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AFRICAAM 18B: Jazz History: Bebop to Present, 1940-Present (AMSTUD 18B, MUSIC 18B)

Modern jazz styles from Bebop to the current scene. Emphasis is on the significant artists of each style.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Low, M. (PI); Koplitz, D. (TA)

AFRICAAM 20A: Jazz Theory (MUSIC 20A)

Introduces the language and sounds of jazz through listening, analysis, and compositional exercises. Students apply the fundamentals of music theory to the study of jazz. Prerequisite: Music 19, consent of instructor, or satisfactory demonstration of basic musical skills proficiency on qualifying examination on first day of class. This class is closed by design. Please register on the waitlist and show up on the first day of class to receive a permission number for enrollment.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
Instructors: ; Nadel, J. (PI)

AFRICAAM 30: The Egyptians (CLASSICS 82, HISTORY 48, HISTORY 148)

This course traces the emergence and development of the distinctive cultural world of the ancient Egyptians over nearly 4,000 years. Through archaeological and textual evidence, we will investigate the social structures, religious beliefs, and expressive traditions that framed life and death in this extraordinary region. Students with or without prior background are equally encouraged.
Last offered: Autumn 2020 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

AFRICAAM 39: Long Live Our 4Bil. Year Old Mother: Black Feminist Praxis, Indigenous Resistance, Queer Possibility (CSRE 39, FEMGEN 39, NATIVEAM 39)

How can art facilitate a culture that values women, mothers, transfolks, caregivers, girls? How can black, indigenous, and people of color frameworks help us reckon with oppressive systems that threaten safety and survival for marginalized people and the lands that sustain us? How can these questions reveal the brilliant and inventive forms of survival that precede and transcend harmful systems toward a world of possibility? Each week, this course will call on artists, scholars, and organizers of color who clarify the urgency and interconnection of issues from patriarchal violence to environmental degradation; criminalization to legacies of settler colonialism. These same thinkers will also speak to the imaginative, everyday knowledge and creative healing practices that our forebears have used for millennia to give vision and rise to true transformation.
Last offered: Spring 2020 | Units: 1-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

AFRICAAM 43: Introduction to English III: Introduction to African American Literature (AMSTUD 12A)

In his bold study, What Was African American Literature?, Kenneth Warren defines African American literature as a late nineteenth- to mid-twentieth-century response to the nation's Jim Crow segregated order. But in the aftermath of the Jim Crow era and the Civil Rights movement, can critics still speak, coherently, of "African American literature"? And how does this political conception of African American literary production compare with accounts grounded in black language and culture? Taking up Warren's intervention, this course will explore African American literature from its earliest manifestations in the spirituals and slave narratives to texts composed at the height of desegregation and decolonization struggles at mid-century and beyond. English majors must take this class for 5 units.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

AFRICAAM 46N: Show and Tell: Creating Provenance Histories of African Art (AFRICAST 46N, HISTORY 46N)

Provenance refers to the chain of custody of a particular art object during its lifetime. Put another way, provenance refers to all the individuals, communities, and institutions who have owned (both legally and illegally), kept, stored, exhibited, displayed, managed, and sold an art object. Knowledge of provenance can both inflate and deflate the value of an art object and it can also shed light upon legal and ethical questions including assessing repatriation and restitution claims for African art objects. Furthermore, by telling the story of how a particular object moved through multiple pairs of hands, often over the course of centuries and across several continents, we gain nuanced appreciation of the social currency of artwork as well as of changing perceptions of aesthetic and monetary value, and insight into the extractive dynamics of colonialism and postcolonial global economies. For this class, you will have the unique opportunity to work first hand with an important African art collection in North America: the Richard H. Scheller Collection at Stanford University. You will select one object from the collection and create a detailed provenance history, documenting and detailing its origins, its movement across space and time, and its arrival to the Scheller collection in Silicon Valley. You will use archival materials from Scheller¿s collection, online databases and archives, and secondary literature. Your final project for the class will be to create a visual StoryMap that allows you to display your provenance history with narrative text and multimedia content. In this way, you will not only have completed a class assignment: you will also have constructed for posterity a remarkable hitherto unknown history of an important African art object.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

AFRICAAM 58A: Egypt in the Age of Heresy (AFRICAST 58, ARCHLGY 58, CLASSICS 58)

Perhaps the most controversial era in ancient Egyptian history, the Amarna period (c.1350-1334 BCE) was marked by great sociocultural transformation, notably the introduction of a new 'religion' (often considered the world's first form of monotheism), the construction of a new royal city, and radical departures in artistic and architectural styles. This course will introduce archaeological and textual sources of ancient Egypt, investigating topics such as theological promotion, projections of power, social structure, urban design, interregional diplomacy, and historical legacy during the inception, height, and aftermath of this highly enigmatic period. Students with or without prior background are equally encouraged.
Last offered: Autumn 2018 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

AFRICAAM 101Q: Black & White Race Relations in American Fiction & Film (AMSTUD 42Q, CSRE 41Q)

Movies and the fiction that inspires them; power dynamics behind production including historical events, artistic vision, politics, and racial stereotypes. What images of black and white does Hollywood produce to forge a national identity? How do films promote equality between the races? What is lost or gained in film adaptations of books? NOTE: Students must attend the first day; admission to the class will be determined based on an in class essay.
Last offered: Winter 2020 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

AFRICAAM 113A: African American Ecologies (ENGLISH 113A)

African American perspectives on the environment have long been suppressed in mainstream ecological discourse, despite the importance of questions of land, labor, and resource to the historical and ongoing experiences of Black people in the United States. Against this exclusion, this course takes up African American literature as a unique site of ecological knowledge and environmental thought. Drawing on texts, art, music, and film from the late nineteenth century to the present, this course considers planetary problems of ecological catastrophe and climatic change in relation to the everyday structures of U.S.-American racial politics. Through close analyses of texts and films set on plantations and steamships, in gardens and coal mines, students will explore the environmental dimensions of African American literature, and gain a deeper understanding of the real-world histories with which these works engage. Texts will include novels by Zora Neale Hurston, Percival Everett, and Toni Morrison, short stories and essays by Charles Chesnutt, Jamaica Kincaid, Katherine McKittrick, and adrienne marie brown, and films and multimedia works by Julie Dash, Stephanie Dinkins, and Jordan Peele. Important topics will include the ecology of the plantation, black feminist ecological thought, and the significance of water in African American life and culture.
| Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

AFRICAAM 133: Literature and Society in Africa and the Caribbean (AFRICAST 132, COMPLIT 133, COMPLIT 233A, CSRE 133E, FRENCH 133, JEWISHST 143)

This course provides students with an introductory survey of literature and cinema from Francophone Africa and the Caribbean in the 20th and 21st centuries. Students will be encouraged to consider the geographical, historical, and political connections between the Maghreb, the Caribbean, and Sub-Saharan Africa. This course will help students improve their ability to speak and write in French by introducing students to linguistic and conceptual tools to conduct literary and visual analysis. While analyzing novels and films, students will be exposed to a diverse number of topics such as national and cultural identity, race and class, gender and sexuality, orality and textuality, transnationalism and migration, colonialism and decolonization, history and memory, and the politics of language. Readings include the works of writers and filmmakers such as Aim¿ C¿saire, Albert Memmi, Ousmane Semb¿ne, Le¿la Sebbar, Mariama B¿, Maryse Cond¿, Dany Laferri¿re, Mati Diop, and special guest L¿onora Miano. Taught in French. Students are encouraged to complete FRENLANG 124 or successfully test above this level through the Language Center. This course fulfills the Writing in the Major (WIM) requirement.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Seck, F. (PI); Yu, K. (TA)

AFRICAAM 134: Black Music Revealed: Black composers, performers, and themes from the 18th century to the present (CSRE 35N, MUSIC 35N)

Online seminar on the achievements of Black composers and performers in ragtime, jazz, and classical music, from Chevalier de Saint-Georges, whose music influenced Mozart, and George Bridgetower, for whom Beethoven composed his "Kreutzer" Sonata, to Anthony Davis's opera "The Central Park Five". Students will examine issues of cultural borrowing in operas by Mozart and Verdi, and shows like Showboat and Porgy and Bess. Guest speakers will include composers and performers. Students will work together in groups to produce materials on course topics in coordination with the African American Museum & Library at Oakland. (Cardinal Course certified by the Haas Center)
| Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

AFRICAAM 145B: Introduction to African Studies I: Africa in the 20th Century (HISTORY 145B)

(AFRICAAM/HISTORY 45B is 3 units; AFRICAAM/HISTORY 145B is 5 units.) CREATIVITY. AGENCY. RESILIENCE. This is the African history with which this course will engage. African scholars and knowledge production of Africa that explicitly engages with theories of race and global Blackness will take center stage. TRADE. RELIGION. CONQUEST. MIGRATION. These are the transformations of the 20th century which we shall interrogate and reposition. Yet these groundbreaking events did not happen in a vacuum. As historians, we also think about the continent's rich traditions and histories prior to the 20th century. FICTION. NONFICTION. FILM. MUSIC. Far from being peripheral to political transformation, African creative arts advanced discourse on gender, technology, and environmental history within the continent and without. We will listen to African creative artists not only as creators, but as agents for change.
Terms: Aut | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

AFRICAAM 149: African Voices: Literature and Arts in 20th Century South Africa (HISTORY 48S)

How did South African Black intellectuals and artists utilize literature and other artistic forms to articulate their increasingly precarious position in the country's political landscape in the 20th century? What hopes and visions were captured through their works? Engaging with numerous sources ranging from speeches, newspapers, short stories, novels, music, film, paintings to photographs, we will explore what Ntongela Masilela calls "New African modernity"--a movement pioneered by different generations of Black intellectuals and artists. We will grapple with the notion of art as political, and the salience of Black women's works in contexts of double marginalization. This class lies at the intersection of intellectual, cultural, and literary histories.
| Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

AFRICAAM 152G: Harlem Renaissance (AMSTUD 152G, ENGLISH 152G)

Examination of the explosion of African American artistic expression during 1920s and 30s New York known as the Harlem Renaissance. Amiri Baraka once referred to the Renaissance as a kind of "vicious Modernism", as a "BangClash", that impacted and was impacted by political, cultural and aesthetic changes not only in the U.S. but Europe, the Caribbean and Latin America. Focus on the literature, graphic arts, and the music of the era in this global context.
Last offered: Autumn 2015 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

AFRICAAM 154G: Black Magic: Ethnicity, Race, and Identity in Performance Cultures (AFRICAAM 254G, CSRE 154D, FEMGEN 154G, TAPS 154G, TAPS 354G)

In 2013, CaShawn Thompson devised a Twitter hashtag, #blackgirlmagic, to celebrate the beauty and intelligence of black women. Twitter users quickly adopted the slogan, using the hashtag to celebrate everyday moments of beauty, accomplishment, and magic. The slogan offered a contemporary iteration of an historical alignment: namely, the concept of "magic" with both Black people as well as "blackness." This course explores the legacy of Black magic--and black magic--through performance texts including plays, poetry, films, and novels. We will investigate the creation of magical worlds, the discursive alignment of magic with blackness, and the contemporary manifestation of a historical phenomenon. We will cover, through lecture and discussion, the history of black magic representation as well as the relationship between magic and religion. Our goal will be to understand the impact and history of discursive alignments: what relationship does "black magic" have to and for "black bodies"? How do we understand a history of performance practice as being caught up in complicated legacies of suspicion, celebration, self-definition? The course will give participants a grounding in black performance texts, plays, and theoretical writings. *This course will also satisfy the TAPS department WIM requirement.*
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Robinson, A. (PI)

AFRICAAM 159: James Baldwin & Twentieth Century Literature (AMSTUD 159, ENGLISH 159, FEMGEN 159)

Black, gay and gifted, Baldwin was hailed as a "spokesman for the race", although he personally, and controversially, eschewed titles and classifications of all kinds. This course examines his classic novels and essays as well his exciting work across many lesser-examined domains - poetry, music, theatre, sermon, photo-text, children's literature, public media, comedy and artistic collaboration. Placing his work in context with other writers of the 20C (Faulkner, Wright, Morrison) and capitalizing on a resurgence of interest in the writer (NYC just dedicated a year of celebration of Baldwin and there are 2 new journals dedicated to study of Baldwin), the course seeks to capture the power and influence of Baldwin's work during the Civil Rights era as well as his relevance in the "post-race" transnational 21st century, when his prescient questioning of the boundaries of race, sex, love, leadership and country assume new urgency.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Elam, M. (PI)

AFRICAAM 187: African Archive Beyond Colonization (AFRICAST 117, ARCHLGY 166, CLASSICS 186, CLASSICS 286, CSRE 166)

From street names to monuments, the material sediments of colonial time can be seen, heard, and felt in the diverse cultural archives of ancient and contemporary Africa. This seminar aims to examine the role of ethnographic practice in the political agendas of past and present African nations. In the quest to reconstruct an imaginary of Africa in space and time, students will explore these social constructs in light of the rise of archaeology during the height of European empire and colonization. Particularly in the last 50 years, revived interest in African cultural heritage and preservation raises complex questions about the problematic tensions between European, American, and African theories of archaeological and ethnographic practice.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Derbew, S. (PI)

AFRICAAM 191B: African American Art (ARTHIST 191, CSRE 191)

This course explores major art and political movements, such as the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement, and #BlackLivesMatter, that have informed and were inspired by African American artists. Students will read pivotal texts written by Black artists, historians, philosophers and activists; consider how artists have contended with issues of identity, race, gender, and sexuality; and learn about galleries, collections, and organizations founded to support the field. Attendance on the first day of class is a requirement for enrollment.
Last offered: Spring 2021 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

AFRICAAM 213: Culture and Revolution in Africa (COMPLIT 213, FRENCH 213E, HISTORY 243E)

This course investigates the relationship between culture, revolutionary decolonization, and post-colonial trajectories. It probes the multilayered development of 20th and 21st-century African literature amid decolonization and Cold War cultural diplomacy initiatives and the debates they generated about African literary aesthetics, African languages, the production of history, and the role of the intellectual. We will journey through national cultural movements, international congresses, and pan-African festivals to explore the following questions: What role did writers and artists play in shaping the discourse of revolutionary decolonization throughout the continent and in the diaspora? How have literary texts, films, and works of African cultural thought shaped and engaged with concepts such as "African unity" and "African cultural renaissance"? How have these notions influenced the imaginaries of post-independence nations, engendered new subjectivities, and impacted gender and generational dynamics? How did the ways of knowing and modes of writing promoted and developed in these contexts shape African futures?
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Seck, F. (PI)

AFRICAAM 218: Musics and Appropriation Throughout the World (CSRE 118D, MUSIC 118)

This course critically examines musical practices and appropriation through the amplification of intersectionality. We consider musics globally through recourse to ethnomusicological literature and critical race theories. Our approach begins from an understanding that the social and political contexts where musics are created, disseminated, and consumed inform disparate interpretations and meanings of music, as well as its sounds. Our goal is to shape our ears to hear the effects of slavery, colonialism, capitalism, nationalism, class, gender difference, militarism, and activism. We interrogate the process of appropriating musics throughout the world by making the power structures that shape privileges and exclusions audible.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

AFRICAAM 226: Mixed-Race Politics and Culture (AMSTUD 152K, CSRE 152K, ENGLISH 152K)

Today, almost one-third of Americans identify with a racial/ethnic minority group, and more than 9 million Americans identify with multiple races. What are the implications of such diversity for American politics and culture? This course approaches issues of race from an interdisciplinary perspective, employing research in the social sciences and humanities to assess how race shapes perceptions of identity as well as political behavior in 21st-century U.S. Issues surrounding the role of multiculturalism, immigration, acculturation, racial representation, and racial prejudice in American society. Topics include the political and social formation of race; racial representation in the media, arts, and popular culture; the rise and decline of the "one-drop rule" and its effect on political and cultural attachments; the politicization of census categories and the rise of the multiracial movement. If you have any questions about enrollment or need a permission number, please contact Farrah Moreno (farrahm@stanford.edu).
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Elam, M. (PI)

AFRICAAM 248C: Curating the Image: African Photography and the Politics of Exhibitions (HISTORY 248C, HISTORY 348C)

This course will be built around a photography exhibition at the Cantor Art Center, featuring the images of South African photographer, Sabelo Mlangeni. The class will invite students to consider both the history and the present-day state of photography on the African continent, exploring themes such as social-realist documentary photography and an African tradition of studio photography. The class will also reflect upon curatorial questions, including how, where, and why certain photographic work is displayed, and the aesthetics as well as politics of museum display.
| Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

AFRICAAM 254G: Black Magic: Ethnicity, Race, and Identity in Performance Cultures (AFRICAAM 154G, CSRE 154D, FEMGEN 154G, TAPS 154G, TAPS 354G)

In 2013, CaShawn Thompson devised a Twitter hashtag, #blackgirlmagic, to celebrate the beauty and intelligence of black women. Twitter users quickly adopted the slogan, using the hashtag to celebrate everyday moments of beauty, accomplishment, and magic. The slogan offered a contemporary iteration of an historical alignment: namely, the concept of "magic" with both Black people as well as "blackness." This course explores the legacy of Black magic--and black magic--through performance texts including plays, poetry, films, and novels. We will investigate the creation of magical worlds, the discursive alignment of magic with blackness, and the contemporary manifestation of a historical phenomenon. We will cover, through lecture and discussion, the history of black magic representation as well as the relationship between magic and religion. Our goal will be to understand the impact and history of discursive alignments: what relationship does "black magic" have to and for "black bodies"? How do we understand a history of performance practice as being caught up in complicated legacies of suspicion, celebration, self-definition? The course will give participants a grounding in black performance texts, plays, and theoretical writings. *This course will also satisfy the TAPS department WIM requirement.*
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Robinson, A. (PI)

AFRICAAM 258: Black Feminist Theater and Theory (CSRE 258, FEMGEN 258X, TAPS 258)

From the rave reviews garnered by Angelina Weld Grimke's lynching play, Rachel to recent work by Lynn Nottage on Rwanda, black women playwrights have addressed key issues in modern culture and politics. We will analyze and perform work written by black women in the U.S., Britain and the Caribbean in the 20th and 21st centuries. Topics include: sexuality, surrealism, colonialism, freedom, violence, colorism, love, history, community and more. Playwrights include: Angelina Grimke, Lorriane Hansberry, Winsome Pinnock, Adrienne Kennedy, Suzan- Lori Parks, Ntozake Shange, Pearl Cleage, Sarah Jones, Anna DeVeare Smith, Alice Childress, Lydia Diamond and Zora Neale Hurston.)
Terms: Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

AFRICAAM 264: Crossing the Atlantic: Race Identity in the "Old" and"New" African Diasporas (COMPLIT 264, CSRE 265, FRENCH 264E)

In this course, we will think critically about what we have come to call the African diaspora. We will travel the world virtually while exploring a selection of classic and understudied texts, in order to interrogate the relationship between culture, race, gender and identity in the "old" and "new" African diasporas. From literary texts to popular culture, we will relate each weekly reading to a hot topic. Our goal is to think cross-culturally and cross-linguistically about the themes covered by putting exciting works in conversation. The diverse topics and concepts discussed will include race, class, gender, identity, sexuality, migration, Afro-Caribbean religions, performance, violence, the body, metissage, Negritude, Negrismo, multiculturalism, nationalism, Afropolitanism and Afropean identities.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Seck, F. (PI)

AFRICAAM 294: Black Brazil: Afro-Brazilian Music, Literature, and Art (CSRE 194, ILAC 194G)

More enslaved people from Africa were forced to Brazil than any other country and Brazil was the last country to abolish the practice of slavery in the Americas. How do these two facts impact the cultural history of Brazil? How and why was the country mythologized as a 'racial democracy' in the twentieth century? This class engages these questions to explore the origins, development, and centrality of Afro-Brazilian culture. We will immerse ourselves in the cities of Salvador and Rio de Janeiro, explore samba and Carnaval, take a dive into syncretic religious practices such as Candomblé, observe dances like capoeira, and study literary and artistic expressions from an anti-racist perspective to gain a fuller picture of Brazilian society today. Taught in English.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

AFRICAST 46N: Show and Tell: Creating Provenance Histories of African Art (AFRICAAM 46N, HISTORY 46N)

Provenance refers to the chain of custody of a particular art object during its lifetime. Put another way, provenance refers to all the individuals, communities, and institutions who have owned (both legally and illegally), kept, stored, exhibited, displayed, managed, and sold an art object. Knowledge of provenance can both inflate and deflate the value of an art object and it can also shed light upon legal and ethical questions including assessing repatriation and restitution claims for African art objects. Furthermore, by telling the story of how a particular object moved through multiple pairs of hands, often over the course of centuries and across several continents, we gain nuanced appreciation of the social currency of artwork as well as of changing perceptions of aesthetic and monetary value, and insight into the extractive dynamics of colonialism and postcolonial global economies. For this class, you will have the unique opportunity to work first hand with an important African art collection in North America: the Richard H. Scheller Collection at Stanford University. You will select one object from the collection and create a detailed provenance history, documenting and detailing its origins, its movement across space and time, and its arrival to the Scheller collection in Silicon Valley. You will use archival materials from Scheller¿s collection, online databases and archives, and secondary literature. Your final project for the class will be to create a visual StoryMap that allows you to display your provenance history with narrative text and multimedia content. In this way, you will not only have completed a class assignment: you will also have constructed for posterity a remarkable hitherto unknown history of an important African art object.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

AFRICAST 58: Egypt in the Age of Heresy (AFRICAAM 58A, ARCHLGY 58, CLASSICS 58)

Perhaps the most controversial era in ancient Egyptian history, the Amarna period (c.1350-1334 BCE) was marked by great sociocultural transformation, notably the introduction of a new 'religion' (often considered the world's first form of monotheism), the construction of a new royal city, and radical departures in artistic and architectural styles. This course will introduce archaeological and textual sources of ancient Egypt, investigating topics such as theological promotion, projections of power, social structure, urban design, interregional diplomacy, and historical legacy during the inception, height, and aftermath of this highly enigmatic period. Students with or without prior background are equally encouraged.
Last offered: Autumn 2018 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

AFRICAST 117: African Archive Beyond Colonization (AFRICAAM 187, ARCHLGY 166, CLASSICS 186, CLASSICS 286, CSRE 166)

From street names to monuments, the material sediments of colonial time can be seen, heard, and felt in the diverse cultural archives of ancient and contemporary Africa. This seminar aims to examine the role of ethnographic practice in the political agendas of past and present African nations. In the quest to reconstruct an imaginary of Africa in space and time, students will explore these social constructs in light of the rise of archaeology during the height of European empire and colonization. Particularly in the last 50 years, revived interest in African cultural heritage and preservation raises complex questions about the problematic tensions between European, American, and African theories of archaeological and ethnographic practice.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Derbew, S. (PI)

AFRICAST 132: Literature and Society in Africa and the Caribbean (AFRICAAM 133, COMPLIT 133, COMPLIT 233A, CSRE 133E, FRENCH 133, JEWISHST 143)

This course provides students with an introductory survey of literature and cinema from Francophone Africa and the Caribbean in the 20th and 21st centuries. Students will be encouraged to consider the geographical, historical, and political connections between the Maghreb, the Caribbean, and Sub-Saharan Africa. This course will help students improve their ability to speak and write in French by introducing students to linguistic and conceptual tools to conduct literary and visual analysis. While analyzing novels and films, students will be exposed to a diverse number of topics such as national and cultural identity, race and class, gender and sexuality, orality and textuality, transnationalism and migration, colonialism and decolonization, history and memory, and the politics of language. Readings include the works of writers and filmmakers such as Aim¿ C¿saire, Albert Memmi, Ousmane Semb¿ne, Le¿la Sebbar, Mariama B¿, Maryse Cond¿, Dany Laferri¿re, Mati Diop, and special guest L¿onora Miano. Taught in French. Students are encouraged to complete FRENLANG 124 or successfully test above this level through the Language Center. This course fulfills the Writing in the Major (WIM) requirement.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Seck, F. (PI); Yu, K. (TA)

AFRICAST 220E: Renaissance Africa (COMPLIT 220, ILAC 220E, ILAC 320E)

Literature, art, and culture in Central/Southern Africa during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Emphasis on forms of exchange between Europeans and Africans in the Kingdom of Kongo and Angola. Readings in Portuguese and English. Taught in English.
Last offered: Autumn 2021 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

AFRICAST 248: Religion, Radicalization and Media in Africa since 1945 (AFRICAST 348, HISTORY 248, HISTORY 348, RELIGST 230X, RELIGST 330X)

What are the paths to religious radicalization, and what role have media- new and old- played in these conversion journeys? We examine how Pentecostal Christians and Reformist Muslims in countries such as South Africa, Nigeria, Sudan, and Ethiopia have used multiple media forms- newspapers, cell phones, TV, radio, and the internet- to gain new converts, contest the authority of colonial and post-colonial states, construct transnational communities, and position themselves as key political players.
Last offered: Spring 2021 | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

AMSTUD 1B: Media, Culture, and Society (COMM 1B)

The institutions and practices of mass media, including television, film, radio, and digital media, and their role in shaping culture and social life. The media's shifting relationships to politics, commerce, and identity.
Terms: Win | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

AMSTUD 4: The Sociology of Music (CSRE 4, SOC 4)

This course examines music - its production, its consumption, and it contested role in society - from a distinctly sociological lens. Why do we prefer certain songs, artists, and musical genres over others? How do we 'use' music to signal group membership and create social categories like class, race, ethnicity, and gender? How does music perpetuate, but also challenge, broader inequalities? Why do some songs become hits? What effects are technology and digital media having on the ways we experience and think about music? Course readings and lectures will explore the various answers to these questions by introducing students to key sociological concepts and ideas. Class time will be spent moving between core theories, listening sessions, discussion of current musical events, and an interrogation of students - own musical experiences. Students will undertake a number of short research and writing assignments that call on them to make sociological sense of music in their own lives, in the lives of others, and in society at large.
Last offered: Winter 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

AMSTUD 12A: Introduction to English III: Introduction to African American Literature (AFRICAAM 43)

In his bold study, What Was African American Literature?, Kenneth Warren defines African American literature as a late nineteenth- to mid-twentieth-century response to the nation's Jim Crow segregated order. But in the aftermath of the Jim Crow era and the Civil Rights movement, can critics still speak, coherently, of "African American literature"? And how does this political conception of African American literary production compare with accounts grounded in black language and culture? Taking up Warren's intervention, this course will explore African American literature from its earliest manifestations in the spirituals and slave narratives to texts composed at the height of desegregation and decolonization struggles at mid-century and beyond. English majors must take this class for 5 units.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

AMSTUD 18A: Jazz History: Ragtime to Bebop, 1900-1940 (MUSIC 18A)

From the beginning of jazz to the war years.
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Low, M. (PI); Haines, Z. (TA)

AMSTUD 18B: Jazz History: Bebop to Present, 1940-Present (AFRICAAM 18B, MUSIC 18B)

Modern jazz styles from Bebop to the current scene. Emphasis is on the significant artists of each style.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Low, M. (PI); Koplitz, D. (TA)

AMSTUD 27Q: Fashion and Photography

Preference to sophomores. Seminar on the history of 20th and 21st century fashion photographs, with a focus on American examples. Topics include: the relationship of fashion and photography to modernity; interplay between mass consumption and luxury; intersection of art and commerce; the role of designers, photographers, editors, and models; studio v. street photography; and the place of mass media, alternative magazines, and online publications. Photographers covered: Edward Steichen, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Steven Meisel, and others. Readings on American culture, film, photography, and fashion.
Last offered: Winter 2019 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

AMSTUD 42Q: Black & White Race Relations in American Fiction & Film (AFRICAAM 101Q, CSRE 41Q)

Movies and the fiction that inspires them; power dynamics behind production including historical events, artistic vision, politics, and racial stereotypes. What images of black and white does Hollywood produce to forge a national identity? How do films promote equality between the races? What is lost or gained in film adaptations of books? NOTE: Students must attend the first day; admission to the class will be determined based on an in class essay.
Last offered: Winter 2020 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

AMSTUD 43X: Starstuff: Space and the American Imagination

(Same as AMSTUD 143X. Students who wish to take it for 5 units, register for AMSTUD 143X.) Course on the history of twentieth and twenty-first century American images of space and how they shape conceptions of the universe. Covers representations made by scientists and artists, as well as scientific fiction films, TV, and other forms of popular visual culture. Topics will include the importance of aesthetics to understandings of the cosmos; the influence of media and technology on representations; the social, political, and historical context of the images; and the ways representations of space influence notions of American national identity and of cosmic citizenship.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Kessler, E. (PI)

AMSTUD 46N: American Moderns: Hemingway, Hurston, Faulkner, & Fitzgerald (ENGLISH 46N)

While Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald were flirting with the expatriate avant-garde in Europe, Zora Neale Hurston and William Faulkner were performing anthropological field-work in the local cultures of the American South. We will read four short novels - Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, and Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby - to address the tremendous diversity of concerns and styles of four writers who marked America's coming-of-age as a literary nation with their multifarious experiments in the regional and the global, the racial and the cosmopolitan, the macho and the feminist, the decadent and the impoverished."
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

AMSTUD 51Q: Comparative Fictions of Ethnicity (COMPLIT 51Q, CSRE 51Q)

Explorations of how literature can represent in complex and compelling ways issues of difference--how they appear, are debated, or silenced. Specific attention on learning how to read critically in ways that lead one to appreciate the power of literary texts, and learning to formulate your ideas into arguments. Course is a Sophomore Seminar and satisfies Write2. By application only
Terms: Spr | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP, Writing 2
Instructors: ; Palumbo-Liu, D. (PI)

AMSTUD 54: The History of Ideas in America, Part I (to 1900) (HISTORY 54)

(Same as HISTORY 154. 54 is 3 units; 154 is 5 units.) How Americans considered problems such as slavery, imperialism, and sectionalism. Topics include: the political legacies of revolution; biological ideas of race; the Second Great Awakening; science before Darwin; reform movements and utopianism; the rise of abolitionism and proslavery thought; phrenology and theories of human sexuality; and varieties of feminism. Sources include texts and images.
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

AMSTUD 54B: The History of Ideas in America, Part II (AMSTUD 154B, HISTORY 54B, HISTORY 154B)

This course explores intellectual life and culture in the United States during the twentieth century, examining the work and lives of social critics, essayists, artists, scientists, journalists, novelists, and sundry other thinkers. We will look at the life of the mind as a narrative of ongoing yet contested secularization and a series of debates about the meaning and nature of truth, knowing, selfhood, and the American democratic experience. Persistent themes include modernism and anti-modernism, shifts and changes in political liberalism and conservatism, disagreements about the role of the United States in the world, and the importance of distinctions based on race, ethnicity, religion, class, and gender.
| Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

AMSTUD 54N: African American Women's Lives (HISTORY 54N)

This course encourages students to think critically about historical sources and to use creative and rigorous historical methods to recover African American women's experiences, which often have been placed on the periphery of American history and American life.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-Gender, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Hobbs, A. (PI)

AMSTUD 63N: The Feminist Critique: The History and Politics of Gender Equality (CSRE 63N, FEMGEN 63N, HISTORY 63N)

This course explores the long history of ideas about gender and equality. Each week we read, dissect, compare, and critique a set of primary historical documents (political and literary) from around the world, moving from the 15th century to the present. We tease out changing arguments about education, the body, sexuality, violence, labor, politics, and the very meaning of gender, and we place feminist critics within national and global political contexts.
Last offered: Autumn 2020 | Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

AMSTUD 68N: Mark Twain and American Culture (ENGLISH 68N)

Preference to freshmen. Mark Twain defined the rhythms of our prose and the contours of our moral map. He recognized our extravagant promise and stunning failures, our comic foibles and¿ tragic flaws. He is viewed as the most American of American authors--and as one of the most universal. How does his work illuminate his society's (and our society's) responses to such issues as race, gender, technology, heredity vs. environment, religion, education, art, imperialism, animal welfare, and what it means to be "American"?
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

AMSTUD 75N: American Short Stories

How and why did the short story take root and flourish in an American context? Early works of classic American literature read alongside stories by women and minority writers, stretching from the early nineteenth century to the contemporary period.
Last offered: Autumn 2017 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

AMSTUD 100B: History of World Cinema II: The Films of Ernst Lubitsch (FILMEDIA 100B, FILMEDIA 300B)

Provides an overview of cinema made around the world between 1930 and 1960, highlighting technical, cultural, political, and economic forces that shaped mid-twentieth-century cinema. We study key film movements and national cinemas towards developing a formal, historical, and theoretical appreciation of a variety of commercial and art film traditions. Specific topics may vary by term/year/instructor. This term's topic: Ernst Lubitsch was: a stage actor in Berlin; a comic actor in early German cinema; Germany's most profitable director in the early 1920s; a director of subtle silent comedies in Hollywood in the later `20s; an innovative director of sound musicals and comedies in the 1930s; head of production for Paramount Pictures; and one of the few directors whose name and likeness were familiar to audiences across America, one famed for what became known as The Lubitsch Touch. The course considers Lubitsch in all these contexts. Charts intersections with collaborators, genre conventions, sexuality and censorship, and studio control. Lubitsch's style depends on performance, so attention will be given to film acting as he came to shape it.
| Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

AMSTUD 104Q: Picturing Americans

What do pictures reveal about individuals and their social, cultural, and historical world? Who or what might they conceal? This seminar uses visual depictions of Americans (paintings, photographs, films, comics, and more) as the starting point for discussions of American history, art, popular culture, social movements, and national identity, as well as questions of who has been represented and who has been overlooked. Literary and historical texts support and complement the close study of pictures from the late 19th century through the present.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Kessler, E. (PI)

AMSTUD 105B: Vietnamese American Cultural Studies (ASNAMST 105)

What is the role of Vietnamese American cultural production in Asian America? How do we reckon with dominant narratives of gratitude and freedom, or seek alternative histories by centering diasporic memory? And what does the 'post'-war generation have to say? To explore these questions, our class will examine writing and visual art from Vietnamese American cultural producers, including Trinh Mai, Thi Bui, Ocean Vuong, Adele Pham, Tuan Andrew Nguyen, and Soleil Ho. We'll think about connections between Vietnamese American cultural studies and Asian America through issues of abolition, sexual violence, representation, model minority, and more. Assignments will include free writes, discussion posts, a midterm, and a collaborative final project. Students will be encouraged to exercise their creativity and make connections to their everyday lives and communities.
| Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

AMSTUD 106: Holy Hipsters: Spiritual Rebellion and Hip Consumerism in Postwar America

This course sketches the history of the "hip" mode of spiritual rebellion from the 1950s Beat Generation to the "hipster witches" of today. In addition to explicating the socio-historical dynamics of spiritual dissent, this seminar will map the shifting terrain of "hip consumerism" and explore the intersection of race, class, and gender in the social construction of hipness.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Greer, J. (PI)

AMSTUD 106B: Black Mirror: A.I.Activism (ARTHIST 168A, CSRE 106A, ENGLISH 106A, SYMSYS 168A)

Lecture/small group course exploring intersections of STEM, arts and humanities scholarship and practice that engages with, and generated by, exponential technologies. Our course explores the social ethical and artistic implications of artificial intelligence systems with an emphasis on aesthetics, civic society and racial justice, including scholarship on decolonial AI, indigenous AI, disability activism AI, feminist AI and the future of work for creative industries.
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Elam, M. (PI)

AMSTUD 109: Militant Mischief: Radical Humor as Civil Disobedience in Postwar America

It is Halloween, 1967. Thousands of hippies costumed as witches and warlocks encircle the US Pentagon to perform a mock exorcism in protest of the Vietnam War. It is 1968, and a contingent of feminists crash a beauty pageant, and allegedly burn their bras to raise consciousness about the objectification of women. As a demonstration against animal cruelty, radical environmentalists in the 1980s dump red paint on celebrities wearing fur coats. All of these theatrical protests speak to a subtradition of postwar American political activism that blurs the boundaries between pranking and protest. In this course, we will explore how American activists have weaponized humor in protest movements through the use of guerrilla theatre, pranks, hacking, and memes. Focus will be directed towards movements that are serious but not sober, and the tradition of carnivalesque activism that links the anti-war movement, women's liberation and abortion activism, eco-radicalism, and Black Lives Matter. Altogether, this course will take humor seriously as a key component in the protest movements that have sought to change the landscape of modern American culture.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Greer, J. (PI)

AMSTUD 109Q: American Road Trips (HISTORY 69Q)

"Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road." --Jack Kerouac, On the Road, 1957. From Jack Kerouac's On the Road to Cheryl Strayed's Wild, this course explores epic road trips of the twentieth century. Travel is a fundamental social and cultural practice through which Americans have constructed ideas about the self, the nation, the past, and the future. The open road, as it is often called, offered excitement, great adventure, and the space for family bonding and memory making. But the footloose and fancy-free nature of travel that Jack Kerouac celebrated was available to some travelers but not to all. Engaging historical and literary texts, film, autobiography, memoir, photography, and music, we will consider the ways that travel and road trips have been represented in American culture. This course examines the following questions: How did men and women experience travel differently? How did the motivations for travel change over time? What role did race, ethnicity, class, relationships, and sexuality play in these trips? Students will work together to plan a road trip of their own which the class will take during the quarter.
Last offered: Autumn 2017 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

AMSTUD 111: Notes from the Underground: Alternative Media from Fanzines to Memes

Beginning with Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense (1776), independent publishing has been an integral component of American popular culture. In this course, we will historicize the self-publishing revolutions that have shaped the twentieth century, paying special attention to the social movements that created their own media ecosystems. Beginning with the amateur press associations of the 1920s, our attention will then turn to the fanzine network of Science Fiction writers in the 1930s and 1940s, the poetry mimeograph revolution of the 1950s, the underground press and comics (or "comix") of the 1960s, and the expansive culture of punk and "riotgrrrl" fanzines from the 1970s-1990s. The insights gleaned from our historical analysis will be applied to the digital culture of memes, and their use among progressive social movements. Visits to archives at Stanford will allow students to connect secondary and primary source research, thereby elucidating how scholars have analyzed the material culture of people on the margins of mainstream culture.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Greer, J. (PI)

AMSTUD 114X: Reading Comics (FILMEDIA 114, FILMEDIA 314)

The modern medium of comics throughout its 150 year history (mostly North American). The flexibility of the medium explored through the genres of humorous and dramatic comic strips, superheroes, undergrounds, independents, kids and comics, journalism, and autobiography. Innovative creators including McCay, Kirby, Barry, Ware, and critical writings including McCloud, Eisner, Groenstee. Topics include text/image relations, panel-to-panel relations, the page, caricature, sequence, subjective expression, seriality, realism vs cartoonism, comics in the context of the fine arts, and relations to other media.
Last offered: Winter 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

AMSTUD 120B: Superhero Theory (ARTHIST 120, ARTHIST 320, FILMEDIA 120, FILMEDIA 320)

With their fantastic powers, mutable bodies, multiple identities, complicated histories, and visual dynamism, the American superhero has been a rich vehicle for fantasies (and anxieties) for 80+ years across multiple media: comics, film, animation, TV, games, toys, apparel. This course centers upon the body of the superhero as it incarnates allegories of race, queerness, hybridity, sexuality, gendered stereotypes/fluidity, politics, vigilantism, masculinity, and monstrosity. They also embody a technological history that encompasses industrial, atomic, electronic, bio-genetic, and digital.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Bukatman, S. (PI)

AMSTUD 123: Getting the Picture: Photojournalism in Russia and the U.S. (COMM 123, REES 223, SLAVIC 123, SLAVIC 323)

The vast majority of photographs printed and consumed around the world appeared on the pages of magazines and newspapers. These pictures were almost always heavily edited, presented in carefully devised sequences, and printed alongside text. Through firsthand visual analysis of the picture presses of yesteryear, this course considers the ongoing meaning, circulation, and power of images as they shape a worldview in Russia as well as the US. In looking at points of contact between two world powers, we will cover the works of a wide array of authors, photographers, photojournalists and photographed celebrities (Lev Tolstoy, Margaret Bourke-White, Russian satirists Ilf and Petrov, John Steinbeck and Richard Capa, and many others). We will explore the relationship between photojournalistic practice of the past with that of our present, from the printed page to digital media, as well as the ethical quandaries posed by the cameras intervention into/shaping of modern history. No knowledge of Russian is required.
Last offered: Autumn 2021 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

AMSTUD 124A: The American West (ARTHIST 152, ENGLISH 124, HISTORY 151, POLISCI 124A)

The American West is characterized by frontier mythology, vast distances, marked aridity, and unique political and economic characteristics. This course integrates several disciplinary perspectives into a comprehensive examination of Western North America: its history, physical geography, climate, literature, art, film, institutions, politics, demography, economy, and continuing policy challenges. Students examine themes fundamental to understanding the region: time, space, water, peoples, and boom and bust cycles.
Terms: Win | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

AMSTUD 125C: The Lost Generation: American literature between the World Wars

This course explores American literature between the World Wars, tracing how themes of trauma, loss, disillusion, and dislocation, as well as issues of race, gender, and class, engendered vibrant "modernist" literary experimentation in this era. Writers may include John Dos Passos, Sherwood Anderson, Willa Cather, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Jean Toomer, Nella Larsen, William Faulkner, and Tillie Olsen.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

AMSTUD 126Q: California Dreaming

'A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest,' writes Joan Didion, 'remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his image.' From the Gold Rush to Hollywood to Silicon Valley, Yosemite to the Salton Sea, in this course we'll encounter a series of writers and artists whose work is set in California, or participates in its imagining, and throughout consider how culture and a sense of place are closely related. How does a novel, photograph, or film conjure a landscape or community? When we think of California, whose stories are included, and whose are left out? Possible texts: works by Mary Austin, Cesar Chavez, Mike Davis, the Depression-era Federal Writers Project, Rebecca Solnit, and John Steinbeck; films: Sunset Boulevard, Clueless, and There Will Be Blood; and the art of Carlton Watkins, Dorothea Lange, Richard Misrach, and Chiura Obata. For the final paper, students will write about a California place of their choice.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Bolten, R. (PI)

AMSTUD 127: American Style and the Rhetoric of Fashion (ARTHIST 165B, FILMEDIA 165B)

Focus on the visual culture of fashion, especially in an American context. Topics include: the representation of fashion in different visual media (prints, photographs, films, window displays, and digital images); the relationship of fashion to its historical context and American culture; the interplay between fashion and other modes of discourse, in particular art, but also performance, music, economics; and the use of fashion as an expression of social status, identity, and other attributes of the wearer. Texts by Thorstein Veblen, Roland Barthes, Dick Hebdige, and other theorists of fashion.
Last offered: Winter 2020 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

AMSTUD 128: The American Look: Fashion and American Culture

Course on fashion and its representation in various media that considers its place in US culture from the 19th century through the present. Close study of different categories of clothing, from dresses and suits to jeans and sneakers, addresses topics such as the relationship of fashion to its historical context and American culture; the interplay between fashion and other modes of discourse; and the use of fashion as an expression of social status, identity, and other attributes of the wearer.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

AMSTUD 139: Walking, Writing, and Freedom, the American Way

An interdisciplinary approach to walking, writing, and freedom in American culture and life. The course will also incorporate a walking and writing practice into weekly meetings to inspire students to think critically about the pedestrian, peripatetic, flaneur, pilgrim, hiker. Assignments will be generated from readings and walks. The reading list also includes scientific and theoretical work on the impact of walking on the mind. Ways AII. 3 units. Class limit 16
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Mesa, C. (PI)

AMSTUD 139C: American Literature and Social Justice (ENGLISH 139C, FEMGEN 139C)

