish Literature.” (The Club was also referred to as di bude or the den.) We’ll examine some of the ‘den’s interests as well as the lives, culture and communities lost forever in the Holocaust but celebrated in the short stories and memoir of the Singer brothers. Along the way, we will experience some cuisine as well as some introductory looks at Jewish customs and practice.
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This course will investigate the organizational dynamics of new religious movements. We will seek to understand why “cults” emerge and how they proliferate, as we explore processes of recruitment, conversion, and charisma. We will use case studies of past and current “cults” to delve into these concepts and explore the human search to belong. Students will be asked to read academic texts, as well as literature to help reinforce these ideas.
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The Burgundian court is a timeless dreamworld of feasting and jousts, but rivalry and deception poison it from within. After her husband is mysteriously assassinated, Kriemhild, the only princess of the Burgundian dynasty, must take matters into her own hands. In The Song of the Nibelung, a medieval paradise falls to revenge, feudal chaos, and fate itself. The anonymous poet of this German epic combined cutting-edge chivalric culture with heroes of legend – Siegfried the dragon slayer, the Scourge of God, Attila the Hun, and the valkyrie, Brunhild. But what are these pagan figures doing in a poem for Christian audiences? And how could a patriarchal culture produce a work that so successfully romanticizes strong women? Students will consider these questions and more as they explore the medieval culture of Central Europe through the poem. Weekly close reading, writing, and seminar assignments will build critical thinking skills, and a final project will emphasize creative learning.
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One of the great epic poems of the world tells the tale of the Malinke warrior-mage Son-Jara, predestined from birth to use his magic and might to overthrow the wizard-king Sumangaru and build the Mali Empire, one of the richest civilizations in history. We will follow Son-Jara (sometimes spelled Sunjata) in his struggle, and discover the culture, history, and worldview of medieval West Africa through his eyes. We will figure out together how to read a poem from a culture so different from our own that it looks almost like Surrealism, and see how doing so opens new perspectives and ideas.
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The Spanish Civil War has been called a dress rehearsal for the Second World War because German, Italian and Soviet military forces used it as a testing ground for their planes, tanks, and battle tactics. It was also a war of ideas and political ideologies that attracted artists, philosophers, and idealists from around the world. But the conflict is nevertheless a very Spanish event, with ancient roots and contemporary consequences.
To counter some of the effects of COVID-19 on our academic community we will be placing a greater emphasis on students working together on collaborative assignments, and mutual support study groups. Projects for this class will be oral presentations and informal debate/conversations with supported by a written “Review of Literature” and “Bibliography”
The objective of this class is to enhance students’ critical thinking and civil conversation skills and to improve research methodology.
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In this course students will learn about hispanophone areas such as Puerto Rico and Cuba. Through a mixture of discussion, the arts, reading and research, together the class will experience history, music, food, trade, education and other elements of the region’s Spanish-speaking peoples.
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This course will challenge students to participate in an analysis of the impact of epidemic diseases on western society and culture from the bubonic plague to HIV/AIDS and the recent experience of Covid-19. Leading themes include infectious disease and its impact on society; the development of public health measures; the role of medical ethics; the genre of plague literature; the social reactions of mass hysteria and violence; the rise of the germ theory of disease; and a comparison of the social, cultural, and historical impact of major infectious diseases.
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This course will ask students to explore numerous syncretic religions of the Caribbean. There will also be a focus on the importance of the African diaspora present in these religions. We will expand the class by sampling some of the Caribbean’s rich resources of literature and food, as well as delve into how religion plays into it all. Finally, the class will explore the relationship between these religions and the current horror trope.
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Adoptions of children have long been a part of the human experience. Yet crossing cultures and ethnicities has been far more prominent over more recent decades. This course will look at those adoptions through memoir, fiction, and poetry. What happens to cultural identity when one is seemingly plucked from one world to another?
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Students will investigate ecological themes in American science fiction of the postwar decades, with a particular focus on writers in western states. Leigh Brackett, Frank Herbert, Ursula K. Leguin and other authors will frame discussions about the perceptions, hopes, and realities of the ecological, technological, and cultural changes of their time. Lectures and discussions will open doorways into the history of speculative genres, the historical breadth of the postwar era’s increasing ecological consciousness, and contextual and thematic links between the two. The development of critical discussion, research, writing, and presentation skills will receive particular focus. Students will write one critical or research paper, give a presentation in coordination with the CHS’s Pi Day event, and read roughly 30 pages a week.
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First Published in 1922, ‘Ulysses’ was the piece of work that made the name of its author, James Joyce. Its publication was seen to expand the domain of permissible subjects in fiction. A labyrinth work of great humor and technical accomplishment, it was once denounced as obscene, occasionally was accused of being unreadable and is now generally acclaimed as being the greatest book of the 20th century.