How have American writers tried to expose and illuminate racism and sexism through fiction, creative nonfiction, journalism, and poetry? How have they tried to focus our attention on discrimination and prejudice based on race, gender, ethnicity, class, religion and national origin? What writing strategies can break through apathy and ignorance? What role, if any, can humor play in this process?
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

AMSTUD 142: The Literature of the Americas (COMPLIT 142, CSRE 142)

This course will focus on identifying moments of continuity and discontinuity in the literatures of the Americas, both in time and space. We will look at a wide-range of literatures of the Americas in comparative perspective, emphasizing continuities and crises that are common to North American, Central American, and South American literatures, from the colonial period until today. Topics include the definitions of such concepts as empire and colonialism, the encounters between worldviews of European and indigenous peoples, the emergence of creole and racially mixed populations, slavery, the New World voice, myths of America as paradise or utopia, the coming of modernism, twentieth-century avant-gardes, and distinctive modern episodes in unaccustomed conversation with each other.
Last offered: Winter 2022 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II

AMSTUD 143A: American Architecture (ARTHIST 143A, ARTHIST 343A, CEE 32R)

A historically based understanding of what defines American architecture. What makes American architecture American, beginning with indigenous structures of pre-Columbian America. Materials, structure, and form in the changing American context. How these ideas are being transformed in today's globalized world.
Terms: Aut | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

AMSTUD 143X: Starstuff: Space and the American Imagination (ARTHIST 264B, FILMEDIA 264B)

Course on the history of twentieth and twenty-first century American images of space and how they shape conceptions of the universe. Covers representations made by scientists and artists, as well as scientific fiction films, TV, and other forms of popular visual culture. Topics will include the importance of aesthetics to understandings of the cosmos; the influence of media and technology on representations; the social, political, and historical context of the images; and the ways representations of space influence notions of American national identity and of cosmic citizenship.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Kessler, E. (PI)

AMSTUD 145: Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley. The site and source of vibrant economic growth and technological innovation. A disruptive force in social, economic, and political systems. An interface between technology and academia, with the the quirky influence of the counterculture in the background. A surprisingly agile cultural behemoth that has reshaped human relationships and hierarchies of all sorts. A brotopia built on the preferences and predilections of rich, geeky white guys. A location with perpetually sunny skies and easy access to beaches and mountains. This seminar will unpack the myths surrounding Silicon Valley by exploring the people, places, industries, and ideas that have shaped it from post-WWII to the present. It takes an interdisciplinary approach to the subject and considers region's history and development; the products of Silicon Valley, from computers and circuit boards to search algorithms and social networks; and Silicon Valley's depictions in photography, film, television, and literature.
Terms: Win | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Kessler, E. (PI)

AMSTUD 146: Working

The average person spends one third of her life working. But what is work? Why do we do it? Whose labor is valued, and whose is invisible? From nineteenth-century factories to the girl boss, this course looks at the cultural imagination of work in the United States. Possible texts include: novels Mildred Pierce and My Year of Rest and Relaxation; television series Mad Men and The Hills; and nonfiction writing by Studs Terkel and Barbara Ehrenreich. Students will encounter related materials in visits to Stanford Special Collections and the upcoming Cantor Arts Center exhibition "Day Jobs." For their final assignment, students will conduct oral histories or produce creative work to be collected in a course publication.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Bolten, R. (PI)

AMSTUD 146A: Steinbeck

Introduction to the work of an American writer, beloved by general readers, often reviled by critics, whose career spanned from the Great Depression through World War II to the social upheavals of the 1960s. Focus on the social and political contexts of Steinbeck's major works; his fascination with California and Mexico; his interdisciplinary interest in marine biology and in philosophy; his diverse experiments with literary form, including drama and film.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

AMSTUD 149: Scams, Hoaxes, and Cons

From Herman Melville to Elizabeth Holmes, this course looks at the history of fakes and fraudsters in American culture, and how they continue to trick, unsettle, and fascinate us. How does a conman pick his mark? How does this relationship reinforce or subvert systems of power, race, gender, and class? What does a scam or hoax-and our willingness to trust in it-tell us about what we value or believe? Possible texts include writings by James Frey, Patricia Highsmith, and Mark Twain; films Nightmare Alley, The Sting, and The Blair Witch Project; and episodes from the recent television series The Dropout.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Bolten, R. (PI)

AMSTUD 150: Introduction to English II: American Literature and Culture to 1855 (ENGLISH 11B)

In this course we'll explore the uncanny world--at once strange and strangely familiar - of early American literature and culture, as we read diverse works - including poetry, captivity and slave narratives, seduction novels, Native American oratory, short stories, essays, autobiographies, and more - in relation to political, social, and artistic as well as literary contexts from the colonial period to the eve of Civil War. Note: students majoring (or planning to major) in English or American Studies should take the course for 5 units and for a letter grade.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Richardson, J. (PI)

AMSTUD 150A: Colonial and Revolutionary America (HISTORY 150A)

(HISTORY 50A is 3 units. HISTORY 150A is 5 units) This course surveys early American history from the onset of English colonization of North America in the late sixteenth century through the American Revolution and the creation of the United States in the late eighteenth. It situates the origins and the development of colonial American society as its peoples themselves experienced it, within the wider histories of the North American continent and the Atlantic basin. It considers the diversity of peoples and empires that made up these worlds as well as the complex movement of goods, peoples, and ideas that defined them. The British North American colonies were just one interrelated part of this wider complex. Yet out of that interconnected Atlantic world, those particular colonies produced a revolution for national independence that had a far-reaching impact on the world. The course, accordingly, explores the origins of this revolutionary movement and the nation state that it wrought, one that would rapidly ascend to hemispheric and then global prominence.
Terms: Aut | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

AMSTUD 151: Migration and Diaspora in American Art, 1800-Present (ARTHIST 151, ARTHIST 351, ASNAMST 151D, CSRE 151D)

This lecture course explores American art through the lens of immigration, exile, and diaspora. We will examine a wide range of work by immigrant artists and craftsmen, paying special attention to issues of race and ethnicity, assimilation, displacement, and political turmoil. Artists considered include Emmanuel Leutze, Thomas Cole, Joseph Stella, Chiura Obata, Willem de Kooning, Mona Hatoum, and Julie Mehretu, among many others. How do works of art reflect and help shape cultural and individual imaginaries of home and belonging?
Last offered: Winter 2019 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

AMSTUD 152G: Harlem Renaissance (AFRICAAM 152G, ENGLISH 152G)

Examination of the explosion of African American artistic expression during 1920s and 30s New York known as the Harlem Renaissance. Amiri Baraka once referred to the Renaissance as a kind of "vicious Modernism", as a "BangClash", that impacted and was impacted by political, cultural and aesthetic changes not only in the U.S. but Europe, the Caribbean and Latin America. Focus on the literature, graphic arts, and the music of the era in this global context.
Last offered: Autumn 2015 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

AMSTUD 152K: Mixed-Race Politics and Culture (AFRICAAM 226, CSRE 152K, ENGLISH 152K)

Today, almost one-third of Americans identify with a racial/ethnic minority group, and more than 9 million Americans identify with multiple races. What are the implications of such diversity for American politics and culture? This course approaches issues of race from an interdisciplinary perspective, employing research in the social sciences and humanities to assess how race shapes perceptions of identity as well as political behavior in 21st-century U.S. Issues surrounding the role of multiculturalism, immigration, acculturation, racial representation, and racial prejudice in American society. Topics include the political and social formation of race; racial representation in the media, arts, and popular culture; the rise and decline of the "one-drop rule" and its effect on political and cultural attachments; the politicization of census categories and the rise of the multiracial movement. If you have any questions about enrollment or need a permission number, please contact Farrah Moreno (farrahm@stanford.edu).
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Elam, M. (PI)

AMSTUD 154: The History of Ideas in America, Part I (to 1900) (HISTORY 154)

(Same as HISTORY 54. 154 is 5 units; 54 is 3 units.) How Americans considered problems such as slavery, imperialism, and sectionalism. Topics include: the political legacies of revolution; biological ideas of race; the Second Great Awakening; science before Darwin; reform movements and utopianism; the rise of abolitionism and proslavery thought; phrenology and theories of human sexuality; and varieties of feminism. Sources include texts and images.
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

AMSTUD 154B: The History of Ideas in America, Part II (AMSTUD 54B, HISTORY 54B, HISTORY 154B)

This course explores intellectual life and culture in the United States during the twentieth century, examining the work and lives of social critics, essayists, artists, scientists, journalists, novelists, and sundry other thinkers. We will look at the life of the mind as a narrative of ongoing yet contested secularization and a series of debates about the meaning and nature of truth, knowing, selfhood, and the American democratic experience. Persistent themes include modernism and anti-modernism, shifts and changes in political liberalism and conservatism, disagreements about the role of the United States in the world, and the importance of distinctions based on race, ethnicity, religion, class, and gender.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

AMSTUD 154D: American Disaster (ENGLISH 154D, SOC 154A)

How do we make sense of catastrophe? Who gets to write or make art about floods, fires, or environmental collapse? How do disaster and its depiction make visible or exacerbate existing social and economic inequalities? Beginning with the Jamestown colony and continuing to the present, this course explores the long history of disaster on the North American continent, and how it has been described by witnesses, writers, and artists. From the 1793 Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic to Hurricane Katrina, the Dust Bowl to contemporary explorations of climate change, this seminar will put in conversation a wide range of primary and secondary materials. Possible texts include writings by Mike Davis, Katherine Anne Porter, Rebecca Solnit, Jesmyn Ward, and Richard Wright; films Wildlife (2018), First Reformed (2017), When the Levees Broke (2006), and Free Willy II (1995); and art by Dorothea Lange, Winslow Homer, and Richard Misrach. For the final paper, students will write a critical essay on a disaster novel, film, or other work or object of their choice, or develop their own creative piece or oral history.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

AMSTUD 159: James Baldwin & Twentieth Century Literature (AFRICAAM 159, ENGLISH 159, FEMGEN 159)

Black, gay and gifted, Baldwin was hailed as a "spokesman for the race", although he personally, and controversially, eschewed titles and classifications of all kinds. This course examines his classic novels and essays as well his exciting work across many lesser-examined domains - poetry, music, theatre, sermon, photo-text, children's literature, public media, comedy and artistic collaboration. Placing his work in context with other writers of the 20C (Faulkner, Wright, Morrison) and capitalizing on a resurgence of interest in the writer (NYC just dedicated a year of celebration of Baldwin and there are 2 new journals dedicated to study of Baldwin), the course seeks to capture the power and influence of Baldwin's work during the Civil Rights era as well as his relevance in the "post-race" transnational 21st century, when his prescient questioning of the boundaries of race, sex, love, leadership and country assume new urgency.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Elam, M. (PI)

AMSTUD 167: Censorship in American Art (ARTHIST 160, CSRE 160, FEMGEN 167)

This course examines the art history of censorship in the United States. Paying special attention to the suppression of queer, Black and Latinx visual and performance art, including efforts to vandalize works and defund institutions, students will explore a variety of writing such as news articles, manifestos, letters, protest signs, scholarly texts, and court proceedings. The course approaches censorship as an act to restrict freedom of expression and, however unwittingly, as a mode of provocation and publicity.
Last offered: Autumn 2021 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

AMSTUD 177B: Contemporary American Short Stories (ENGLISH 177B)

An exploration of the power and diversity of the American short story ranging from the 1970s to the present day. By examining short stories historically, critically, and above all as art objects, students will learn how to read, interpret, critique, and enjoy short stories as social, political, and humanist documents. Students will learn techniques to craft their own short stories and their own critical essays in a course that combines creative practice and the art of critical appreciation.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

AMSTUD 183: Re-Imagining American Borders (CSRE 183, FEMGEN 183)

Borders of all kinds in this America have been tight for a long time, and the four years of the Trump regime have shown new violent dangers in such divisions in race, ethnicity, gender and class in this country. In the inordinately difficult years of 2020-2021 as the pandemic has uncovered even more lethal created divisions via closed crossings and early deaths reflecting difference, our task in this course is to both examine how systemic inequities have been developed as part of American history and our daily life, especially as we see the pandemic effects, and to see how American artists, including novelists, poets, visual and performance artists, filmmakers, photographers and essayists, have developed approaches to examine, resist or re-create how the shards of our fractured identities may make sense to us. Films from Raoul Peck on colonialism and white supremacy in this America, Barry Jenkins and Kara Walker on slavery in visual narratives, poets Shailja Patel, Naomi Shihab Nye, Claudia Rankine, Layli Long Soldier, Janice Lobo Sapiago, Felicia Zamora, Zhenyu Yuan, from within the power of multiple languages, and Ta-Nehisi Coates and Nikole Hannah-Jones of the '1619' Project who bring US education into the story, all speak to recent art and social action. Nearby guest speakers from the newly produced Mini Museum Honoring the Black Panther Party in West Oakland, and creators of the Stanford Graphic Novel Project's visual art book with revelations on California prison conditions will also provide more vivid examples for all. Students' work for the quarter includes both written analysis and creative final projects.
Last offered: Autumn 2021 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II

AMSTUD 186D: Asian American Art (ARTHIST 186B, ASNAMST 186B)

This lecture course explores the work of artists, craftspeople, and laborers of Asian descent from 1850-present. Rather than a discrete identity category, we approach 'Asian American' as an expansive, relational term that encompasses heterogenous experiences of racialization and migration. Key themes include the history of immigration and displacement; diasporic geographies; art, activism, and community; feminist/queer perspectives; and interethnic conflict and solidarity. The course coincides with the public launch exhibitions of the Asian American Art Initiative (AAAI) at the Cantor Arts Center and includes regular visits to the museum and Stanford Special Collections.
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

AMSTUD 251C: The American Enlightenment (HISTORY 251C)

The eighteenth century saw the rise of many exciting new political, religious, and scientific theories about human happiness, perfectibility, and progress that today we call "the Enlightenment." Most people associate the Enlightenment with Europe, but in this course we will explore the many ways in which the specific conditions of eighteenth-century North America --such as slavery, the presence of large numbers of indigenous peoples, a colonial political context, and even local animals, rocks, and plants--also shaped the major questions and conversations of the people who strove to become "enlightened." We'll also explore how American Enlightenment ideas have profoundly shaped the way Americans think today about everything from politics to science to race. The class is structured as lecture and discussion, with deep reading in primary sources from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Last offered: Summer 2021 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

AMSTUD 253F: Thinking the American Revolution (HISTORY 253F, HISTORY 353F)

No period in American history has generated as much creative political thinking as the era of the American Revolution. This course explores the origins and development of that thought from the onset of the dispute between Great Britain and its American colonies over liberty and governance through the debates surrounding the construction and implementation of the United States federal Constitution.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

AMSTUD 290: Movies and Methods: The Judy Garland Seminar (FILMEDIA 290, FILMEDIA 490)

Acting and performance have been prominent in cinema throughout the medium's history, but have received relatively little attention in film studies. Performance provides a compellingly different way of engaging with a film. The Judy Garland Seminar proposes, first, that we attend to the centrality of performance in film, and, second, that the work Garland produced across three decades demonstrates not only a coherence and consistency, but also a variety and richness, that merits close examination. Judy Garland was one of the most accomplished performers of her time, her seeming naturalism a function of her fierce discipline. Her career straddled multiple media: film, recording, live performance and television. From childhood, her life was lived in the public eye and her personal travails were as well known as the characters she incarnated on screen - in fact, her biography informs some of her later film roles. Garland's work in this period occurs primarily in two genres: musical comedy and melodrama (and what we can call the melodramatic musical). Some of her best films were directed by two of the foremost studio directors - Vincente Minnelli and George Cukor - intersections of star, genre, and director will inform the seminar, as will explorations of Garland's work on television and the concert stage. The seminar will begin with an overview of the writing around film acting and the star text while considering some of Judy's earlier film appearances. Classes will be divided between critical engagement with assigned readings and close readings of Judy Garland performances. The screening list will be supplemented with ample clips from other films, and earlier work will be compared to later performances wherever useful. Both a mainstream star and a gay cult icon, Garland's persona was read differently by different audiences, so the seminar will also consider the reception of Judy Garland and her significance then and now.
Terms: Spr | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II | Repeatable 2 times (up to 10 units total)
Instructors: ; Bukatman, S. (PI)

ANTHRO 1: Introduction to Cultural and Social Anthropology (ANTHRO 201)

This course introduces basic anthropological concepts and presents the discipline's distinctive perspective on society and culture. The power of this perspective is illustrated by exploring vividly-written ethnographic cases that show how anthropological approaches illuminate contemporary social and political issues in a range of different cultural sites. In addition to class meeting time, a one-hour, once weekly required discussion section will be assigned in the first week of the quarter.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Thiranagama, S. (PI)

ANTHRO 1S: Introduction to Cultural and Social Anthropology (ANTHRO 101S, ANTHRO 201S)

This course introduces basic anthropological concepts and presents the discipline's distinctive perspective on society and culture. The power of this perspective is illustrated by exploring vividly-written ethnographic cases that show how anthropological approaches illuminate contemporary social and political issues in a range of different cultural sites.
Terms: Sum | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Baker, B. (PI)

ANTHRO 3: Introduction to Archaeology (ARCHLGY 1)

This course is a general introduction to archaeology and world prehistory, with additional emphases on the logics, practices, methods and contemporary relevance of archaeological knowledge production. Topics will range from the earliest Homo sapiens to critical considerations of the archaeology of more contemporary contexts and the politics of the past and ancient environments - recognizing that the "past" is not just about the past.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

ANTHRO 42: Megacities (URBANST 142)

This class will examine a variety of ways that the city has been represented and understood in anthropology, architecture, literature, film, and journalism in order to better understand how everyday life and experience has been read in conjunction with urban forms. Issues covered will include the co-constitution of space and identities; consumption, spectacle, and economic disparity; transportation and health; colonialism and post-colonialism. Assignments will include writing and drawing projects based on close observation and reading.
Terms: Spr | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ANTHRO 82P: The Literature of Psychosis (HUMBIO 162L, PSYC 82, PSYC 282)

One of the great gifts of literature is its ability to give us insight into the internal worlds of others. This is particularly true of that state clinicians call "psychosis." But psychosis is a complex concept. It can be terrifying and devastating for patients and families, and yet shares characteristics with other, less pathological states, such as mysticism and creativity. How then can we begin to make sense of it? In this course, we will examine the first-hand experience of psychosis. We will approach it from multiple perspectives, including clinical descriptions, works of art, and texts by writers ranging from Shakespeare, to the science fiction writer Philip K. Dick, to patients attempting to describe their experience. This class is not only for students thinking of careers in medicine, psychology or anthropology, but also readers and writers interested exploring extraordinary texts. There are no prerequisites necessary; all that is needed is a love of language and a curiosity about the secrets of other minds.
Last offered: Spring 2021 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP | Repeatable 2 times (up to 10 units total)

ANTHRO 101S: Introduction to Cultural and Social Anthropology (ANTHRO 1S, ANTHRO 201S)

This course introduces basic anthropological concepts and presents the discipline's distinctive perspective on society and culture. The power of this perspective is illustrated by exploring vividly-written ethnographic cases that show how anthropological approaches illuminate contemporary social and political issues in a range of different cultural sites.
Terms: Sum | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Baker, B. (PI)

ANTHRO 103B: History of Archaeological Thought (ARCHLGY 103)

Introduction to the history of archaeology and the forms that the discipline takes today, emphasizing developments and debates over the past five decades. Historical overview of culture, historical, processual and post-processual archaeology, and topics that illustrate the differences and similarities in these theoretical approaches. Satisfies Archaeology WIM requirement.
Terms: Spr | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Trivedi, M. (PI)

ANTHRO 127D: Heritage Politics (ARCHLGY 127, ARCHLGY 227)

Heritage is a matter of the heart and not the brain, David Lowenthal once said. It does not seek to explore the past, but to domesticate it and enlist it for present causes. From the drafting of the first royal decrees on ancient monuments in the 17th century, political interests have had a hand in deciding which traditions, monuments and sites best represent and best serve the needs of the nation. The sum of these domestication efforts, the laws, institutions and practices established to protect and manage heritage, is what we call heritage governance. In this seminar you will learn about the politics of 21st century heritage governance at national and international level. Students will become familiar with key conventions and learn about the functioning of heritage institutions. We will also examine the hidden practices and current political developments that impact heritage governance: how UNESCO heritage sites become bargaining tools in international relations, how EU heritage policies are negotiated in the corridors of Brussels, and how the current re-nationalization of Western politics can affect what we come to know as our common past.
Last offered: Spring 2019 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

ANTHRO 128: Visual Studies

Drawing on anthropology, art history, cultural studies, and other fields, this course explores how and why one might want to think critically about the politics of visuality, social imagination, the politics of making and consuming images and things, iconophonia and iconophilia, the classification of people and things into 'artists' and 'art', and cultural production more generally.
Last offered: Spring 2018 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, WAY-A-II

ANTHRO 134D: Introduction to Museum Practice (ARCHLGY 134, ARCHLGY 234, ARTHIST 284B)

This is a hands-on museum practicum course open to students of all levels that will culminate in a student-curated exhibit. It entails a survey of the range of museum responsibilities and professions including the purpose, potential, and challenges of curating collections. While based at the Stanford University Archaeology Collections (SUAC), we will visit other campus collections and sites. Students will plan and realize an exhibition at the Stanford Archaeology Center, gaining skills in collections management, research, interpretation, and installation.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE | Repeatable 3 times (up to 15 units total)
Instructors: ; Raad, D. (PI)

APPPHYS 100Q: INDIGO

Preference to sophomores. Indigo as a plant, biomolecule, dye, ancient craft material, and organic semiconductor; the interest of natural dyes for both biomimetic engineering and indigenous artistic practices. Students will plant and tend an indigo crop, harvest and process indigo leaves for dyestuffs, and dye textiles using an organic vat process. Lectures, readings and discussions will focus on the biochemistry and physics of indigo dye, traditional indigo textile arts, environmental impacts of industrial-scale indigo dyeing of denim, roles of indigo in upcycling, craft-washing, and the aesthetics of indigo in western and non-western cultural frames.
Last offered: Summer 2021 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ARABLANG 10: Arabic Calligraphy

Arabic calligraphy is the supreme art of the Islamic world. Other Islamic arts, such as architecture, metal work, ceramics, glass, and textiles, draw on calligraphy as their principal source of embellishment. Interactive lecture-workshop sketches Arabic calligraphy's development and illustrates the various types of Arabic calligraphy in use today use. Prerequisite: Knowledge of Arabic writing and reading required. May be repeated 3 times for credit.
Terms: Win, Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE | Repeatable 3 times (up to 9 units total)
Instructors: ; Barhoum, K. (PI)

ARCHLGY 1: Introduction to Archaeology (ANTHRO 3)

This course is a general introduction to archaeology and world prehistory, with additional emphases on the logics, practices, methods and contemporary relevance of archaeological knowledge production. Topics will range from the earliest Homo sapiens to critical considerations of the archaeology of more contemporary contexts and the politics of the past and ancient environments - recognizing that the "past" is not just about the past.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Bauer, A. (PI)

ARCHLGY 21Q: Eight Great Archaeological Sites in Europe (CLASSICS 21Q)

Preference to sophomores. Focus is on excavation, features and finds, arguments over interpretation, and the place of each site in understanding the archaeological history of Europe. Goal is to introduce the latest archaeological and anthropological thought, and raise key questions about ancient society. The archaeological perspective foregrounds interdisciplinary study: geophysics articulated with art history, source criticism with analytic modeling, statistics interpretation. A web site with resources about each site, including plans, photographs, video, and publications, is the basis for exploring.
Terms: Win, Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, Writing 2
Instructors: ; Shanks, M. (PI)

ARCHLGY 58: Egypt in the Age of Heresy (AFRICAAM 58A, AFRICAST 58, CLASSICS 58)

Perhaps the most controversial era in ancient Egyptian history, the Amarna period (c.1350-1334 BCE) was marked by great sociocultural transformation, notably the introduction of a new 'religion' (often considered the world's first form of monotheism), the construction of a new royal city, and radical departures in artistic and architectural styles. This course will introduce archaeological and textual sources of ancient Egypt, investigating topics such as theological promotion, projections of power, social structure, urban design, interregional diplomacy, and historical legacy during the inception, height, and aftermath of this highly enigmatic period. Students with or without prior background are equally encouraged.
Last offered: Autumn 2018 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

ARCHLGY 103: History of Archaeological Thought (ANTHRO 103B)

Introduction to the history of archaeology and the forms that the discipline takes today, emphasizing developments and debates over the past five decades. Historical overview of culture, historical, processual and post-processual archaeology, and topics that illustrate the differences and similarities in these theoretical approaches. Satisfies Archaeology WIM requirement.
Terms: Spr | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Trivedi, M. (PI)

ARCHLGY 117: Virtual Italy (CLASSICS 115, ENGLISH 115, HISTORY 238C, ITALIAN 115)

Classical Italy attracted thousands of travelers throughout the 1700s. Referring to their journey as the "Grand Tour," travelers pursued intellectual passions, promoted careers, and satisfied wanderlust, all while collecting antiquities to fill museums and estates back home. What can computational approaches tell us about who traveled, where and why? We will read travel accounts; experiment with parsing; and visualize historical data. Final projects to form credited contributions to the Grand Tour Project, a cutting-edge digital platform. No prior programming experience necessary.
Terms: Win | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Ceserani, G. (PI)

ARCHLGY 118: Engineering the Roman Empire (CLASSICS 168)

Enter the mind, the drafting room, and the building site of the Roman architects and engineers whose monumental projects impressed ancient and modern spectators alike. This class explores the interrelated aesthetics and mechanics of construction that led to one of the most extensive building programs undertaken by a pre-modern state. Through case studies ranging from columns, domes and obelisks to road networks, machines and landscape modification, we investigate the materials, methods, and knowledge behind Roman innovation, and the role of designed space in communicating imperial identity.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

ARCHLGY 127: Heritage Politics (ANTHRO 127D, ARCHLGY 227)

Heritage is a matter of the heart and not the brain, David Lowenthal once said. It does not seek to explore the past, but to domesticate it and enlist it for present causes. From the drafting of the first royal decrees on ancient monuments in the 17th century, political interests have had a hand in deciding which traditions, monuments and sites best represent and best serve the needs of the nation. The sum of these domestication efforts, the laws, institutions and practices established to protect and manage heritage, is what we call heritage governance. In this seminar you will learn about the politics of 21st century heritage governance at national and international level. Students will become familiar with key conventions and learn about the functioning of heritage institutions. We will also examine the hidden practices and current political developments that impact heritage governance: how UNESCO heritage sites become bargaining tools in international relations, how EU heritage policies are negotiated in the corridors of Brussels, and how the current re-nationalization of Western politics can affect what we come to know as our common past.
Last offered: Spring 2019 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

ARCHLGY 134: Introduction to Museum Practice (ANTHRO 134D, ARCHLGY 234, ARTHIST 284B)

This is a hands-on museum practicum course open to students of all levels that will culminate in a student-curated exhibit. It entails a survey of the range of museum responsibilities and professions including the purpose, potential, and challenges of curating collections. While based at the Stanford University Archaeology Collections (SUAC), we will visit other campus collections and sites. Students will plan and realize an exhibition at the Stanford Archaeology Center, gaining skills in collections management, research, interpretation, and installation.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE | Repeatable 3 times (up to 15 units total)
Instructors: ; Raad, D. (PI)

ARCHLGY 151: Ten Things: An Archaeology of Design (CLASSICS 151)

Connections among science, technology, society and culture by examining the design of a prehistoric hand axe, Egyptian pyramid, ancient Greek perfume jar, medieval castle, Wedgewood teapot, Edison's electric light bulb, computer mouse, Sony Walkman, supersonic aircraft, and BMW Mini. Interdisciplinary perspectives include archaeology, cultural anthropology, science studies, history and sociology of technology, cognitive science, and evolutionary psychology.
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

ARCHLGY 166: African Archive Beyond Colonization (AFRICAAM 187, AFRICAST 117, CLASSICS 186, CLASSICS 286, CSRE 166)

From street names to monuments, the material sediments of colonial time can be seen, heard, and felt in the diverse cultural archives of ancient and contemporary Africa. This seminar aims to examine the role of ethnographic practice in the political agendas of past and present African nations. In the quest to reconstruct an imaginary of Africa in space and time, students will explore these social constructs in light of the rise of archaeology during the height of European empire and colonization. Particularly in the last 50 years, revived interest in African cultural heritage and preservation raises complex questions about the problematic tensions between European, American, and African theories of archaeological and ethnographic practice.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Derbew, S. (PI)

ARTHIST 1A: Decolonizing the Western Canon: Introduction to Art and Architecture from Prehistory to Medieval (CLASSICS 56)

Traditional Art History viewed the Renaissance as its pinnacle; it privileged linear perspective and lifelikeness and measured other traditions against this standard, neglecting art from the Near East, Egypt, the Middle Ages, or Islam. This course will disrupt this colonizing vision by conceptualizing artworks as "methexis" (participation, liveliness, or enactment) as opposed to mimesis (imitation or lifelikeness). We will study the development of the Western canon and its systematic eradication of difference through a renewed understanding of what an artwork is.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

ARTHIST 1B: How to Look at Art and Why: An Introduction to the History of Western Painting

This course explores the relation of art to life - how and why works of art, even from hundreds of years ago, matter in a person's life. It trains students to find the words to share their thoughts about art with their peers, friends, and family. Some fundamental questions the course considers: How do we get beyond the idea that the study and making of art are elite, 'privileged' activities apart from the real world? How do we develop a sense of discernment - of deciding for ourselves which artists matter, and which don't - without being a snob? How can works of art teach us to feel the wonder of being alive and our deep debt to the past, to the dead? Focusing on painters such as Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Goya, Manet, Morisot, and Charlotte Salomon, this course will pursue these questions with the aim of challenging and encouraging students to develop their own ways of thinking and feeling - generously and ethically - about the past and the present. Sections will focus on original works of art at the Cantor Arts Center. No prerequisites required.
Terms: Aut | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Nemerov, A. (PI)

ARTHIST 2: Asian Arts and Cultures (JAPAN 60)

An exploration of the visual arts of East and South Asia from ancient to modern times, in their social, religious, literary and political contexts. Analysis of major monuments of painting, sculpture and architecture will be organized around themes that include ritual and funerary arts, Buddhist art and architecture across Asia, landscape and narrative painting, culture and authority in court arts, and urban arts in the early modern world.
Terms: Win | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Vinograd, R. (PI)

ARTHIST 3: Introduction to World Architecture (CLASSICS 54)

This course offers an expansive and wide-ranging introduction to architecture and urban design from the earliest human constructions to the mid-20th century. The examples range from the Americas to Europe, the Middle East, South and East Asia. The diverse technologies and materialities of building are addressed throughout and an overriding concern is to understand architecture as a sensible manifestation of particular cultures, whether societies or individuals. To the same ends, student writing assignments will involve the analysis of local space, whether a room or a building, and then the built environment at large
Last offered: Spring 2021 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

ARTHIST 80N: Looking into Portraits: Identities in Question

This seminar explores multiple aspects of this basically simple visual category - images of particular persons. We look at portraits from diverse eras and cultures, as many as possible in their original media of painting, sculpture, drawings, prints, photographs or videos from the Cantor or other local collections, and others in reproduction. We also read and discuss brief essays and articles by art historians and cultural critics as guides for approaching and understanding portraits. Our primary focus will be on the multiple purposes of portraiture, from commemoration, projection of authority, and self-fashioning to asserting social status, cultural role, and personal identity. Along with the history of art and visual culture studies we will benefit from the approaches and insights of fields such as political and social history, religious studies, anthropology, and neuroscience.
| Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ARTHIST 100N: The Artist in Ancient Greek Society (CLASSICS 18N)

Given the importance of art to all aspects of their lives, the Greeks had reason to respect their artists. Yet potters, painters and even sculptors possessed little social standing. Why did the Greeks value the work of craftsmen but not the men themselves? Why did Herodotus dismiss those who worked with their hands as "mechanics?" What prompted Homer to claim that "there is no greater glory for a man than what he achieves with his own hands," provided that he was throwing a discus and not a vase on a wheel? Painted pottery was essential to the religious and secular lives of the Greeks. Libations to the gods and to the dead required vessels from which to pour them. Economic prosperity depended on the export of wine and oil in durable clay containers. At home, depictions of gods and heroes on vases reinforced Greek values and helped parents to educate their children. Vases depicting Dionysian excess were produced for elite symposia, from which those who potted and painted them were excluded. Sculptors were less lowly but still regarded as "mechanics," with soft bodies and soft minds (Xenophon), "indifferent to higher things" (Plutarch). The seminar addresses such issues as we work to acknowledge our own privilege and biases. Students will read and discuss texts, write response papers and present slide lectures on aspects of the artist's profession.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Maxmin, J. (PI)

ARTHIST 101: Introduction to Greek Art I: The Archaic Period (CLASSICS 161)

The class considers the development of Greek art from 1000-480 and poses the question, how Greek was Greek art? In the beginning, as Greece emerges from 200 years of Dark Ages, their art is cautious, conservative and more abstract than life-like, closer to Calder than Michelangelo. While Homer describes the rippling muscles (and egos) of Bronze Age heroes, his fellow painters and sculptors prefer abstraction. This changes in the 7th century, when travel to and trade with the Near East transform Greek culture. What had been an insular society becomes cosmopolitan, enriched by the sophisticated artistic traditions of lands beyond the Aegean "frog pond." Imported Near Eastern bronzes and ivories awaken Greek artists to a wider range of subjects, techniques and ambitions. Later in the century, Greeks in Egypt learn to quarry and carve hard stone from Egyptian masters. Throughout the 6th century, Greek artists absorb what they had borrowed, compete with one another, defy their teachers, test the tolerance of the gods and eventually produce works of art that speak with a Greek accent. By the end of the archaic period, images of gods and mortals bear little trace of alien influence or imprint, yet without the contributions of Egypt and the Near East, Greek art as we know it would have been unthinkable.
Terms: Aut | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Maxmin, J. (PI)

ARTHIST 102: Introduction to Greek Art II: From the Parthenon to Scopas (CLASSICS 162)

The class begins with the art, architecture and political ideals of Periclean Athens, from the emergence of the city as the political and cultural center of Greece in 450 to its defeat in the Peloponnesian War in 404. It then considers how the Athenians (shell-shocked from war and three outbreaks of plague) and the rest of 4th century Greece rebuild their lives and the monuments that define them. Earlier 5th century traditions endure, with subtle changes, in the work of sculptors such as Kephisodotos. Less subtle are the outlook and output of his son Praxiteles. In collaboration with Phryne, his muse and mistress, Praxiteles challenged the canons and constraints of the past with the first female nude in the history of Greek sculpture. His gender-bending gods and men were equally audacious, their shiny surfaces reflecting Plato's discussion of Eros and androgyny. Scopas was also a man of his time, but pursued different interests. Drawn to the interior lives of men and woman, his tormented Trojan War heroes and victims are still scarred by memories of the Peloponnesian War, and a world away from the serene faces of the Parthenon. His Maenad, who has left this world for another, belongs to the same years as Euripides' Bacchae and, at the same time, anticipates the torsion and turbulence of Bernini and the Italian Baroque. The history and visual culture of these years remind us that we are not alone, that the Greeks grappled as we do with the inevitability and consequences of war, disease and inner daemons.
Terms: Win | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Maxmin, J. (PI)

ARTHIST 106: Byzantine Art and Architecture, 300-1453 C.E. (ARTHIST 306, CLASSICS 171)

This course explores the art and architecture of the Eastern Mediterranean: Constantinople, Jerusalem, Alexandria, Antioch, Damascus, Thessaloniki, and Palermo, 4th-15th centuries. Applying an innovative approach, we will probe questions of phenomenology and aesthetics, focusing our discussion on the performance and appearance of spaces and objects in the changing diurnal light, in the glitter of mosaics and in the mirror reflection and translucency of marble.
Last offered: Spring 2021 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

ARTHIST 110: French Painting from Watteau to Monet (ARTHIST 310, FRENCH 110, FRENCH 310)

This course offers a survey of painting in France from 1700 to around 1900. It introduces major artists, artworks, and the concepts used by contemporary observers and later art historians to make sense of this extraordinarily rich period. Overarching themes discussed in the class will include the dueling legacies of coloristic virtuosity and classical formalism, new ways of representing visual perception, the opposing artistic effects of absorption and theatricality, the rise and fall of official arts institutions, and the participation of artists and artworks in political upheaval and social change. The course ends with an interrogation of the concept of modernity and its emergence out of dialogue and conflict with artists of the past. Students will learn and practice formal analysis of paintings, as well as interpretations stressing historical context.
Last offered: Winter 2019 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ARTHIST 115: The Italian Renaissance, or the Art of Success (ARTHIST 315, ITALIAN 115A, ITALIAN 315A)

How come that, even if you have never set foot in Italy, you have heard of Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael? What made them so incredibly famous, back then as well as today? This course examines the shooting of those, and other, artists to fame. It provides in-depth analyses of their innovative drawing practices and the making of masterpieces, taking you through a virtual journey across some of the greatest European and American collections. At the same time, this course also offers a study of the mechanics of success, how opportunities are created and reputations managed, and what role art plays in the construction of class and in today's national politics.
Last offered: Autumn 2021 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ARTHIST 118A: Space, Public Discourse and Revolutionary Practices (CSRE 95I, GLOBAL 145)

This course examines the mediums of public art that have been voices of social change, protestnand expressions of community desire. It will offer a unique glimpse into Iran¿sncontemporary art and visual culture through the investigation of public art practices such asngraffiti and street art, as well as older traditions of Naghali and Iranian Coffeehouse Painting.nnBeginning Iranian case studies will be expanded in comparison with global examples that spannprojects that include Insite (San Diego/Tijuana), Project Row Houses (Houston, TX) the DMZnProject (Korea), Munster Skulpture Projects (Germany), among others. Students will alsonexamine the infrastructural conditions of public art, such as civic, public, and private funding,nrelationships with local communities, and the life of these projects as they move in and out ofnthe artworld. This encompassing view anchors a legacy of Iranian cultural contributions in largerntrajectories of art history, contemporary art, and community arts practice. Guest artists,ncurators, and researchers with site visits included. Students will propose either new public artnproposals, exhibitions, or research to provoke their own ideas while engaging the ever changingnstate of public discourse in these case studies
| Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ARTHIST 119: Love at First Sight: Visual Desire, Attraction, and the Pleasures of Art (ARTHIST 319, FRENCH 149, FRENCH 349, ITALIAN 149, ITALIAN 349)

Why do dating sites rely on photographs? Why do we believe that love is above all a visual force? How is pleasure, even erotic pleasure, achieved through looking? While the psychology of impressions offers some answers, this course uncovers the ways poets, songwriters, and especially artists have explored myths and promoted ideas about the coupling of love and seeing. Week by week, we will be reflecting on love as political critique, social disruption, and magical force. And we will do so by examining some of the most iconic works of art, from Dante's writings on lovesickness to Caravaggio's Narcissus, studying the ways that objects have shifted from keepsakes to targets of our cares. While exploring the visual roots and evolutions of what has become one of life's fundamental drives, this course offers a passionate survey of European art from Giotto's kiss to Fragonard's swing that elicits stimulating questions about the sensorial nature of desire and the human struggle to control emotions.
Last offered: Summer 2021 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ARTHIST 120: Superhero Theory (AMSTUD 120B, ARTHIST 320, FILMEDIA 120, FILMEDIA 320)

With their fantastic powers, mutable bodies, multiple identities, complicated histories, and visual dynamism, the American superhero has been a rich vehicle for fantasies (and anxieties) for 80+ years across multiple media: comics, film, animation, TV, games, toys, apparel. This course centers upon the body of the superhero as it incarnates allegories of race, queerness, hybridity, sexuality, gendered stereotypes/fluidity, politics, vigilantism, masculinity, and monstrosity. They also embody a technological history that encompasses industrial, atomic, electronic, bio-genetic, and digital.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Bukatman, S. (PI)

ARTHIST 142: Architecture Since 1900 (CEE 32G)

Art 142 is an introduction to the history of architecture since 1900 and how it has shaped and been shaped by its cultural contexts. The class also investigates the essential relationship between built form and theory during this period.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

ARTHIST 143A: American Architecture (AMSTUD 143A, ARTHIST 343A, CEE 32R)

A historically based understanding of what defines American architecture. What makes American architecture American, beginning with indigenous structures of pre-Columbian America. Materials, structure, and form in the changing American context. How these ideas are being transformed in today's globalized world.
Terms: Aut | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

ARTHIST 147: Modernism and Modernity (ARTHIST 347)

This course focuses on European and American art and visual culture between the mid-nineteenth and the mid-twentieth centuries. We will begin and end in Paris, exploring visual expressions of modernism as they were shaped by industrialization and urban renewal, the fantasies and realities of Orientalism and colonial exploitation, changing gender expectations, racial difference, and world war. Encompassing a wide range of media, the course explores modernism as a compelling dream of utopian possibilities challenged by the conditions of social life in the context of diversity and difference.
Last offered: Spring 2021 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

ARTHIST 149: Introduction to Islamic Art (ISLAMST 149C)

This course surveys the art and architecture of societies where Muslims were dominant or where they formed significant minorities from the emergence of Islam until the present. It examines the form and function of architecture and works of art as well as the social, historical and cultural contexts, patterns of use, and evolving meanings attributed to art by the users. The course follows a chronological order, where selected visual materials are treated along chosen themes. Themes include the creation of a distinctive visual culture in the emerging Islamic polity; the development of urban institutions; key architectural types such as the mosque, madrasa, caravanserai, dervish lodge and mausoleum; art objects and the arts of the illustrated book; self-representation; cultural interconnections along trade and pilgrimage routes; westernization and modernization in art and architecture.
Terms: Win | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Blessing, P. (PI)

ARTHIST 151: Migration and Diaspora in American Art, 1800-Present (AMSTUD 151, ARTHIST 351, ASNAMST 151D, CSRE 151D)

This lecture course explores American art through the lens of immigration, exile, and diaspora. We will examine a wide range of work by immigrant artists and craftsmen, paying special attention to issues of race and ethnicity, assimilation, displacement, and political turmoil. Artists considered include Emmanuel Leutze, Thomas Cole, Joseph Stella, Chiura Obata, Willem de Kooning, Mona Hatoum, and Julie Mehretu, among many others. How do works of art reflect and help shape cultural and individual imaginaries of home and belonging?
Last offered: Winter 2019 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

ARTHIST 152: The American West (AMSTUD 124A, ENGLISH 124, HISTORY 151, POLISCI 124A)

The American West is characterized by frontier mythology, vast distances, marked aridity, and unique political and economic characteristics. This course integrates several disciplinary perspectives into a comprehensive examination of Western North America: its history, physical geography, climate, literature, art, film, institutions, politics, demography, economy, and continuing policy challenges. Students examine themes fundamental to understanding the region: time, space, water, peoples, and boom and bust cycles.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

ARTHIST 160: Censorship in American Art (AMSTUD 167, CSRE 160, FEMGEN 167)

This course examines the art history of censorship in the United States. Paying special attention to the suppression of queer, Black and Latinx visual and performance art, including efforts to vandalize works and defund institutions, students will explore a variety of writing such as news articles, manifestos, letters, protest signs, scholarly texts, and court proceedings. The course approaches censorship as an act to restrict freedom of expression and, however unwittingly, as a mode of provocation and publicity.
Last offered: Autumn 2021 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

ARTHIST 164: History of World Cinema III: Queer Cinemas around the World (ARTHIST 364, CSRE 102C, CSRE 302C, FEMGEN 100C, FEMGEN 300C, FILMEDIA 100C, FILMEDIA 300C, GLOBAL 193, GLOBAL 390, TAPS 100C, TAPS 300C)

Provides an overview of cinema from around the world since 1960, highlighting the cultural, political, and economic forces that have shaped various film movements over the last six decades. Specific topics may vary by term/year/instructor. This term's topic, Queer Cinemas around the World, engages with a range of queer cinematic forms and queer spectatorial practices in different parts of the world, as well as BIPOC media from North America. Through film and video from Kenya, Malaysia, India, The Dominican Republic, China, Brazil, Palestine, Japan, Morocco, the US etc., we will examine varied narratives about trans experience, same-sex desire, LGBTQI2S+ rights, censorship, precarity, and hopefulness. This course will attune us to regional cultural specificities in queer expression and representation, prompting us to move away from hegemonic and homogenizing understandings of queer life and media. Notes: Screenings will be held on Fridays at 1:30PM in Oshman Hall. Screening times will vary slightly from week to week.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II | Repeatable 2 times (up to 10 units total)

ARTHIST 165B: American Style and the Rhetoric of Fashion (AMSTUD 127, FILMEDIA 165B)

Focus on the visual culture of fashion, especially in an American context. Topics include: the representation of fashion in different visual media (prints, photographs, films, window displays, and digital images); the relationship of fashion to its historical context and American culture; the interplay between fashion and other modes of discourse, in particular art, but also performance, music, economics; and the use of fashion as an expression of social status, identity, and other attributes of the wearer. Texts by Thorstein Veblen, Roland Barthes, Dick Hebdige, and other theorists of fashion.
Last offered: Winter 2020 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ARTHIST 168A: Black Mirror: A.I.Activism (AMSTUD 106B, CSRE 106A, ENGLISH 106A, SYMSYS 168A)

Lecture/small group course exploring intersections of STEM, arts and humanities scholarship and practice that engages with, and generated by, exponential technologies. Our course explores the social ethical and artistic implications of artificial intelligence systems with an emphasis on aesthetics, civic society and racial justice, including scholarship on decolonial AI, indigenous AI, disability activism AI, feminist AI and the future of work for creative industries.
| Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

ARTHIST 180: Art, Meditation, and Creation (ARTSINST 280, LIFE 180)

Art and meditation invite us to be fully present in our minds and bodies. This class will give you tools to integrate mind and body as you explore artworks on display at the university's museums and throughout campus. In your engagement with activity-based learning at these venues, you will attend to perception and embodiment in the process of writing and making creative work about art. You will also learn meditation techniques and be exposed to authors who foreground the importance of the body in both writing and making art. For your meditation-centered and research-based final creative project, you will have the option of writing an experimental visual analysis or devising a performance.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

ARTHIST 182B: Cultures in Competition: Arts of Song-Era China (ARTHIST 382B)

The Song dynasty (mid-10th to late 13th c.) was a period of extraordinary diversity and technical accomplishment in Chinese painting, ceramics, calligraphy, architecture and sculpture. Artistic developments emerged within a context of economic dynamism, urban growth, and competition in dynastic, political, cultural and social arenas ¿ as between Chinese and formerly nomadic neighboring regimes, or between reformers and conservatives. This course will consider major themes and topics in Song art history, including innovations in architectural and ceramic technologies; developments in landscape painting and theory; the rise of educated artists; official arts and ideologies of Song, Liao and Jin court regimes; new roles for women as patrons and cultural participants; and Chan and popular Buddhist imagery.
Terms: Aut | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Vinograd, R. (PI)

ARTHIST 186B: Asian American Art (AMSTUD 186D, ASNAMST 186B)

This lecture course explores the work of artists, craftspeople, and laborers of Asian descent from 1850-present. Rather than a discrete identity category, we approach 'Asian American' as an expansive, relational term that encompasses heterogenous experiences of racialization and migration. Key themes include the history of immigration and displacement; diasporic geographies; art, activism, and community; feminist/queer perspectives; and interethnic conflict and solidarity. The course coincides with the public launch exhibitions of the Asian American Art Initiative (AAAI) at the Cantor Arts Center and includes regular visits to the museum and Stanford Special Collections.
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

ARTHIST 188B: From Shanghai Modern to Global Contemporary: Frontiers of Modern Chinese Art (ARTHIST 388B)

Chinese artistic developments in an era of revolution and modernization, from Shanghai Modern and New National Painting though the politicized art of the Cultural Revolution and post-Mao era re-entry into international arenas.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

ARTHIST 191: African American Art (AFRICAAM 191B, CSRE 191)

This course explores major art and political movements, such as the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement, and #BlackLivesMatter, that have informed and were inspired by African American artists. Students will read pivotal texts written by Black artists, historians, philosophers and activists; consider how artists have contended with issues of identity, race, gender, and sexuality; and learn about galleries, collections, and organizations founded to support the field. Attendance on the first day of class is a requirement for enrollment.
Last offered: Spring 2021 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

ARTHIST 194: U.S. Latinx Art (CHILATST 195, CSRE 195)

This course surveys art made by Latinas/os/xs who have lived and worked in the United States since the 1700s, including Chicanos, Nuyoricans, and other Black, Brown, and Indigenous artists. While exploring the diversity of Latinx art, students will consider artists' relationships to identity, race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. Students will also study how artists have responded to and challenged discrimination, institutional exclusion, and national debates through their work. Attendance on the first day of class is a requirement for enrollment.
Last offered: Winter 2021 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

ARTHIST 199: Close Cinematic Analysis - Caste, Sexuality, and Religion in Indian Media (ASNAMST 108, FEMGEN 104, FILMEDIA 101, FILMEDIA 301, TAPS 101F)

India is the world's largest producer of films in over 20 languages, and Bollywood is often its most visible avatar, especially on US university curricula. This course will introduce you to a range of media from the Indian subcontinent across commercial and experimental films, documentaries, streaming media, and online cultures. We will engage in particular with questions of sexuality, gender, caste, religion, and ethnicity in this postcolonial context and across its diasporas, including in the Caribbean. Given this course's emphasis on close cinematic analysis, we will analyze formal aspects of cinematography, editing, mise-en-scene, and performance, and how these generate spectatorial pleasure, star and fan cultures, and particular modes of representation. This course fulfills the WIM requirement for Film and Media Studies majors. Note: Screenings will be held on Thursdays at 5:30 PM. Screening times will vary from week to week and may range from 90 to 180 minutes.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

ARTHIST 203: Artists, Athletes, Courtesans and Crooks (CLASSICS 163)

The seminar examines a range of topics devoted to the makers of Greek art and artifacts, the men and women who used them in life and the afterlife, and the miscreants - from Lord Elgin to contemporary tomb-looters and dealers - whose deeds have damaged, deracinated and desecrated temples, sculptures and grave goods. Readings include ancient texts in translation, books and articles by classicists and art historians, legal texts and lively page-turners. Students will discuss weekly readings, give brief slide lectures and a final presentation on a topic of their choice, which need not be confined to the ancient Mediterranean.
Terms: Aut | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Maxmin, J. (PI)

ARTHIST 204: Dialogues with the Dead (CLASSICS 127)

This seminar considers the dynamism and resilience of Greek art and culture. The dialogues in question are not with ancient shades in the underworld but with later artists who build on the creative vision (and blind spots) of the past to addressthe issues of their day.Roman philhellenes, Renaissance humanists and Neoclassical loyalists have received much attention. More remains to be explored in the work of modern and contemporary artists such as Romare Bearden, Robert Mapplethorpe, Lawrence Argent, Daniel Arsham, Yinka Shonibare and Xu Zhen.In the Cantor Center and the Rodin Garden, the artist's debts to antiquity run deep; freed from his shadow, Camille Claudel's bronzes reflect the sunlit surfaces of Greek sculpture. On Meyer Green, the capital puns of Xu Zhen reverberate from Shanghai to Athens, from archetypes in the Louvre to galleries around the world, where classical "icons" - subverted, inverted and recharged - engage contemporary eyes. Classical tragedy spoke to war-weary Greeks in the 5th century. Today, Sophocles and Bryan Doerries' Theatre of War Productions help veterans to feel less alone as they return to civilian life bearing the wounds of war, visible and invisible. The vibrant and varied afterlife of Greek art is the subject of the seminar, but we will not ignore the sinister aspects of its legacy: the advertising industry's Botoxic embrace of "Greek perfection," the quest for fitness at any price and the persistence of white, western, ableist ideals of male and female beauty. Darker still is the lethal appropriation of classical art and architecture by genocidal tyrants and racists. These dialogues are deadl
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ARTHIST 206A: Persian Poetry: Text, Space, and Image (ARTHIST 406A, COMPLIT 126, COMPLIT 226)

Featuring several sessions led by distinguished artist Ala Ebtekar, this course traces the nexus of word and image across a millennium of Persian poetry. Our aim is to look at how texts have been represented through images and enacted in public performances, from the tenth century to the present. Topics will range from high to popular culture and include the visual representation of narrative in illuminated manuscripts, the function of calligraphy on sacred and profane buildings, the performance of poetry in mediaeval courts, the use of images in dramatic tellings of the national epic, and the practice of divination by books. What kinds of space are created in these different instances of text and image coming together? What does it mean for our understanding - and experience - of history if verses from the 13th or 14th century are inscribed on the interior of taxi cabs that navigate through the contemporary Iranian city? And how does an ancient text come alive in a performance that seeks to recreate the space of its origin? These are some of the questions that will be explored through an examination of primary sources (both texts and images) as well as theoretical analyses.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ARTHIST 207A: Bodies that Remain: Art and Death in the Middle Ages

This seminar investigates medieval attitudes towards dead bodies through the material culture of death, from the cult of relics, to tomb sculpture, to monumental architecture. The place of death in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim communities in medieval Europe will be analyzed by putting these works of art in conversation with texts dealing with death as both biological event and powerful symbol.
Last offered: Spring 2021 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ARTHIST 207D: Race and Ethnicity in Premodern Europe (ARTHIST 407D, HISTORY 215B, HISTORY 315B)

How do historians, art historians, and literary historians of premodern Europe shape their research and their teaching around questions of race? How do current debates on race theory shape our perception of the past and deepen historical inquiry? This graduate colloquium focuses on the most recent publications on race in medieval and early modern studies to reflect on such questions while examining the challenges that race studies put on historical definitions, research methodologies, as well as teaching institutions.
Last offered: Winter 2021 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

ARTHIST 208: Hagia Sophia (ARTHIST 408, CLASSICS 173, CLASSICS 273)

This seminar uncovers the aesthetic principles and spiritual operations at work in Hagia Sophia, the church dedicated to Holy Wisdom in Constantinople. Rather than a static and inert structure, the Great Church emerges as a material body that comes to life when the morning or evening light resurrects the glitter of its gold mosaics and when the singing of human voices activates the reverberant and enveloping sound of its vast interior. Drawing on art and architectural history, liturgy, musicology, and acoustics, this course explores the Byzantine paradigm of animation arguing that it is manifested in the visual and sonic mirroring, in the chiastic structure of the psalmody, and in the prosody of the sung poetry. Together these elements orchestrate a multi-sensory experience that has the potential to destabilize the divide between real and oneiric, placing the faithful in a space in between terrestrial and celestial. A short film on aesthetics and samples of Byzantine chant digitally imprinted with the acoustics of Hagia Sophia are developed as integral segments of this research; they offer a chance for the student to transcend the limits of textual analysis and experience the temporal dimension of this process of animation of the inert.
Last offered: Winter 2022 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

ARTHIST 210: Great Minds of the Italian Renaissance and their World (HISTORY 240C, ITALIAN 140, ITALIAN 240)

What enabled Leonardo da Vinci to excel in over a dozen fields from painting to engineering and to anticipate flight four hundred years before the first aircraft took off? How did Michelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel Ceiling? What forces and insights led Machiavelli to write "The Prince"? An historical moment and a cultural era, the Italian Renaissance famously saw monumental achievements in literature, art, and architecture, influential developments in science and technology, and the flourishing of multi-talented individuals who contributed profoundly, expertly, and simultaneously to very different fields. In this course on the great thinkers, writers, and achievers of the Italian Renaissance, we will study these "universal geniuses" and their world. Investigating the writings, thought, and lives of such figures as Leonardo da Vinci, Niccol¿ Machiavelli, and Galileo Galilei, we will interrogate historical and contemporary ideas concerning genius, creativity, and the phenomenon of "Renaissance man" known as polymathy. Taught in English. In 2023-24, this course is part of the Humanities Core, a collaborative set of global humanities seminars that brings all of its students and faculty into conversation. On Tuesdays you meet in your own course, and on Thursday all the HumCore seminars in session that quarter meet together: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ARTHIST 218A: Michelangelo: Gateway to Early Modern Italy (ARTHIST 418A, HISTORY 237B, HISTORY 337B, ITALIAN 237, ITALIAN 337)

Revered as one of the greatest artists in history, Michelangelo Buonarroti's extraordinarily long and prodigious existence (1475-1564) spanned the Renaissance and the Reformation in Italy. The celebrity artist left behind not only sculptures, paintings, drawings, and architectural designs, but also an abundantly rich and heterogeneous collection of artifacts, including direct and indirect correspondence (approximately 1400 letters), an eclectic assortment of personal notes, documents and contracts, and 302 poems and 41 poetic fragments. This course will explore the life and production of Michelangelo in relation to those of his contemporaries. Using the biography of the artist as a thread, this interdisciplinary course will draw on a range of critical methodologies and approaches to investigate the civilization and culture of Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Course themes will follow key tensions that defined the period and that found expression in Michelangelo: physical-spiritual, classical-Christian, tradition-innovation, individual-collective.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ARTHIST 231: Leonardo's World: Science, Technology, and Art (ARTHIST 431, HISTORY 231, HISTORY 331, ITALIAN 231, ITALIAN 331)

Leonardo da Vinci is emblematic of creativity and innovation. His art is iconic, his inventions legendary. His understanding of nature, the human body, and machines made him a scientist and engineer as well as an artist. His fascination with drawing buildings made him an architect, at least on paper. This class explores the historical Leonardo, considering his interests and accomplishments as a product of the society of Renaissance Italy. Why did this world produce a Leonardo? Special attention will be given to interdisciplinary connections between religion, art, science, and technology.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

ARTHIST 233: Censorship in American Art (ARTHIST 433, CSRE 233)

This seminar examines the art history of censorship in the United States. Paying special attention to the suppression of queer, Black, and Latinx visual and performance art, including efforts to vandalize works and defund institutions, students will explore a variety of writing such as news articles, manifestos, letters, protest signs, scholarly texts, and court proceedings. The course approaches censorship as an act to restrict freedom of expression and, however unwittingly, as a mode of provocation and publicity.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Salseda, R. (PI)

ARTHIST 238C: Art and the Market (FRENCH 238)

This course examines the relationship between art and the market, from Renaissance artisans to struggling Impressionist painters to the globalized commercial world of contemporary art and NFTs. Using examples drawn from France, this course explores the relationship between artists and patrons, the changing status of artists in society, patterns of shifting taste, and the effects of museums on making and collecting art. Students will read a mixture of historical texts about art and artists, fictional works depicting the process of artistic creation, and theoretical analyses of the politics embedded in artworks. They will examine individual artworks, as well as the market structures in which such artworks were produced and bought. The course will be taught in English, with the option of readings in French for departmental majors.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

ARTHIST 245: Art, Business & the Law (SIW 245)

This course examines art at the intersection of business and the law from a number of different angles, focusing on how the issues raised by particular case studies, whether legal, ethical and/or financial, impact our understanding of how works of art circulate, are received, evaluated and acquire different meanings in given social contexts. Topics include the design, construction and contested signification of selected war memorials; the rights involved in the display and desecration of the American flag; censorship of sexually charged images; how the value of art is appraised; institutional critique and the art museum, among others.
Last offered: Summer 2021 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ARTHIST 247: Russia in Color (ARTHIST 447, SLAVIC 131, SLAVIC 331)

This course explores the application, evolution, and perception of color in art, art history, literature, and popular culture - in (Soviet) Russia and emigration. Working closely with the Cantor Arts Center collection at Stanford, this course pairs artifacts art with theoretical and cultural readings (media theory, philosophy, literature, science). With a particular focus on Russian and East European objects (including those by Russian icons, Soviet posters, and prints by Wassily Kandinsky and Marc Chagall), the course will include a basic introduction to color terminology, guest lectures on the technologies color printing, the science of color perception, and a hands-on practicum in color mixing/pigmentation. In addition to direct encounters with material and artifact, our course will also seek to better understand the digital experience of art objects in general, and color in particular. No knowledge of Russian is required.
Last offered: Winter 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ARTHIST 249: Latinx Art: Exhibition History and Theory (ARTHIST 449, CHILATST 249)

This seminar examines exhibitions of art made by Latinas/es/os/xs in the United States, including Chicanos, Nuyoricans, and other Black, Brown, and Indigenous artists. While exploring exhibitions, students will consider curators' and artists' relationships to identity, race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. Students will also study how practitioners have responded to and challenged discrimination, institutional exclusion, and national debates through their work. The course will include guest curator talks and will result in final projects that comprise either research papers that critically look at exhibitions or proposals for exhibitions of Latinx art.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Salseda, R. (PI)

ARTHIST 252A: Art and Power: From Royal Spectacle to Revolutionary Ritual (FRENCH 252)

From the Palace of Versailles to grand operas to Jacques-Louis David's portraits of revolutionary martyrs, rarely have the arts been so powerfully mobilized by the State as in early modern France. This course examines how the arts were used from Louis XIV to the Revolution in order to broadcast political authority across Europe. We will also consider the resistance to such attempts to elicit shock-and-awe through artistic patronage. By studying music, architecture, garden design, the visual arts, and theater together, students will gain a new perspective on works of art in their political contexts. But we will also examine the libelous pamphlets and satirical cartoons that turned the monarchy¿s grandeur against itself, ending the course with an examination of the new artistic regime of the French Revolution. The course will be taught in English with the option of French readings for departmental majors.
Last offered: Spring 2018 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

ARTHIST 264B: Starstuff: Space and the American Imagination (AMSTUD 143X, FILMEDIA 264B)

Course on the history of twentieth and twenty-first century American images of space and how they shape conceptions of the universe. Covers representations made by scientists and artists, as well as scientific fiction films, TV, and other forms of popular visual culture. Topics will include the importance of aesthetics to understandings of the cosmos; the influence of media and technology on representations; the social, political, and historical context of the images; and the ways representations of space influence notions of American national identity and of cosmic citizenship.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Kessler, E. (PI)

ARTHIST 265A: Word and Image (ARTHIST 465A, COMPLIT 225, ITALIAN 265, ITALIAN 365)

What impact do images have on our reading of a text? How do words influence our understanding of images or our reading of pictures? What makes a visual interpretation of written words or a verbal rendering of an image successful? These questions will guide our investigation of the manifold connections between words and images in this course on intermediality and the relations and interrelations between writing and art from classical antiquity to the present. Readings and discussions will include such topics as the life and afterlife in word and image of Ovid's "Metamorphoses," Dante's "Divine Comedy," Ludovico Ariosto's "Orlando Furioso," and John Milton's "Paradise Lost;" the writings and creative production of poet-artists Michelangelo Buonarroti, William Blake, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti; innovations in and correspondences between literature and art in the modern period, from symbolism in the nineteenth century through the flourishing of European avant-garde movements in the twentieth century.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ARTHIST 273: Couture Culture (ARTHIST 473, FRENCH 173, FRENCH 373)

Fashion, art, and representation in Europe and the US between 1860 and today. Beginning with Baudelaire, Impressionism, the rise of the department store and the emergence of haute couture, culminating in the spectacular fashion exhibitions mounted at the Metropolitan and other major art museums in recent years. Students participate actively in class discussion and pursue related research projects.
Last offered: Autumn 2021 | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ARTHIST 274A: The Art of the Uncanny (ARTHIST 474A)

From murderous dolls to evil doppelgängers, humanoid doubles haunt the Western cultural imagination. Beginning with an in-depth look at the contested concept of the "uncanny", the seminar traces the history of anxiety about non-human humans in the West. An interdisciplinary inquiry, this course draws its sources from art, film, literature, psychology, and science.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ARTHIST 293A: Latin American Art and Literature: 100 Years of Modernisms (ILAC 126)

This course will explore the different kinds of modernisms and modernities that Latin American artists and authors have produced from the early twentieth century to the present. Defined as a break with the past and with tradition, the term "modernism" in Latin America has signified specific transformations that speak to the continent¿s long history of colonialism and alleged marginality in relation to Europe and the United States. How have Latin American artistic and literary movements drawn from and broken with European modernisms and avant-gardes? What meanings of "tradition" and "modernity" emerge from their works, especially in their engagement with Indigenous and Afro-Latin American cultures? By examining artworks together with literary texts, we will address their aesthetic dimensions, as well as the socio-historical and political conditions that made them possible. Some movements may include Antropofagia (Brazil), Mexican Muralism, Surrealism, Indigenisms, Afro-Caribbean art and literature, Abstractionism, Neo-Concretism, and Tropicalia. Course content and discussions will be in English. ILAC/Spanish majors should take the course for 5 units and must do the readings and assignments in Spanish.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

ARTHIST 449: Latinx Art: Exhibition History and Theory (ARTHIST 249, CHILATST 249)

This seminar examines exhibitions of art made by Latinas/es/os/xs in the United States, including Chicanos, Nuyoricans, and other Black, Brown, and Indigenous artists. While exploring exhibitions, students will consider curators' and artists' relationships to identity, race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. Students will also study how practitioners have responded to and challenged discrimination, institutional exclusion, and national debates through their work. The course will include guest curator talks and will result in final projects that comprise either research papers that critically look at exhibitions or proposals for exhibitions of Latinx art.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Salseda, R. (PI)

ARTSINST 11Q: Art in the Metropolis (ARTSTUDI 11Q, ENGLISH 11Q, FILMEDIA 11Q, MUSIC 11Q, TAPS 11Q)

This seminar is offered in conjunction with the annual "Arts Immersion" trip to New York that takes place over the spring break and is organized by the Stanford Arts Institute (SAI). Enrollment in this course is a requirement for taking part in the spring break trip. The program is designed to provide a group of students with the opportunity to immerse themselves in the cultural life of New York City guided by faculty and SAI staff. Students will experience a broad range and variety of art forms (visual arts, theater, opera, dance, etc.) and will meet with prominent arts administrators and practitioners, some of whom are Stanford alumni. In the seminar, we will prepare for the diverse experiences the trip affords and develop individual projects related to particular works of art, exhibitions, and performances that we'll encounter in person during the stay in New York. Class time will be divided between readings, presentations, and one studio based creative project. The urban setting in which the various forms of art are created, presented, and received will form a special point of focus. A principal aim of the seminar will be to develop aesthetic sensibilities through writing critically about the art that interests and engages us and making art. For further details please visit the Stanford Arts Institute website: https://arts.stanford.edu/for-students/academics/arts-immersion/new-york/
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Berlier, T. (PI)

ARTSINST 280: Art, Meditation, and Creation (ARTHIST 180, LIFE 180)

Art and meditation invite us to be fully present in our minds and bodies. This class will give you tools to integrate mind and body as you explore artworks on display at the university's museums and throughout campus. In your engagement with activity-based learning at these venues, you will attend to perception and embodiment in the process of writing and making creative work about art. You will also learn meditation techniques and be exposed to authors who foreground the importance of the body in both writing and making art. For your meditation-centered and research-based final creative project, you will have the option of writing an experimental visual analysis or devising a performance.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

ARTSTUDI 11Q: Art in the Metropolis (ARTSINST 11Q, ENGLISH 11Q, FILMEDIA 11Q, MUSIC 11Q, TAPS 11Q)

This seminar is offered in conjunction with the annual "Arts Immersion" trip to New York that takes place over the spring break and is organized by the Stanford Arts Institute (SAI). Enrollment in this course is a requirement for taking part in the spring break trip. The program is designed to provide a group of students with the opportunity to immerse themselves in the cultural life of New York City guided by faculty and SAI staff. Students will experience a broad range and variety of art forms (visual arts, theater, opera, dance, etc.) and will meet with prominent arts administrators and practitioners, some of whom are Stanford alumni. In the seminar, we will prepare for the diverse experiences the trip affords and develop individual projects related to particular works of art, exhibitions, and performances that we'll encounter in person during the stay in New York. Class time will be divided between readings, presentations, and one studio based creative project. The urban setting in which the various forms of art are created, presented, and received will form a special point of focus. A principal aim of the seminar will be to develop aesthetic sensibilities through writing critically about the art that interests and engages us and making art. For further details please visit the Stanford Arts Institute website: https://arts.stanford.edu/for-students/academics/arts-immersion/new-york/
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Berlier, T. (PI)

ARTSTUDI 123I: Undergraduate Seminar in Composition: Music, Art, and Intermedia (MUSIC 123I)

How do music and art relate? How does one speak for, with, the other? In the past century, Western visual art turned towards abstraction and time-based works. Techniques and processes for interaction between image and sound expanded dramatically. What better place to learn about them than the Anderson Collection? Through students' own visual and aural creations, we will explore and share individual approaches to time, symbol, memory, and meaning. Previous experience in music composition is welcome but not required. This course must be taken for a minimum of 3 units and a letter grade to be eligible for Ways-AII credit.
| Units: 2-3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

ARTSTUDI 162: Embodied Interfaces

Our computers, phones and devices see us predominantly as fingers and eyes staring at screens. What would happen if our technology acknowledged more of our rich physical presence and capabilities in its design? How have artists and designers used different sensing technologies to account for more of our embodied selves in their works? In this studio course we explore various sensing technologies and design artworks that engage our whole selves. Interfaces explored range from the practical to the poetic. Sensors may involve flex sensors, heat sensors, microphones and simple camera tracking technology. We analyze different tools for their appropriateness for different tasks and extend them through our designs.
Last offered: Autumn 2020 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

ARTSTUDI 239: Intermedia Workshop (MUSIC 155, MUSIC 255)

Students develop and produce intermedia works. Musical and visual approaches to the conceptualisation and shaping of time-based art. Exploration of sound and image relationship. Study of a wide spectrum of audiovisual practices including experimental animation, video art, dance, performance, non-narrative forms, interactive art and installation art. Focus on works that use music/sound and image as equal partners. Limited enrollment. Prerequisites: consent of instructors, and one of FILMPROD 114, ARTSTUDI 131, 138, 167, 177, 179, or MUSIC 123, or equivalent. May be repeated for credit
Terms: Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE | Repeatable 2 times (up to 8 units total)

ASNAMST 16N: Behind "Swingposium:" Activism in Performing Arts (MUSIC 16N)

Swingposium (https://taiko.org/swingposium) is an immersive theater production, being presented by San Jose Taiko at Stanford in November. It tells the hidden history of Japanese Americans boosting morale in WWII Incarceration Camps through swing dances with live big band music, and will include student performers from Stanford Jazz Orchestra, Stanford Taiko, Swingtime, and the Asian American Theater Project. This class - through readings and discussion, conversations with artists, and hands-on experience with taiko, theater and swing music/dance - explores foundations of this production: the Japanese American community, North American taiko, African American roots of big band and swing, and immersive and Asian American theater.
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

ASNAMST 31N: Behind the Big Drums: Exploring Taiko (MUSIC 31N)

Preference to Freshman. Since 1992 generations of Stanford students have heard, seen, and felt the power of taiko, big Japanese drums, at Admit Weekend, NSO, or Baccalaureate. Taiko is a relative newcomer to the American music scene. The contemporary ensemble drumming form, or kumidaiko, developed in Japan in the 1950s. The first North American taiko groups emerged from the Japanese American community shortly after and coincided with increased Asian American activism. In the intervening years, taiko has spread into communities in the UK, Europe, Australia, and South America. What drives the power of these drums? In this course, we explore the musical, cultural, historical, and political perspectives of taiko through readings and discussion, conversations with taiko artists, and learn the fundamentals of playing. With the taiko as our focal point, we find intersections of Japanese music, Japanese American history, and Asian American activism, and explore relations between performance, cultural expression, community, and identity.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Sano, S. (PI); Uyechi, L. (PI)

ASNAMST 104: Sexual Violence in Asian America (FEMGEN 116)

The course will make connections across historical and everyday violence on Asian American women to think about why violence against Asian women in wartime is hypervisible, yet everyday sexual violence against Asian American women is invisible. Reading texts from Asian American studies and Black and women of color feminism, we will consider the socialization of sexual violence and rape culture historically and within the present. Enrollment is by instructor approval only. If interested in enrolling, please fill out this form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfIar8sr5llpQqqIwZYrFo5b5sVj29G42pwxpviKFKVBsRESA/viewform.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Dinh, T. (PI)

ASNAMST 105: Vietnamese American Cultural Studies (AMSTUD 105B)

What is the role of Vietnamese American cultural production in Asian America? How do we reckon with dominant narratives of gratitude and freedom, or seek alternative histories by centering diasporic memory? And what does the 'post'-war generation have to say? To explore these questions, our class will examine writing and visual art from Vietnamese American cultural producers, including Trinh Mai, Thi Bui, Ocean Vuong, Adele Pham, Tuan Andrew Nguyen, and Soleil Ho. We'll think about connections between Vietnamese American cultural studies and Asian America through issues of abolition, sexual violence, representation, model minority, and more. Assignments will include free writes, discussion posts, a midterm, and a collaborative final project. Students will be encouraged to exercise their creativity and make connections to their everyday lives and communities.
Terms: Win | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

ASNAMST 108: Close Cinematic Analysis - Caste, Sexuality, and Religion in Indian Media (ARTHIST 199, FEMGEN 104, FILMEDIA 101, FILMEDIA 301, TAPS 101F)

India is the world's largest producer of films in over 20 languages, and Bollywood is often its most visible avatar, especially on US university curricula. This course will introduce you to a range of media from the Indian subcontinent across commercial and experimental films, documentaries, streaming media, and online cultures. We will engage in particular with questions of sexuality, gender, caste, religion, and ethnicity in this postcolonial context and across its diasporas, including in the Caribbean. Given this course's emphasis on close cinematic analysis, we will analyze formal aspects of cinematography, editing, mise-en-scene, and performance, and how these generate spectatorial pleasure, star and fan cultures, and particular modes of representation. This course fulfills the WIM requirement for Film and Media Studies majors. Note: Screenings will be held on Thursdays at 5:30 PM. Screening times will vary from week to week and may range from 90 to 180 minutes.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Iyer, U. (PI)

ASNAMST 132: Whose Classics? Race and Classical Antiquity in the U.S. (CLASSICS 132, CSRE 132)

Perceived as the privileged inheritance of white European (and later, American) culture, Classics has long been entangled with whiteness. We will examine this issue by flipping the script and decentering whiteness, focusing instead on marginalized communities of color that have been challenging their historic exclusion from classics. We will read classical works and their modern retellings by Black, Indigenous, Chicanx and Asian American intellectual leaders and explore how they critique classics' relationship to racism, nationalism, settler colonialism and imperialism. Readings include Sophocles' Oedipus Rex alongside Rita Dove's The Darker Face of the Earth, Euripides' Medea alongside Luis Alfaro's Mojada, Sophocles' Antigone alongside Beth Piatote's Ant¿kone, and the selections from the Homeric Odyssey alongside Ocean Vuong's Night Sky with Exit Wounds.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

ASNAMST 139: Refugees, Race and the Greco-Roman World (CLASSICS 139, CSRE 139)

Who is a refugee and who gets to decide? How does race impact who is welcomed into a new community and who is turned away? And what does the Greco-Roman world have to do this? This course will explore these questions by surveying different forms of forced displacement in and beyond antiquity through the lens of Critical Race Theory and Critical Refugee Studies. We will examine how forcibly displaced people were portrayed and treated in ancient Greece and Rome and investigate how racialization contributed to xenophobic immigration policies as well as imperial agendas. We will then evaluate the impact of ancient discourses of forced displacement on the modern world, with a focus on American immigration policies. Understanding that refugees are not objects of investigation, but are powerful knowledge producers, we will also engage with works created by refugees throughout the course.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

ASNAMST 151D: Migration and Diaspora in American Art, 1800-Present (AMSTUD 151, ARTHIST 151, ARTHIST 351, CSRE 151D)

This lecture course explores American art through the lens of immigration, exile, and diaspora. We will examine a wide range of work by immigrant artists and craftsmen, paying special attention to issues of race and ethnicity, assimilation, displacement, and political turmoil. Artists considered include Emmanuel Leutze, Thomas Cole, Joseph Stella, Chiura Obata, Willem de Kooning, Mona Hatoum, and Julie Mehretu, among many others. How do works of art reflect and help shape cultural and individual imaginaries of home and belonging?
Last offered: Winter 2019 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

ASNAMST 169D: Contemporary Asian American Stories (ENGLISH 169D)

This course will examine the aesthetics and politics of contemporary Asian American storytellers, with an emphasis on work produced within the past five years. We will investigate the pressures historically placed on Asian Americans to tell a certain kind of story e.g. the immigrant story in a realist mode and the ways writers have found to surprise, question, and innovate, moving beyond those boundaries to explore issues of race, sexuality, science, memory, citizenship, and belonging. Course materials will consist of novels, short stories, graphic narrative, and film, and may include work by Ocean Vuong, Mira Jacobs, Gish Jen, Charles Yu, and Adrian Tomine, as well as Lulu Wangs 2019 film The Farewell. This seminar will feature both analytical and creative components, and students will be encouraged to produce both kinds of responses to the material.
Terms: Aut | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Tanaka, S. (PI)

ASNAMST 186B: Asian American Art (AMSTUD 186D, ARTHIST 186B)

This lecture course explores the work of artists, craftspeople, and laborers of Asian descent from 1850-present. Rather than a discrete identity category, we approach 'Asian American' as an expansive, relational term that encompasses heterogenous experiences of racialization and migration. Key themes include the history of immigration and displacement; diasporic geographies; art, activism, and community; feminist/queer perspectives; and interethnic conflict and solidarity. The course coincides with the public launch exhibitions of the Asian American Art Initiative (AAAI) at the Cantor Arts Center and includes regular visits to the museum and Stanford Special Collections.
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

BIO 184: Environmental Humanities: Finding Our Place on a Changing Planet (ENGLISH 140D, SUSTAIN 140)

The rapid degradation of our planet threatens the health and survival of communities and ecosystems around the world. How did we get here? What cultural, philosophical, and ethical challenges underlie the separation of humanity from nature and precipitate unprecedented ecological destruction? How can we make sense of this, and how can we reimagine a more connected future? Through engaging the work of environmental philosophers, cultural ecologists, artists, humanities scholars, Indigenous leaders, and others with land-based knowledge, this course will prompt you to think deeply about humanity's place in the world and explore strategies to change our course. Together, we will explore contrasting cultural paradigms around human-nature relationships and apply learnings to action - including through final projects that involve external audiences in meaningful environmental contemplation or impact.
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-ER

CEE 32A: Psychology of Architecture

This course argues that architecture often neglects the interdisciplinary investigation of our internal psychological experience and the way it impacts our creation of space. How does our inner life influence external design? How are we impacted emotionally, physically, psychologically by the spaces we inhabit day to day? How might we intentionally imbue personal and public spaces with specific emotions? This seminar serves as a call to action for students interested in approaching architecture with a holistic understanding of the emotional impact of space. Sample topics addressed will include: conscious vs. unconscious design; the ego of architecture; psycho-spatial perspectives; ideas of home; integral/holistic architecture; phenomenology of inner and outer spaces; exploring archetypal architecture; and translating emotion through environment.
Last offered: Winter 2022 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

CEE 32B: Design Theory

This seminar focuses on the key themes, histories, and methods of architectural theory -- a form of architectural practice that establishes the aims and philosophies of architecture. Architectural theory is primarily written, but it also incorporates drawing, photography, film, and other media. One of the distinctive features of modern and contemporary architecture is its pronounced use of theory to articulate its aims. One might argue that modern architecture is modern because of its incorporation of theory. This course focuses on those early-modern, modern, and late-modern writings that have been and remain entangled with contemporary architectural thought and design practice. Rather than examine the development of modern architectural theory chronologically, it is explored architectural through thematic topics. These themes enable the student to understand how certain architectural theoretical concepts endure, are transformed, and can be furthered through his/her own explorations.CEE 32B is a crosslisting of ARTHIST 217B/417B.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

CEE 32D: Construction: The Writing of Architecture

This seminar focuses on the construction of architectural writing. The class will analyze this idea through four topics: formal analysis, manifesto, translation, and preservation. The seminar is divided into two-week modules with each of these four concepts functioning as organizing principles. The first week of each module will involve familiarizing the seminar with both the terms and rhetorical tactics of the given theme by reading and analyzing specific texts and completing a short written analysis (1-2 pages). The second week will expand upon this foundation and involve further analysis in addition to each student writing a short paper (3-4 pages) drawing on the examples discussed and their own experiences in the discipline. The goal of the seminar is for each student to be able to analyze how an architectural writing is constructed and to develop his/her skills in the construction of his/her own writing.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Beischer, T. (PI)

CEE 32G: Architecture Since 1900 (ARTHIST 142)

Art 142 is an introduction to the history of architecture since 1900 and how it has shaped and been shaped by its cultural contexts. The class also investigates the essential relationship between built form and theory during this period.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

CEE 32Q: Place: Making Space Now

This seminar argues that architeccts are ultimately "placemakers," and questions what that means in the contemporary world. Part I investigates the meaning of the word "place." Additional background for understanding contemporary place making will include a critique of the history of modern place-making through an examination of modern form. Part II examines two traditional notions of place by scale: from "home" to "the city." What elements give these conceptions of space a sense of place? To answer this question, themes such as memory, mapping, and boundary, among others, will be investigated. part III presents challenges to the traditional notions of place discussed in Part II. Topics addressed include: What does it mean to be "out of place"? What sense of place does a nomad have, and how is this represented? What are the "non-places" and how can architects design for these spaces? Part IV addresses the need to re-conceptualize contemporary space. The role of digital and cyber technologies, the construction of locality in a global world, and the in-between places that result from a world in flux are topics discussed in this section of the seminar. Learning goals: Specific goals include clsoe reading of texts, understanding of philosophical thinking and writing, argument under uncertainty, and developed concepts of place, space and architecture.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

CEE 32R: American Architecture (AMSTUD 143A, ARTHIST 143A, ARTHIST 343A)

A historically based understanding of what defines American architecture. What makes American architecture American, beginning with indigenous structures of pre-Columbian America. Materials, structure, and form in the changing American context. How these ideas are being transformed in today's globalized world.
Terms: Aut, Win | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

CEE 147: Building Heaven and Hell (CLASSICS 147R, RELIGST 147)

How did early Greeks, Romans, Jews, and Christians imagine space? How did they construct heaven and hell and the afterlife through their written texts? Can we take written images of the earthly and heavenly Jerusalem and her temple, such as those found in Ezekiel, the Book of Revelation and the Apocalypse of Paul and transform them into three-dimensional space? Can we visualize Homer's Hades or Dante's Inferno? We are going to try! We will meet in the architecture studio and build out of foam board and hot glue. A number of themes will emerge through the course: the interpretive move in rendering a once real space as a literary icon, the relationship between text and imagined space, the connection between space and ritual, and how to construct an image of a society from whom it imagines in hell. Learn more about the course here: https://youtu.be/J9q8CCQ9NkA
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

CHILATST 128: Spanish through Comics (ILAC 128)

The course, an exploration of the graphic narrative medium in Spanish, is open to intermediate and advanced Spanish speakers. We'll analyze vignettes, sections, or chapters from both auteur and pop-culture series. These may include Arrugas and Lola Vendetta (Spain), Mafalda, Macanudo, Naftalina, and El eternauta (Argentina), Los once and Caminos condenados (Colombia), Nos vamos (Ecuador/ Colombia), Vivos se los llevaron (Mexico), as well as Spy vs. Spy and My Favorite Thing is Monsters (ChicanX/LatinX). Secondary sources include McCloud, Mbembe, Chute, and Aldama. The through line will be representations and instantiations of power struggles in this deceivingly naive form. Visual narratological aspects and the specificity of the medium will also be discussed at length. Language learners and everyone who wants detailed feedback on their Spanish must enroll in the cognate course SPANLANG 121 "Concurrent Writing Support."
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

CHILATST 140: Migration in 21st Century Latin American Film (ILAC 140)

Focus on how images and narratives of migration are depicted in recent Latin American film. It compares migration as it takes place within Latin America to migration from Latin America to Europe and to the U.S. We will analyze these films, and their making, in the global context of an ever-growing tension between "inside" and "outside"; we consider how these films represent or explore precariousness and exclusion; visibility and invisibility; racial and gender dynamics; national and social boundaries; new subjectivities and cultural practices. Films include: Bolivia, Copacabana, La teta asustada, Norteado, Sin nombre, Migraci¿n, Ulises, among others. Films in Spanish, with English subtitles. Discussions and assignments in Spanish.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Briceno, X. (PI)

CHILATST 195: U.S. Latinx Art (ARTHIST 194, CSRE 195)

This course surveys art made by Latinas/os/xs who have lived and worked in the United States since the 1700s, including Chicanos, Nuyoricans, and other Black, Brown, and Indigenous artists. While exploring the diversity of Latinx art, students will consider artists' relationships to identity, race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. Students will also study how artists have responded to and challenged discrimination, institutional exclusion, and national debates through their work. Attendance on the first day of class is a requirement for enrollment.
Last offered: Winter 2021 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

CHILATST 249: Latinx Art: Exhibition History and Theory (ARTHIST 249, ARTHIST 449)

This seminar examines exhibitions of art made by Latinas/es/os/xs in the United States, including Chicanos, Nuyoricans, and other Black, Brown, and Indigenous artists. While exploring exhibitions, students will consider curators' and artists' relationships to identity, race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. Students will also study how practitioners have responded to and challenged discrimination, institutional exclusion, and national debates through their work. The course will include guest curator talks and will result in final projects that comprise either research papers that critically look at exhibitions or proposals for exhibitions of Latinx art.
| Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

CHINA 21: Humanities Core: Love and Betrayal in Asia (HUMCORE 21, JAPAN 21, KOREA 21)

Why are lovers in storybooks East and West always star-crossed? Why do love and death seem to go together? For every Romeo and Juliet, there are dozens of doomed lovers in the Asian literary repertoires, from Genji's string of embittered mistresses, to the Butterfly lovers in early modern China, to the voices of desire in Koryo love songs, to the devoted adolescent cousins in Dream of the Red Chamber, to the media stars of Korean romantic drama, now wildly popular throughout Asia. In this course, we explore how the love story has evolved over centuries of East Asian history, asking along the way what we can learn about Chinese, Japanese, and Korean views of family and community, gender and sexuality, truth and deception, trust and betrayal, ritual and emotion, and freedom and solidarity from canonical and non-canonical works in East Asian literatures. N.B. This is the second of three courses in the East Asian track. These courses offer an unparalleled opportunity to study East Asian history and culture, past and present. Take all three to experience a year-long intellectual community dedicated to exploring how ideas have shaped our world and future.
Last offered: Winter 2020 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

CHINA 21Q: Humanities Core: Love and Betrayal in Asia (HUMCORE 21Q, JAPAN 21Q, KOREA 21Q)