This class will focus on reading the novel and some short essays that help explain sections of the work. In addition to reading assignments, students will write a variety of short essays every week. There will also be a final “Bloomsday” presentation, which will be a reading, or staged event of the students’ choice.
The objective of this course is that students will experience literature as an art form, learn how to recognize distinct writing styles, and develop the writing skills to communicate using 10 distinct types for essay – from narrative, expository and descriptive to persuasive and critical.
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Very few Americans have a clear grasp on what caused Putin’s War in Ukraine and why it matters to the broader world. Indeed, most Americans know very little about the region at all outside of hazy Cold War tropes. In this class, we will explore the complex, multi-ethnic nature of the two states, how they came to be, and their conflicting and intertwined present. We will do so using literature, film, news and history texts, including works by Masha Gessen and Orlando Figes. By the end, we will all have a deeper understanding of the Slavic World as well as these questions: What is nationalism? How does a country transform into a democracy? A dictatorship? How does the fate of any one country affect people thousands of miles away?
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In this course, we will survey the political, economic, and cultural history of what has become the United States between European colonization and living memory. First semester, students will be introduced to historical method and perspectives as we explore how the initial interactions of European colonists, Native American societies, and African slaves affected the shape that the future nation would eventually take, and examine the growth of major colonies, the founding and territorial expansion of the United States, and the many developments in American culture, self-image, and economics up through the Civil War. We will trace struggles for equality in race, gender, and class within the country, and their effect on a developing society. In the second semester, we will follow these threads up to the present day while consolidating skills in historical analysis and research. Students will develop their historical literacy and critical sensibilities in order to understand the processes of historical change and the roles and effects of the U.S. on its citizens and the world, laying the groundwork for both responsible citizenship and further studies in the Humanities.
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Van Gogh’s paintings, even for those who dislike classical painting and distrust modern art, are accessible to virtually everyone. His life was indeed romantically passionate and tragic, and posterity continues to embellish and distort his life story voraciously. This course will examine Vincent Van Gogh the person, artist, commodity, fetishized icon, and architype. We will read his letters and look at his work in the context the ideas and art of his time and, in particular, we will look at how his identity is created and consumed today.
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With our current socio-political climate terse and Anti-Semitism on the rise in America, it is essential to explore the Holocaust of the 1930s and 1940s, find its roots and recognize some of the art, music and literature that grew out of this horrific period. In particular, this course will look at memoirs and other literary forms written by survivors of the concentration camps. Additionally, the course will examine how anti-Semitism gripped European nations historically, leading to the horrific events of this era. Authors include: Laurence Rees, Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi and Gad Beck.
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This course will explore German culture and society during the Weimar period (1918-1933). Centered in Berlin, German culture between the world wars exhibited progressive developments in visual arts, theater, cinema, music, literature, and cultural theory. In addition to the focus on culture, we will also examine some of the philosophical and political underpinnings of these developments. The final part of the course will confront the rise of the Nazi regime and the demise of Weimar culture. This course is particularly relevant in today’s political environment in the US, especially when considering the growth of far-right populism and anti-LGBTQ movements and legislation.
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This course provides an introductory survey of women’s changing roles throughout American history, from colonial times through the War of 1812. An emphasis is placed on the significance of key political changes, such as the role of Native American women, the American Revolution, and the struggle over slavery.
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At least 6500 migrant workers have died building stadiums in Qatar for this year’s World Cup Soccer tournament. Iran will Face USA, England, and Wales while the best national soccer teams around the world compete this November to decide the World Champion. World leaders get their photo-ops and Multinational Corporations will make millions, but the worldview of the average “Working Class” will be the primary focus of this class. We will look at the soccer rivalries around the world and the history of some nation teams and peek at World cup History. This is a research class, with reading discussion and writing workshops primarily and some presentation of research.
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While fundamentally reorienting the global balance of power and jump-starting the atomic age, World War II dramatically increased the human capacity for mass destruction of life. With a focus on the cultural, political, and military aspects of the war in the Pacific, students will investigate salient causes and outcomes of World War II more generally; read first hand accounts of survivors from all walks of life; and reflect on the search for understanding and regeneration in the disaster’s aftermath, a crucial project of undiminished importance even today. Students will read roughly 30 pages a week and exercise presentation, seminar and research writing skills.
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World Geography introduces students to the history, methodology, and ethics of the science of Geography. A survey of the Earth’s physical geography, major world regions, and salient geographic currents; geo-political, economic, and climatological, will be explored through lectures, readings, activities, games, and presentations. Building global geographic literacy, testing skills, and oral and visual communication skills are core focus areas of this class. Students will create maps using original research and give a geography presentation on a subject of interest to them.