Why are lovers in storybooks East and West always star-crossed? Why do love and death seem to go together? For every Romeo and Juliet, there are dozens of doomed lovers in the Asian literary repertoires, from Genji's string of embittered mistresses, to the Butterfly lovers in early modern China, to the voices of desire in Koryo love songs, to the devoted adolescent cousins in Dream of the Red Chamber, to the media stars of Korean romantic drama, now wildly popular throughout Asia. In this course, we explore how the love story has evolved over centuries of East Asian history, asking along the way what we can learn about Chinese, Japanese, and Korean views of family and community, gender and sexuality, truth and deception, trust and betrayal, ritual and emotion, and freedom and solidarity from canonical and non-canonical works in East Asian literatures. N.B. This is the second of three courses in the East Asian track. These courses offer an unparalleled opportunity to study East Asian history and culture, past and present. Take all three to experience a year-long intellectual community dedicated to exploring how ideas have shaped our world and future.
Last offered: Winter 2019 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

CHINA 23N: Heroes and Heroism

The seminar examines concepts and models of heroism in three paradigmatic ancient traditions: China, Greece, and Rome. Our inquiry is guided by the following questions: What qualities and experiences define someone as a hero? If heroism is not all about excellence, brilliance and glory, what makes heroes exceptional and inspiring figures? How does courage relate to other virtues such as integrity, loyalty, fortitude, and self-sacrifice? Is heroism compatible with fear, shame, and humiliation? How do heroes become what they are, what role do education and imitation play? Is courage a gendered virtue? Does the ethical importance of heroism rest on the fact that heroes are typically confronted with extraordinary choices about life and death, honor and ignominy, freedom and suffering, and survival and immortality? Finally, how do different cultures shape and enrich our answers to the above questions?
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-ER
Instructors: ; Zhou, Y. (PI)

CHINA 24: Humanities Core: How to be Modern in East Asia (COMPLIT 44, HUMCORE 133, JAPAN 24, KOREA 24)

Modern East Asia was almost continuously convulsed by war and revolution in the 19th and 20th centuries. But the everyday experience of modernity was structured more profoundly by the widening gulf between the country and the city, economically, politically, and culturally. This course examines literary and cinematic works from China and Japan that respond to and reflect on the city/country divide, framing it against issues of class, gender, national identity, and ethnicity. It also explores changing ideas about home/hometown, native soil, the folk, roots, migration, enlightenment, civilization, progress, modernization, nationalism, cosmopolitanism, and sustainability. All materials are in English. This course is part of the Humanities Core: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Reichert, J. (PI); Xu, L. (PI)

CHINA 70N: Animal Planet and the Romance of the Species (COMPLIT 70N)

Preference to freshmen.This course considers a variety of animal characters in Chinese and Western literatures as potent symbols of cultural values and dynamic sites of ethical reasoning. What does pervasive animal imagery tell us about how we relate to the world and our neighbors? How do animals define the frontiers of humanity and mediate notions of civilization and culture? How do culture, institutions, and political economy shape concepts of human rights and animal welfare? And, above all, what does it mean to be human in the pluralistic and planetary 21st century? Note: To be eligible for WAYS credit, you must take course for a Letter Grade.
Last offered: Winter 2019 | Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-A-II, WAY-ER

CHINA 111: Literature in 20th-Century China (CHINA 211)

(Graduate students register for 211.) How modern Chinese culture evolved from tradition to modernity; the century-long drive to build a modern nation state and to carry out social movements and political reforms. How the individual developed modern notions of love, affection, beauty, and moral relations with community and family. Sources include fiction and film clips. WIM course.
Terms: Aut | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Wang, B. (PI)

CHINA 112: Tiananmen Square: History, Literature, Iconography (CHINA 212)

Multidisciplinary. Literary and artistic representations of this site of political and ideological struggles throughout the 20th century. Tiananmen-themed creative, documentary, and scholarly works that shed light on the dynamics and processes of modern Chinese culture and politics. No knowledge of Chinese required. Repeat for credit.
Last offered: Winter 2020 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI | Repeatable 2 times (up to 10 units total)

CHINA 115: Sex, Gender, and Power in Modern China (CHINA 215, FEMGEN 150, FEMGEN 250)

Investigates how sex, gender, and power are entwined in the Chinese experience of modernity. Topics include anti-footbinding campaigns, free love/free sex, women's mobilization in revolution and war, the new Marriage Law of 1950, Mao's iron girls, postsocialist celebrations of sensuality, and emergent queer politics. Readings range from feminist theory to China-focused historiography, ethnography, memoir, biography, fiction, essay, and film. All course materials are in English.
Last offered: Summer 2021 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-Gender, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

CHINA 118: Humanities Core: Everybody Eats: The Language, Culture, and Ethics of Food in East Asia (HUMCORE 22, JAPAN 118, KOREA 118)

Many of us have grown up eating "Asian" at home, with friends, on special occasions, or even without full awareness that Asian is what we were eating. This course situates the three major culinary traditions of East Asia--China, Japan, and Korea--in the histories and civilizations of the region, using food as an introduction to their rich repertoires of literature, art, language, philosophy, religion, and culture. It also situates these seemingly timeless gastronomies within local and global flows, social change, and ethical frameworks. Specifically, we will explore the traditional elements of Korean court food, and the transformation of this cuisine as a consequence of the Korean War and South Korea¿s subsequent globalizing economy; the intersection of traditional Japanese food with past and contemporary identities; and the evolution of Chinese cuisine that accompanies shifting attitudes about the environment, health, and well-being. Questions we will ask ourselves during the quarter include, what is "Asian" about Asian cuisine? How has the language of food changed? Is eating, and talking about eating, a gendered experience? How have changing views of the self and community shifted the conversation around the ethics and ecology of meat consumption?
Last offered: Spring 2020 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, Writing 2

CHINA 151B: The Nature of Knowledge: Science and Literature in East Asia (CHINA 251B, JAPAN 151B, JAPAN 251B, KOREA 151, KOREA 251)

"The Nature of Knowledge" explores the intersections of science and humanities East Asia. It covers a broad geographic area (China, Japan, and Korea) along a long temporal space (14th century - present) to investigate how historical notions about the natural world, the human body, and social order defied, informed, and constructed our current categories of science and humanities. The course will make use of medical, geographic, and cosmological treatises from premodern East Asia, portrayals and uses of science in modern literature, film, and media, as well as theoretical and historical essays on the relationships between literature, science, and society.As part of its exploration of science and the humanities in conjunction, the course addresses how understandings of nature are mediated through techniques of narrative, rhetoric, visualization, and demonstration. In the meantime, it also examines how the emergence of modern disciplinary "science" influenced the development of literary language, tropes, and techniques of subject development. This class will expose the ways that science has been mobilized for various ideological projects and to serve different interests, and will produce insights into contemporary debates about the sciences and humanities.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI | Repeatable 2 times (up to 10 units total)
Instructors: ; Zur, D. (PI); Sigley, A. (TA)

CHINA 163: Chinese Biographies of Women (CHINA 263)

Generic and historical analysis of the two-millennia long biographical tradition inaugurated by Liu Xiang, ca. 79-8 B.C.E. Chinese women's history, intellectual history, historiography, and literary studies.
Last offered: Autumn 2018 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

CHINA 163A: Looking for the Way (Dao) in East Asia (HUMCORE 113)

This course looks at foundations of East Asian thought, including Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism as well as other cultural traditions. The ideologies were first articulated in ancient China (or India) and from there spread to Korea, Japan, and throughout Southeast Asia, where they remain important today. We will read selections from seminal texts including "The Confucian Analects", "Daode jing", "Zhuangzi", and "The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch". Attention is also given to other perennial (and often problematic) themes of Asian life and society, including those of conflicting loyalties and violent revenge. Finally, the course examines aesthetic expression in painting and calligraphy that became the embodiment of classical philosophical values and their own articulation of an aestheticized Way, still widely practiced and admired. This course is part of the Humanities Core, a collaborative set of global humanities seminars that brings all of its students and faculty into conversation. On Mondays you meet in your own course, and on Wednesdays all the HumCore seminars (in session that quarter) meet together: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/.
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

CLASSICS 9N: What Didn't Make the Bible (HISTORY 112C, JEWISHST 4, RELIGST 4)

Over two billion people alive today consider the Bible to be sacred scripture. But how did the books that made it into the bible get there in the first place? Who decided what was to be part of the bible and what wasn't? How would history look differently if a given book didn't make the final cut and another one did? Hundreds of ancient Jewish and Christian texts are not included in the Bible. "What Didn't Make It in the Bible" focuses on these excluded writings. We will explore the Dead Sea Scrolls, Gnostic gospels, hear of a five-year-old Jesus throwing temper tantrums while killing (and later resurrecting) his classmates, peruse ancient romance novels, explore the adventures of fallen angels who sired giants (and taught humans about cosmetics), tour heaven and hell, encounter the garden of Eden story told from the perspective of the snake, and learn how the world will end. The course assumes no prior knowledge of Judaism, Christianity, the bible, or ancient history. It is designed for students who are part of faith traditions that consider the bible to be sacred, as well as those who are not. The only prerequisite is an interest in exploring books, groups, and ideas that eventually lost the battles of history and to keep asking the question "why." In critically examining these ancient narratives and the communities that wrote them, you will investigate how religions canonize a scriptural tradition, better appreciate the diversity of early Judaism and Christianity, understand the historical context of these religions, and explore the politics behind what did and did not make it into the bible.
Terms: Aut | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Penn, M. (PI); Persad, S. (GP)

CLASSICS 13N: Race, Blackness, Antiquity (CSRE 13N)

What was the definition of 'race' twenty-five hundred years ago? What did black skin color indicate in the centuries before the Trans-Atlantic slave trade? In this course, students will investigate the history of black skin color in Greek and Roman antiquity alongside the legacy of race within the field of Classics (ancient Greek and Latin literature). In addition to interrogating the terms 'race' and 'blackness' as it applies to an ancient time period, students will cross-examine the role that race and cultural imperialism have played in the formation of the current discipline of Classics. This course will benefit greatly from students with a broad spectrum of interests; all are welcome to join the discussion.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

CLASSICS 14N: Ecology in Philosophy and Literature

What can we do to help the environment? How do our conceptions of the environment affect our actions? In this class, we examine the basic principles of ecological thinking in Western culture. We explore the ways that different writers represent and conceive of the natural world. We also analyze different environmental philosophies. We will address the following questions: What is nature? Who decides what is "natural"? How do humans differ from other animals? Do these differences make us superior beings? How do our eating habits affect the earth? What are the philosophical arguments for vegetarianism and veganism? How have the technologies of television, cell phones, and computers affected our relationship to the natural world? To what extent do we dwell in cyberspace? How does this affect our habitation on earth? How does modern technology inform the way that we think and act in the world? To help us answer these questions, we read nature writers (Edward Abbey, Annie Dillard), philosophers (Descartes, Heidegger), short stories (Kafka, Ursula le Guin), novelists (Conrad, Tournier) and contemporary writers (Peter Singer, Michael Pollan, Elizabeth Kolbert).
Last offered: Spring 2019 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-EthicReas, WAY-A-II, WAY-ER

CLASSICS 18N: The Artist in Ancient Greek Society (ARTHIST 100N)

Given the importance of art to all aspects of their lives, the Greeks had reason to respect their artists. Yet potters, painters and even sculptors possessed little social standing. Why did the Greeks value the work of craftsmen but not the men themselves? Why did Herodotus dismiss those who worked with their hands as "mechanics?" What prompted Homer to claim that "there is no greater glory for a man than what he achieves with his own hands," provided that he was throwing a discus and not a vase on a wheel? Painted pottery was essential to the religious and secular lives of the Greeks. Libations to the gods and to the dead required vessels from which to pour them. Economic prosperity depended on the export of wine and oil in durable clay containers. At home, depictions of gods and heroes on vases reinforced Greek values and helped parents to educate their children. Vases depicting Dionysian excess were produced for elite symposia, from which those who potted and painted them were excluded. Sculptors were less lowly but still regarded as "mechanics," with soft bodies and soft minds (Xenophon), "indifferent to higher things" (Plutarch). The seminar addresses such issues as we work to acknowledge our own privilege and biases. Students will read and discuss texts, write response papers and present slide lectures on aspects of the artist's profession.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Maxmin, J. (PI)

CLASSICS 19N: Eloquence Personified: How To Speak Like Cicero

This course is an introduction to Roman rhetoric, Cicero's Rome, and the active practice of speaking well. Participants read a short rhetorical treatise by Cicero, analyze one of his speeches as well as more recent ones by, e.g., Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Obama, and watch their oratorical performances. During the remainder of the term they practice rhetoric, prepare and deliver in class two (short) speeches, and write an essay.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

CLASSICS 21Q: Eight Great Archaeological Sites in Europe (ARCHLGY 21Q)

Preference to sophomores. Focus is on excavation, features and finds, arguments over interpretation, and the place of each site in understanding the archaeological history of Europe. Goal is to introduce the latest archaeological and anthropological thought, and raise key questions about ancient society. The archaeological perspective foregrounds interdisciplinary study: geophysics articulated with art history, source criticism with analytic modeling, statistics interpretation. A web site with resources about each site, including plans, photographs, video, and publications, is the basis for exploring.
Terms: Win, Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, Writing 2
Instructors: ; Shanks, M. (PI)

CLASSICS 31: Greek Mythology

The heroic and divine in the literature, mythology, and culture of archaic Greece. Interdisciplinary approach to the study of individuals and society. Illustrated lectures. Readings in translation of Homer, Hesiod, and the poets of lyric and tragedy. Weekly participation in a discussion section is required during regular academic quarters (Aut, Win, Spr)
Terms: Win, Sum | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Martin, R. (PI)

CLASSICS 34: Ancient Athletics

How the Olympic Games developed and how they were organized. Many other Greek festivals featured sport and dance competitions, including some for women, and showcased the citizen athlete as a civic ideal. Roman athletics in contrast saw the growth of large-scale spectator sports and professional athletes. Some toured like media stars; others regularly risked death in gladiatorial contests and chariot-racing. We will also explore how large-scale games were funded and how they fostered the development of sports medicine. Weekly participation in a discussion section is required; enroll in sections on coursework.
Last offered: Winter 2019 | Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

CLASSICS 36: Gender and Power in Ancient Rome

Interactions of gender and power in ancient Roman politics, religion, spectacles, and daily life. Masculinity and femininity in founding legends and public rituals; the ambiguous status of Vestal Virgins; gendered behavior in the Roman Forum; the spatial logic of prostitution; sexual characterizations of good vs. bad emperors in ancient texts; gender and time in Roman houses; inversions of gender and space in early Christian martyr narratives. Readings include modern gender theory as well as ancient Roman texts and material culture.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-Gender, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Trimble, J. (PI)

CLASSICS 37: Great Books, Big Ideas from Ancient Greece and Rome (DLCL 11, HUMCORE 112)

This course will journey through ancient Greek and Roman literature from Homer to St. Augustine, in constant conversation with the other HumCore travelers in the Ancient Middle East, Africa and South Asia, and Early China. It will introduce participants to some of its fascinating features and big ideas (such as the idea of history); and it will reflect on questions including: What is an honorable life? Who is the Other? How does a society fall apart? Where does human subjectivity fit into a world of matter, cause and effect? Should art serve an exterior purpose? Do we have any duties to the past? This course is part of the Humanities Core, a collaborative set of global humanities seminars that brings all of its students and faculty into conversation. On Mondays you meet in your own course, and on Wednesdays all the HumCore seminars (in session that quarter) meet together: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/.
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

CLASSICS 40: The History of Ancient Greek Philosophy (PHIL 100)

We shall cover the major developments in Greek philosophical thought, focusing on Plato, Aristotle, and the Hellenistic schools (the Epicureans, the Stoics, and the Skeptics). Topics include epistemology, metaphysics, psychology, ethics and political theory. No prereqs, not repeatable.
Terms: Aut | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

CLASSICS 42: Philosophy and Literature (COMPLIT 181, ENGLISH 81, FRENCH 181, GERMAN 181, ILAC 181, ITALIAN 181, PHIL 81, SLAVIC 181)

Can novels make us better people? Can movies challenge our assumptions? Can poems help us become who we are? We'll think about these and other questions with the help of writers like Toni Morrison, Marcel Proust, Jordan Peele, Charlie Kaufman, Rachel Cusk, William Shakespeare, and Samuel Beckett, plus thinkers like Nehamas, Nietzsche, Nussbaum, Plato, and Sartre. We'll also ask whether a disenchanted world can be re-enchanted; when, if ever, the truth stops being the most important thing; why we sometimes choose to read sad stories; whether we ever love someone for who they are; who could possibly want to live their same life over and over again; what it takes to make ourselves fully moral; whether it's ever good to be conflicted; how we can pull ourselves together; and how we can take ourselves apart. (This is the required gateway course for the Philosophy and Literature major tracks. Majors should register in their home department.)
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

CLASSICS 43: Exploring the New Testament (HISTORY 111B, JEWISHST 86, RELIGST 86)

To explore the historical context of the earliest Christians, students will read most of the New Testament as well as many documents that didn't make the final cut. Non-Christian texts, Roman art, and surviving archeological remains will better situate Christianity within the ancient world. Students will read from the Dead Sea Scrolls, explore Gnostic gospels, hear of a five-year-old Jesus throwing divine temper tantrums while killing (and later resurrecting) his classmates, peruse an ancient marriage guide, and engage with recent scholarship in archeology, literary criticism, and history.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

CLASSICS 44: Epic! Life, death, and glory in the Iliad and Odyssey

The two epics attributed to the ancient Greek poet Homer enshrine a vivid world of experience centered on the deeds and misdeeds of warriors and divinities, kings and queens, in the last days and aftermath of the Trojan War. The course examines these remarkable poems in detail, with attention to their political, social, historical and artistic contexts, as well as to their reception in art, literature, film and music over the last two millennia. No prior knowledge of Homer or Greek literature necessary.
Last offered: Autumn 2018 | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

CLASSICS 47: Ancient Knowledge, New Frontiers: How the Greek Legacy Became Islamic Science (COMPLIT 107A, HUMCORE 121)

What is the relation between magic and science? Is religion compatible with the scientific method? Are there patterns in the stars? What is a metaphor? This course will read key moments in Greek and Islamic science and philosophy and investigate the philosophy of language, mathematical diagrams, manuscripts, the madrasa, free will, predestination, and semantic logic. We will read selections from Ibn Taymiya, Ibn Haytham, Omar Khayyam, Baha al-Din al-Amili, and others. This course is part of the Humanities Core, a collaborative set of global humanities seminars that brings all of its students and faculty into conversation. On Tuesdays you meet in your own course, and on Thursdays all the HumCore seminars (in session that quarter) meet together: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Netz, R. (PI)

CLASSICS 54: Introduction to World Architecture (ARTHIST 3)

This course offers an expansive and wide-ranging introduction to architecture and urban design from the earliest human constructions to the mid-20th century. The examples range from the Americas to Europe, the Middle East, South and East Asia. The diverse technologies and materialities of building are addressed throughout and an overriding concern is to understand architecture as a sensible manifestation of particular cultures, whether societies or individuals. To the same ends, student writing assignments will involve the analysis of local space, whether a room or a building, and then the built environment at large
Last offered: Spring 2021 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

CLASSICS 56: Decolonizing the Western Canon: Introduction to Art and Architecture from Prehistory to Medieval (ARTHIST 1A)

Traditional Art History viewed the Renaissance as its pinnacle; it privileged linear perspective and lifelikeness and measured other traditions against this standard, neglecting art from the Near East, Egypt, the Middle Ages, or Islam. This course will disrupt this colonizing vision by conceptualizing artworks as "methexis" (participation, liveliness, or enactment) as opposed to mimesis (imitation or lifelikeness). We will study the development of the Western canon and its systematic eradication of difference through a renewed understanding of what an artwork is.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

CLASSICS 58: Egypt in the Age of Heresy (AFRICAAM 58A, AFRICAST 58, ARCHLGY 58)

Perhaps the most controversial era in ancient Egyptian history, the Amarna period (c.1350-1334 BCE) was marked by great sociocultural transformation, notably the introduction of a new 'religion' (often considered the world's first form of monotheism), the construction of a new royal city, and radical departures in artistic and architectural styles. This course will introduce archaeological and textual sources of ancient Egypt, investigating topics such as theological promotion, projections of power, social structure, urban design, interregional diplomacy, and historical legacy during the inception, height, and aftermath of this highly enigmatic period. Students with or without prior background are equally encouraged.
Last offered: Autumn 2018 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

CLASSICS 82: The Egyptians (AFRICAAM 30, HISTORY 48, HISTORY 148)

This course traces the emergence and development of the distinctive cultural world of the ancient Egyptians over nearly 4,000 years. Through archaeological and textual evidence, we will investigate the social structures, religious beliefs, and expressive traditions that framed life and death in this extraordinary region. Students with or without prior background are equally encouraged.
Last offered: Autumn 2020 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

CLASSICS 88: Origins of History in Greece and Rome (HISTORY 114)

What's the history of `History'? The first ancient historians wrote about commoners and kings, conquest and power - those who had it, those who wanted it, those without it. Their powerful ways of recounting the past still resonate today and can be harnessed to tell new stories. We will look at how ancients like Herodotus, Thucydides, Tacitus, and Livy turned stories about the past into compelling narratives of loss, growth and decline - inventing 'History' as we know it. All readings in English.
Last offered: Spring 2019 | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

CLASSICS 102L: Advanced Latin: Lucretius (De Rerum Natura)

In this course we will read Book 3 of one of the most compelling works of ancient philosophy: Lucretius' De Rerum Natura ("On the Nature of Things"). The poem is a detailed exposition of the physical theory of Epicurus, an extreme materialism (and precursor to modern atomic theory) intended in significant part to remove the fear of death. Book 3 is considered by many to be the finest of the entire poem, for Lucretius offers here a response to the fact of human mortality that is nothing short of ennobling and liberating. Classics majors and minors must take the course for a letter grade. It may be repeated for degree credit with advance approval from the Director of Undergraduate Studies.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: Language, WAY-A-II | Repeatable for credit
Instructors: ; Tennant, J. (PI)

CLASSICS 103L: Advanced Latin: Tacitus

In this course we will read Book 4 of Tacitus' "Annals", one of the most compelling and crucial pieces in this famed historian's bleak depiction of the Roman empire. We will focus on the portrait of the emperor Tiberius, which has long exemplified how to understand political power in psychological terms, and has been the model since for innumerable tyrannical figures in literature and arts. How did Tacitus the historian achieve such powerful, long-lasting influence? Close attention to language, style and narrative techniques. Classics majors and minors must take for a letter grade and may repeat for credit with advance approval from the Director of Undergraduate Studies.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: Language, WAY-A-II | Repeatable for credit
Instructors: ; Ceserani, G. (PI)

CLASSICS 112: Introduction to Greek Tragedy: Gods, Heroes, Fate, and Justice (TAPS 167)

Gods and heroes, fate and free choice, gender conflict, the justice or injustice of the universe: these are just some of the fundamental human issues that we will explore in about ten of the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.
Terms: Win | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Kim, H. (PI); McCall, M. (PI)

CLASSICS 115: Virtual Italy (ARCHLGY 117, ENGLISH 115, HISTORY 238C, ITALIAN 115)

Classical Italy attracted thousands of travelers throughout the 1700s. Referring to their journey as the "Grand Tour," travelers pursued intellectual passions, promoted careers, and satisfied wanderlust, all while collecting antiquities to fill museums and estates back home. What can computational approaches tell us about who traveled, where and why? We will read travel accounts; experiment with parsing; and visualize historical data. Final projects to form credited contributions to the Grand Tour Project, a cutting-edge digital platform. No prior programming experience necessary.
Terms: Win | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Ceserani, G. (PI)

CLASSICS 127: Dialogues with the Dead (ARTHIST 204)

This seminar considers the dynamism and resilience of Greek art and culture. The dialogues in question are not with ancient shades in the underworld but with later artists who build on the creative vision (and blind spots) of the past to addressthe issues of their day.Roman philhellenes, Renaissance humanists and Neoclassical loyalists have received much attention. More remains to be explored in the work of modern and contemporary artists such as Romare Bearden, Robert Mapplethorpe, Lawrence Argent, Daniel Arsham, Yinka Shonibare and Xu Zhen.In the Cantor Center and the Rodin Garden, the artist's debts to antiquity run deep; freed from his shadow, Camille Claudel's bronzes reflect the sunlit surfaces of Greek sculpture. On Meyer Green, the capital puns of Xu Zhen reverberate from Shanghai to Athens, from archetypes in the Louvre to galleries around the world, where classical "icons" - subverted, inverted and recharged - engage contemporary eyes. Classical tragedy spoke to war-weary Greeks in the 5th century. Today, Sophocles and Bryan Doerries' Theatre of War Productions help veterans to feel less alone as they return to civilian life bearing the wounds of war, visible and invisible. The vibrant and varied afterlife of Greek art is the subject of the seminar, but we will not ignore the sinister aspects of its legacy: the advertising industry's Botoxic embrace of "Greek perfection," the quest for fitness at any price and the persistence of white, western, ableist ideals of male and female beauty. Darker still is the lethal appropriation of classical art and architecture by genocidal tyrants and racists. These dialogues are deadl
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

CLASSICS 130: The Grandeur of Epic: Poetry, Narrative, and World from Homer to Evolutionary Biology

Explores the mystery and power of epic. This ancient word, which at its root means "what is spoken," first classified certain traditions of archaic Greek poetry, especially Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. It now appears everywhere from slang to contemporary scientific discourse. Though some might dismiss its proliferation as an accident of everyday speech, the course will take the phenomenon of "epic" seriously, asking what it is about this oldest of genres that continues to inspire our collective imagination. Readings will include works of epic as well as theoretical and philosophical works on narrative, religion, and science. We will read substantial selections from the Iliad, Hesiod's poems, the Hebrew Bible, the Gospels, Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, J.R.R. Tolkien's Silmarillion, and Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea.
Last offered: Spring 2019 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

CLASSICS 132: Whose Classics? Race and Classical Antiquity in the U.S. (ASNAMST 132, CSRE 132)

Perceived as the privileged inheritance of white European (and later, American) culture, Classics has long been entangled with whiteness. We will examine this issue by flipping the script and decentering whiteness, focusing instead on marginalized communities of color that have been challenging their historic exclusion from classics. We will read classical works and their modern retellings by Black, Indigenous, Chicanx and Asian American intellectual leaders and explore how they critique classics' relationship to racism, nationalism, settler colonialism and imperialism. Readings include Sophocles' Oedipus Rex alongside Rita Dove's The Darker Face of the Earth, Euripides' Medea alongside Luis Alfaro's Mojada, Sophocles' Antigone alongside Beth Piatote's Ant¿kone, and the selections from the Homeric Odyssey alongside Ocean Vuong's Night Sky with Exit Wounds.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

CLASSICS 133: Socrates and Social Justice (CLASSICS 233)

In this class, we examine whether Socrates is a model for social justice. Socrates presents a complicated figure regarding issues of political action and social justice. Some view Socrates as a champion of liberty and individual conscience. Others see him as quiescent when Athenian democracy needed defenders or, even worse, allied with those who undermined democracy. By reading relevant selections from Plato in conjunction with contemporary scholarship, we will decide for ourselves whether Socrates is an exemplar of social justice.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-ER

CLASSICS 136: The Greek Invention of Mathematics

How was mathematics invented? A survey of the main creative ideas of ancient Greek mathematics. Among the issues explored are the axiomatic system of Euclid's Elements, the origins of the calculus in Greek measurements of solids and surfaces, and Archimedes' creation of mathematical physics. We will provide proofs of ancient theorems, and also learn how such theorems are even known today thanks to the recovery of ancient manuscripts.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Netz, R. (PI); Liu, H. (TA)

CLASSICS 139: Refugees, Race and the Greco-Roman World (ASNAMST 139, CSRE 139)

Who is a refugee and who gets to decide? How does race impact who is welcomed into a new community and who is turned away? And what does the Greco-Roman world have to do this? This course will explore these questions by surveying different forms of forced displacement in and beyond antiquity through the lens of Critical Race Theory and Critical Refugee Studies. We will examine how forcibly displaced people were portrayed and treated in ancient Greece and Rome and investigate how racialization contributed to xenophobic immigration policies as well as imperial agendas. We will then evaluate the impact of ancient discourses of forced displacement on the modern world, with a focus on American immigration policies. Understanding that refugees are not objects of investigation, but are powerful knowledge producers, we will also engage with works created by refugees throughout the course.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

CLASSICS 147R: Building Heaven and Hell (CEE 147, RELIGST 147)

How did early Greeks, Romans, Jews, and Christians imagine space? How did they construct heaven and hell and the afterlife through their written texts? Can we take written images of the earthly and heavenly Jerusalem and her temple, such as those found in Ezekiel, the Book of Revelation and the Apocalypse of Paul and transform them into three-dimensional space? Can we visualize Homer's Hades or Dante's Inferno? We are going to try! We will meet in the architecture studio and build out of foam board and hot glue. A number of themes will emerge through the course: the interpretive move in rendering a once real space as a literary icon, the relationship between text and imagined space, the connection between space and ritual, and how to construct an image of a society from whom it imagines in hell. Learn more about the course here: https://youtu.be/J9q8CCQ9NkA
| Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

CLASSICS 151: Ten Things: An Archaeology of Design (ARCHLGY 151)

Connections among science, technology, society and culture by examining the design of a prehistoric hand axe, Egyptian pyramid, ancient Greek perfume jar, medieval castle, Wedgewood teapot, Edison's electric light bulb, computer mouse, Sony Walkman, supersonic aircraft, and BMW Mini. Interdisciplinary perspectives include archaeology, cultural anthropology, science studies, history and sociology of technology, cognitive science, and evolutionary psychology.
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

CLASSICS 161: Introduction to Greek Art I: The Archaic Period (ARTHIST 101)

The class considers the development of Greek art from 1000-480 and poses the question, how Greek was Greek art? In the beginning, as Greece emerges from 200 years of Dark Ages, their art is cautious, conservative and more abstract than life-like, closer to Calder than Michelangelo. While Homer describes the rippling muscles (and egos) of Bronze Age heroes, his fellow painters and sculptors prefer abstraction. This changes in the 7th century, when travel to and trade with the Near East transform Greek culture. What had been an insular society becomes cosmopolitan, enriched by the sophisticated artistic traditions of lands beyond the Aegean "frog pond." Imported Near Eastern bronzes and ivories awaken Greek artists to a wider range of subjects, techniques and ambitions. Later in the century, Greeks in Egypt learn to quarry and carve hard stone from Egyptian masters. Throughout the 6th century, Greek artists absorb what they had borrowed, compete with one another, defy their teachers, test the tolerance of the gods and eventually produce works of art that speak with a Greek accent. By the end of the archaic period, images of gods and mortals bear little trace of alien influence or imprint, yet without the contributions of Egypt and the Near East, Greek art as we know it would have been unthinkable.
Terms: Aut | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Maxmin, J. (PI)

CLASSICS 162: Introduction to Greek Art II: From the Parthenon to Scopas (ARTHIST 102)

The class begins with the art, architecture and political ideals of Periclean Athens, from the emergence of the city as the political and cultural center of Greece in 450 to its defeat in the Peloponnesian War in 404. It then considers how the Athenians (shell-shocked from war and three outbreaks of plague) and the rest of 4th century Greece rebuild their lives and the monuments that define them. Earlier 5th century traditions endure, with subtle changes, in the work of sculptors such as Kephisodotos. Less subtle are the outlook and output of his son Praxiteles. In collaboration with Phryne, his muse and mistress, Praxiteles challenged the canons and constraints of the past with the first female nude in the history of Greek sculpture. His gender-bending gods and men were equally audacious, their shiny surfaces reflecting Plato's discussion of Eros and androgyny. Scopas was also a man of his time, but pursued different interests. Drawn to the interior lives of men and woman, his tormented Trojan War heroes and victims are still scarred by memories of the Peloponnesian War, and a world away from the serene faces of the Parthenon. His Maenad, who has left this world for another, belongs to the same years as Euripides' Bacchae and, at the same time, anticipates the torsion and turbulence of Bernini and the Italian Baroque. The history and visual culture of these years remind us that we are not alone, that the Greeks grappled as we do with the inevitability and consequences of war, disease and inner daemons.
Terms: Win | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Maxmin, J. (PI)

CLASSICS 163: Artists, Athletes, Courtesans and Crooks (ARTHIST 203)

The seminar examines a range of topics devoted to the makers of Greek art and artifacts, the men and women who used them in life and the afterlife, and the miscreants - from Lord Elgin to contemporary tomb-looters and dealers - whose deeds have damaged, deracinated and desecrated temples, sculptures and grave goods. Readings include ancient texts in translation, books and articles by classicists and art historians, legal texts and lively page-turners. Students will discuss weekly readings, give brief slide lectures and a final presentation on a topic of their choice, which need not be confined to the ancient Mediterranean.
Terms: Aut | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Maxmin, J. (PI)

CLASSICS 168: Engineering the Roman Empire (ARCHLGY 118)

Enter the mind, the drafting room, and the building site of the Roman architects and engineers whose monumental projects impressed ancient and modern spectators alike. This class explores the interrelated aesthetics and mechanics of construction that led to one of the most extensive building programs undertaken by a pre-modern state. Through case studies ranging from columns, domes and obelisks to road networks, machines and landscape modification, we investigate the materials, methods, and knowledge behind Roman innovation, and the role of designed space in communicating imperial identity.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

CLASSICS 171: Byzantine Art and Architecture, 300-1453 C.E. (ARTHIST 106, ARTHIST 306)

This course explores the art and architecture of the Eastern Mediterranean: Constantinople, Jerusalem, Alexandria, Antioch, Damascus, Thessaloniki, and Palermo, 4th-15th centuries. Applying an innovative approach, we will probe questions of phenomenology and aesthetics, focusing our discussion on the performance and appearance of spaces and objects in the changing diurnal light, in the glitter of mosaics and in the mirror reflection and translucency of marble.
Last offered: Spring 2021 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

CLASSICS 173: Hagia Sophia (ARTHIST 208, ARTHIST 408, CLASSICS 273)

This seminar uncovers the aesthetic principles and spiritual operations at work in Hagia Sophia, the church dedicated to Holy Wisdom in Constantinople. Rather than a static and inert structure, the Great Church emerges as a material body that comes to life when the morning or evening light resurrects the glitter of its gold mosaics and when the singing of human voices activates the reverberant and enveloping sound of its vast interior. Drawing on art and architectural history, liturgy, musicology, and acoustics, this course explores the Byzantine paradigm of animation arguing that it is manifested in the visual and sonic mirroring, in the chiastic structure of the psalmody, and in the prosody of the sung poetry. Together these elements orchestrate a multi-sensory experience that has the potential to destabilize the divide between real and oneiric, placing the faithful in a space in between terrestrial and celestial. A short film on aesthetics and samples of Byzantine chant digitally imprinted with the acoustics of Hagia Sophia are developed as integral segments of this research; they offer a chance for the student to transcend the limits of textual analysis and experience the temporal dimension of this process of animation of the inert.
Last offered: Winter 2022 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

CLASSICS 179: Dancing in Ancient Greece and Rome (CLASSICS 279)

What was the role of dance in Greek and Roman cultures? Who danced and who were their spectators? Dance as an art for its own sake and as a vehicle of meaning; aesthetics and ethics of ancient dance; Philosophical and Anthropological aspects of dance in Greek and Roman societies. Detailed discussion of visual and textual sources (in English) . 
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

CLASSICS 181: Classical Seminar: Origins of Political Thought (CLASSICS 381, ETHICSOC 130A, PHIL 176A, PHIL 276A, POLISCI 230A, POLISCI 330A)

Political philosophy in classical antiquity, centered on reading canonical works of Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle against other texts and against the political and historical background. Topics include: interdependence, legitimacy, justice; political obligation, citizenship, and leadership; origins and development of democracy; law, civic strife, and constitutional change.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-ER

CLASSICS 186: African Archive Beyond Colonization (AFRICAAM 187, AFRICAST 117, ARCHLGY 166, CLASSICS 286, CSRE 166)

From street names to monuments, the material sediments of colonial time can be seen, heard, and felt in the diverse cultural archives of ancient and contemporary Africa. This seminar aims to examine the role of ethnographic practice in the political agendas of past and present African nations. In the quest to reconstruct an imaginary of Africa in space and time, students will explore these social constructs in light of the rise of archaeology during the height of European empire and colonization. Particularly in the last 50 years, revived interest in African cultural heritage and preservation raises complex questions about the problematic tensions between European, American, and African theories of archaeological and ethnographic practice.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Derbew, S. (PI)

CLASSICS 262: Sex and the Early Church (FEMGEN 262, FEMGEN 362R, RELIGST 262, RELIGST 362)

Sex and the Early Church examines the ways first- through sixth-century Christians addressed questions regarding human sexuality. We will pay particular attention to the relationship between sexuality and issues of gender, culture, power, and resistance. We will read a Roman gynecological manual, an ancient dating guide, the world's first harlequin romance novels, ancient pornography, early Christian martyrdom accounts, stories of female and male saints, instructions for how to best battle demons, visionary accounts, and monastic rules. These will be supplemented by modern scholarship in classics, early Christian studies, gender studies, queer studies, and the history of sexuality. The purpose of our exploration is not simply to better understand ancient views of gender and sexuality. Rather, this investigation of a society whose sexual system often seems so surprising aims to denaturalize many of our own assumptions concerning gender and sexuality. In the process, we will also examine the ways these first centuries of what eventually became the world's largest religious tradition has profoundly affected the sexual norms of our own time. The seminar assumes no prior knowledge of Judaism, Christianity, the bible, or ancient history. Undergraduates register for 200-level for 5 units. Graduate students register for 300-level for 3-5 units.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Penn, M. (PI); Amin, A. (TA)

COLLEGE 101: Why College? Your Education and the Good Life

You're about to embark on an amazing journey: a college education. But what is the purpose of this journey? Why go to college? Some argue that the purpose of college is to train you for a career. Others claim that college is no longer necessary, that you can launch the next big startup and change the world without a degree. Peter Thiel offers students like you $100,000 to skip or stop out of college because knowledge that is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind. Why read Plato if you're a STEM major, after all? Why think about primate health if you're in the arts? In the face of such critiques, this class makes a case for an expansive education that trains your mind to engage with a variety of subjects and skills. The philosophy behind this model has traditionally been called liberal education (from the Latin word for freedom, libertas). Together we will explore the history, practice, and rationales for a liberal education by putting canonical texts in conversation with more recent works. We will consider the relevance of liberal education to all areas of study, from STEM to the arts, and its relations to future careers. And we will examine the central place that the idea of 'the good life' has historically enjoyed in theories of liberal education. You will be prompted to examine your own life, to question how and why you make decisions, and to argue for your views while respecting those of others. Maybe you will conclude that a liberal education is no longer relevant in the twenty-first century, but we hope that you will do so armed with a thorough understanding of what it has been and what it can be. In the end, college is less about what you will do in life, than about what kind of person you will be. So: what kind of person do you want to be? What kind of life will you live? Join us as we explore what others have said about these questions and prepare to answer them for yourself.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: College, THINK, WAY-A-II

COLLEGE 103: Globally Queer

The progress of LGBTQ+ rights over the last half century has been remarkably swift and absolutely global. Pride parades and marriage rights have become emblems of a global movement that seems to transcend culture. This course asks what has allowed LGBTQ+ issues to become leading indicators of a certain kind of liberalization and modernization. What is the road LGBTQ+ rights took from the Stonewall Inn in 1969 to Pride Parades in Minsk, Kolkata and Nuuk, Greenland by 2015? This course will introduce students to the concepts and issues that have shaped this development. But it will also highlight the concepts by which historians, social scientists and political theorists have interrogated the problematic underbelly of this story of global triumph. What gets left out when we frame the course of LGBTQ+ history as somehow moving from Lower Manhattan to the rest of the world? Many academics studying LGBTQ+ history worry about the eurocentrism inherent in this way of telling the story this way, and about how it truncates our understanding of LGBTQ+ culture. After all, are LGBTQ+ identities and rights one size-fits-all? Do they become a way for Western nations to once again set the standards by which others are judged developmentally deficient? In certain societies reference to a 'traditional' national way of thinking about gender and sexuality is simply a fig leaf for homophobia and transphobia. But in other countries an international vocabulary of LGBTQ+ identity comes face-to-face with longstanding or newly emergent configurations of gender and sexuality that look very different. How do we mediate between those two? At the same time, the way Western societies export their conception of what LGBTQ+ identity is and why and when it matters tells us something about how Western Europe and the United States think about these issues themselves? What kinds of rights do Western nations tend to (or at least claim to) champion? Who gets to have and claim those rights?
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: College, THINK, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

COLLEGE 113: Utopia, Dystopia, and Technology in Science Fiction

We live immersed in technology but are perplexed by deep uncertainties about where technology is taking us - to a dead end or a better place? Technology has helped create utopian visions of good society while plunging societies into dystopic nightmares. Science and technology have been a universal path for all societies to join the modern world, but different cultures think about them differently. The Enlightenment ofthe West conceives scientific modernity as emancipation from religion and superstition and as a power over nature. In contrast, the traditional Chinese worldviews incorporate technology into a sacred cosmos where humans use science and technology to stay in tune with Heaven and Earth. Today, technoscience discourse has become a dominant power and ideology. Technoscientific agendas are generating class disparity,eroding the social fabric, undermining the humanist traditions, and damaging nature and climate. Science fiction thinks about how science and technology transform human society, values, and everyday experiences in ways good or bad. By projecting both utopia and dystopia, sf reveals and critiques technology-induced social malaises and keeps hopes alive by projecting better futures, testifying to the ceaseless human potential for self-renewal in sustaining civilization on Earth. This course asks the two-fold question: How can humans of diverse cultures harness technoscientific innovations while preserving humanist values and maintain a sustainable economy and civilization? How do narratives of utopia and dystopia depict the anthropocentric domination of nature and the exploitation working classes through themisuse and abuse of technology? Two evening film screenings required.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: College, THINK, WAY-A-II

COLLEGE 114: Looking for the Dao in East Asia

This course explores an array of early thought and practices in East Asia that had lasting impact--down to today. The focus is on foundational texts, systems of belief, and the arts (music, calligraphy, painting). In one way or another, these were primarily concerned with discovering and propagating a certain Way (Dao) that was believed to embody cosmic principles and be essential to a good life and a harmonious society. But there was plenty of disagreement about what the Way was, where to look for it, and how best to practice it in daily life. We concentrate on cultural values in ancient China that became intrinsic there and were later transported throughout East Asia (Korea, Japan) and even to Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, etc.). Since antiquity, Chinese thinking grappled with the question of how society should be ordered and what if any model should be adopted to achieve social harmony. A range of rival philosophical and religious systems emerged. Later, people who were not satisfied with any one of these extended their inquiries into other areas of human endeavor, especially in the literary, musical, and visual arts, discovering that these could embody their own Way that led to a fulfilling life. We will give attention to all of these alternative understandings of the Way, which collectively account for many of the distinctive traits of culture and history in East Asia.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: College, THINK, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Egan, R. (PI); Li, S. (TA)

COLLEGE 115: Ancient Greece and Rome

Ancient Greek and Roman texts have long been regarded as the touchstones of Western culture. Many of the disciplines that we study at the university - including history, philosophy, political theory, and literature - evolved out of classical texts. In this course, we will read and discuss some of the most influential Western works, ranging from Homer and Plato to Cicero and Seneca. Not only do these texts reward attentive reading, but for much of Western history, their knowledge was considered essential for an education. (No knowledge of Greek or Latin required).
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: College, THINK, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Edelstein, D. (PI)

COLLEGE 116: Ancients and Moderns: Africa and South Asia

How might the comparative global humanities help us understand the cultural traditions of Africa and South Asia? Culturally significant texts (and text equivalents) will allow us to compare different answers to abiding human questions, such as (a) Where do we come from? Why do origins matter? (b) Which features define human (as opposed to divine and animal) being? (c) Which features define community? What is the role of gender, religion, race/ethnicity, language or geography in creating group identity? In what ways are such social identities determined by a sense of the past, whether we call it history, mythology, tradition or collective memory? (d) What role do different media - whether written, spoken, otherwise performed, or visual - play in conveying a sense of the past from one generation to another? In the course of our readings and analysis we shall question the very nature of literature in relation to non-written media, the coherence of supposed traditions, and the usefulness of rubrics such as collective memory. In what ways is our access to such cultural productions framed by colonial histories, with their discrepant experiences and perspectives? By what means can we try to get beyond such constraints? Readings are drawn from (inter alia) the Ramayana; the Bhagavad-Gita; Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart; and Chimamanda Adichie, 'The headstrong historian'.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: College, THINK, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Parker, G. (PI)

COMM 1B: Media, Culture, and Society (AMSTUD 1B)

The institutions and practices of mass media, including television, film, radio, and digital media, and their role in shaping culture and social life. The media's shifting relationships to politics, commerce, and identity.
Terms: Win | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

COMM 123: Getting the Picture: Photojournalism in Russia and the U.S. (AMSTUD 123, REES 223, SLAVIC 123, SLAVIC 323)

The vast majority of photographs printed and consumed around the world appeared on the pages of magazines and newspapers. These pictures were almost always heavily edited, presented in carefully devised sequences, and printed alongside text. Through firsthand visual analysis of the picture presses of yesteryear, this course considers the ongoing meaning, circulation, and power of images as they shape a worldview in Russia as well as the US. In looking at points of contact between two world powers, we will cover the works of a wide array of authors, photographers, photojournalists and photographed celebrities (Lev Tolstoy, Margaret Bourke-White, Russian satirists Ilf and Petrov, John Steinbeck and Richard Capa, and many others). We will explore the relationship between photojournalistic practice of the past with that of our present, from the printed page to digital media, as well as the ethical quandaries posed by the cameras intervention into/shaping of modern history. No knowledge of Russian is required.
Last offered: Autumn 2021 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

COMM 184: Race and Media (COMM 284)

(Graduate students register for 284. COMM 184 is offered for 5 units, COMM 284 is offered for 4 units.) This course explores the co-construction of media practices and racial identity in the US. We will ask how media have shaped how we think about race. And we will explore the often surprising ways ideas about race have shaped media practices and technologies in turn. The course will draw on contemporary debates as well as historical examples and will cover themes such as representation and visual culture, media industries and audience practices, and racial bias in digital technology.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

COMPLIT 10N: Shakespeare and Performance in a Global Context

Preference to freshmen. The problem of performance including the performance of gender through the plays of Shakespeare. In-class performances by students of scenes from plays. The history of theatrical performance. Sources include filmed versions of plays, and readings on the history of gender, gender performance, and transvestite theater. Note: To be eligible for WAYS credit, you must take the course for a Letter Grade. In AY 2020-21, a 'CR' grade will satisfy the WAYS requirement.
Last offered: Spring 2021 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-Gender, WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 11Q: Shakespeare, Playing, Gender

Preference to sophomores. Focus is on several of the best and lesser known plays of Shakespeare, on theatrical and other kinds of playing, and on ambiguities of both gender and playing gender.
Last offered: Winter 2022 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-Gender, WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 21Q: Wilde's Worlds: Oscar Wilde in the International Context

This course introduces you to Oscar Wilde's life and works in various international literary, artistic, social, and cultural contexts in the European fin de siecle, as well as to Wilde's posthumous reception as an international iconic figure of LGBTQ+ literary and cultural history. We will consider Wilde's own roots in Irish culture; his love for Ancient Greece and Rome in the context of Oxford Hellenism; the influence of French and Belgian Decadence and Symbolism on The Picture of Dorian Gray and Salome (which we will read side by side with writings by Joris-Karl Huysmans, Stephane Mallarme, and Rachilde); Wilde's interest in the visual and decorative arts; Wilde's joyful dandyism and vibrant queer literary networks in Paris and London; the impact of Wilde's 1895 trials and imprisonment for "acts of gross indecency"; Wilde's reception in countries such as Germany, Japan, Russia, and the U.S.; and the vibrant posthumous afterlife of Wilde's work and persona in dance, opera, films, musicals, cartoons, and popular culture from the 1900s to today. Studying Oscar Wilde's life and works in such comparative and international contexts opens a door to the historical 1890s, while also giving us the chance to understand and appreciate Wilde's legacy as a queer artist and cultural trailblazer that still speaks to us in our own time. This course will emphasize close reading, analytical writing, and honing your presentation skills as you learn to understand and appreciate the many worlds of Oscar Wilde from the 1890s to today.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, Writing 2
Instructors: ; Dierkes, P. (PI)

COMPLIT 31: Texts that Changed the World from the Ancient Middle East (HUMCORE 111, JEWISHST 150, RELIGST 150)

This course traces the story of the cradle of human civilization. We will begin with the earliest human stories, the Gilgamesh Epic and biblical literature, and follow the path of the development of law, religion, philosophy and literature in the ancient Mediterranean or Middle Eastern world, to the emergence of Jewish and Christian thinking. We will pose questions about how this past continues to inform our present: What stories, myths, and ideas remain foundational to us? How did the stories and myths shape civilizations and form larger communities? How did the earliest stories conceive of human life and the divine? What are the ideas about the order of nature, and the place of human life within that order? How is the relationship between the individual and society constituted? This course is part of the Humanities Core: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-ER

COMPLIT 37Q: Zionism and the Novel (JEWISHST 37Q)

At the end of the nineteenth century, Zionism emerged as a political movement to establish a national homeland for the Jews, eventually leading to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. This seminar uses novels to explore the changes in Zionism, the roots of the conflict in the Middle East, and the potentials for the future. We will take a close look at novels by Israelis, both Jewish and Arab, in order to understand multiple perspectives, and we will also consider works by authors from the North America and from Europe. Note: This course must be taken for a letter grade to be eligible for WAYS credit.
Terms: Aut, Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP, Writing 2
Instructors: ; Berman, R. (PI)

COMPLIT 43: Modernity and Politics in Middle Eastern Literatures (HUMCORE 131)

This course will investigate cultural and literary responses to modernity in the Middle East. The intense modernization process that started in mid 19th century and lingers to this day in the region caused Arabic, Persian, and Turkish literary cultures to encounter rapid changes; borders dissolved, new societies and nations were formed, daily life westernized, and new literary forms took over the former models. In order to understand how writers and individuals negotiated between tradition and modernity and how they adapted their traditions into the modern life we will read both canonical and graphic novels comparatively from each language group and focus on the themes of nation, identity, and gender. All readings will be in English translation. This course is part of the Humanities Core: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Karahan, B. (PI)

COMPLIT 44: Humanities Core: How to be Modern in East Asia (CHINA 24, HUMCORE 133, JAPAN 24, KOREA 24)

Modern East Asia was almost continuously convulsed by war and revolution in the 19th and 20th centuries. But the everyday experience of modernity was structured more profoundly by the widening gulf between the country and the city, economically, politically, and culturally. This course examines literary and cinematic works from China and Japan that respond to and reflect on the city/country divide, framing it against issues of class, gender, national identity, and ethnicity. It also explores changing ideas about home/hometown, native soil, the folk, roots, migration, enlightenment, civilization, progress, modernization, nationalism, cosmopolitanism, and sustainability. All materials are in English. This course is part of the Humanities Core: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Reichert, J. (PI); Xu, L. (PI)

COMPLIT 46: Atlantic Folds: Indigeneity and Modernity (HUMCORE 135)

The Atlantic as an infinite doubling of ancient and modern. The Atlantic as an endless, watery cloth of African, American, and European folds, unfolding and refolding through bodies and ideas: blackness, whiteness, nature, nurture, water, blood, cannibal, mother, you, and I. The Atlantic as a concept, a space, a muse, a goddess. The Atlantic as birth and burial. One ocean under God, divisible, with salt enough for all who thirst. Authors include: Paul Gilroy, Gilles Deleuze, Chimamanda Adichie, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Davi Kopenawa, Pepetela, Beyoncé, and José Vasconcelos. This course is part of the Humanities Core: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/
Last offered: Spring 2021 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 51Q: Comparative Fictions of Ethnicity (AMSTUD 51Q, CSRE 51Q)

Explorations of how literature can represent in complex and compelling ways issues of difference--how they appear, are debated, or silenced. Specific attention on learning how to read critically in ways that lead one to appreciate the power of literary texts, and learning to formulate your ideas into arguments. Course is a Sophomore Seminar and satisfies Write2. By application only
Terms: Spr | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP, Writing 2
Instructors: ; Palumbo-Liu, D. (PI)

COMPLIT 55N: Black Panther, Hamilton, Diaz, and Other Wondrous Lives (CSRE 55N)

This seminar concerns the design and analysis of imaginary (or constructed) worlds for narratives and media such as films, comics, and literary texts. The seminar's primary goal is to help participants understand the creation of better imaginary worlds - ultimately all our efforts should serve that higher purpose. Some of the things we will consider when taking on the analysis of a new world include: What are its primary features - spatial, cultural, biological, fantastic, cosmological? What is the world's ethos (the guiding beliefs or ideals that characterize the world)? What are the precise strategies that are used by the artist to convey the world to us and us to the world? How are our characters connected to the world? And how are we - the viewer or reader or player - connected to the world? Note: This course must be taken for a letter grade to be eligible for WAYS credit.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Saldivar, J. (PI)

COMPLIT 57: Human Rights and World Literature

Human rights may be universal, but each appeal comes from a specific location with its own historical, social, and cultural context. This summer we will turn to literary narratives and films from a wide number of global locations to help us understand human rights; each story taps into fundamental beliefs about justice and ethics, from an eminently human and personal point of view. What does it mean not to have access to water, education, free speech, for example? This course has two components. The first will be a set of readings on the history and ethos of modern human rights. These readings will come from philosophy, history, political theory. The second, and major component is comprised of novels and films that come from different locations in the world, each telling a compelling story. We will come away from this class with a good introduction to human rights history and philosophy and a set of insights into a variety of imaginative perspectives on human rights issues from different global locations. Readings include: Amnesty International, Freedom: Stories Celebrating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Andrew Clapham, Human Rights: A Very Short Introduction, James Dawes, That the World May Know, Walter Echo-Hawk, In the Light of Justice, Amitav Ghosh, The Hungry Tide, Bessie Head, The Word for World is Forest, Ursula LeGuin.
Last offered: Spring 2021 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 70N: Animal Planet and the Romance of the Species (CHINA 70N)

Preference to freshmen.This course considers a variety of animal characters in Chinese and Western literatures as potent symbols of cultural values and dynamic sites of ethical reasoning. What does pervasive animal imagery tell us about how we relate to the world and our neighbors? How do animals define the frontiers of humanity and mediate notions of civilization and culture? How do culture, institutions, and political economy shape concepts of human rights and animal welfare? And, above all, what does it mean to be human in the pluralistic and planetary 21st century? Note: To be eligible for WAYS credit, you must take course for a Letter Grade.
Last offered: Winter 2019 | Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-A-II, WAY-ER

COMPLIT 100: CAPITALS: How Cities Shape Cultures, States, and People (DLCL 100, FRENCH 175, GERMAN 175, HISTORY 206E, ILAC 175, ITALIAN 175, URBANST 153)

This course takes students on a trip to major capital cities at different moments in time, including Renaissance Florence, Golden Age Madrid, colonial Mexico City, imperial Beijing, Enlightenment and romantic Paris, existential and revolutionary St. Petersburg, roaring Berlin, modernist Vienna, and transnational Accra. While exploring each place in a particular historical moment, we will also consider the relations between culture, power, and social life. How does the cultural life of a country intersect with the political activity of a capital? How do large cities shape our everyday experience, our aesthetic preferences, and our sense of history? Why do some cities become cultural capitals? Primary materials for this course will consist of literary, visual, sociological, and historical documents (in translation).
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

COMPLIT 101: What Is Comparative Literature?

What makes comparative literature a distinct field? More than simply reading literature from different places and times, at base comparative literature emerges from a cosmopolitan and anthropological project, attempting to use literature (as an aesthetic object) as a particular index to Otherness. This means at its best comp lit also engages with (directly or indirectly) issues of ethics and responsibility. We will read early studies of folklore (Stith Thompson), philosophical texts of Otherness (Hegel, Fanon, Derrida, Levinas), feminist critique (Butler, Beauvoir), and anthropologists writing in a literary vein (Clifford). Finally, we address how the "human" finds itself offset by its environment (Tsing). Literary works include Al-Koni, The Bleeding of the Stone, Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower, Carpentier, The Kingdom of This World; Gao Xingjian, Soul Mountain (excerpts), Goethe, The East-West Divan (excerpts), LeGuin, "Those who walk away from Omelas," and Rhys, The Wide Sargasso Sea.
Terms: Aut | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 104: Reading In Depth: Deep Time in Theory, Literature and Visual Art

What can the humanities teach us about deep time? Can human beings even conceive of the vast and unfathomable timescales presupposed by geology? The challenge that deep time poses to the human imagination - a challenge that has grown all the more urgent to address in light of our current environmental crisis - will be approached in this course 1. By considering how artists and writers create their own scales of measure in relation to deep time 2. By taking seriously claims of non-human animism in diverse cultural traditions 3. By examining how rhythms of human and non-human life are inscribed in specific literary and artistic works. Assignments in this seminar/arts practicum course will be creative and multimedia in kind. The course includes field trips to the Redwood forest and to the Hopkins Marine Station.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 104N: Film and Fascism in Europe (FILMEDIA 105N, FRENCH 104N, ITALIAN 104N)

Controlling people's minds through propaganda is an integral part of fascist regimes' totalitarianism. In the interwar, cinema, a relatively recent mass media, was immediately seized upon by fascist regimes to produce aggrandizing national narratives, justify their expansionist and extermination policies, celebrate the myth of the "Leader," and indoctrinate the people. Yet film makers under these regimes (Rossellini, Renoir) or just after their fall, used the same media to explore and expose how they manufactured conformism, obedience, and mass murder and to interrogate fascism. We will watch films produced by or under European fascist regimes (Nazi Germany, Italy under Mussolini, Greece's Regime of the Colonels) but also against them. The seminar introduces key film analysis tools and concepts, while offering insights into the history of propaganda and cinema. Taught in English.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Alduy, C. (PI)

COMPLIT 107: Why is Climate Change Un-believable? Interdisciplinary Approaches to Environmental Action

The science is there. The evidence is there. Why do people still refuse to recognize one of the greatest threats to human existence? Why can't, why won't they believe the truth? The time to act is slowly evaporating before our eyes. To answer this question requires an interdisciplinary approach that investigates many of the ways global warming has been analyzed, imagined, represented, and evaluated. Thus we welcome students of any major willing to embark on this common project and to participate fully. We will challenge ourselves to move between and amongst texts that are familiar and those we will bring into the conversation. There will be much that we miss, but we hope this course will at least begin a serious conversation in a unique way. The course will run on two parallel tracks: on the one hand, we will delve into textual representations and arguments; on the other hand, we will attempt to develop a sensibility for how climate change makes itself manifest in the physical world through a series of workshops and site visits in the Bay Area. The first track of this course will center on the discussion of three science fiction novels: The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh, The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu, and Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. The second track of this course is comprised of a series of workshops that aims to develop spatial and material literacy relevant to climate change awareness. It will engage topics such as: scale, atmosphere, measure, material reciprocity, and garbage repurposing. One of the primary goals of this course is to not only understand the problem of climate change, but also how to best act upon it. Thus the required final assignment for this class can be a recommendation for action based on a critical review of the topic of climate change and already existing activism. It can take the form of a paper, a video, an installation art project, a podcast, etc.. But in all cases your work must analytically engage the specific medium of literary expression.
Last offered: Summer 2023 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 107A: Ancient Knowledge, New Frontiers: How the Greek Legacy Became Islamic Science (CLASSICS 47, HUMCORE 121)

What is the relation between magic and science? Is religion compatible with the scientific method? Are there patterns in the stars? What is a metaphor? This course will read key moments in Greek and Islamic science and philosophy and investigate the philosophy of language, mathematical diagrams, manuscripts, the madrasa, free will, predestination, and semantic logic. We will read selections from Ibn Taymiya, Ibn Haytham, Omar Khayyam, Baha al-Din al-Amili, and others. This course is part of the Humanities Core, a collaborative set of global humanities seminars that brings all of its students and faculty into conversation. On Tuesdays you meet in your own course, and on Thursdays all the HumCore seminars (in session that quarter) meet together: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Netz, R. (PI)

COMPLIT 109A: Murder, Mystery and Memory: Istanbul in Historical Fiction (COMPLIT 309A)

This course serves as an introduction to the genre of historical fiction with a focus on Istanbul as its setting. After a brief overview of the origins of the genre in the early nineteenth century to its worldwide popularity in the twenty-first century, we will read historical novels set in Istanbul at its different moments in time. We will study issues of narration, memory and plot as we explore the relation between literature and history, between historical novel and truth; and discuss what it means to imaginatively and critically engage with the past. Readings will include novels by writers such as Ihsan Oktay Anar, Mathias Enard, Jason Goodwin, Nedim Gursel, Barbara Nadel, and Orhan Pamuk.
Last offered: Winter 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 111K: From Colonialism to K-pop: Race and Gender in South Korean Culture (CSRE 111A, FEMGEN 111A, KOREA 111, KOREA 222)

Some may associate South Korea with the following: BTS, North Korean nukes, Samsung, Hyundai, Squid Games. Some may repeat what South Korea has said about itself: that it is racially homogenous, an ethnic community that can trace their ancestry back 5000 years. Some may wonder how a country that is often perceived as Christian and conservative developed pop culture like K-pop, or queer subcultures, or feminist activism. This class will use South Korea as a case study to think historically and geographically about race and gender through the following topics: when did racial discourses begin to emerge in Korea? What have been South Korea's significant encounters with the figure of the Other in its modern history? How were women implicated in the changing landscape of colonial Korea, the Korean War, Korea's Vietnam War experience, and compressed modernization? How have the influx of migrant labor and North Korean refugees impacted ideas about race in South Korea? And finally, what does K-pop tell us about shifting South Korean views of race and gender? The primary materials that we will analyze will be drawn from Korean fiction, film, and media in translation.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

COMPLIT 111Q: Texts and Contexts: Spanish/English Literary Translation Workshop (DLCL 111Q, ILAC 111Q)

The Argentinian writer and translator, Jorge Luis Borges, once said, 'Cada idioma es un modo de sentir el universo.' How are modes of feeling and perception translated across languages? How does the historical context of a work condition its translation into and out of a language? In this course, you will translate from a variety of genres that will teach you the practical skills necessary to translate literary texts from Spanish to English and English to Spanish. By the end of the term, you will have translated and received feedback on a project of your own choosing. Discussion topics may include: the importance of register, tone, and audience; the gains, in addition to the losses, that translations may introduce; the role of ideological, social-political, and aesthetic factors on the production of translations; and comparative syntaxes, morphologies, and semantic systems. Preference will be given to sophomores but freshman through seniors have enjoyed this course in the past. Course taught in Spanish.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

COMPLIT 121: Poems, Poetry, Worlds

What is poetry? Why does it matter? How does it speak in many voices to questions of history, society, and personal experience? Readings will consider poetry as a cross-cultural way of thinking, through feeling, form, invention, sound, and language. The poetry of several cultures will be considered in comparative relation to that of the English-speaking world and in light of classic and more recent theories of poetry.
Terms: Aut | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 122A: Radical Poetry: The Avant-garde in Latin America and Spain (ILAC 122A)

The first few decades of the 20th century ushered in a dynamic literary and aesthetic renewal in Spain and Latin America. Young poets sought a radical change in response to a rapidly changing world, one marked by the horrors of World War I and the rise of a new technological urban society. This course will focus on the poetry and attendant manifestos of movements such as Creacionismo, Ultraismo, Estridentismo, Surrealismo and other -ismos. How did the European avant-garde (e.g. Futurism, Dada, and Surrealism) inform such aesthetic turns? In what ways did poetry assimilate modern visual culture while questioning established poetics? Authors may include Aleixandre, Borges, Cansino-Assens, G. Diego, G. de Torre, Huidobro, Larrea, Lorca, Maples Arce, Neruda, Tablada, and Vallejo. Taught in Spanish.
Last offered: Autumn 2021 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 123: The Novel (DLCL 143)

This course traces the global development of the modern literary genre par excellence through some of its great milestones, with an emphasis on Asian, American, and African novels and innovative approaches.
Terms: Spr | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 123A: Resisting Coloniality: Then and Now (ILAC 123A)

What are the different shapes that Western colonialism took over the centuries? How did people resist the symbolic and material oppressions engendered by such colonialist endeavors? This course offers a deep dive into history of the emergence of Western colonialism (alt: Spanish and Portuguese empires) by focusing on literary and cultural strategies of resisting coloniality in Latin America, from the 16th century to the present. Students will examine critiques of empire through a vast array of sources (novel, letter, short story, sermon, history, essay), spanning from early modern denunciations of the oppression of indigenous and enslaved peoples to modern Latin American answers to the three dominant cultural paradigms in post-independence period: Spain, France, and the United States. Through an examination of different modes of resistance, students will learn to identify the relation between Western colonialism and the discriminatory discourses that divided people based on their class, gender, ethnicity, and race, and whose effects are still impactful for many groups of people nowadays. Authors may include Isabel Guevara, Catalina de Erauso, el Inca Garcilaso, Sor Juana, Simón Bolívar, Flora Tristán, Silvina Ocampo, Jorge Luis Borges, and Gabriel García Márquez. Taught in Spanish.
Last offered: Summer 2021 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

COMPLIT 125J: Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka and Beyond: Place in Modern Japan (JAPAN 125, JAPAN 225)

From the culturally distinct urban centers of Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka to the sharp contrasts between the southernmost and northernmost parts of Japan, modern Japanese literature and film present rich characterizations of place that have shaped Japanese identities at the national, regional, and local levels. This course focuses attention on how these settings operate in key works of literature and film, with an eye toward developing students' understanding of diversity within modern Japan. FOR UNDERGRADS: This course must be taken for a minimum of 3 units and a letter grade to be eligible for Ways credit
| Units: 2-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

COMPLIT 126: Persian Poetry: Text, Space, and Image (ARTHIST 206A, ARTHIST 406A, COMPLIT 226)

Featuring several sessions led by distinguished artist Ala Ebtekar, this course traces the nexus of word and image across a millennium of Persian poetry. Our aim is to look at how texts have been represented through images and enacted in public performances, from the tenth century to the present. Topics will range from high to popular culture and include the visual representation of narrative in illuminated manuscripts, the function of calligraphy on sacred and profane buildings, the performance of poetry in mediaeval courts, the use of images in dramatic tellings of the national epic, and the practice of divination by books. What kinds of space are created in these different instances of text and image coming together? What does it mean for our understanding - and experience - of history if verses from the 13th or 14th century are inscribed on the interior of taxi cabs that navigate through the contemporary Iranian city? And how does an ancient text come alive in a performance that seeks to recreate the space of its origin? These are some of the questions that will be explored through an examination of primary sources (both texts and images) as well as theoretical analyses.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 126C: Literature, Data, and AI

What kind of data is literature? What different methods are available to scholars who work with it, and what are the philosophical assumptions that underpin those methods? In this course, we will survey major critical approaches to literature from the last century as well as emerging methods from the digital humanities, and try them out for ourselves. Students will construct their own portfolio of texts and each week they will (re)analyze them using a different approach; they will record their findings and reflect on their experiences in a weekly log. The course will comprise asynchronous activities (lectures, presentations, assignments, readings) and one synchronous meeting per week to discuss the readings. Approaches may include: formalism, structuralism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, critical approaches to identity and performance (gender, race, sexuality and disability), network analysis, topic modeling, stylometry, and word embeddings. No prior programming knowledge is expected. This course will not offer detailed training in computational analysis; rather, the focus will be on the theoretical implications of computational tools. All readings will be in English.
Last offered: Summer 2021 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 127B: The Hebrew and Jewish Short Story (JEWISHST 147B)

Short stories from Israel, the US and Europe including works by Agnon, Kafka, Keret, Castel-Bloom, Kashua, Singer, Benjamin, Freud, biblical myths and more. The class will engage with questions related to the short story as a literary form and the history of the short story. Reading and discussion in English. Note: To be eligible for WAYS credit, you must take the course for a Letter Grade.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

COMPLIT 131: Coming of Age in the Middle Ages

It is often said that adolescence is a modern invention, and that people in earlier times expected children to act like adults as soon as they were physically able to do so. But the literature that survives from the European Middle Ages reveals a deep preoccupation with questions of how to form socially-competent individuals. What role did literature play in disseminating norms and models for adult behavior? This course introduces students to a range of works from 1100 to 1500CE that portray the process of becoming an adult or prescribe what it should look like: behavior manuals, treatises, epic narratives, romances, and literary 'letters' from parents to children. Students gain familiarity with a range of historic genres and develop skills in close reading and critical analysis. Readings are in English.
Last offered: Spring 2020 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 133: Literature and Society in Africa and the Caribbean (AFRICAAM 133, AFRICAST 132, COMPLIT 233A, CSRE 133E, FRENCH 133, JEWISHST 143)

This course provides students with an introductory survey of literature and cinema from Francophone Africa and the Caribbean in the 20th and 21st centuries. Students will be encouraged to consider the geographical, historical, and political connections between the Maghreb, the Caribbean, and Sub-Saharan Africa. This course will help students improve their ability to speak and write in French by introducing students to linguistic and conceptual tools to conduct literary and visual analysis. While analyzing novels and films, students will be exposed to a diverse number of topics such as national and cultural identity, race and class, gender and sexuality, orality and textuality, transnationalism and migration, colonialism and decolonization, history and memory, and the politics of language. Readings include the works of writers and filmmakers such as Aim¿ C¿saire, Albert Memmi, Ousmane Semb¿ne, Le¿la Sebbar, Mariama B¿, Maryse Cond¿, Dany Laferri¿re, Mati Diop, and special guest L¿onora Miano. Taught in French. Students are encouraged to complete FRENLANG 124 or successfully test above this level through the Language Center. This course fulfills the Writing in the Major (WIM) requirement.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Seck, F. (PI); Yu, K. (TA)

COMPLIT 134A: Classics of Persian Literature (COMPLIT 234)

Why do poems that were written hundreds of years ago still capture the imagination? How is love configured in the texts of a distant culture? Who sings the tales and who are the heroes? This course offers an introduction to the central works of Persian literature, from the 10th century to the present, across the genres of epic, romance, lyric, and novel. As we become acquainted with texts from a millennium of literary history, we will touch upon questions of performance (music and dance), storytelling, profane and divine love, the nature of spiritual quests, the development of narrative and poetic form, the formal and ethical aspects of translation, and, finally, the meaning of modernity in a non-Western context. Readings include: the Book of Kings by Ferdowsi (d.1020); Layla and Majnun by Nezami (d.1209); The Conference of the Birds by Attar (d.1221); selections from the Masnavi and Divan of Rumi (d.1273); the Rose Garden by Sa`di (d.1292), selections from the Divan of Hafez (d.1390); The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat (d.1951); and selected modern poems. Taught in English.
Last offered: Winter 2021 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 138: Literature and the Brain (COMPLIT 238, ENGLISH 118, ENGLISH 218, FRENCH 118, FRENCH 218, PSYC 126, PSYCH 118F)

How does fiction make us better at reading minds? Why do some TV shows get us to believe two contradictory things at once? And can cognitive biases be a writer's best friend? We'll think about these and other questions in the light of contemporary neuroscience and experimental psychology, with the help of Song of Solomon (Toni Morrison), Madame Bovary (Gustave Flaubert), season 1 of Westworld (Lisa Joy / Jonathan Nolan), and short readings from writers like Louise Glück, Jorge Luis Borges, Virginia Woolf, and Marcel Proust. We'll also ask what we see when we read; whether the language we speak affects the way we think; and why different people react differently to the same book. Plus: is free will a fiction, or were you just forced to say that?
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 140: The Pen and the Sword: A Gendered History (FEMGEN 141B, HISTORY 261P, ITALIAN 141)

As weapons, the pen and the sword have been used to wound, punish, and condemn as well as to protect, liberate, and elevate. Historically entangled with ideals of heroism, nobility, and civility, the pen and the sword have been the privileged instruments of men. Yet, throughout history, women have picked up the pen and the sword in defense, despair, and outrage as well as with passion, vision, and inspiration. This course is dedicated to them, and to study of works on love, sex, and power that articulate female experience. In our readings and seminars, we will encounter real and fictive women in their own words and in narrations and depictions by others from classical antiquity to the present, with a special focus on the Renaissance and on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Touching on such topics as flattery and slander through the study of misogynistic, protofeminist, and feminist works in the early modern and modern periods in various European literary traditions, we will consider questions of truth and falsehood in fiction and in life. Course materials span a variety genres and media, from poetry, letters, dialogues, public lectures, treatises, short stories, and drama to painting, sculpture, music, and film works regarded for their aesthetic, intellectual, religious, social, and political value and impact.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 141: Songs of Love and Longing (COMPLIT 241B, MUSIC 183F, MUSIC 283F)

This course will take us on a journey from the Balkans to South Asia as we explore the nexus of poetry and song practiced by bards across a vast geographic and cultural space. Specifically, we will survey the Persianate genre of ghazal lyric, the storytelling traditions of Central Asia, the spiritual concert of certain Sufi orders, the mystical poems and music of Alevi ashiks in Turkey and the Balkans, the life and legend of Armenian poet-composer Sayat Nova, the spiritual practices of the Kurdish Ahl-e Haqq in Iran, the art forms of khyal and qawwali in India and Pakistan, and the syncretistic mysticism of the Bauls of Bengal. Students will engage in listening exercises, analysis of cinematic examples, and a comparison with the European troubadour tradition. There are no prerequisites for this course apart from a desire to engage with poetry as an existential performance. Taught in English.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 142: The Literature of the Americas (AMSTUD 142, CSRE 142)

This course will focus on identifying moments of continuity and discontinuity in the literatures of the Americas, both in time and space. We will look at a wide-range of literatures of the Americas in comparative perspective, emphasizing continuities and crises that are common to North American, Central American, and South American literatures, from the colonial period until today. Topics include the definitions of such concepts as empire and colonialism, the encounters between worldviews of European and indigenous peoples, the emergence of creole and racially mixed populations, slavery, the New World voice, myths of America as paradise or utopia, the coming of modernism, twentieth-century avant-gardes, and distinctive modern episodes in unaccustomed conversation with each other.
Last offered: Winter 2022 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 142B: Translating Japan, Translating the West (JAPAN 121, JAPAN 221)

Translation lies at the heart of all intercultural exchange. This course introduces students to the specific ways in which translation has shaped the image of Japan in the West, the image of the West in Japan, and Japan's self-image in the modern period. What texts and concepts were translated by each side, how, and to what effect? No prior knowledge of Japanese language necessary.
Last offered: Winter 2020 | Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

COMPLIT 148: Transcultural Perspectives of South-East Asian Music and Arts (COMPLIT 267, FRENCH 260A, MUSIC 146N, MUSIC 246N)

This course will explore the links between aspects of South-East Asian cultures and their influence on modern and contemporary Western art and literature, particularly in France; examples of this influence include Claude Debussy (Gamelan music), Jacques Charpentier (Karnatak music), Auguste Rodin (Khmer art) and Antonin Artaud (Balinese theater). In the course of these interdisciplinary analyses - focalized on music and dance but not limited to it - we will confront key notions in relation to transculturality: orientalism, appropriation, auto-ethnography, nostalgia, exoticism and cosmopolitanism. We will also consider transculturality interior to contemporary creation, through the work of contemporary composers such as Tran Kim Ngoc, Chinary Ung and Tôn-Thât Tiêt. Viewings of sculptures, marionette theater, ballet, opera and cinema will also play an integral role. To satisfy a Ways requirement, this course must be taken for at least 3 units. WIM credit in Music at 4 units and a letter grade.
Terms: Win | Units: 2-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Kretz, H. (PI)

COMPLIT 149: The Laboring of Diaspora & Border Literary Cultures (CSRE 149, ILAC 149)

Focus is given to emergent theories of culture and on comparative literary and cultural studies. How do we treat culture as a social force? How do we go about reading the presence of social contexts within cultural texts? How do ethno-racial writers re-imagine the nation as a site with many "cognitive maps" in which the nation-state is not congruent with cultural identity? How do diaspora and border narratives/texts strive for comparative theoretical scope while remaining rooted in specific local histories. Note: This course must be taken for a letter grade to be eligible for WAYS credit.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

COMPLIT 155: Rivers That Were: Latin American Ecopoetry (ILAC 155)

For over a century, poetry in Latin America has been tracing the connections between the human and the nonhuman. We will examine closely the ways in which such poetry registers environmental degradation and its disproportionate impacts along axes of race, gender, and class. How does such poetry unearth a history of colonialism and extractivism that continues to manifest socio-politically and economically in the Latin American landscape? What futures do these eco-poets imagine and advocate? In its encounter with the natural world, poetry makes us feel: how might it inspire us to act? Texts include works by Mistral, Neruda, Parra, Cardenal, Pacheco, Aridjis, Calderón, and Huenún. Taught in Spanish.
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

COMPLIT 156: Stories at the Border (ENGLISH 155, GLOBAL 120)

How authors and filmmakers represent the process of border-making as a social experience? How do the genres in which they work shape our understandings of the issues themselves? We will explore several different genres of visual and textual representation from around the world that bear witness to border conflict - including writing by China Miéville, Carmen Boullosa, Joe Sacco, and Agha Shahid Ali - many of which also trouble the borders according to which genres are typically separated and defined.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

COMPLIT 161E: Narrative and Narrative Theory (ENGLISH 161)

An introduction to stories and storytelling--that is, to narrative. What is narrative? When is narrative fictional and when non-fictional? How is it done, word by word, sentence by sentence? Must it be in prose? Can it be in pictures? How has storytelling changed over time? Focus on various forms, genres, structures, and characteristics of narrative. nEnglish majors must take this class for 5 units.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 163: A Brief History of Now: Song and Poetry from Sappho to Taylor Swift (FRENCH 163)

What techniques do singers share between traditions from antiquity to the present? How do they produce a sense of a moment to be seized, a contrast between hope and despair, and here and now? Transhistorical, comparative analysis of lyric modes and conventions such as apostrophe, the desire to sing and uselessness of doing so, when and where they diverge in different lyric genres and traditions. Poets and songwriters include Catullus, Sappho, Li Qingzhao, troubadours, Dante, Labe, Donne, Taylor Swift, Bob Dylan, SZA. Each week, students will enrich the discussion by introducing to the class their own suggestions of relevant works.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 178: Metamorphosis and Desire: Spenser, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Milton

A recurring motif in the myths of poetry's origins is a metamorphosis provoked by erotic desire, from the nymph Daphne transformed into a laurel tree as she escapes the god Apollo to the bard Orpheus dismembered by impassioned Maenads. This course explores the entanglement of these themes in Renaissance verse across plays by Shakespeare, epic poetry by Spenser and Milton, and narrative poems by Marlowe, Shakespeare, and their contemporaries in continental Europe. We will situate these works amid critical perspectives on desire, love, and gendered subjectivity in early modernity and against the classical background of Ovid's 'Metamorphoses', whose tales of eroticism and transformation shaped so much of Renaissance literary and artistic production.
Last offered: Winter 2020 | Units: 1-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 179: Rumi: Rhythms of Creation (COMPLIT 249)

This course offers a comprehensive introduction to the thought, poetics, and legacy of one of the towering figures of Persian letters, Mawlana Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207-1273). After discussing the literary ancestors (Sana'i, `Attar), we will trace the mystico-philosophical foundations of Rumi's thought through close readings of the lyrical (Divan-e Shams) and narrative poems (Mathnavi-ye ma`navi), the prose works (Fihe ma fihe), and the letters. Literary analyses will be followed by an exploration of music as a structuring principle in Rumi's work and the role of sama` (spiritual audition) as a poetic practice. From there, we will look at the ritual and symbolism of the dervish dance, the foundation of the Mevlevi order, the interconnectedness of space (architecture) and poetic form that is exemplified in the Mevlevi dervish lodges, and the literary and philosophical echoes of Rumi in Ottoman culture, above all Seyh Galip's masterpiece Hüsn ü Ask (1782). The course will be complemented by digressions on Rumi in contemporary Persian and Turkish music, including live musical performances. Open to undergraduates and graduates. Taught in English.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Huber, M. (PI)

COMPLIT 181: Philosophy and Literature (CLASSICS 42, ENGLISH 81, FRENCH 181, GERMAN 181, ILAC 181, ITALIAN 181, PHIL 81, SLAVIC 181)

Can novels make us better people? Can movies challenge our assumptions? Can poems help us become who we are? We'll think about these and other questions with the help of writers like Toni Morrison, Marcel Proust, Jordan Peele, Charlie Kaufman, Rachel Cusk, William Shakespeare, and Samuel Beckett, plus thinkers like Nehamas, Nietzsche, Nussbaum, Plato, and Sartre. We'll also ask whether a disenchanted world can be re-enchanted; when, if ever, the truth stops being the most important thing; why we sometimes choose to read sad stories; whether we ever love someone for who they are; who could possibly want to live their same life over and over again; what it takes to make ourselves fully moral; whether it's ever good to be conflicted; how we can pull ourselves together; and how we can take ourselves apart. (This is the required gateway course for the Philosophy and Literature major tracks. Majors should register in their home department.)
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 184: Reading Rumi

Introduction to the work of Mawlana Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207-1273) in the original Persian. Through close readings of the poems and prose texts we will explore the ways in which Rumi's thought informs his poetic language and continues to resonate with us today. Topics to be touched upon in connection with the primary texts include: Islamic philosophy; theories of literature in the Arabo-Persian world; poetic genres in medieval Persian literature; meter, rhyme, and metaphor; and, finally, fundamental questions of translation and translatability. Special emphasis will be placed on understanding Rumi within the historical context. Readings in Persian. Two years of Persian at Stanford or equivalent required. Counts for the Persian track in the MELLAC minor.
Last offered: Spring 2020 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 184A: Poetry and Mysticism (COMPLIT 284A)

This course explores the interfaces of poetic and mystical speech across times and cultures. Topics include performance; subjectivity; spiritual/erotic love; linguistic fragmentation; the limits of language; and, finally, the question of apophasis as a subversive act. Sources range from the 10th to the 20th century and include Ramon Llull, Santa Teresa, Saint John of the Cross, the Judaic tradition, Hallaj, Rumi, Persianate Sufism, Meister Eckhart, Angelus Silesius, Paul Celan, Simone Weil, Georges Bataille, Juan Goytisolo, and Andrei Tarkovsky. Taught in English.
Last offered: Autumn 2021 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 188: In Search of the Holy Grail: Percival's Quest in Medieval Literature (COMPLIT 388, GERMAN 188, GERMAN 388)

This course focuses on one of the most famous inventions of the Middle Ages: the Holy Grail. The grail - a mysterious vessel with supernatural properties - is first mentioned in Chrétien de Troyes' "Perceval," but the story is soon rewritten by authors who alter the meaning of both the grail and the quest. By reading three different versions, we will explore how they respond differently to major topics in medieval culture and relevant to today: romantic love, family ties, education, moral guilt, and spiritual practice. The texts are: Chrétien de Troyes' "Perceval," Wolfram von Eschenbach's "Parzival," and the anonymous "Queste del Saint Graal." All readings will be available in English.
Last offered: Winter 2020 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 199: Senior Seminar

What is theory, and how (and why) do we do it in Comparative Literature? Senior seminar for Comparative Literature Senior majors only.
Terms: Win | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-ER
Instructors: ; Palumbo-Liu, D. (PI)

COMPLIT 202: Feminist and Queer Theories and Methods Across the Disciplines (FEMGEN 103, FEMGEN 203)

(Graduate Students register for PHIL 279A or FEMGEN 203) This course is an opportunity to explore a variety of historic and current feminist and queer perspectives in the arts, humanities, and social science research. NOTE: This course must be taken for a letter grade and a minimum of 3 units to be eligible for WAYS credit. The 2 unit option is for graduate students only.
Terms: Win | Units: 2-5 | UG Reqs: GER:EC-Gender, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

COMPLIT 208: The Cosmopolitan Introvert: Modern Greek Poetry and its Itinerants

Overview of the last century of Greek poetry with emphasis on modernism. Approximately 20 modern Greek poets (starting with Cavafy and Nobel laureates Seferis and Elytis and moving to more modern writers) are read and compared to other major European and American writers. The themes of the cosmopolitan itinerant and of the introvert, often co-existing in the same poet, connect these idiosyncratic voices. The course uses translations and requires no knowledge of Greek but original texts can also be shared with interested students. Note: The course is open to both undergraduate and graduate students
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Ioannidis, J. (PI)

COMPLIT 213: Culture and Revolution in Africa (AFRICAAM 213, FRENCH 213E, HISTORY 243E)

This course investigates the relationship between culture, revolutionary decolonization, and post-colonial trajectories. It probes the multilayered development of 20th and 21st-century African literature amid decolonization and Cold War cultural diplomacy initiatives and the debates they generated about African literary aesthetics, African languages, the production of history, and the role of the intellectual. We will journey through national cultural movements, international congresses, and pan-African festivals to explore the following questions: What role did writers and artists play in shaping the discourse of revolutionary decolonization throughout the continent and in the diaspora? How have literary texts, films, and works of African cultural thought shaped and engaged with concepts such as "African unity" and "African cultural renaissance"? How have these notions influenced the imaginaries of post-independence nations, engendered new subjectivities, and impacted gender and generational dynamics? How did the ways of knowing and modes of writing promoted and developed in these contexts shape African futures?
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Seck, F. (PI)

COMPLIT 214: Shipwrecks and Backlands: Getting Lost in Literature (COMPLIT 314A, ILAC 218, ILAC 318)

This course takes students on a journey through tales of getting lost in the Portuguese and Spanish empires. We will read harrowing stories of being caught adrift at sea and mystical interpretations of island desertion. The course begins with sea-dominated stories of Portuguese voyages to Asia, Africa, and Brazil then turns to how the Amazon and the sertão, or backlands, became a driving force of Brazilian literature. Official historians, poets, and novelists imbued the ocean and the backlands with romanticism, yet these spaces were the backdrop to slavery and conquest. Instead of approaching shipwreck and captivity narratives as eyewitness testimonies, as many have, we will consider how they produced 'the sea' and 'the wilderness' as poetic constructions in Western literature while also offering glimpses of the 'darker side' of Iberian expansion. Taught in English with all texts offered both in English and the original Portuguese or Spanish. Optional guest lectures in Portuguese.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Hughes, N. (PI)

COMPLIT 220: Renaissance Africa (AFRICAST 220E, ILAC 220E, ILAC 320E)

Literature, art, and culture in Central/Southern Africa during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Emphasis on forms of exchange between Europeans and Africans in the Kingdom of Kongo and Angola. Readings in Portuguese and English. Taught in English.
Last offered: Autumn 2021 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

COMPLIT 222: Narratives of Modern and Contemporary Korea (KOREA 120, KOREA 220)

This introductory survey will examine the development of South and North Korean literature from the turn of the 20th century until the present. The course will be guided by historical and thematic inquiries as we explore literature in the colonial period, in the period of postwar industrialization, and contemporary literature from the last decade. We will supplement our readings with critical writing about Korea from the fields of cultural studies and the social sciences in order to broaden the terms of our engagement with our primary texts.
Last offered: Winter 2022 | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 222A: Myth and Modernity (GERMAN 222, GERMAN 322, JEWISHST 242G, JEWISHST 342)

Masters of German 20th- and 21st-Century literature and philosophy as they present aesthetic innovation and confront the challenges of modern technology, social alienation, manmade catastrophes, and imagine the future. Readings include Nietzsche, Freud, Rilke, Musil, Brecht, Kafka, Doeblin, Benjamin, Juenger, Arendt, Musil, Mann, Adorno, Celan, Grass, Bachmann, Bernhardt, Wolf, and Kluge. Taught in English. Note for German Studies grad students: GERMAN 322 will fulfill the grad core requirement since GERMAN 332 is not being offered this year. NOTE: Enrollment requires Professor Eshel's consent. Please complete the following form to be considered for the class: https://forms.gle/zq3EwGWc1Ff7xn7T9. Enrollment is limited to 20 students. Students will be notified about their acceptance by March 20th and given a permission code. UPDATE 3/2/23 - There was a problem with the original form. Please edit your response to include your name.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 225: Word and Image (ARTHIST 265A, ARTHIST 465A, ITALIAN 265, ITALIAN 365)

What impact do images have on our reading of a text? How do words influence our understanding of images or our reading of pictures? What makes a visual interpretation of written words or a verbal rendering of an image successful? These questions will guide our investigation of the manifold connections between words and images in this course on intermediality and the relations and interrelations between writing and art from classical antiquity to the present. Readings and discussions will include such topics as the life and afterlife in word and image of Ovid's "Metamorphoses," Dante's "Divine Comedy," Ludovico Ariosto's "Orlando Furioso," and John Milton's "Paradise Lost;" the writings and creative production of poet-artists Michelangelo Buonarroti, William Blake, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti; innovations in and correspondences between literature and art in the modern period, from symbolism in the nineteenth century through the flourishing of European avant-garde movements in the twentieth century.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 226: Persian Poetry: Text, Space, and Image (ARTHIST 206A, ARTHIST 406A, COMPLIT 126)

Featuring several sessions led by distinguished artist Ala Ebtekar, this course traces the nexus of word and image across a millennium of Persian poetry. Our aim is to look at how texts have been represented through images and enacted in public performances, from the tenth century to the present. Topics will range from high to popular culture and include the visual representation of narrative in illuminated manuscripts, the function of calligraphy on sacred and profane buildings, the performance of poetry in mediaeval courts, the use of images in dramatic tellings of the national epic, and the practice of divination by books. What kinds of space are created in these different instances of text and image coming together? What does it mean for our understanding - and experience - of history if verses from the 13th or 14th century are inscribed on the interior of taxi cabs that navigate through the contemporary Iranian city? And how does an ancient text come alive in a performance that seeks to recreate the space of its origin? These are some of the questions that will be explored through an examination of primary sources (both texts and images) as well as theoretical analyses.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 228: Critical Translation Studies (JAPAN 123, JAPAN 223)

This course does not teach students how to translate, but rather how to incorporate translation into their critical thinking. Critical translation studies comprises wide-ranging ruminations on the complex interplay between languages, cultures, power, and identity. How can we integrate translation into our thinking about the processes that shape literary, political, ethical, and aesthetic sensibilities, and what do we stand to gain by doing so? Course readings introduce key works from inter-lingual perspectives that range across English, Hebrew, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Tagalog, Bengali, Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian, and Québécois. (Students need only have some knowledge of a language other than Standard American English to productively engage with the readings.) Class discussions and workshop assignments are designed to prepare students to integrate critical thinking about translation into their own research and intellectual interests.
Last offered: Winter 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 231B: Cultural Hybridity in Central-Eastern Europe (SLAVIC 160, SLAVIC 360)

Historically shaped by shifting borders and mixing of various cultures and languages, identities in-between have been in abundance in Central-Eastern Europe. This course offers a comprehensive study of the oeuvre of several major Central-European authors of modernity: the Ukrainian-Russian Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852), the Czech-German-Jewish Franz Kafka (1883-1924), the Austrian-Galician-Jewish Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (1836-1895), the Ukrainian-Galician Olha Kobylyans¿ka (1863-1942), the Russian-German Lou Andreas-Salomé (1861-1937), the Jewish-Polish-Galician Bruno Schulz (1892-1942), and the Polish-Argentinean Witold Gombrowicz (1904-1969). Performing their selves in two or more cultures, these writers were engaged in identity games and produced hybrid texts with which they intervened into the major culture as others. In the course, we will apply post-structuralist and post-colonial concepts such as minor language, heterotopia, in-betweenness, mimicry, indeterminacy, exile, displacement, and transnationalism to the study of the writers oeuvres. We will also master the sociolinguistic analysis of such multi-lingual phenomena as self-translation, code-switching, and calquing and examine various versions of the same text to uncover the palimpsest of hybrid identities.
Last offered: Winter 2021 | Units: 2-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

COMPLIT 233A: Literature and Society in Africa and the Caribbean (AFRICAAM 133, AFRICAST 132, COMPLIT 133, CSRE 133E, FRENCH 133, JEWISHST 143)

This course provides students with an introductory survey of literature and cinema from Francophone Africa and the Caribbean in the 20th and 21st centuries. Students will be encouraged to consider the geographical, historical, and political connections between the Maghreb, the Caribbean, and Sub-Saharan Africa. This course will help students improve their ability to speak and write in French by introducing students to linguistic and conceptual tools to conduct literary and visual analysis. While analyzing novels and films, students will be exposed to a diverse number of topics such as national and cultural identity, race and class, gender and sexuality, orality and textuality, transnationalism and migration, colonialism and decolonization, history and memory, and the politics of language. Readings include the works of writers and filmmakers such as Aim¿ C¿saire, Albert Memmi, Ousmane Semb¿ne, Le¿la Sebbar, Mariama B¿, Maryse Cond¿, Dany Laferri¿re, Mati Diop, and special guest L¿onora Miano. Taught in French. Students are encouraged to complete FRENLANG 124 or successfully test above this level through the Language Center. This course fulfills the Writing in the Major (WIM) requirement.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Seck, F. (PI); Yu, K. (TA)

COMPLIT 234: Classics of Persian Literature (COMPLIT 134A)

Why do poems that were written hundreds of years ago still capture the imagination? How is love configured in the texts of a distant culture? Who sings the tales and who are the heroes? This course offers an introduction to the central works of Persian literature, from the 10th century to the present, across the genres of epic, romance, lyric, and novel. As we become acquainted with texts from a millennium of literary history, we will touch upon questions of performance (music and dance), storytelling, profane and divine love, the nature of spiritual quests, the development of narrative and poetic form, the formal and ethical aspects of translation, and, finally, the meaning of modernity in a non-Western context. Readings include: the Book of Kings by Ferdowsi (d.1020); Layla and Majnun by Nezami (d.1209); The Conference of the Birds by Attar (d.1221); selections from the Masnavi and Divan of Rumi (d.1273); the Rose Garden by Sa`di (d.1292), selections from the Divan of Hafez (d.1390); The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat (d.1951); and selected modern poems. Taught in English.
Last offered: Winter 2021 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 236: Literature and Transgression (FEMGEN 236)

Close reading and analysis of erotic-sexual and aesthetic-stylistic transgression in selected works by such authors as Baudelaire, Wilde, Flaubert, Rachilde, Schnitzler, Kafka, Joyce, Barnes, Eliot, Bataille, Burroughs, Thomas Mann, Kathy Acker, as well as in recent digital literature and online communities. Along with understanding the changing cultural, social, and political contexts of what constitutes "transgression" or censorship, students will gain knowledge of influential theories of transgression and conceptual limits by Foucault, Blanchot, and contemporary queer and feminist writers.
Last offered: Autumn 2019 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

COMPLIT 236A: Casablanca - Algiers - Tunis : Cities on the Edge (CSRE 140S, FRENCH 236, FRENCH 336, HISTORY 245C, JEWISHST 236A, URBANST 140F)

Casablanca, Algiers and Tunis embody three territories, real and imaginary, which never cease to challenge the preconceptions of travelers setting sight on their shores. In this class, we will explore the myriad ways in which these cities of North Africa, on the edge of Europe and of Africa, have been narrated in literature, cinema, and popular culture. Home to Muslims, Christians, and Jews, they are an ebullient laboratory of social, political, religious, and cultural issues, global and local, between the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries. We will look at mass images of these cities, from films to maps, novels to photographs, sketching a new vision of these magnets as places where power, social rituals, legacies of the Ottoman and French colonial pasts, and the influence of the global economy collude and collide. Special focus on class, gender, and race.
Last offered: Spring 2021 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

COMPLIT 238: Literature and the Brain (COMPLIT 138, ENGLISH 118, ENGLISH 218, FRENCH 118, FRENCH 218, PSYC 126, PSYCH 118F)

How does fiction make us better at reading minds? Why do some TV shows get us to believe two contradictory things at once? And can cognitive biases be a writer's best friend? We'll think about these and other questions in the light of contemporary neuroscience and experimental psychology, with the help of Song of Solomon (Toni Morrison), Madame Bovary (Gustave Flaubert), season 1 of Westworld (Lisa Joy / Jonathan Nolan), and short readings from writers like Louise Glück, Jorge Luis Borges, Virginia Woolf, and Marcel Proust. We'll also ask what we see when we read; whether the language we speak affects the way we think; and why different people react differently to the same book. Plus: is free will a fiction, or were you just forced to say that?
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 238A: Dante's "Inferno" (ITALIAN 238A, ITALIAN 338A)

Intensive reading of Dante's "Inferno" (the first canticle of his three canticle poem The Divine Comedy). Main objective: to learn how to read the Inferno in detail and in depth, which entails both close textual analysis as well as a systematic reconstruction of the Christian doctrines that subtend the poem. The other main objective is to understand how Dante's civic and political identity as a Florentine, and especially his exile from Florence, determined his literary career and turned him into the author of the poem. Special emphasis on Dante's moral world view and his representation of character. Taught in English.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 238B: Dante's "Purgatorio" and "Paradiso" (ITALIAN 238B, ITALIAN 338B)

Reading the second and third canticles of Dante's "Divine Comedy." Prerequisite: students must have read Dante's "Inferno" in a course or on their own. Taught in English. Recommended: reading knowledge of Italian.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 241B: Songs of Love and Longing (COMPLIT 141, MUSIC 183F, MUSIC 283F)

This course will take us on a journey from the Balkans to South Asia as we explore the nexus of poetry and song practiced by bards across a vast geographic and cultural space. Specifically, we will survey the Persianate genre of ghazal lyric, the storytelling traditions of Central Asia, the spiritual concert of certain Sufi orders, the mystical poems and music of Alevi ashiks in Turkey and the Balkans, the life and legend of Armenian poet-composer Sayat Nova, the spiritual practices of the Kurdish Ahl-e Haqq in Iran, the art forms of khyal and qawwali in India and Pakistan, and the syncretistic mysticism of the Bauls of Bengal. Students will engage in listening exercises, analysis of cinematic examples, and a comparison with the European troubadour tradition. There are no prerequisites for this course apart from a desire to engage with poetry as an existential performance. Taught in English.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 243: The Age of Beloveds: Inflections of Desire in Persian and Ottoman Literature

This course follows the trajectory of Islamicate love poetry from its emergence in medieval Persian letters to the court of the Ottoman Sultans. Our point of departure will be the emergence of a unique doctrine of love in Persian literature between the 11th and the 14th centuries, from the confluence of courtly, romantic and mystical ideas. Tracing the gradual imbrication of sacred and profane desire, we will study the advice on marital love in early Mirrors for Princes, the exaltation of heterosexual love in romances, the recasting of love in the context of a mystical erotology, and, finally, the enduring legacy of this discourse of love in ghazal poetry. We will then explore the theme of love, oscillating between heterosexual, homoerotic, and mystical in Ottoman lyric poetry by Sufi, Sultan, and woman poets, spreading over four hundred years until the 19th century. In looking at these texts, we will touch upon questions regarding the ideals and realities of love in Persian and Ottoman society, the protean nature and all-encompassing scope of longing in Perso-Ottoman letters, and the metaphysical implications of the hierarchical structure underlying the Persianate codes of love. Open to undergraduates and graduates. Taught in English.
Last offered: Winter 2020 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 243A: From Idol to Equal: Changing Images of Love in 20th-Century Persian and Turkish Literature

This course will explore the changing images of love in pivotal works of modern Persian and Turkish literature. Classes will include close readings and discussions of poems, short stories, and plays with particular attention to the constellation of lover/beloved, the theme of romantic love, and the cultural and historical background of these elements. Our starting point will be the adoption of the novel as a form in the late 19th century. From there, we will explore different figurations of love in key texts of the 20th century up to the Islamic Revolution in Iran (1978) and the coup d'état in Turkey (1980). Themes will include the end of empire and the demise of the concubine, the portrayal of the homeland as lover, secularization and the lifting of the veil, the figure of the female pioneer, the conflict of western and eastern morals, the prostitute as a new paradigm, the emergence of female writers, and avantgarde conceptions of love. Open to undergraduate and graduate students. All readings and discussions will be in English.
Last offered: Winter 2017 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 243B: Arabic Poetry: Advanced Readings in Arabic Literature and Science II

Arabic poetry from the present day to the 500s. This class will be taught entirely in Arabic. Open to undergraduates with four years or more of Arabic.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II | Repeatable for credit

COMPLIT 243G: Adab and Ilm: Advanced Readings in Arabic Literature and Science I

Sufism, Quranic exegesis, adab, hands-on manuscript work in Special Collections, and more. Texts will be in Arabic and discussion will be in English. Advanced reading in Arabic literature (adab) and science (ilm) for graduate students. Open to undergraduates with four years or more of Arabic.
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II | Repeatable for credit

COMPLIT 244: Literature and Technology from Frankenstein to the Futurists (ENGLISH 244, ITALIAN 244, ITALIAN 344)

Overview of defects and disorder across crystalline, amorphous, and glassy phases that are central to function and application, spanning metals, ceramics, and soft/biological matter. Structure and properties of simple 0D/1D/2D defects in crystalline materials. Scaling laws, connectivity and frustration, and hierarchy/distributions of structure across length scales in more disordered materials. Key characterization techniques. Pre-reqs: MATSCI 211 (thermo), 212 (kinetics)
Last offered: Winter 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 244: Modern Persian Poetry

Drawing on poems, songs, and films in addition to theoretical texts, this course retraces the struggle for a modern poetic language in Iran from the time of the Constitutional Revolution (1905/6) to the Islamic Revolution (1978/79), and beyond. Topics include: the unresolved relationship between tradition and modernity; poetry as a vehicle of enlightenment and revolution; the quest for a new poetic expression of love; the emerging possibility of a female voice in Persian poetry; the construction of historical memory through literature; responses to the experience of modern alienation; the figure of the poet as dissident; and the subversive force of poetic form itself. Poets to be read are Iraj, Bahar, Nima, Shamlu, Sepehri, Akhavan Sales, Forugh, and Esma'il Kho'i as well as some non-canonical figures. Open to undergraduates and graduates. Taught in English.
Last offered: Winter 2020 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 249: Rumi: Rhythms of Creation (COMPLIT 179)

This course offers a comprehensive introduction to the thought, poetics, and legacy of one of the towering figures of Persian letters, Mawlana Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207-1273). After discussing the literary ancestors (Sana'i, `Attar), we will trace the mystico-philosophical foundations of Rumi's thought through close readings of the lyrical (Divan-e Shams) and narrative poems (Mathnavi-ye ma`navi), the prose works (Fihe ma fihe), and the letters. Literary analyses will be followed by an exploration of music as a structuring principle in Rumi's work and the role of sama` (spiritual audition) as a poetic practice. From there, we will look at the ritual and symbolism of the dervish dance, the foundation of the Mevlevi order, the interconnectedness of space (architecture) and poetic form that is exemplified in the Mevlevi dervish lodges, and the literary and philosophical echoes of Rumi in Ottoman culture, above all Seyh Galip's masterpiece Hüsn ü Ask (1782). The course will be complemented by digressions on Rumi in contemporary Persian and Turkish music, including live musical performances. Open to undergraduates and graduates. Taught in English.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Huber, M. (PI)

COMPLIT 249B: Iranian Cinema in Diaspora (GLOBAL 249B)

Despite enormous obstacles, immigrant Iranian filmmakers, within a few decades (after the Iranian Revolution), have created a slow but steady stream of films outside Iran. They were originally started by individual spontaneous attempts from different corners of the world and by now we can identify common lines of interest amongst them. There are also major differences between them. These films have never been allowed to be screened inside Iran, and without any support from the global system of production and distribution, as independent and individual attempts, they have enjoyed little attention. Despite all this, Iranian cinema in exile is in no sense any less important than Iranian cinema inside Iran. In this course we will view one such film, made outside Iran, in each class meeting and expect to reach a common consensus in identifying the general patterns within these works and this movement. Questions such as the ones listed below will be addressed in our meetings each week: What changes in aesthetics and point of view of the filmmaker are caused by the change in his or her work environment? Though unwantedly these films are made outside Iran, how related are they to the known (recognized) cinema within Iran? And in fact, to what extent do these films express things that are left unsaid by the cinema within Iran? NOTE: To satisfy a WAYS requirement, this course must be taken for a minimum 3 units and a letter grade. Please contact your academic advisor for University policy regarding WAYS.
Terms: Aut, Win | Units: 1-3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Beyzaie, B. (PI)

COMPLIT 249C: Contemporary Iranian Theater (GLOBAL 249C)

Today, Iranian plays both in traditional and contemporary styles are staged in theater festivals throughout the world and play their role in forming a universal language of theater which combine the heritages from countries in all five continents. Despite many obstacles, some Iranian plays have been translated into English and some prominent Iranian figures are successful stage directors outside Iran. Forty-six years ago when "Theater in Iran" (a monograph on the history of Iranian plays) by Bahram Beyzaie was first published, it put the then contemporary Iranian theater movement "which was altogether westernizing itself blindly" face to face with a new kind of self-awareness. Hence, today's generation of playwrights and stage directors in Iran, all know something of their theatrical heritage. In this course we will spend some class sessions on the history of theater in Iran and some class meetings will be concentrating on contemporary movements and present day playwrights. Given the dearth of visual documents, an attempt will be made to present a picture of Iranian theater to the student. Students are expected to read the recommended available translated plays of the contemporary Iranian playwrights and participate in classroom discussions. NOTE: To satisfy WAYS requirements, you must enroll in the course for a minimum of 3 units. Please contact your academic advisor for more information regarding University WAYS requirements.
Terms: Spr | Units: 1-3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Beyzaie, B. (PI)

COMPLIT 252A: Great Arabic Poetry

Introduction to the canon of Arabic poetry from the sixth to the twenty-first century. Imru' al-Qays, al-Mutanabbi, Mahmud Darwish, and more. Readings in Arabic. Two years of Arabic at Stanford or equivalent required. Counts for the Arabic Track in the MELLAC Minor.
Last offered: Winter 2020 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 252B: Great Arabic Prose

Introduction to the best Arabic Literature from the 790s to 2016. Al-Jahiz, Naguib Mahfouz, and much more. Readings in Arabic. Two years of Arabic at Stanford or equivalent required. Counts for the Arabic Track in the MELLAC Minor. Note: This course must be taken for a minimum of 3 units and a letter grade to be eligible for WAYS credit.
Last offered: Spring 2020 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

COMPLIT 254: The Middle East through Graphic Novel

How do young Middle Easterners grow up and get by? How do states, families, wars, religions, displacement and patriarchy shape their lives? In this course, we will examine the coming of age as children grow up to become adults, learn and negotiate layers of hierarchies of authority, class, gender, and violence in the Middle East /West Asia. We will trace the role of capitalism, colonialism and modernization, which shapes the global history in the meanings and experiences of the youth from major and minor ethnic, language or religious communities of the region. To do so, we will explore the graphic novel genre, a hybrid form that became very popular among Middle Eastern artists and writers who mastered it to narrate their personal stories interwoven in the region's sociopolitical and cultural issues. Through these graphic novels, we will learn not only how to understand the commonalities and differences of the writers' respective societies' history, culture and politics but also how to read words through pictures. Each graphic novel we read will provide us a platform to get into the world of ordinary people making sense of their lives in the unfolding macro processes that affect their families and families. Their stories of struggles, intimacy and resilience will give us a chance to understand the Middle East, beyond the headlines about conflict and deprivation. One graphic novel will be assigned each week. The class is appropriate for beginning students, non-majors, as well as upper level and graduate students, and it may be taken for different levels of credit. All readings will be in English.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 258A: Existentialism, from Moral Quest to Novelistic Form (ILAC 211, ILAC 311)

This seminar intends to follow the development of Existentialism from its genesis to its literary expressions in the European postwar. The notions of defining commitment, of moral ambiguity, the project of the self, and the critique of humanism will be studied in selected texts by Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Unamuno, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Joan Sales.
Last offered: Winter 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-ER

COMPLIT 259A: Levinas and Literature (JEWISHST 249A)

Focus is on major works by French phenomenologist Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995) and their import for literary studies. Aim is to discuss and evaluate Levinas's (often latent) aesthetics through a close reading of his work in phenomenology, ethics, and Jewish philosophy. If poetry has come to seem barbaric (or at least useless) in a world so deeply shaped by genocide, forced migration, and climate change, Levinas offers a clear and deeply engaged path forward. If you love literature but still haven't figured out what on earth it might be good for, this course is for you. Readings and discussion in English.
Last offered: Winter 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 264: Crossing the Atlantic: Race Identity in the "Old" and"New" African Diasporas (AFRICAAM 264, CSRE 265, FRENCH 264E)

In this course, we will think critically about what we have come to call the African diaspora. We will travel the world virtually while exploring a selection of classic and understudied texts, in order to interrogate the relationship between culture, race, gender and identity in the "old" and "new" African diasporas. From literary texts to popular culture, we will relate each weekly reading to a hot topic. Our goal is to think cross-culturally and cross-linguistically about the themes covered by putting exciting works in conversation. The diverse topics and concepts discussed will include race, class, gender, identity, sexuality, migration, Afro-Caribbean religions, performance, violence, the body, metissage, Negritude, Negrismo, multiculturalism, nationalism, Afropolitanism and Afropean identities.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Seck, F. (PI)

COMPLIT 264T: Race, Gender, Justice (CSRE 264S, FEMGEN 264S, TAPS 264S)

The question of justice animates some of the most influential classics and contemporary plays in the dramatic canon. We will examine the relationship between state laws and kinship obligations in Sophocles's Antigone. We will trace the transnational circulation of this text and its adaptations in Gambaro's Argentinian Antigona Furiosa, and Fugard and Kani's South African The Island. We will read Shakespeare's Othello and consider questions of racism, misogyny, and intimate partner violence, investigate the reverberations of these themes in the OJ Simpson trial, and explore its afterlife in Toni Morrison's Desdemona. We will take up questions of sexual violence via John Patrick Shanley's Doubt and Ariel Dorfman's Chilean classic, Death and the Maiden. We will examine themes of police brutality and racial vulnerability in Anna Deavere Smith's Twilight and Aleshea Harris's What to Send Up When it Goes Down. Through close readings of plays, we will explore the inter-articulation of intimacy and violence, intimidation and transgression, vengeance and forgiveness within the context of larger struggles for gender and racial justice. We will read plays in light of contemporary reckonings with the US criminal justice system: the #MeToo movement and the Black Lives Matter movement. While the former appeals to the criminal justice system to restore victims¿ rights, the latter urges a thorough dismantling of the carceral state. How do we understand these divergent responses to augment or abolish punitive structures? Meets WM requirement for TAPS.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

COMPLIT 266: Martin Heidegger: Off the Beaten Track (COMPLIT 363, GERMAN 276)

Martin Heidegger is one of the most influential and contested philosophers of the modern era. This seminar will offer close readings of Heidegger's first book following the Second World War: Martin Heidegger: Off the Beaten Track (Holzwege). We will discuss Heidegger's aesthetic theory ("The Origin of the Work of Art"), his reaction to Hegel's notion of experience, Nietzsche's dictum "God is dead," and Heidegger's unique understanding of poetry, poetics and poetic thinking in "Why Poets?" The seminar will also explore how some of Heidegger's ideas have left a lasting mark in contemporary discussions regarding truth, experience, art, and literature.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 281E: Pirandello, Sartre, and Beckett (COMPLIT 381E, FRENCH 214, FRENCH 314, ITALIAN 214, ITALIAN 314)

In this course we will read the main novels and plays of Pirandello, Sartre, and Beckett, with special emphasis on the existentialist themes of their work. Readings include The Late Mattia Pascal, Six Characters in Search of an Author, Henry IV; Nausea, No Exit, "Existentialism is a Humanism"; Molloy, Endgame, Krapp's Last Tape, Waiting for Godot. Taught in English.
Last offered: Spring 2021 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 284A: Poetry and Mysticism (COMPLIT 184A)

This course explores the interfaces of poetic and mystical speech across times and cultures. Topics include performance; subjectivity; spiritual/erotic love; linguistic fragmentation; the limits of language; and, finally, the question of apophasis as a subversive act. Sources range from the 10th to the 20th century and include Ramon Llull, Santa Teresa, Saint John of the Cross, the Judaic tradition, Hallaj, Rumi, Persianate Sufism, Meister Eckhart, Angelus Silesius, Paul Celan, Simone Weil, Georges Bataille, Juan Goytisolo, and Andrei Tarkovsky. Taught in English.
Last offered: Autumn 2021 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 285: Texts and Contexts: French-English Translation (CSRE 285, FRENCH 185, FRENCH 285)

This course introduces students to the ways in which translation has shaped the image of France and the Francophone world. What texts and concepts were translated, how, where, and to what effect? Students will work on a translation project throughout the quarter and translate texts from French to English and English to French. Topics may include the role of translation in the development of cultures; the political dimension of translation, translation in the context of migration, and the socio-cultural frameworks that shape translations. Case studies: Camus, Chamoiseau, Djebar, Fanon, Sow Fall, Proust. Prior knowledge of French language required.
Last offered: Winter 2021 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

COMPLIT 287: Hope in the Modern Age (GERMAN 287, JEWISHST 287)

Immanuel Kant famously considered "What may I hope?" to be the third and final question of philosophy. This course considers the thinkers, from Immanuel Kant to Judith Butler, who have attempted to answer this question from within the context of modernity. Has revolution replaced religion as the object of our hope? Has Enlightenment lived up to its promises? These topics and more will be discussed, with readings from thinkers including Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Benjamin, Adorno, and Arendt, alongside the literature of writers such as Kafka, Celan, Nelly Sachs, among others, and with particular focus on the question of hope within the German-Jewish tradition.
Last offered: Autumn 2021 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

COMPLIT 293: Literary Translation: Theory and Practice (DLCL 293, ENGLISH 293)

An overview of translation theories and practices over time. The aesthetic, ethical, and political questions raised by the act and art of translation and how these pertain to the translator's tasks. Discussion of particular translation challenges and the decision processes taken to address these issues. Coursework includes assigned theoretical readings, comparative translations, and the undertaking of an individual translation project.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
Instructors: ; Santana, C. (PI)

CSRE 4: The Sociology of Music (AMSTUD 4, SOC 4)

This course examines music - its production, its consumption, and it contested role in society - from a distinctly sociological lens. Why do we prefer certain songs, artists, and musical genres over others? How do we 'use' music to signal group membership and create social categories like class, race, ethnicity, and gender? How does music perpetuate, but also challenge, broader inequalities? Why do some songs become hits? What effects are technology and digital media having on the ways we experience and think about music? Course readings and lectures will explore the various answers to these questions by introducing students to key sociological concepts and ideas. Class time will be spent moving between core theories, listening sessions, discussion of current musical events, and an interrogation of students - own musical experiences. Students will undertake a number of short research and writing assignments that call on them to make sociological sense of music in their own lives, in the lives of others, and in society at large.
Last offered: Winter 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

CSRE 11: Introduction to Dance Studies (DANCE 11, FEMGEN 11, TAPS 11)

This class is an introduction to dance studies and the complex meanings bodily performances carry both onstage and off. Using critical frames drawn from dance criticism, history and ethnography and performance studies, and readings from cultural studies, dance, theater and critical theory, the class explores how performing bodies make meanings. We will read theoretical and historical texts and recorded dance as a means of developing tools for viewing and analyzing dance and understanding its place in larger social, cultural, and political structures. Special attention will be given to new turns in queer and feminist dance studies. This course blends theory and embodied practice. This means as we read, research, and analyze, we will also dance. Students enrolled should expect to move throughout the quarter and complete a two-part choreographic research project. TAPS 11 has been certified to fulfill the Writing in the Major (WIM) requirement.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
Instructors: ; Jones, T. (PI)

CSRE 13N: Race, Blackness, Antiquity (CLASSICS 13N)

What was the definition of 'race' twenty-five hundred years ago? What did black skin color indicate in the centuries before the Trans-Atlantic slave trade? In this course, students will investigate the history of black skin color in Greek and Roman antiquity alongside the legacy of race within the field of Classics (ancient Greek and Latin literature). In addition to interrogating the terms 'race' and 'blackness' as it applies to an ancient time period, students will cross-examine the role that race and cultural imperialism have played in the formation of the current discipline of Classics. This course will benefit greatly from students with a broad spectrum of interests; all are welcome to join the discussion.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

CSRE 35N: Black Music Revealed: Black composers, performers, and themes from the 18th century to the present (AFRICAAM 134, MUSIC 35N)

Online seminar on the achievements of Black composers and performers in ragtime, jazz, and classical music, from Chevalier de Saint-Georges, whose music influenced Mozart, and George Bridgetower, for whom Beethoven composed his "Kreutzer" Sonata, to Anthony Davis's opera "The Central Park Five". Students will examine issues of cultural borrowing in operas by Mozart and Verdi, and shows like Showboat and Porgy and Bess. Guest speakers will include composers and performers. Students will work together in groups to produce materials on course topics in coordination with the African American Museum & Library at Oakland. (Cardinal Course certified by the Haas Center)
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

CSRE 39: Long Live Our 4Bil. Year Old Mother: Black Feminist Praxis, Indigenous Resistance, Queer Possibility (AFRICAAM 39, FEMGEN 39, NATIVEAM 39)

How can art facilitate a culture that values women, mothers, transfolks, caregivers, girls? How can black, indigenous, and people of color frameworks help us reckon with oppressive systems that threaten safety and survival for marginalized people and the lands that sustain us? How can these questions reveal the brilliant and inventive forms of survival that precede and transcend harmful systems toward a world of possibility? Each week, this course will call on artists, scholars, and organizers of color who clarify the urgency and interconnection of issues from patriarchal violence to environmental degradation; criminalization to legacies of settler colonialism. These same thinkers will also speak to the imaginative, everyday knowledge and creative healing practices that our forebears have used for millennia to give vision and rise to true transformation.
Last offered: Spring 2019 | Units: 1-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

CSRE 41Q: Black & White Race Relations in American Fiction & Film (AFRICAAM 101Q, AMSTUD 42Q)

Movies and the fiction that inspires them; power dynamics behind production including historical events, artistic vision, politics, and racial stereotypes. What images of black and white does Hollywood produce to forge a national identity? How do films promote equality between the races? What is lost or gained in film adaptations of books? NOTE: Students must attend the first day; admission to the class will be determined based on an in class essay.
Last offered: Winter 2020 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

CSRE 51Q: Comparative Fictions of Ethnicity (AMSTUD 51Q, COMPLIT 51Q)

Explorations of how literature can represent in complex and compelling ways issues of difference--how they appear, are debated, or silenced. Specific attention on learning how to read critically in ways that lead one to appreciate the power of literary texts, and learning to formulate your ideas into arguments. Course is a Sophomore Seminar and satisfies Write2. By application only
Terms: Spr | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP, Writing 2
Instructors: ; Palumbo-Liu, D. (PI)

CSRE 55N: Black Panther, Hamilton, Diaz, and Other Wondrous Lives (COMPLIT 55N)

This seminar concerns the design and analysis of imaginary (or constructed) worlds for narratives and media such as films, comics, and literary texts. The seminar's primary goal is to help participants understand the creation of better imaginary worlds - ultimately all our efforts should serve that higher purpose. Some of the things we will consider when taking on the analysis of a new world include: What are its primary features - spatial, cultural, biological, fantastic, cosmological? What is the world's ethos (the guiding beliefs or ideals that characterize the world)? What are the precise strategies that are used by the artist to convey the world to us and us to the world? How are our characters connected to the world? And how are we - the viewer or reader or player - connected to the world? Note: This course must be taken for a letter grade to be eligible for WAYS credit.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Saldivar, J. (PI)

CSRE 63N: The Feminist Critique: The History and Politics of Gender Equality (AMSTUD 63N, FEMGEN 63N, HISTORY 63N)

This course explores the long history of ideas about gender and equality. Each week we read, dissect, compare, and critique a set of primary historical documents (political and literary) from around the world, moving from the 15th century to the present. We tease out changing arguments about education, the body, sexuality, violence, labor, politics, and the very meaning of gender, and we place feminist critics within national and global political contexts.
Last offered: Autumn 2020 | Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

CSRE 95I: Space, Public Discourse and Revolutionary Practices (ARTHIST 118A, GLOBAL 145)

This course examines the mediums of public art that have been voices of social change, protestnand expressions of community desire. It will offer a unique glimpse into Iran¿sncontemporary art and visual culture through the investigation of public art practices such asngraffiti and street art, as well as older traditions of Naghali and Iranian Coffeehouse Painting.nnBeginning Iranian case studies will be expanded in comparison with global examples that spannprojects that include Insite (San Diego/Tijuana), Project Row Houses (Houston, TX) the DMZnProject (Korea), Munster Skulpture Projects (Germany), among others. Students will alsonexamine the infrastructural conditions of public art, such as civic, public, and private funding,nrelationships with local communities, and the life of these projects as they move in and out ofnthe artworld. This encompassing view anchors a legacy of Iranian cultural contributions in largerntrajectories of art history, contemporary art, and community arts practice. Guest artists,ncurators, and researchers with site visits included. Students will propose either new public artnproposals, exhibitions, or research to provoke their own ideas while engaging the ever changingnstate of public discourse in these case studies
Last offered: Autumn 2019 | Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

CSRE 102C: History of World Cinema III: Queer Cinemas around the World (ARTHIST 164, ARTHIST 364, CSRE 302C, FEMGEN 100C, FEMGEN 300C, FILMEDIA 100C, FILMEDIA 300C, GLOBAL 193, GLOBAL 390, TAPS 100C, TAPS 300C)

Provides an overview of cinema from around the world since 1960, highlighting the cultural, political, and economic forces that have shaped various film movements over the last six decades. Specific topics may vary by term/year/instructor. This term's topic, Queer Cinemas around the World, engages with a range of queer cinematic forms and queer spectatorial practices in different parts of the world, as well as BIPOC media from North America. Through film and video from Kenya, Malaysia, India, The Dominican Republic, China, Brazil, Palestine, Japan, Morocco, the US etc., we will examine varied narratives about trans experience, same-sex desire, LGBTQI2S+ rights, censorship, precarity, and hopefulness. This course will attune us to regional cultural specificities in queer expression and representation, prompting us to move away from hegemonic and homogenizing understandings of queer life and media. Notes: Screenings will be held on Fridays at 1:30PM in Oshman Hall. Screening times will vary slightly from week to week.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II | Repeatable 2 times (up to 10 units total)
Instructors: ; Iyer, U. (PI)

CSRE 106A: Black Mirror: A.I.Activism (AMSTUD 106B, ARTHIST 168A, ENGLISH 106A, SYMSYS 168A)

Lecture/small group course exploring intersections of STEM, arts and humanities scholarship and practice that engages with, and generated by, exponential technologies. Our course explores the social ethical and artistic implications of artificial intelligence systems with an emphasis on aesthetics, civic society and racial justice, including scholarship on decolonial AI, indigenous AI, disability activism AI, feminist AI and the future of work for creative industries.
| Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

CSRE 111A: From Colonialism to K-pop: Race and Gender in South Korean Culture (COMPLIT 111K, FEMGEN 111A, KOREA 111, KOREA 222)

Some may associate South Korea with the following: BTS, North Korean nukes, Samsung, Hyundai, Squid Games. Some may repeat what South Korea has said about itself: that it is racially homogenous, an ethnic community that can trace their ancestry back 5000 years. Some may wonder how a country that is often perceived as Christian and conservative developed pop culture like K-pop, or queer subcultures, or feminist activism. This class will use South Korea as a case study to think historically and geographically about race and gender through the following topics: when did racial discourses begin to emerge in Korea? What have been South Korea's significant encounters with the figure of the Other in its modern history? How were women implicated in the changing landscape of colonial Korea, the Korean War, Korea's Vietnam War experience, and compressed modernization? How have the influx of migrant labor and North Korean refugees impacted ideas about race in South Korea? And finally, what does K-pop tell us about shifting South Korean views of race and gender? The primary materials that we will analyze will be drawn from Korean fiction, film, and media in translation.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

CSRE 113: Passing: Hidden Identities Onscreen (FEMGEN 112, JEWISHST 112)

Characters who are Jewish, Black, Latinx, women, and LGBTQ often conceal their identities - or "pass" - in Hollywood film. Our course will trace how Hollywood has depicted"passing" from the early 20th century to the present. Just a few of our films will include Gentleman's Agreement (1947), Imitation of Life (1959), School Ties (1992), White Chicks (2004), and Blackkklansman (2018). Through these films, we will explore the overlaps and differences between antisemitism, racism, misogyny, and queerphobia, both onscreen and in real life. In turn, we will also study the ideological role of passing films: how they thrill audiences by challenging social boundaries and hierarchies, only to reestablish familiar boundaries by the end. With this contradiction, passing films often help audiences to feel enlightened without actually challenging the oppressive status quo. Thus, we will not treat films as accurate depictions of real-world passing, but rather as cultural tools that help audiences to manage ideological contradictions about race, gender, sexuality, and class. Students will finish the course by creating their own short films about passing.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Branfman, J. (PI)

CSRE 118D: Musics and Appropriation Throughout the World (AFRICAAM 218, MUSIC 118)

This course critically examines musical practices and appropriation through the amplification of intersectionality. We consider musics globally through recourse to ethnomusicological literature and critical race theories. Our approach begins from an understanding that the social and political contexts where musics are created, disseminated, and consumed inform disparate interpretations and meanings of music, as well as its sounds. Our goal is to shape our ears to hear the effects of slavery, colonialism, capitalism, nationalism, class, gender difference, militarism, and activism. We interrogate the process of appropriating musics throughout the world by making the power structures that shape privileges and exclusions audible.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

CSRE 124B: German Jews: Thought, Race, and Identity (GERMAN 124, JEWISHST 124)

This course offers an introduction to German Jewish thought from the 18th century to the present day. We will explore the way Jews in the German-speaking world understood their identities in the face of changing cultural and political contexts and the literary and philosophical works they produced in the face of antisemitism, discrimination, and genocide. This course covers the major themes and events in German-Jewish cultural history, including the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment), fin de si'cle Vienna, Zionism, exile and migration, the Holocaust, and the modern German Jewish renaissance, with readings from Moses Mendelsohn, Karl Marx, Franz Kafka, Hannah Arendt, Max Czollek, and more. We will pay special attention to the way the German Jewish experience challenges our understanding of identity categories such as race and religion, as well as concepts of whiteness, Europeanness, and the modern nation state.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Hodrick, C. (PI)

CSRE 131A: Introduction to Queer Theory (FEMGEN 131, FILMEDIA 131A)

What can Queer Theory help us do and undo? Emerging at the intersections of feminist theory, queer activism, and critical race studies in the 1990's, Queer Theory has become a dynamic interdisciplinary field that informs a wide range of cultural and artistic practices. This course will introduce students to the development of queer theory as well as core concepts and controversies in the field. While considering theoretical frames for thinking gender, sexuality, and sex, we will explore the possibilities--and limitations--of queer theory with a focus on doing and undoing identity, knowledge, and power.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

CSRE 131B: Jews, Race, and Ethnicity in French Cinema and Literature (FRENCH 102, JEWISHST 131)

How does an officially colorblind country engage with its (in)visible minorities? In a country such as France - which espouses an assimilationist, as opposed to a "melting pot" ideology - one's national belonging is said to transcend their religious, racial, and ethnic particularities. As such, assimilating to a secular, universal model of Frenchness is considered key to the healthy functioning of society. Why might this be so, and has it always been the case? In this class, we will explore this and related questions as they have been articulated in France and the former French Empire from the Revolution through the twenty-first century. Via close study of literature, cinema, and still image, we will (a) examine how the universalist model deals with racial, religious, and ethnic differences, (b) assess how constructions of difference--be they racial, ethnic, or religious--change across time and space, and (c) assess the impact that the colorblind, assimilationist model has on the lived experiences of France's visible and invisible minorities.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Glasberg, R. (PI)

CSRE 132: Whose Classics? Race and Classical Antiquity in the U.S. (ASNAMST 132, CLASSICS 132)

Perceived as the privileged inheritance of white European (and later, American) culture, Classics has long been entangled with whiteness. We will examine this issue by flipping the script and decentering whiteness, focusing instead on marginalized communities of color that have been challenging their historic exclusion from classics. We will read classical works and their modern retellings by Black, Indigenous, Chicanx and Asian American intellectual leaders and explore how they critique classics' relationship to racism, nationalism, settler colonialism and imperialism. Readings include Sophocles' Oedipus Rex alongside Rita Dove's The Darker Face of the Earth, Euripides' Medea alongside Luis Alfaro's Mojada, Sophocles' Antigone alongside Beth Piatote's Ant¿kone, and the selections from the Homeric Odyssey alongside Ocean Vuong's Night Sky with Exit Wounds.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

CSRE 133E: Literature and Society in Africa and the Caribbean (AFRICAAM 133, AFRICAST 132, COMPLIT 133, COMPLIT 233A, FRENCH 133, JEWISHST 143)

This course provides students with an introductory survey of literature and cinema from Francophone Africa and the Caribbean in the 20th and 21st centuries. Students will be encouraged to consider the geographical, historical, and political connections between the Maghreb, the Caribbean, and Sub-Saharan Africa. This course will help students improve their ability to speak and write in French by introducing students to linguistic and conceptual tools to conduct literary and visual analysis. While analyzing novels and films, students will be exposed to a diverse number of topics such as national and cultural identity, race and class, gender and sexuality, orality and textuality, transnationalism and migration, colonialism and decolonization, history and memory, and the politics of language. Readings include the works of writers and filmmakers such as Aim¿ C¿saire, Albert Memmi, Ousmane Semb¿ne, Le¿la Sebbar, Mariama B¿, Maryse Cond¿, Dany Laferri¿re, Mati Diop, and special guest L¿onora Miano. Taught in French. Students are encouraged to complete FRENLANG 124 or successfully test above this level through the Language Center. This course fulfills the Writing in the Major (WIM) requirement.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Seck, F. (PI); Yu, K. (TA)

CSRE 139: Refugees, Race and the Greco-Roman World (ASNAMST 139, CLASSICS 139)

Who is a refugee and who gets to decide? How does race impact who is welcomed into a new community and who is turned away? And what does the Greco-Roman world have to do this? This course will explore these questions by surveying different forms of forced displacement in and beyond antiquity through the lens of Critical Race Theory and Critical Refugee Studies. We will examine how forcibly displaced people were portrayed and treated in ancient Greece and Rome and investigate how racialization contributed to xenophobic immigration policies as well as imperial agendas. We will then evaluate the impact of ancient discourses of forced displacement on the modern world, with a focus on American immigration policies. Understanding that refugees are not objects of investigation, but are powerful knowledge producers, we will also engage with works created by refugees throughout the course.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

CSRE 140S: Casablanca - Algiers - Tunis : Cities on the Edge (COMPLIT 236A, FRENCH 236, FRENCH 336, HISTORY 245C, JEWISHST 236A, URBANST 140F)

Casablanca, Algiers and Tunis embody three territories, real and imaginary, which never cease to challenge the preconceptions of travelers setting sight on their shores. In this class, we will explore the myriad ways in which these cities of North Africa, on the edge of Europe and of Africa, have been narrated in literature, cinema, and popular culture. Home to Muslims, Christians, and Jews, they are an ebullient laboratory of social, political, religious, and cultural issues, global and local, between the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries. We will look at mass images of these cities, from films to maps, novels to photographs, sketching a new vision of these magnets as places where power, social rituals, legacies of the Ottoman and French colonial pasts, and the influence of the global economy collude and collide. Special focus on class, gender, and race.
Last offered: Spring 2021 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

CSRE 142: The Literature of the Americas (AMSTUD 142, COMPLIT 142)

This course will focus on identifying moments of continuity and discontinuity in the literatures of the Americas, both in time and space. We will look at a wide-range of literatures of the Americas in comparative perspective, emphasizing continuities and crises that are common to North American, Central American, and South American literatures, from the colonial period until today. Topics include the definitions of such concepts as empire and colonialism, the encounters between worldviews of European and indigenous peoples, the emergence of creole and racially mixed populations, slavery, the New World voice, myths of America as paradise or utopia, the coming of modernism, twentieth-century avant-gardes, and distinctive modern episodes in unaccustomed conversation with each other.
Last offered: Winter 2022 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II

CSRE 146S: Sound Tracks: Music, Memory, Migration (MUSIC 146S)

Music records racial and ethnic histories. How can critically listening to the musics of diasporic and migratory peoples attune us to the processes of identity formation, racialization, and self-understanding? In this course will gain deeper insights into how communities have used music to respond to the challenges of migration and minoritization under ever-changing nationalist frames. As we listen to musics from the Romani, Jewish, African, and Latinx diasporas, we explore how race, ethnicity, identity, heritage, nationalism, minoritization, hybridity, and diversity are refracted through sound. WIM at 4 units only.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Costache, I. (PI)

CSRE 149: The Laboring of Diaspora & Border Literary Cultures (COMPLIT 149, ILAC 149)

Focus is given to emergent theories of culture and on comparative literary and cultural studies. How do we treat culture as a social force? How do we go about reading the presence of social contexts within cultural texts? How do ethno-racial writers re-imagine the nation as a site with many "cognitive maps" in which the nation-state is not congruent with cultural identity? How do diaspora and border narratives/texts strive for comparative theoretical scope while remaining rooted in specific local histories. Note: This course must be taken for a letter grade to be eligible for WAYS credit.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

CSRE 151D: Migration and Diaspora in American Art, 1800-Present (AMSTUD 151, ARTHIST 151, ARTHIST 351, ASNAMST 151D)

This lecture course explores American art through the lens of immigration, exile, and diaspora. We will examine a wide range of work by immigrant artists and craftsmen, paying special attention to issues of race and ethnicity, assimilation, displacement, and political turmoil. Artists considered include Emmanuel Leutze, Thomas Cole, Joseph Stella, Chiura Obata, Willem de Kooning, Mona Hatoum, and Julie Mehretu, among many others. How do works of art reflect and help shape cultural and individual imaginaries of home and belonging?
Last offered: Winter 2019 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

CSRE 151P: Transpacific Performance (TAPS 151P, TAPS 351P)

Building on exciting new work in transpacific studies, this course explores how performance reveals the many ways in which cultures and communities intersect across the diverse and dynamic Pacific Ocean world, covering works from the Americas and Asia, Pacific Islands, and Australia. In an era when the Pacific has emerged as the center of global cultural and financial power, what critical and ethical role does performance play in treating the region's entangled histories, its urgent contemporary issues, and possible futures?
Last offered: Spring 2020 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

CSRE 152K: Mixed-Race Politics and Culture (AFRICAAM 226, AMSTUD 152K, ENGLISH 152K)

Today, almost one-third of Americans identify with a racial/ethnic minority group, and more than 9 million Americans identify with multiple races. What are the implications of such diversity for American politics and culture? This course approaches issues of race from an interdisciplinary perspective, employing research in the social sciences and humanities to assess how race shapes perceptions of identity as well as political behavior in 21st-century U.S. Issues surrounding the role of multiculturalism, immigration, acculturation, racial representation, and racial prejudice in American society. Topics include the political and social formation of race; racial representation in the media, arts, and popular culture; the rise and decline of the "one-drop rule" and its effect on political and cultural attachments; the politicization of census categories and the rise of the multiracial movement. If you have any questions about enrollment or need a permission number, please contact Farrah Moreno (farrahm@stanford.edu).
Last offered: Winter 2018 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

CSRE 154D: Black Magic: Ethnicity, Race, and Identity in Performance Cultures (AFRICAAM 154G, AFRICAAM 254G, FEMGEN 154G, TAPS 154G, TAPS 354G)

In 2013, CaShawn Thompson devised a Twitter hashtag, #blackgirlmagic, to celebrate the beauty and intelligence of black women. Twitter users quickly adopted the slogan, using the hashtag to celebrate everyday moments of beauty, accomplishment, and magic. The slogan offered a contemporary iteration of an historical alignment: namely, the concept of "magic" with both Black people as well as "blackness." This course explores the legacy of Black magic--and black magic--through performance texts including plays, poetry, films, and novels. We will investigate the creation of magical worlds, the discursive alignment of magic with blackness, and the contemporary manifestation of a historical phenomenon. We will cover, through lecture and discussion, the history of black magic representation as well as the relationship between magic and religion. Our goal will be to understand the impact and history of discursive alignments: what relationship does "black magic" have to and for "black bodies"? How do we understand a history of performance practice as being caught up in complicated legacies of suspicion, celebration, self-definition? The course will give participants a grounding in black performance texts, plays, and theoretical writings. *This course will also satisfy the TAPS department WIM requirement.*
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Robinson, A. (PI)

CSRE 160: Censorship in American Art (AMSTUD 167, ARTHIST 160, FEMGEN 167)

This course examines the art history of censorship in the United States. Paying special attention to the suppression of queer, Black and Latinx visual and performance art, including efforts to vandalize works and defund institutions, students will explore a variety of writing such as news articles, manifestos, letters, protest signs, scholarly texts, and court proceedings. The course approaches censorship as an act to restrict freedom of expression and, however unwittingly, as a mode of provocation and publicity.
Last offered: Autumn 2021 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

CSRE 166: African Archive Beyond Colonization (AFRICAAM 187, AFRICAST 117, ARCHLGY 166, CLASSICS 186, CLASSICS 286)

From street names to monuments, the material sediments of colonial time can be seen, heard, and felt in the diverse cultural archives of ancient and contemporary Africa. This seminar aims to examine the role of ethnographic practice in the political agendas of past and present African nations. In the quest to reconstruct an imaginary of Africa in space and time, students will explore these social constructs in light of the rise of archaeology during the height of European empire and colonization. Particularly in the last 50 years, revived interest in African cultural heritage and preservation raises complex questions about the problematic tensions between European, American, and African theories of archaeological and ethnographic practice.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Derbew, S. (PI)

CSRE 183: Re-Imagining American Borders (AMSTUD 183, FEMGEN 183)

Borders of all kinds in this America have been tight for a long time, and the four years of the Trump regime have shown new violent dangers in such divisions in race, ethnicity, gender and class in this country. In the inordinately difficult years of 2020-2021 as the pandemic has uncovered even more lethal created divisions via closed crossings and early deaths reflecting difference, our task in this course is to both examine how systemic inequities have been developed as part of American history and our daily life, especially as we see the pandemic effects, and to see how American artists, including novelists, poets, visual and performance artists, filmmakers, photographers and essayists, have developed approaches to examine, resist or re-create how the shards of our fractured identities may make sense to us. Films from Raoul Peck on colonialism and white supremacy in this America, Barry Jenkins and Kara Walker on slavery in visual narratives, poets Shailja Patel, Naomi Shihab Nye, Claudia Rankine, Layli Long Soldier, Janice Lobo Sapiago, Felicia Zamora, Zhenyu Yuan, from within the power of multiple languages, and Ta-Nehisi Coates and Nikole Hannah-Jones of the '1619' Project who bring US education into the story, all speak to recent art and social action. Nearby guest speakers from the newly produced Mini Museum Honoring the Black Panther Party in West Oakland, and creators of the Stanford Graphic Novel Project's visual art book with revelations on California prison conditions will also provide more vivid examples for all. Students' work for the quarter includes both written analysis and creative final projects.
Last offered: Autumn 2021 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II

CSRE 191: African American Art (AFRICAAM 191B, ARTHIST 191)

This course explores major art and political movements, such as the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement, and #BlackLivesMatter, that have informed and were inspired by African American artists. Students will read pivotal texts written by Black artists, historians, philosophers and activists; consider how artists have contended with issues of identity, race, gender, and sexuality; and learn about galleries, collections, and organizations founded to support the field. Attendance on the first day of class is a requirement for enrollment.
Last offered: Spring 2021 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

CSRE 194: Black Brazil: Afro-Brazilian Music, Literature, and Art (AFRICAAM 294, ILAC 194G)

More enslaved people from Africa were forced to Brazil than any other country and Brazil was the last country to abolish the practice of slavery in the Americas. How do these two facts impact the cultural history of Brazil? How and why was the country mythologized as a 'racial democracy' in the twentieth century? This class engages these questions to explore the origins, development, and centrality of Afro-Brazilian culture. We will immerse ourselves in the cities of Salvador and Rio de Janeiro, explore samba and Carnaval, take a dive into syncretic religious practices such as Candomblé, observe dances like capoeira, and study literary and artistic expressions from an anti-racist perspective to gain a fuller picture of Brazilian society today. Taught in English.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

CSRE 194NCR: Topics in Writing & Rhetoric: Introduction to Cultural Rhetorics (PWR 194NCR)

All cultures have their own ways of communicating and making meaning through a range of situated rhetorical practices. In this gateway course to the Notation in Cultural Rhetorics, you'll explore the diverse contexts in which these practices are made and continue to be made;learn methodologies for examining their rhetorical production across media and modality; and study situated cultural practices and their historical and current developments.
Terms: Win | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Jernigan, H. (PI)

CSRE 195: U.S. Latinx Art (ARTHIST 194, CHILATST 195)

This course surveys art made by Latinas/os/xs who have lived and worked in the United States since the 1700s, including Chicanos, Nuyoricans, and other Black, Brown, and Indigenous artists. While exploring the diversity of Latinx art, students will consider artists' relationships to identity, race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. Students will also study how artists have responded to and challenged discrimination, institutional exclusion, and national debates through their work. Attendance on the first day of class is a requirement for enrollment.
Last offered: Winter 2021 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

CSRE 233: Censorship in American Art (ARTHIST 233, ARTHIST 433)

This seminar examines the art history of censorship in the United States. Paying special attention to the suppression of queer, Black, and Latinx visual and performance art, including efforts to vandalize works and defund institutions, students will explore a variety of writing such as news articles, manifestos, letters, protest signs, scholarly texts, and court proceedings. The course approaches censorship as an act to restrict freedom of expression and, however unwittingly, as a mode of provocation and publicity.
| Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

CSRE 249: The Algerian Wars (FRENCH 249, HISTORY 239G, JEWISHST 249)

From Algiers the White to Algiers the Red, Algiers, the Mecca of the Revolutionaries in the words of Amilcar Cabral, this course offers to study the Algerian Wars since the French conquest of Algeria (1830-) to the Algerian civil war of the 1990s. We will revisit the ways in which the war has been narrated in literature and cinema, popular culture, and political discourse. A special focus will be given to the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962). The course considers the racial representations of the war in the media, the continuing legacies surrounding the conflict in France, Africa, and the United States, from Che Guevara to the Black Panthers. A key focus will be the transmission of collective memory through transnational lenses, and analyses of commemorative events and movies. nReadings from James Baldwin, Assia Djebar, Albert Camus, Frantz Fanon, Mouloud Feraoun. Movies include "The Battle of Algiers," "Days of Glory," and "Viva Laldjérie." nTaught in English.
Last offered: Spring 2018 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

CSRE 258: Black Feminist Theater and Theory (AFRICAAM 258, FEMGEN 258X, TAPS 258)

From the rave reviews garnered by Angelina Weld Grimke's lynching play, Rachel to recent work by Lynn Nottage on Rwanda, black women playwrights have addressed key issues in modern culture and politics. We will analyze and perform work written by black women in the U.S., Britain and the Caribbean in the 20th and 21st centuries. Topics include: sexuality, surrealism, colonialism, freedom, violence, colorism, love, history, community and more. Playwrights include: Angelina Grimke, Lorriane Hansberry, Winsome Pinnock, Adrienne Kennedy, Suzan- Lori Parks, Ntozake Shange, Pearl Cleage, Sarah Jones, Anna DeVeare Smith, Alice Childress, Lydia Diamond and Zora Neale Hurston.)
Terms: Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

CSRE 264S: Race, Gender, Justice (COMPLIT 264T, FEMGEN 264S, TAPS 264S)

The question of justice animates some of the most influential classics and contemporary plays in the dramatic canon. We will examine the relationship between state laws and kinship obligations in Sophocles's Antigone. We will trace the transnational circulation of this text and its adaptations in Gambaro's Argentinian Antigona Furiosa, and Fugard and Kani's South African The Island. We will read Shakespeare's Othello and consider questions of racism, misogyny, and intimate partner violence, investigate the reverberations of these themes in the OJ Simpson trial, and explore its afterlife in Toni Morrison's Desdemona. We will take up questions of sexual violence via John Patrick Shanley's Doubt and Ariel Dorfman's Chilean classic, Death and the Maiden. We will examine themes of police brutality and racial vulnerability in Anna Deavere Smith's Twilight and Aleshea Harris's What to Send Up When it Goes Down. Through close readings of plays, we will explore the inter-articulation of intimacy and violence, intimidation and transgression, vengeance and forgiveness within the context of larger struggles for gender and racial justice. We will read plays in light of contemporary reckonings with the US criminal justice system: the #MeToo movement and the Black Lives Matter movement. While the former appeals to the criminal justice system to restore victims¿ rights, the latter urges a thorough dismantling of the carceral state. How do we understand these divergent responses to augment or abolish punitive structures? Meets WM requirement for TAPS.
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

CSRE 265: Crossing the Atlantic: Race Identity in the "Old" and"New" African Diasporas (AFRICAAM 264, COMPLIT 264, FRENCH 264E)

In this course, we will think critically about what we have come to call the African diaspora. We will travel the world virtually while exploring a selection of classic and understudied texts, in order to interrogate the relationship between culture, race, gender and identity in the "old" and "new" African diasporas. From literary texts to popular culture, we will relate each weekly reading to a hot topic. Our goal is to think cross-culturally and cross-linguistically about the themes covered by putting exciting works in conversation. The diverse topics and concepts discussed will include race, class, gender, identity, sexuality, migration, Afro-Caribbean religions, performance, violence, the body, metissage, Negritude, Negrismo, multiculturalism, nationalism, Afropolitanism and Afropean identities.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Seck, F. (PI)

CSRE 285: Texts and Contexts: French-English Translation (COMPLIT 285, FRENCH 185, FRENCH 285)

This course introduces students to the ways in which translation has shaped the image of France and the Francophone world. What texts and concepts were translated, how, where, and to what effect? Students will work on a translation project throughout the quarter and translate texts from French to English and English to French. Topics may include the role of translation in the development of cultures; the political dimension of translation, translation in the context of migration, and the socio-cultural frameworks that shape translations. Case studies: Camus, Chamoiseau, Djebar, Fanon, Sow Fall, Proust. Prior knowledge of French language required.
Last offered: Winter 2021 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

DANCE 11: Introduction to Dance Studies (CSRE 11, FEMGEN 11, TAPS 11)

This class is an introduction to dance studies and the complex meanings bodily performances carry both onstage and off. Using critical frames drawn from dance criticism, history and ethnography and performance studies, and readings from cultural studies, dance, theater and critical theory, the class explores how performing bodies make meanings. We will read theoretical and historical texts and recorded dance as a means of developing tools for viewing and analyzing dance and understanding its place in larger social, cultural, and political structures. Special attention will be given to new turns in queer and feminist dance studies. This course blends theory and embodied practice. This means as we read, research, and analyze, we will also dance. Students enrolled should expect to move throughout the quarter and complete a two-part choreographic research project. TAPS 11 has been certified to fulfill the Writing in the Major (WIM) requirement.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
Instructors: ; Jones, T. (PI)

DANCE 161P: Dance and the Politics of Movement (LIFE 161P, TAPS 161P, TAPS 361P)

This course examines how the dancing body has been viewed, exhibited, analyzed, and interpreted from the late nineteenth century to the present. We will discuss how ideologies about race, gender, and sexual orientation are mapped onto the body, as well as investigate the body's place in discourses on religion, health, war, performance, and consumer culture. We will explore how people create meaning through dance and how dance, in turn, shapes social norms, political institutions, and cultural practices. The course's structure challenges the Western/non-Western binary by comparing dance forms across the globe.
Last offered: Spring 2020 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

DANCE 162P: Intersectionality and the Politics of Ballet (FEMGEN 162, TAPS 162P)

Ballet dancers drag a long and conservative history with them each time they step onstage. Yet recently some of the most radical challenges in dance are coming from ballerinas, featuring prosthetic limbs, non-female identifying dancers en pointe, and Ultra-Orthodox Jewish women performing classical repertoire. This seminar uses dance history to reposition ballet as a daring future-facing art form, one where the politics of nationality, religion, class, gender, race, and disability intersect. These issues are provocatively illuminated by classically trained dancers like South African artist Dada Masilo in her gender-bending Swan Lake and Giselle adaptations, Phil Chan's anti-Orientalist restagings, and activist American dancer Alice Sheppard's showcasing of the art of disability partnered by her wheelchair. What can ballet bring to the pressing social issues of equity, inclusion, and diversity when for centuries it has been considered an exemplar of the static imperialist, Western art form and idealized white body? What has shifted to reveal ballet as a vital medium for registering new global identities and social justice challenges? How can an art form built on obedient bodies be politically dangerous? Exposing limitations of binaries such as masculine/feminine, White/Black, heterosexual/homosexual, and colonial/ colonized histories, we consider how culture is complicated through the ballet repertoire and its techniques for disciplining and gendering bodies. Using live and recorded performances, interviews with practitioners reshaping the field, and close readings of new scholarship, we will see how 21st century politics are being negotiated through ballet in an intersectional frame.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

DANCE 195D: Queer Caribbean Performance (TAPS 195D, TAPS 395D)

With its' lush and fantastic landscape, fabulous carnivalesque aesthetics, and rich African Diaspora Religious traditions, the Caribbean has long been a setting which New World black artists have staged competing visions of racial and sexual utopia and dystopia. However, these foreigner-authored fantasies have often overshadowed the lived experience and life storytelling of Caribbean subjects. This course explores the intersecting performance cultures, politics, and sensual/sexual practices that have constituted queer life in the Caribbean region and its diaspora. Placing Caribbean queer of color critique alongside key moments in twentieth and twenty-first century performance history at home and abroad, we will ask how have histories of the plantation, discourses of race and nation, migration, and revolution led to the formation of regionally specific queer identifications. What about the idea of the 'tropics' has made it such as fertile ground for queer performance making, and how have artists from the region identified or dis-identified with these aesthetic formations? This class will begin with an exploration of theories of queer diaspora and queer of color critique's roots in black feminisms. We will cover themes of exile, religious rites, and organizing as sights of queer political formation and creative community in the Caribbean.
Last offered: Winter 2022 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

DANCE 196: Dancing Black: Embodying the African Diaspora in the United States and the Caribbean (TAPS 196, TAPS 396)

What does it mean to dance black? How can studying comparative dance practices across the United States and the Caribbean expose continuities and differences in African diaspora experience? How can we draw strategies from black performance to inform our current movements for social change? This class will explore how dance and writing about performance have shaped notions of what it means to identify or be marked as an African diaspora subject. From the ring shouts of captive Africans to the 20th-century concert dance stage, from New York queer ballroom culture to Tiktok fads, this class will expose students to both historical and ethnographic methods for using dance to study the formation of black community in the New World. Looking beyond the surface of skin, we'll explore how race is experienced in muscle and flesh, and how black performers have historically taken advantage of or disavowed racialized ideas of how they can/should move. We will read theories of diaspora, queer of color critique and black feminist theory, and performance theory. We will search for the common questions and conversations about embodiment, the spectator's gaze, and black belonging that run through all three disciplines. Students will be required to do some movement research (through accessible, at-home dance practice), write weekly journals, and complete short essay projects. Students develop will skills for writing, speaking, and making performance to explore the intersections between race, sexuality, and dance.
Last offered: Autumn 2021 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

DLCL 11: Great Books, Big Ideas from Ancient Greece and Rome (CLASSICS 37, HUMCORE 112)

This course will journey through ancient Greek and Roman literature from Homer to St. Augustine, in constant conversation with the other HumCore travelers in the Ancient Middle East, Africa and South Asia, and Early China. It will introduce participants to some of its fascinating features and big ideas (such as the idea of history); and it will reflect on questions including: What is an honorable life? Who is the Other? How does a society fall apart? Where does human subjectivity fit into a world of matter, cause and effect? Should art serve an exterior purpose? Do we have any duties to the past? This course is part of the Humanities Core, a collaborative set of global humanities seminars that brings all of its students and faculty into conversation. On Mondays you meet in your own course, and on Wednesdays all the HumCore seminars (in session that quarter) meet together: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/.
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

DLCL 12Q: Humanities Core: Great Books, Big Ideas -- Europe, Middle Ages and Renaissance (FRENCH 12Q, HUMCORE 12Q, ILAC 12Q)

This three-quarter sequence asks big questions of major texts in the European and American tradition. What is a good life? How should society be organized? Who belongs? How should honor, love, sin, and similar abstractions govern our actions? What duty do we owe to the past and future? The second quarter focuses on the transition from the Middle Ages to Modernity, Europe's re-acquaintance with classical antiquity and its first contacts with the New World. Authors include Dante, Shakespeare, Machiavelli, Cervantes, and Milton. N.B. This is the second of three courses in the European track. These courses offer an unparalleled opportunity to study European history and culture, past and present. Take all three to experience a year-long intellectual community dedicated to exploring how ideas have shaped our world and future. Students who take HUMCORE 11 and HUMCORE 12Q will have preferential admission to HUMCORE 13Q (a WR2 seminar).
Last offered: Winter 2019 | Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

DLCL 21N: Ecologies of Communication (ENGLISH 21N, SUSTAIN 51N)

What remnants of our culture will future generations discover and decipher and how will they interpret these? How will they access the technologies we have created? How will they understand the environmental changes that current humans have caused? And how will their encounters with the past inform their own future? This IntroSem explores a humanistic perspective on sustainability, viewing the human record itself as a resource and exploring how it might be sustained in an ethical and meaningful way. Broadly, we ask what is the science behind sustaining the ecology of historic heritage?
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

DLCL 52: Global Humanities: The Grand Millennium, 800-1800 (HISTORY 206D, HUMCORE 52, JAPAN 52)

How should we live? This course explores ethical pathways in European, Islamic, and East Asian traditions: mysticism and rationality, passion and duty, this and other worldly, ambition and peace of mind. They all seem to be pairs of opposites, but as we'll see, some important historical figures managed to follow two or more of them at once. We will read works by successful thinkers, travelers, poets, lovers, and bureaucrats written between 800 and 1900 C.E. We will ask ourselves whether we agree with their choices and judgments about what is a life well lived.
Last offered: Winter 2020 | Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-ER

DLCL 100: CAPITALS: How Cities Shape Cultures, States, and People (COMPLIT 100, FRENCH 175, GERMAN 175, HISTORY 206E, ILAC 175, ITALIAN 175, URBANST 153)

This course takes students on a trip to major capital cities at different moments in time, including Renaissance Florence, Golden Age Madrid, colonial Mexico City, imperial Beijing, Enlightenment and romantic Paris, existential and revolutionary St. Petersburg, roaring Berlin, modernist Vienna, and transnational Accra. While exploring each place in a particular historical moment, we will also consider the relations between culture, power, and social life. How does the cultural life of a country intersect with the political activity of a capital? How do large cities shape our everyday experience, our aesthetic preferences, and our sense of history? Why do some cities become cultural capitals? Primary materials for this course will consist of literary, visual, sociological, and historical documents (in translation).
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

DLCL 103: Future Text: AI and Literatures, Cultures, and Languages (ITALIAN 103)

How do AI language models work and what is their impact on education? In this course we will: Experiment with translation; Experiment with textual analysis of specific texts from different contexts and historical periods and cultures; Experiment with large data questions that are very hard to do by a single person; Experiment with ways to fact-check an AI generated work: we know AI creates false assertions, and backs them up with false references; Experiment with collaborating with AI to write a final paper, a blog, a newspaper article, etc.
Terms: Aut | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

DLCL 111Q: Texts and Contexts: Spanish/English Literary Translation Workshop (COMPLIT 111Q, ILAC 111Q)

The Argentinian writer and translator, Jorge Luis Borges, once said, 'Cada idioma es un modo de sentir el universo.' How are modes of feeling and perception translated across languages? How does the historical context of a work condition its translation into and out of a language? In this course, you will translate from a variety of genres that will teach you the practical skills necessary to translate literary texts from Spanish to English and English to Spanish. By the end of the term, you will have translated and received feedback on a project of your own choosing. Discussion topics may include: the importance of register, tone, and audience; the gains, in addition to the losses, that translations may introduce; the role of ideological, social-political, and aesthetic factors on the production of translations; and comparative syntaxes, morphologies, and semantic systems. Preference will be given to sophomores but freshman through seniors have enjoyed this course in the past. Course taught in Spanish.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

DLCL 113Q: Borges and Translation (ILAC 113Q)

Borges's creative process and practice as seen through the lens of translation. How do Borges's texts articulate the relationships between reading, writing, and translation? Topics include authorship, fidelity, irreverence, and innovation. Readings will draw on Borges's short stories, translations, and essays. Taught in Spanish. Prerequisite: 100-level course in Spanish or permission of instructor.
Last offered: Autumn 2017 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

DLCL 121: Performing the Middle Ages

Through an analysis of medieval courtly love, religious, satirical, and Crusade lyrics, we will study the rise of a new subjectivity; the female voice; the roles of poet, audience, and patron; oral and manuscript transmission; and political propaganda. Special attention will be given to performance as a reimagining of self and social identity. Authors include Bertran de Born, Marie de France, Hildegard von Bingen, Walther von der Vogelweide, Dante, and Chaucer. Students will have the opportunity to produce a creative project that brings medieval ideas about performance into dialogue with modern conceptions. Taught in English, all texts in translation. NOTE: for AY 2018-19 FRENCH 166 Food, Text, Music: A Multidisciplinary Lab on the Art of Feasting counts for DLCL 121.
Last offered: Autumn 2016 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-Gender, WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

DLCL 122Q: Technologies of Handwriting: History, Theory, Practice (ENGLISH 10Q)

Handwriting has a long history and significance. Think about Toni Morrison's diaries; a note by Einstein; a Laozi manuscript from the second century; Elizabeth I's poems; hieroglyphic laws; an electronic signature; a postcard from a friend. This course will investigate the history of handwriting, focusing on the importance of the technology and its digital aspects. We shall consider the training and physical efforts of scribes, and the transmission of knowledge, including that of traditionally oral cultures. We'll look at the development of western scripts, gain insight about materials and tools (from animal skin to reed pens) and learn calligraphy from an expert modern scribe, the better to understand the skill and aesthetic of this most everyday of technologies that, I shall argue, will outlive all others
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Treharne, E. (PI)

DLCL 143: The Novel (COMPLIT 123)

This course traces the global development of the modern literary genre par excellence through some of its great milestones, with an emphasis on Asian, American, and African novels and innovative approaches.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

DLCL 293: Literary Translation: Theory and Practice (COMPLIT 293, ENGLISH 293)

An overview of translation theories and practices over time. The aesthetic, ethical, and political questions raised by the act and art of translation and how these pertain to the translator's tasks. Discussion of particular translation challenges and the decision processes taken to address these issues. Coursework includes assigned theoretical readings, comparative translations, and the undertaking of an individual translation project.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
Instructors: ; Santana, C. (PI)

EDUC 116N: Howard Zinn and the Quest for Historical Truth (HISTORY 116N)

With more than two million copies in print, Howard Zinn's A People's History is a cultural icon. We will use Zinn's book to probe how we determine what was true in the past. A People's History will be our point of departure, but our journey will visit a variety of historical trouble spots: debates about whether the US was founded as a Christian nation, Holocaust denial, and the "Birther" controversy of President Obama.
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ENGLISH 5AA: Queer(ing) Asian American Literature

When "inadmissible" desires and "illegible" racial identities intersect, what do their complex entanglements make visible? What histories do they illuminate? What other worlds do they make possible? Thinking with Alexander Chee's Edinburgh (2000), Monique Truong's The Book of Salt (2003), and Ocean Vuong's On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019), this course explores queer Asian American literary narratives as imperatives for fuller understandings of Asian American racial and sexual identities - and as critical interventions in the Asian American literary canon. Drawing in supplementary short stories, poetry, and art, as well as readings in criticism and theory, we will also consider: how might the doubly "inscrutable" figure of the queer Asian American destabilize the very boundaries of "Asian America" itself? No previous exposure to Asian American critique or queer theory expected: students of all backgrounds are welcome. (Note: This Writing-Intensive Seminar in English (WISE) course fulfills WIM for English majors. Non-majors are welcome, space permitting. For enrollment permission contact vbeebe@stanford.edu.)
Terms: Aut | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Xiong, C. (PI)

ENGLISH 5BA: Reading and Writing in the Digital Age

In this course, we will ask how acts of reading, writing, and interpretation change across different mediums, softwares, platforms, and contexts. The digital turn has fractured the historical connection between literature and the printed page, and rooted our everyday writing on seemingly immaterial mediums. So, why do we still read physical books in a world where practically all text has been digitized, a world where we have Red Dead Redemption and Wikipedia? What is the book as a literary object doing today? How have digital-age writers?particularly writers of color?reimagined the book as a means for representing historical trauma through experiments in image and typography? How, more broadly, has the digitization of communication transformed or displaced literary forms and experiences? What even is 'literary writing' (or, for that matter, 'academic writing')? To explore these questions, we will consider various mediums of reading and writing?including letters (Emily Dickinson and Eminem), artists' books (Edward Ruscha and Rupi Kaur), sound (Amiri Baraka, Kendrick Lamar, Tracie Morris), video games (Emily is Away, Doki Doki Literature Club!), fan fiction, and more?drawing on readings in media studies and reader response theory as critical frameworks for our inquiries. To supplement these readings, we will experiment with writing in several forms and platforms, exploring how different media both constrain and enable unique forms of expression and interpretation. (Note: This Writing-Intensive Seminar in English (WISE) course fulfills WIM for English majors. Non-majors are welcome, space permitting. For enrollment permission contact vbeebe@stanford.edu.)
Terms: Aut | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Messarra, L. (PI)

ENGLISH 5CA: WISE: Anti-Social Heroes in the Nineteenth Century

In this course, we will consider how unsociability, or anti-sociability, became a major literary trope of modernity. Reading texts by Jane Austen (Emma), James Hogg (Confessions of a Justified Sinner), and Charles Baudelaire (a translated selection of poetry and prose), we will encounter such figures as the outcast, the egotist, and the fl¿neur, and ask how they came to predominate the literary imagination. We will also engage with a variety of critical approaches as we explore questions about the aesthetics and politics of unsociability and the modern social configurations in which they took shape. With Hogg, we will think about political voice and the scapegoat's ironic mode of social critique. With Austen, we will attend to the nexus of narrative, competition, and civility, as we consider the gendered division of forms of unsociability. With Baudelaire, we will turn to the modern city and explore the psychology and philosophy underpinning its emerging cultural heroes. (Note: This Writing-Intensive Seminar in English (WISE) course fulfills WIM for English majors. Non-majors are welcome, space permitting. For enrollment permission contact vbeebe@stanford.edu.)
Terms: Aut | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Keren, I. (PI)

ENGLISH 5K: WISE: The Cult of Jack Kerouac (And Other Stories of Literary Celebrity)

This course explores the rise, stakes, and ironies of literary stardom by focusing on one of the Bay Area's most notorious band of celebrity authors: the Beats. To some, Beat politics, styles, and philosophies have seemed dated for decades; and yet Beat writers maintain a weirdly broad staying power. Even now, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg remain pop-cultural touchstones, outsider-intellectual icons, and essential reading for teens and the highly educated. To get to the root of this phenomenon, we will consider what fame meant to literature and vice versa in the post-World War II era - a time when a rapidly changing media ecology, rising consumerism, and intensifying Cold War nationalism made for curious marriages: between avant-garde art and pop culture, between countercultural ambitions and commercial appropriation. Why did the Beats get famous? How did their fame affect the life and work of contemporaries (like the acclaimed but understudied poet Bernadette Mayer) who wrote in their long shadow? What can these dynamics teach us about celebrity and technology today? In answering these questions, we will examine Beat writers in print, on film and TV, in photographs and advertisements, and in the archive. Students will learn to work with a range of genres and forms including some criticism and theory by authors both inside and outside of the literary 'star system.' (Note: This Writing-Intensive Seminar in English (WISE) course fulfills WIM for English majors. Non-majors are welcome, space permitting. For enrollment permission contact vbeebe@stanford.edu.)
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ENGLISH 5P: WISE: Literature and the Internet

It is widely held that the term 'cyberspace' first appeared not in the giddy reports of business consultants or futurologists, but in a short story by science fiction author William Gibson. Literature has long functioned as a kind of incubator for some of the most important concepts and metaphors that we use to understand the massive transformations that digital technologies have effected within modern life. In this class, we will read novels, short stories, and poetry from the last fifty years that try to capture the new forms of experience that these technologies' considered broadly under the rubric of 'the internet' have brought into being. Drawing on media-theoretical and Marxist approaches in particular, we will work together to develop a critical vocabulary for analyzing the two-way traffic between digital media and literary forms, from cyberpunk fiction to Instagram poetry. (Note: This Writing-Intensive Seminar in English (WISE) course fulfills WIM for English majors. Non-majors are welcome, space permitting. For enrollment permission contact vbeebe@stanford.edu.)
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ENGLISH 5S: WISE: Thoreau and His Readers

"Some historical phenomena need large-scale analysis," writes literary critic Wai-Chee Dimock. In this course, we will take Dimock's invitation as we study the far-reaching resonances of a text that might seem parochial: Henry David Thoreau's Walden. Thoreau's account of his 'experiment in living' for two years at Walden Pond proved polarizing when he first published it in 1854. Even today Thoreau can be read as either dangerously self-indulgent or radically self-reliant. But while his political thought is often associated with modern libertarianism, it has also shaped an active, deeply egalitarian form of civic engagement from the nineteenth century on. Indeed, the themes that cut across Walden and that anchor Thoreau's speeches and essays on civil disobedience have made him a writer with a direct influence on such twentieth-century revolutionaries as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. At the same time, Thoreau has played a foundational role in the development of environmental thought and ethics. In this course, we will read Walden slowly, pairing Thoreau's work with the contributions of other writers and activists whose work either references or resonates with Thoreau's, from the mid-nineteenth century to today. Bringing a comparative lens to topics ranging from abolitionism to environmentalism, we will consider the historical contexts and trajectories of these movements and attempt to articulate our own sense of ethical and political responsibility in the twenty-first century. (Note: This Writing-Intensive Seminar in English (WISE) course fulfills WIM for English majors. Non-majors are welcome, space permitting. For enrollment permission contact vbeebe@stanford.edu.)
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ENGLISH 5T: WISE: Renaissance Word Play

Sparknotes' No Fear Shakespeare series promises to "translate" the Bard. CliffsNotes and Shmoop offer similar services. But what is it about early modern English that demands translation? Even in modern editions, with their standardized spellings and explanatory footnotes, the language of the Renaissance still feels unsettled and, at times, unsettling. This was a period of unprecedented linguistic play and unmatched verbal chaos. Authors revised, razed, and even invented languages to accommodate realities actual and imagined. This course explores their innovations. Three texts will guide our exploration of semantics, semiotics, and rhetoric: Thomas Nashe's The Unfortunate Traveller (1594), Book One of Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene (1590), and Sir Philip Sidney's Defence of Poesy (1595). Along the way, we will consult classical, medieval, early modern, and contemporary philosophers and critics who interrogate language, its aspirations, and its failings. Secondary readings will pair Plato, Cicero, and Erasmus, with Freud, Foucault, and Derrida, among others.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ENGLISH 5V: WISE: Haunted Daughters: Race, Gender, and the Family in Gothic Fiction

At its heart, the gothic is about the intrusion of the past into the present. It grapples with what happens when the dead haunt the living or past injustices refuse to stay buried. In this course, we will explore the interplay of race, gender, trauma, ancestry, and haunted domestic spaces. Linking a selection of short ghost stories by earlier writers to more recent novels by women authors of color, we will trace permutations of women's gothic writing from 1861 to 2020, focusing especially on how 20th and 21st century women authors of color utilize, subvert, redirect, and interrogate the genre. Assigned novels will include Toni Morrison's classic Beloved, Yangsze Choo's Ghost Bride, and Silvia Morena Garcia's bestselling Mexican Gothic. Earlier texts will include stories by Elizabeth Gaskell, Edith Wharton, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Throughout the course, we will ask: why is the gothic such a powerful outlet for women's voices? How do ghost stories explore themes of intergenerational trauma, cultural oppression, and violence? What does it mean for a home or family to be haunted? What do haunted daughters owe to the ghosts of their cultural or familial pasts?
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ENGLISH 5W: WISE: Detective Fiction

What do detective stories reveal about the structure of society? What can mystery writers like Edgar Allan Poe, Agatha Christie, Chester Himes, and Patricia Highsmith teach us about the structure of literature? On the one hand, detectives have special access to the social worlds represented in fiction. As we'll see, solving a crime often means charting a course through the many sub-worlds of urban life, from penthouse to flophouse. The private eye can enter communities that would otherwise be closed to outsiders, social groups set apart by differences like race, class, gender, or sexuality. On the other hand, detective fiction also dramatizes the act of reading itself as a social relationship, at once a contract and a game between author and reader. In exchange for our time and attention, we expect the author to play fair, provide clues, and give us a logically sound and satisfying ending. This course uses detective fiction as an introduction to a structuralist approach to narrative, and as an occasion to discuss the big questions: the relationship between self and society and the pleasures and responsibilities therein.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

ENGLISH 9CFS: Fire Stories: Narrative in the Digital Age

How do we tell stories in the age of the internet, social media, and new technology? How has the art of storytelling evolved over time? In this Creative Writing course we will explore storytelling in the digital age. We will be reading and writing in a variety of genres, workshopping our own personal projects, and considering ways in which storytelling has shifted from oral traditions to modern iterations like podcasts, songwriting, filmmaking, and multimedia. Assignments will range from reading Justin Torres' novel, 'We the Animals,' to watching films like 'Birdman' and 'La Jet¿e.' We will be listening to albums, looking at photo essays, and frequently meeting outdoors to tell stories around a fire. Anyone with a sense of adventure is welcome!
Terms: Aut | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
Instructors: ; Carlson-Wee, K. (PI)

ENGLISH 9CI: Inspired By Science: A Writing Workshop

How can your interest in science and the environment be enriched by a regular creative practice? How do you begin to write a poem or essay about the wonders of the natural world or the nuances of climate change? What are the tools and strategies available to creative writers, and how can these techniques be used to communicate complex concepts and research to wide-audiences? We begin to answer these questions by drawing inspiration from the rich tradition of scientists who write and writers who integrate science. Emphasizing writing process over finished product, students maintain journals throughout the quarter, responding to daily prompts that encourage both practice and play. Through open-ended and exploratory writing, along with specific exercises to learn the writer's craft students develop a sense of their own style and voice. Note: First priority to undergrads. Students must attend the first class meeting to retain their roster spot.
Terms: Aut, Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
Instructors: ; Michas-Martin, S. (PI)

ENGLISH 9CP: Writing Off the Page: Songwriting, Film, and Spoken Word

With recent blockbuster films like Patterson and major prizes being awarded to artists like Bob Dylan and Kendrick Lamar, the borders of what constitutes traditional literature are shifting. In this Creative Writing course we will be looking at literature `off the page,' in songwriting, spoken word, multi-media, and visual art. We will be workshopping our own creative projects and exploring the boundaries of contemporary literature. Artists we'll be looking at include Iron and Wine, Lil Wayne, Allen Ginsberg, Beyonce, David Lynch, Patti Smith, Mark Strand, Anne Carson, Danez Smith, Bon Iver, and Lou Reed. For undergraduates only. NOTE: Students must attend the first class meeting to retain their roster spot.
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
Instructors: ; Carlson-Wee, K. (PI)

ENGLISH 9SF: Fight the Future: Speculative Fiction and Social Justice

Imagining the future has been one of the most important ways humans have assessed their present. In this salon-style seminar we'll focus on modern speculative fiction as social critique, especially of regimes of patriarchy, racism, and capitalism. The course will be devoted to new and established writers of speculative fiction -- broadly defined and across era and geography -- whose work engages with oppression and freedom, sex, love, and other dynamics of power. We will also devote one night per week to film screenings of classic and contemporary films in the genre. Guest lecturers will discuss the work of authors such as Octavia Butler, Samuel R. Delany, Franz Kafka, Philip K. Dick, Ursula LeGuin, and others.
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ENGLISH 10E: Intro to English I: Love and Death from Chaucer to Milton

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Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Hoxby, B. (PI)

ENGLISH 10Q: Technologies of Handwriting: History, Theory, Practice (DLCL 122Q)

Handwriting has a long history and significance. Think about Toni Morrison's diaries; a note by Einstein; a Laozi manuscript from the second century; Elizabeth I's poems; hieroglyphic laws; an electronic signature; a postcard from a friend. This course will investigate the history of handwriting, focusing on the importance of the technology and its digital aspects. We shall consider the training and physical efforts of scribes, and the transmission of knowledge, including that of traditionally oral cultures. We'll look at the development of western scripts, gain insight about materials and tools (from animal skin to reed pens) and learn calligraphy from an expert modern scribe, the better to understand the skill and aesthetic of this most everyday of technologies that, I shall argue, will outlive all others
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Treharne, E. (PI)

ENGLISH 11B: Introduction to English II: American Literature and Culture to 1855 (AMSTUD 150)

In this course we'll explore the uncanny world--at once strange and strangely familiar - of early American literature and culture, as we read diverse works - including poetry, captivity and slave narratives, seduction novels, Native American oratory, short stories, essays, autobiographies, and more - in relation to political, social, and artistic as well as literary contexts from the colonial period to the eve of Civil War. Note: students majoring (or planning to major) in English or American Studies should take the course for 5 units and for a letter grade.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Richardson, J. (PI)

ENGLISH 11Q: Art in the Metropolis (ARTSINST 11Q, ARTSTUDI 11Q, FILMEDIA 11Q, MUSIC 11Q, TAPS 11Q)

This seminar is offered in conjunction with the annual "Arts Immersion" trip to New York that takes place over the spring break and is organized by the Stanford Arts Institute (SAI). Enrollment in this course is a requirement for taking part in the spring break trip. The program is designed to provide a group of students with the opportunity to immerse themselves in the cultural life of New York City guided by faculty and SAI staff. Students will experience a broad range and variety of art forms (visual arts, theater, opera, dance, etc.) and will meet with prominent arts administrators and practitioners, some of whom are Stanford alumni. In the seminar, we will prepare for the diverse experiences the trip affords and develop individual projects related to particular works of art, exhibitions, and performances that we'll encounter in person during the stay in New York. Class time will be divided between readings, presentations, and one studio based creative project. The urban setting in which the various forms of art are created, presented, and received will form a special point of focus. A principal aim of the seminar will be to develop aesthetic sensibilities through writing critically about the art that interests and engages us and making art. For further details please visit the Stanford Arts Institute website: https://arts.stanford.edu/for-students/academics/arts-immersion/new-york/
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Berlier, T. (PI)

ENGLISH 12C: Introduction to English III: Modern Literature

Survey of the major trends in literary history from 1850 to the present.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP | Repeatable 2 times (up to 10 units total)
Instructors: ; McGurl, M. (PI)

ENGLISH 13P: Media and Communication from the Middle Ages to the Printing Press (ENGLISH 113P, HISTORY 13P, HISTORY 113P, MUSIC 13P, MUSIC 113P)

Did you know that the emperor Charlemagne was illiterate, yet his scribes revolutionized writing in the West? This course follows decisive moments in the history of media and communication, asking how new recording technologies reshaped a society in which most people did not read or write--what has been described as the shift "from memory to written record." To understand this transformation, we examine forms of oral literature and music, from the Viking sagas, the call to crusade, and medieval curses (Benedictine maledictions), to early popular authors such as Dante and the 15th-century feminist scribe, Christine de Pizan. We trace the impact of musical notation, manuscript and book production, and Gutenberg's print revolution. To paraphrase Marshall McLuhan's famous dictum, how did the medium shape the message? Along the way, we will consider how the medieval arts of memory and divine reading (lectio divina) can inform communication in the digital world. This is a hands-on course: students will handle medieval manuscripts and early printed books in Special Collections, and will participate in an "ink-making workshop," following medieval recipes for ink and for cutting quills, then using them to write on parchment. The course is open to all interested students.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Phillips, J. (PI)

ENGLISH 15N: Wastelands

Have human beings ruined the world? Was it war, or industry, or consumerism, or something else that did it? Beginning with an in-depth exploration of some of the key works of literary modernism, this class will trace the image of the devastated landscape as it develops over the course of the 20th and 21st centuries, arriving finally at literary representations of the contemporary zombie apocalypse. Authors to include T.S Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, Nathanael West, Willa Cather, Cormac McCarthy, and others.
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; McGurl, M. (PI)

ENGLISH 15Q: Family Trees: The Intergenerational Novel

The vast majority of novels feature a central protagonist, or a cast of characters whose interactions play out over weeks or months. But some stories overflow our life spans, and cannot be truthfully told without the novelist reaching far back in time. In this Sophomore Seminar, we will consider three novels that seek to tell larger, more ambitious stories that span decades and continents. In the process, we will discuss how novelists build believable worlds, craft memorable characters, keep us engaged as readers, and manage such ambitious projects.
Last offered: Winter 2022 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ENGLISH 17N: Animal Poems

Animals have always appealed to the human imagination. This course provides basic a rubric for analyzing a variety of animal poems in order (1) to make you better readers of poetry and (2) to examine some of the most pressing philosophical questions that have been raised in the growing field of animal studies. The animals that concern us here are not allegorical-the serpent as evil, the fox as cunning, the dove as a figure for love. Rather, they are creatures that, in their stubborn animality, provoke the imagination of the poet.
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Gigante, D. (PI)

ENGLISH 17Q: After 2001: A 21st Century Science Fiction Odyssey

In 1968, Stanley Kurick's 2001: A Space Odyssey imagined the future in the then distant year of 2001. Now that year is more than 20 years in the rearview and his science fiction future is now our past (with fewer PanAm flights to the moon and a stunning dearth of murderous AI). What is science fiction in the 21st century? What does it do? Who writes it? And, importantly, who is it for? In this class we will explore the questions of topic, author, audience, and community through the lens of the Hugo winning short stories since 2001. Hugo Awards are chosen by the fans, so this will allow us to examine the ways in which fandom and popular culture have changed in the last two decades in ways that has made the genre broader and more inclusive of writers and readers of every gender, race, and sexuality, while at the same time provoking a reactionary response in a minority of writers and fans who consider themselves decentered by these developments. Readings will include the Hugo winning short stories, some classic science fiction stories, and contemporary reports about the annual science fiction convention where these awards are given (WorldCon), and articles about science fiction fan culture. We will also view some of the science fiction visual works that have been important or influential in the past two decades. Timing and health permitted we will attend a local science fiction convention. This course will be reading- and writing-intensive but will also offer opportunities for spirited discussion. We will be engaging with sensitive subjects such as race, class, gender, and sexuality. Assignments include weekly short essays, discussion leadership, individual presentations, and a final research paper.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

ENGLISH 18N: Shakespeare in Love

Fluid, ever changing, fresh and quick, love is the stuff of imagination. Who can define it? This course will begin where Shakespeare begins his career as a playwright with The Comedy of Errors. We then intersperse the reading of Shakespeare's sonnets (nos. 1-154) three comedies in which love figures as a principal theme: Love's Labor's Lost, Much Ado About Nothing, and All's Well That Ends Well. The final three weeks will be devoted to different kinds of love as they appear in the Henry sequence. Against the stately backdrop of history, we will examine the betrayed love of Sir John Falstaff for Prince Hal, the lighthearted banter of the knight and Mistress Quickly, Henry V's wooing of Catherine of Valois.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ENGLISH 19Q: I Bet You Think You're Funny: Humor Writing Workshop

Nothing is harder than being funny on purpose. We often associate humor with lightness, and sometimes that's appropriate, but humor is inextricably interlinked with pain and anger, and our funniest moments often spring from our deepest wounds. Humor can also allow us a platform for rage and indignation when other forms of rhetoric feel inadequate. This workshop will take students through the techniques and aesthetics of humor writing, in a variety of forms, and the main product of the quarter will be to submit for workshop a sustained piece of humor writing. For undergrads only.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
Instructors: ; Porter, E. (PI)

ENGLISH 21N: Ecologies of Communication (DLCL 21N, SUSTAIN 51N)

What remnants of our culture will future generations discover and decipher and how will they interpret these? How will they access the technologies we have created? How will they understand the environmental changes that current humans have caused? And how will their encounters with the past inform their own future? This IntroSem explores a humanistic perspective on sustainability, viewing the human record itself as a resource and exploring how it might be sustained in an ethical and meaningful way. Broadly, we ask what is the science behind sustaining the ecology of historic heritage?
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

ENGLISH 26Q: The Brontes: a Victorian Family and its Marvelous Daughters

Isolated in the moorlands of Yorkshire and raised in evangelical strictness by an eccentric father, the Bronte children imagined stories of personal power and political intrigue, based on the news they read. The eldest of the three sisters, Charlotte, grew up to become a major novelist of the Victorian age. Her younger sister, Emily, became a poet and a novelist of wild genius. The youngest sister, Anne, wrote two arresting novels before her early death. The lone brother, Branwell, squandered his talents -- and much of the family's money -- before his death at thirty-one. In 1847, Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, Emily Bronte's Withering Heights, and Anne Bronte's Agnes Grey surprised literary London, and voiced an angry, sensual, urgent response to the Victorians' nagging "Woman Question." These eccentric novels register the tedium, the aspirations, and the frustrations of these gifted women. We will consider historical, cultural, and biographical questions, as we study these early novels, the children's juvenilia, and a representative later work. Each student will have the chance to investigate one of these women more deeply, and share their discoveries with the the seminar.
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Paulson, L. (PI)

ENGLISH 27Q: The Childhood Novel

In this course, we will consider the first volumes of three ambitious literary projects: Marcel Proust's IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME; Elena Ferrante's NEOPOLITAN NOVELS; and Karl Ove Knausgaard MY STRUGGLE. These writers, and the novels they wrote, may seem, at first glance, to be very different. Proust was a gay French writer, born in 1871. Ferrante is a reclusive Italian novelist whose identity has, for many years, been a mystery (including her year of birth). Knausgaard is a kind of literary rock star, a Norwegian novelist of immense fame. But all three novelists share a fascination with childhood, and all three novelists have produced works that walk a very fine line between fiction and memoir, imagination and memory. In reading the first volumes of these three long novel sequences, we'll consider what aspects of the writer's life are fit for the page. At what point does the novelist's allegiance to the recollection of their own particular past give way to their invention of a fictional world we can only dwell in? What is the difference between Proust, Ferrante and Knausgaard's first-person narrators and Proust, Ferrante and Knausgaard themselves? And what lessons might we draw from these novelists and novels when it comes to writing about our own childhood experiences?
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

ENGLISH 28Q: The Campus Novel

The college campus is a fascinating place, where people from different backgrounds come together for different purposes. So it is no wonder that many novelists have turned their attention upon the college campus as a setting for their novels. In this Sophomore Seminar, we will read three fantastic campus novels, and use these books as means of exploring big questions about the purpose of an undergraduate education.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Smith, A. (PI)

ENGLISH 46N: American Moderns: Hemingway, Hurston, Faulkner, & Fitzgerald (AMSTUD 46N)

While Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald were flirting with the expatriate avant-garde in Europe, Zora Neale Hurston and William Faulkner were performing anthropological field-work in the local cultures of the American South. We will read four short novels - Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, and Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby - to address the tremendous diversity of concerns and styles of four writers who marked America's coming-of-age as a literary nation with their multifarious experiments in the regional and the global, the racial and the cosmopolitan, the macho and the feminist, the decadent and the impoverished."
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

ENGLISH 53Q: Writing and Gender in the Age of Disruption (FEMGEN 53Q)

In this course, we will read a wide cross-section of British and American women writers who turned to fiction and poetry to examine, and to survive, their times: Virginia Woolf, Nella Larsen, Rebecca West, Zora Neale Hurston, Jean Rhys, Jessie Redmon Fauset, Katherine Mansfield, H.D., Marianne Moore, and Una Marson. You will learn how to pay close attention to the often radically new ways these writers bent language to their purposes to express complex emotions and vexed political realities; in your own essay writing, you will learn how to write clearly and persuasively about small units of text and to craft longer critical analyses attentive to language, history, and culture. Always, students will be encouraged to draw connections between then and now, to ponder what has changed, and what remains to be changed, in our own turbulent times.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Staveley, A. (PI)

ENGLISH 61N: Jane Austen's Fiction

Austen's finely wrought novels were unlike any previous fiction, offering an intensely realized example of literary originality. This class focuses on Austen's major writing, all published in a remarkable ten year period. These novels - including Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Mansfield Park and Persuasion - have had a profound impact on the development and understanding of the novel as an art form. We'll take the measure of Austen's inventiveness and her subtle, engrossing experiments in narrative voice, fictional character, representation and literary form. Our two goals will be to closely engage each novel (looking at the major interpretative and aesthetic questions that are generated) and to track the rich dialogue that takes place between her different texts when they are read together.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Woloch, A. (PI)

ENGLISH 68N: Mark Twain and American Culture (AMSTUD 68N)

Preference to freshmen. Mark Twain defined the rhythms of our prose and the contours of our moral map. He recognized our extravagant promise and stunning failures, our comic foibles and¿ tragic flaws. He is viewed as the most American of American authors--and as one of the most universal. How does his work illuminate his society's (and our society's) responses to such issues as race, gender, technology, heredity vs. environment, religion, education, art, imperialism, animal welfare, and what it means to be "American"?
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

ENGLISH 72N: Serial Storytelling

"TV's Lost Weekends," a recent headline says, referring to the modern habit of binge-watching television shows. Such news stories debate the right way to watch TV. They also echo longstanding arguments about how to read books. This course juxtaposes contemporary television with classic serial novels in order to explore different ways of experiencing longform narratives. How do we read or watch when we're forced to wait before the next episode---or, conversely, given the opportunity to binge?
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ENGLISH 81: Philosophy and Literature (CLASSICS 42, COMPLIT 181, FRENCH 181, GERMAN 181, ILAC 181, ITALIAN 181, PHIL 81, SLAVIC 181)

Can novels make us better people? Can movies challenge our assumptions? Can poems help us become who we are? We'll think about these and other questions with the help of writers like Toni Morrison, Marcel Proust, Jordan Peele, Charlie Kaufman, Rachel Cusk, William Shakespeare, and Samuel Beckett, plus thinkers like Nehamas, Nietzsche, Nussbaum, Plato, and Sartre. We'll also ask whether a disenchanted world can be re-enchanted; when, if ever, the truth stops being the most important thing; why we sometimes choose to read sad stories; whether we ever love someone for who they are; who could possibly want to live their same life over and over again; what it takes to make ourselves fully moral; whether it's ever good to be conflicted; how we can pull ourselves together; and how we can take ourselves apart. (This is the required gateway course for the Philosophy and Literature major tracks. Majors should register in their home department.)
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

ENGLISH 83N: City, Space, Literature (URBANST 83N)

This course presents a literary tour of various cities as a way of thinking about space, representation, and the urban. Using literature and film, the course will explore these from a variety of perspectives. The focus will be thematic rather than chronological, but an attempt will also be made to trace the different ways in which cities have been represented from the late nineteenth century to recent times. Ideas of space, cosmopolitanism, and the urban will be explored through films such as The Bourne Identity and The Lunchbox, as well as in the writings of Arthur Conan Doyle, Walter Mosley, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Fiston Mwanza Mujila, Karen Tei Yamashita, and Mohsin Hamid, among others.
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ENGLISH 90: Fiction Writing

The elements of fiction writing: narration, description, and dialogue. Students write complete stories and participate in story workshops. Prerequisite: PWR 1 (waived in summer quarter). NOTE: First priority to undergrads. Students must attend the first class meeting to retain their roster spot.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

ENGLISH 90H: Humor Writing Workshop

What makes writing funny? What are we doing when we try to be funny? In this creative writing workshop, you'll exercise your native wit by writing short pieces of humor in a variety of forms. We'll practice writing jokes, parody, satire, sketches, stories, and more, study theories of humor, research practical principles and structures that writers have repeatedly used to make things funny, and enjoy and analyze examples of humor old and new to use as models. In the service of creating and understanding humor, we'll also explore questions about what purposes humor serves, and what relationship humor has with power, culture, and history.
Terms: Win, Spr | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
Instructors: ; Porter, E. (PI)

ENGLISH 90Q: Sports Writing

Study and practice of the unique narratives, tropes, images and arguments that creative writers develop when they write about popular sport. From regional fandom to individualist adventuring, boxing and baseball to mascot dancing and table tennis, exceptional creative writers mine from a diversity of leisure activity a rich vein of sports writing in the creative nonfiction genre. In doing so, they demonstrate the creative and formal adaptability required to write with excellence about any subject matter, and under the circumstances of any subjectivity. Discussion of the ways in which writers have framed, and even critiqued, our interest in athletic events, spectatorship, and athletic beauty. Writers include Joyce Carol Oates, Roland Barthes, David James Duncan, Arnold Rampersad, John Updike, Maxine Kumin, Susan Sterling, Ernest Hemingway, Norman Mailer, Dervla Murphy, Haruki Murakami, Don DeLillo, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Annie Dillard, John McPhee, and Laura Hillenbrand. Close readings of essays on form and sport, as well as book excerpts. Students will engage in class discussions and write short weekly papers, leading to a more comprehensive project at the end of the quarter.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
Instructors: ; Evans, J. (PI)

ENGLISH 90R: American Road Trip

From Whitman to Kerouac, Alec Soth to Georgia O'Keeffe, the lure of travel has inspired many American artists to pack up their bags and hit the open road. In this course we will be exploring the art and literature of the great American road trip, including prose, poetry, films, and photography. We will be reading and writing in a variety of genres, workshopping our own stories, and considering the ways in which our personal journeys have come to inform and define our lives. The course includes a number of campus-wide field trips, and an end-of-quarter road trip down the California coast.
Terms: Spr | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
Instructors: ; Carlson-Wee, K. (PI)

ENGLISH 91: Creative Nonfiction

Historical and contemporary as a broad genre including travel and nature writing, memoir, biography, journalism, and the personal essay. Students use creative means to express factual content. Prerequisite: PWR 1 (waived in summer quarter and for SLE students). NOTE: First priority to undergrads. Students must attend the first class meeting to retain their roster spot.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

ENGLISH 91AI: Creative Writing & Science: The Artful Interpreter (OCEANS 157H, OCEANS 257H)

What role does creativity play in the life of a scientist? How has science inspired great literature? How do you write accessibly and expressively about things like whales, DNA or cancer? This course provides a unique opportunity for students to directly engage with marine animals, coastal habitats and environmental concerns of Monterey Bay. As historian Jill Lepore writes of Rachel Carson: "She could not have written Silent Spring if she hadn't, for decades, scrambled down rocks, rolled up her pant legs, and waded into tide pools, thinking about how one thing can change another..." Students will complete and workshop three original nonfiction essays that explore the intersection between personal narrative and scientific curiosity. You will develop a more patient and observant eye and improve your ability to articulate scientific concepts to a general readership. Students must submit a Google Form to request enrollment by December 1st: https://forms.gle/yoPriHjyE1GHrCJh7 If selected for enrollment, students must attend the first class meeting to retain their roster spot. **Course taught in-person only at Hopkins Marine Station.** Please note: Depending on enrollment across the courses offered on Fridays at Hopkins, a university shuttle will be made available or carpool mileage reimbursements will be provided. Carpool reimbursement is subject to specific terms and conditions; class lists will be distributed for this purpose. However, if a university shuttle is provided, carpool reimbursements will not be honored.
Terms: Win | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
Instructors: ; Michas-Martin, S. (PI)

ENGLISH 91NW: Nature Writing

In this course we will be reading some of the most beautiful, magical, vital, dangerous andrevolutionary essays and stories and poems ever written, and, in our own writing about nature, will be joining that lineage that includes writers such as Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emily Dickinson, John Muir, Wendell Berry, Rachel Carson, Annie Dillard, and many others. Expect to spend lots of time immersed in nature, literally and literarily. Required materials include: pen, notebook, magnifying glass, binoculars, and a good pair of shoes.NOTE: First priority to undergrads. Students must attend the first class meeting to retain their roster spot.
Terms: Spr | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
Instructors: ; Smith, A. (PI)

ENGLISH 91V: Creative Nonfiction

Online workshop course. Historical and contemporary as a broad genre including travel and nature writing, memoir, biography, journalism, and the personal essay. Students use creative means to express factual content.
Terms: Sum | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
Instructors: ; Beaty, G. (PI)

ENGLISH 92: Reading and Writing Poetry

Issues of poetic craft. How elements of form, music, structure, and content work together to create meaning and experience in a poem. Prerequisite: PWR 1. NOTE: First priority to undergrads. Students must attend the first class meeting to retain their roster spot.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

ENGLISH 93Q: The American Road Trip

From Whitman to Kerouac, Alec Soth to Georgia O'Keeffe, the lure of travel has inspired many American artists to pack up their bags and hit the open road. In this course we will be exploring the art and literature of the great American road trip. We will be reading and writing in a variety of genres, workshopping our own personal projects, and considering a wide breadth of narrative approaches. Assignments will range from reading Cormac McCarthy's novel, 'The Road,' to listening to Bob Dylan's album, 'Highway 61 Revisited.' We will be looking at films like 'Badlands' and 'Thelma and Louise,' acquainting ourselves with contemporary photographers, going on a number of campus-wide field trips, and finishing the quarter with an actual road trip down the California coast. Anyone with a sense of adventure is welcome!
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
Instructors: ; Carlson-Wee, K. (PI)

ENGLISH 94Q: The Future is Feminine (FEMGEN 94Q)

Gender is one of the great social issues of our time. What does it mean to be female or feminine? How has femininity been defined, performed, punished, or celebrated? Writers are some of our most serious and eloquent investigators of these questions, and in this class we'll read many of our greatest writers on the subject of femininity, as embodied by both men and women, children and adults, protagonists and antagonists. From Virginia Woolf to Ernest Hemingway, from Beloved to Gone Girl (and even "RuPaul's Drag Race"), we'll ask how the feminine is rendered and contested. We'll do so in order to develop a history and a vocabulary of femininity so that we may, in this important time, write our own way in to the conversation. This is first and foremost a creative writing class, and our goals will be to consider in our own work the importance of the feminine across the entire spectrum of gender, sex, and identity. We will also study how we write about femininity, using other writers as models and inspiration. As we engage with these other writers, we will think broadly and bravely, and explore the expressive opportunities inherent in writing. We will explore our own creative practices through readings, prompted exercises, improv, games, collaboration, workshop, and revision, all with an eye toward writing the feminine future.
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
Instructors: ; Pufahl, S. (PI)

ENGLISH 102: Pathogens and Populations: Representing Infectious Disease

Infectious diseases are too small to see and too large to fathom. Biologically, microscopic invaders, viruses even smaller than our cells, can travel across the planet and infect billions of humans. Socially, individual contacts have the potential to devastate families, fracture communities, and decimate whole civilizations. How can we comprehend, let alone make meaningful decisions about, complex multi-scale systems of people and pathogens?The main way we try to understand infectious diseases is putting them into other forms that straddle these scales, in short, representing them. To address the resulting representational problems, this course explores a range of scientific and cultural representations of disease. We will ask: What are the underlying assumptions and limits made in our attempts to describe a pathogen spreading through a population? How can board games, mathematical models, and oral histories show the randomness behind catastrophic outbreaks? Or, how might a network model illustrate the way HIV spreads among characters in a novel? How does the epidemiological case study rely on the same principles as tabloid stories about "superspreaders" like Typhoid Mary?The goal of the course is to understand and critique the ways infectious disease is represented, and especially to understand what and who is excluded in different modes of representation. This course is appropriate for students interested in public health, medicine, life writing, science writing, history of science, and media studies. In addition to scientific papers, course material will include plays, poems, board games, comics, novels, oral narratives, and newspaper articles.
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ENGLISH 106A: Black Mirror: A.I.Activism (AMSTUD 106B, ARTHIST 168A, CSRE 106A, SYMSYS 168A)

Lecture/small group course exploring intersections of STEM, arts and humanities scholarship and practice that engages with, and generated by, exponential technologies. Our course explores the social ethical and artistic implications of artificial intelligence systems with an emphasis on aesthetics, civic society and racial justice, including scholarship on decolonial AI, indigenous AI, disability activism AI, feminist AI and the future of work for creative industries.
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Elam, M. (PI)

ENGLISH 110: The Indian Novel

When we imagine the exemplary global or postcolonial novel, we're likely to think of novels from India. But the current dominance of Indian Anglophone fiction was hardly the tryst with destiny it seems in retrospect. This course offers a perspective on the emergence of the Anglophone novel in India through a conversation with its linguistic and generic others works in the competing modes of short stories, poetry, and film. The course may include writings by Mulk Raj Anand, G.V. Desani, Anita Desai, and Arundhati Roy, as well as selections from the volume A History of the Indian Novel in English.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

ENGLISH 112C: Humanities Core: Great Minds of the Italian Renaissance and their World (HUMCORE 122)

What enabled Leonardo da Vinci to excel in over a dozen fields from painting to engineering and to anticipate flight four hundred years before the first aircraft took off? How did Michelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel Ceiling? What forces and insights led Machiavelli to write "The Prince"? An historical moment and a cultural era, the Italian Renaissance famously saw monumental achievements in literature, art, and architecture, influential developments in science and technology, and the flourishing of multi-talented individuals who contributed profoundly, expertly, and simultaneously to very different fields. In this course on the great thinkers, writers, and achievers of the Italian Renaissance, we will study these "universal geniuses" and their world. Investigating the writings, thought, and lives of such figures as Leonardo da Vinci, Niccol¿ Machiavelli, and Galileo Galilei, we will interrogate historical and contemporary ideas concerning genius, creativity, and the phenomenon of "Renaissance man" known as polymathy. Taught in English. On Tuesdays you meet in your own course, and on Thursday all the HumCore seminars in session that quarter meet together: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/.
| Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

ENGLISH 113A: African American Ecologies (AFRICAAM 113A)

African American perspectives on the environment have long been suppressed in mainstream ecological discourse, despite the importance of questions of land, labor, and resource to the historical and ongoing experiences of Black people in the United States. Against this exclusion, this course takes up African American literature as a unique site of ecological knowledge and environmental thought. Drawing on texts, art, music, and film from the late nineteenth century to the present, this course considers planetary problems of ecological catastrophe and climatic change in relation to the everyday structures of U.S.-American racial politics. Through close analyses of texts and films set on plantations and steamships, in gardens and coal mines, students will explore the environmental dimensions of African American literature, and gain a deeper understanding of the real-world histories with which these works engage. Texts will include novels by Zora Neale Hurston, Percival Everett, and Toni Morrison, short stories and essays by Charles Chesnutt, Jamaica Kincaid, Katherine McKittrick, and adrienne marie brown, and films and multimedia works by Julie Dash, Stephanie Dinkins, and Jordan Peele. Important topics will include the ecology of the plantation, black feminist ecological thought, and the significance of water in African American life and culture.
Terms: Spr | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Gordon, W. (PI)

ENGLISH 113P: Media and Communication from the Middle Ages to the Printing Press (ENGLISH 13P, HISTORY 13P, HISTORY 113P, MUSIC 13P, MUSIC 113P)

Did you know that the emperor Charlemagne was illiterate, yet his scribes revolutionized writing in the West? This course follows decisive moments in the history of media and communication, asking how new recording technologies reshaped a society in which most people did not read or write--what has been described as the shift "from memory to written record." To understand this transformation, we examine forms of oral literature and music, from the Viking sagas, the call to crusade, and medieval curses (Benedictine maledictions), to early popular authors such as Dante and the 15th-century feminist scribe, Christine de Pizan. We trace the impact of musical notation, manuscript and book production, and Gutenberg's print revolution. To paraphrase Marshall McLuhan's famous dictum, how did the medium shape the message? Along the way, we will consider how the medieval arts of memory and divine reading (lectio divina) can inform communication in the digital world. This is a hands-on course: students will handle medieval manuscripts and early printed books in Special Collections, and will participate in an "ink-making workshop," following medieval recipes for ink and for cutting quills, then using them to write on parchment. The course is open to all interested students.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Phillips, J. (PI)

ENGLISH 115: Virtual Italy (ARCHLGY 117, CLASSICS 115, HISTORY 238C, ITALIAN 115)

Classical Italy attracted thousands of travelers throughout the 1700s. Referring to their journey as the "Grand Tour," travelers pursued intellectual passions, promoted careers, and satisfied wanderlust, all while collecting antiquities to fill museums and estates back home. What can computational approaches tell us about who traveled, where and why? We will read travel accounts; experiment with parsing; and visualize historical data. Final projects to form credited contributions to the Grand Tour Project, a cutting-edge digital platform. No prior programming experience necessary.
Terms: Win | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Ceserani, G. (PI)

ENGLISH 118: Literature and the Brain (COMPLIT 138, COMPLIT 238, ENGLISH 218, FRENCH 118, FRENCH 218, PSYC 126, PSYCH 118F)

How does fiction make us better at reading minds? Why do some TV shows get us to believe two contradictory things at once? And can cognitive biases be a writer's best friend? We'll think about these and other questions in the light of contemporary neuroscience and experimental psychology, with the help of Song of Solomon (Toni Morrison), Madame Bovary (Gustave Flaubert), season 1 of Westworld (Lisa Joy / Jonathan Nolan), and short readings from writers like Louise Glück, Jorge Luis Borges, Virginia Woolf, and Marcel Proust. We'll also ask what we see when we read; whether the language we speak affects the way we think; and why different people react differently to the same book. Plus: is free will a fiction, or were you just forced to say that?
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

ENGLISH 122C: Medieval Fantasy Literature

This is a comparative medieval literature course that surveys Anglo-Norman and English romance, English and Norse heroic epic, and Norse and Celtic mythology. What significance and meaning did medieval writers from different times and places see in magic and monsters; what superstitions and beliefs converged in their efforts to represent things from the other side, and what compelled them to do so? We will address such questions by reading the literature against the social, cultural, and religious contexts that shaped medieval life and artistic production. Finally we will turn to some modern works inspired by these medieval texts, reflecting on how literary medievalism has cultivated the tropes of medieval fantasy to produce works which mediate between an imagined history, sublime fabrication, and contemporary concerns.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Ashton, M. (PI)

ENGLISH 124: The American West (AMSTUD 124A, ARTHIST 152, HISTORY 151, POLISCI 124A)

The American West is characterized by frontier mythology, vast distances, marked aridity, and unique political and economic characteristics. This course integrates several disciplinary perspectives into a comprehensive examination of Western North America: its history, physical geography, climate, literature, art, film, institutions, politics, demography, economy, and continuing policy challenges. Students examine themes fundamental to understanding the region: time, space, water, peoples, and boom and bust cycles.
Terms: Win | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

ENGLISH 133B: Storytelling and Mythmaking: Modern Odysseys

In 1923, the poet T.S. Eliot wrote an essay in praise of James Joyce's Ulysses' a novel that adapted episodes of Homer's Odyssey into the daily life of twentieth-century Dublin. "It has the importance of a scientific discovery. No one else has built a novel upon such a foundation before: it has never before been necessary, In using the myth, in manipulating a continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity, Mr. Joyce is pursuing a method which others must pursue after him, Instead of the narrative method, we may now use the mythical method. "In this class, as both readers and writers, we will make use of this "mythical method" ourselves, as critical readers and creative writers. Using the same ancient material as a foundation, we'll follow a host of modern writers and critics who have been inspired by Homer to create new stories and to theorize narrative itself. These writers include Joyce, Franz Kafka, Derek Walcott, Junot D¿az, Margaret Atwood, Louise Gl¿ck, and Daniel Mendelsohn.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Osgood, M. (PI)

ENGLISH 139C: American Literature and Social Justice (AMSTUD 139C, FEMGEN 139C)

How have American writers tried to expose and illuminate racism and sexism through fiction, creative nonfiction, journalism, and poetry? How have they tried to focus our attention on discrimination and prejudice based on race, gender, ethnicity, class, religion and national origin? What writing strategies can break through apathy and ignorance? What role, if any, can humor play in this process?
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ENGLISH 140D: Environmental Humanities: Finding Our Place on a Changing Planet (BIO 184, SUSTAIN 140)

The rapid degradation of our planet threatens the health and survival of communities and ecosystems around the world. How did we get here? What cultural, philosophical, and ethical challenges underlie the separation of humanity from nature and precipitate unprecedented ecological destruction? How can we make sense of this, and how can we reimagine a more connected future? Through engaging the work of environmental philosophers, cultural ecologists, artists, humanities scholars, Indigenous leaders, and others with land-based knowledge, this course will prompt you to think deeply about humanity's place in the world and explore strategies to change our course. Together, we will explore contrasting cultural paradigms around human-nature relationships and apply learnings to action - including through final projects that involve external audiences in meaningful environmental contemplation or impact.
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-ER

ENGLISH 144B: Contemporary British Fiction: History, Language, Place

How do contemporary British novelists represent dramatic changes in culture, class, demography, generation, economy, gender, race, and national identity following the allied victory in the Second World War (1939-1945)?¿ Focusing on writers born between 1948 and 1975, we examine the structuring of historical consciousness in novels by Zadie Smith, Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro, Jeanette Winterson, Hanif Kureishi, Julian Barnes, Ali Smith, and Hilary Mantel.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Staveley, A. (PI)

ENGLISH 145I: Curating 20th Century U.S. Literature

Throughout the 20th century, writers in the United States of America produced an unprecedentedly large, diverse, and transformative body of literature. Authors, editors, and publishers began anthologizing this material early in the century, often aiming to introduce new communities of writers¿including those marginalized because of their race, gender, or sexuality¿to U.S. readers. As a result, anthologies became important to the lives and literature of a wide range of major 20th century U.S. authors, including EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY, WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE, HILDA "H.D." DOOLITTLE., WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS, ERNEST HEMINGWAY, JAMES WELDON JOHNSON, LANGSTON HUGHES, ZORA NEAL HURSTON, RICHARD WRIGHT, ALLEN GINSBERG, ADRIENNE RICH, AMIRI BARAKA, FRANK O'HARA, JACK KEROUAC, AUDRE LORDE, CARLOS BULOSAN, FRANK CHIN, GLORIA ANZALDÚA, BERNADETTE MAYER, LESLIE MARMON SILKO, LOUISE ERDRICH, MICHAEL CHABON, CLAUDIA RANKINE AND MANY, MANY MORE., Students in this course will have the opportunity to read all of these authors and others, and in doing so will construct a concrete, comprehensive, and cutting-edge understanding of how U.S. literature developed over the course of the 20th century.
Last offered: Summer 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ENGLISH 146W: Iconic Short Stories

Exploration of classic (mostly) and contemporary short stories emphasizing craft aspects useful to writers and looking closely at how Chekhov, Kafka, Woolf, Flaubert, Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Munro, and others evoke emotion. Fulfills short story literature requirement for the Minor in Creative Writing and the Creative Writing Emphasis in the English Major. Admission by consent of instructor.
Terms: Spr | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
Instructors: ; Tallent, E. (PI)

ENGLISH 150K: Animal Poems

Animals have always appealed to the human imagination. This course provides basic a rubric for analyzing a variety of animal poems in order (1) to make you better readers of poetry and (2) to examine some of the most pressing philosophical questions that have been raised in the growing field of animal studies. The animals that concern us here are not allegorical - the serpent as evil, the fox as cunning, the dove as a figure for love. Rather, they are creatures that, in their stubborn animality, provoke the imagination of the poet.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II | Repeatable 2 times (up to 10 units total)

ENGLISH 152G: Harlem Renaissance (AFRICAAM 152G, AMSTUD 152G)

Examination of the explosion of African American artistic expression during 1920s and 30s New York known as the Harlem Renaissance. Amiri Baraka once referred to the Renaissance as a kind of "vicious Modernism", as a "BangClash", that impacted and was impacted by political, cultural and aesthetic changes not only in the U.S. but Europe, the Caribbean and Latin America. Focus on the literature, graphic arts, and the music of the era in this global context.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Elam, M. (PI)

ENGLISH 152K: Mixed-Race Politics and Culture (AFRICAAM 226, AMSTUD 152K, CSRE 152K)

Today, almost one-third of Americans identify with a racial/ethnic minority group, and more than 9 million Americans identify with multiple races. What are the implications of such diversity for American politics and culture? This course approaches issues of race from an interdisciplinary perspective, employing research in the social sciences and humanities to assess how race shapes perceptions of identity as well as political behavior in 21st-century U.S. Issues surrounding the role of multiculturalism, immigration, acculturation, racial representation, and racial prejudice in American society. Topics include the political and social formation of race; racial representation in the media, arts, and popular culture; the rise and decline of the "one-drop rule" and its effect on political and cultural attachments; the politicization of census categories and the rise of the multiracial movement. If you have any questions about enrollment or need a permission number, please contact Farrah Moreno (farrahm@stanford.edu).
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Elam, M. (PI)

ENGLISH 153G: Literature and the Future

We often think of literature as a window onto the past. This class, by contrast, will offer various ways of analyzing the relationship between writing and the future. Writing might represent forecasts of the future, as in some speculative fiction; it can attempt to speak to the readers of the future; it can use apocalyptic visions to make people in the present feel ethical responsibility to the future (as in some literature on climate change). Writing of the past can also hail us today as its own future. Authors may include Octavia Butler, Ursula Le Guin, David Mitchell, William Shakespeare, and more. Themes will include Afrofuturism, ecological futurity, revolutionary futures, literary reception, the future represented by your desire to finish a text, and more.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ENGLISH 154D: American Disaster (AMSTUD 154D, SOC 154A)

How do we make sense of catastrophe? Who gets to write or make art about floods, fires, or environmental collapse? How do disaster and its depiction make visible or exacerbate existing social and economic inequalities? Beginning with the Jamestown colony and continuing to the present, this course explores the long history of disaster on the North American continent, and how it has been described by witnesses, writers, and artists. From the 1793 Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic to Hurricane Katrina, the Dust Bowl to contemporary explorations of climate change, this seminar will put in conversation a wide range of primary and secondary materials. Possible texts include writings by Mike Davis, Katherine Anne Porter, Rebecca Solnit, Jesmyn Ward, and Richard Wright; films Wildlife (2018), First Reformed (2017), When the Levees Broke (2006), and Free Willy II (1995); and art by Dorothea Lange, Winslow Homer, and Richard Misrach. For the final paper, students will write a critical essay on a disaster novel, film, or other work or object of their choice, or develop their own creative piece or oral history.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ENGLISH 154F: Film & Philosophy (FRENCH 154, ITALIAN 154, PHIL 193C)

What makes you the individual you are? Should you plan your life, or make it up as you go along? Is it always good to remember your past? Is it always good to know the truth? When does a machine become a person? What do we owe to other people? Is there always a right way to act? How can we live in a highly imperfect world? And what can film do that other media can't? We'll think about all of these great questions with the help of films that are philosophically stimulating, stylistically intriguing, and, for the most part, gripping to watch: Do The Right Thing (Lee), The Dark Knight (Nolan), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Kaufman), Arrival (Villeneuve), My Dinner with Andr¿ (Malle), Blade Runner (Scott), La Jet¿e (Marker), Fight Club (Fincher), No Country for Old Men (Coen), The Seventh Seal (Bergman), and Memento (Nolan). Attendance at weekly screenings is mandatory; and fun. We will not be using the waitlist on Axess - if you would like to enroll and the course is full/closed please email us to get on the waitlist!
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

ENGLISH 155: Stories at the Border (COMPLIT 156, GLOBAL 120)

How authors and filmmakers represent the process of border-making as a social experience? How do the genres in which they work shape our understandings of the issues themselves? We will explore several different genres of visual and textual representation from around the world that bear witness to border conflict - including writing by China Miéville, Carmen Boullosa, Joe Sacco, and Agha Shahid Ali - many of which also trouble the borders according to which genres are typically separated and defined.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

ENGLISH 157D: Literature of the Anthropocene

We are living in a time of expedient environmental change caused by human influence. How has the American literary imagination metabolized the science and psychology of the moment? How do recently published works of poetry and fiction reflect our evolving relationship to animals, natural resources, weather and the very concept of 'nature' itself? How can stories and poems as cultural products help raise or sustain an ecological awareness, individually and collectively? Can a story introduce research or present a future that might otherwise seem inaccessible? Can a poem advance our understanding of the link between social justice and climate justice? These are some of the questions we'll ask as we engage texts by aesthetically, experientially, and culturally diverse writers. This small, discussion-based seminar aims to foster interdisciplinary exchange - students from across campus disciplines are encouraged to enroll.
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

ENGLISH 158H: Science Meets Literature on the Monterey Peninsula (OCEANS 158H, OCEANS 258H)

(Graduate students register for 258H) This course will consider the remarkable nexus of scientific research and literature that developed on the Monterey Peninsula in the first half of the 20th century and how the two areas of creativity influenced each other. The period of focus begins with the 1932 association of John and Carol Steinbeck, Ed Ricketts, and Joseph Campbell, all of whom were highly influenced by the Carmel poet, Robinson Jeffers ¿ and ends with the novels Cannery Row (1945) and Sweet Thursday (1954). An indisputable high-tide mark, Sea of Cortez: A Leisurely of Travel and Research (1941) will be considered in detail. Weekend field trips will include intertidal exploration, a tour of the Jeffers Tor House in Carmel, and whale watching on Monterey Bay. Formally BIOHOPK 158H & 258H.
Last offered: Spring 2019 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

ENGLISH 159: James Baldwin & Twentieth Century Literature (AFRICAAM 159, AMSTUD 159, FEMGEN 159)

Black, gay and gifted, Baldwin was hailed as a "spokesman for the race", although he personally, and controversially, eschewed titles and classifications of all kinds. This course examines his classic novels and essays as well his exciting work across many lesser-examined domains - poetry, music, theatre, sermon, photo-text, children's literature, public media, comedy and artistic collaboration. Placing his work in context with other writers of the 20C (Faulkner, Wright, Morrison) and capitalizing on a resurgence of interest in the writer (NYC just dedicated a year of celebration of Baldwin and there are 2 new journals dedicated to study of Baldwin), the course seeks to capture the power and influence of Baldwin's work during the Civil Rights era as well as his relevance in the "post-race" transnational 21st century, when his prescient questioning of the boundaries of race, sex, love, leadership and country assume new urgency.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Elam, M. (PI)

ENGLISH 160: Poetry and Poetics

Introduction to the reading of poetry, with emphasis on how the sense of poems is shaped through diction, imagery, and technical elements of verse.English majors must take this class for 5 units.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

ENGLISH 161: Narrative and Narrative Theory (COMPLIT 161E)

An introduction to stories and storytelling--that is, to narrative. What is narrative? When is narrative fictional and when non-fictional? How is it done, word by word, sentence by sentence? Must it be in prose? Can it be in pictures? How has storytelling changed over time? Focus on various forms, genres, structures, and characteristics of narrative. nEnglish majors must take this class for 5 units.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

ENGLISH 169D: Contemporary Asian American Stories (ASNAMST 169D)

This course will examine the aesthetics and politics of contemporary Asian American storytellers, with an emphasis on work produced within the past five years. We will investigate the pressures historically placed on Asian Americans to tell a certain kind of story e.g. the immigrant story in a realist mode and the ways writers have found to surprise, question, and innovate, moving beyond those boundaries to explore issues of race, sexuality, science, memory, citizenship, and belonging. Course materials will consist of novels, short stories, graphic narrative, and film, and may include work by Ocean Vuong, Mira Jacobs, Gish Jen, Charles Yu, and Adrian Tomine, as well as Lulu Wangs 2019 film The Farewell. This seminar will feature both analytical and creative components, and students will be encouraged to produce both kinds of responses to the material.
Terms: Aut | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Tanaka, S. (PI)

ENGLISH 177B: Contemporary American Short Stories (AMSTUD 177B)

An exploration of the power and diversity of the American short story ranging from the 1970s to the present day. By examining short stories historically, critically, and above all as art objects, students will learn how to read, interpret, critique, and enjoy short stories as social, political, and humanist documents. Students will learn techniques to craft their own short stories and their own critical essays in a course that combines creative practice and the art of critical appreciation.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

ENGLISH 190S: Short Story Salon

Who better to discuss a book with than its author? In this course we will immerse ourselves in eight short story collections and meet with many of the authors of these collections to hear about their experience drafting, revising, and sending their books out into the world. We will read as writers for inspiration and craft and analyze the collections for structure, character development, dialogue, setting, language, and theme. We will pay particular attention to the range, arrangement, and architecture of the story collection as a whole. How does a collection become greater than the sum of its parts? How does an author manage so many stops and starts? We will write about, discuss, and present the collections we read, participate in Q&A with visiting authors, and complete weekly in-class writing exercises designed to inform and inspire our own writing.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II | Repeatable 2 times (up to 10 units total)

ENGLISH 190W: Contemporary Women Writers (FEMGEN 190W)

"Every word a woman writes changes the story of the world, revises the official version¿¿is this what sets contemporary women writers apart? How can we understand the relation between the radically unprecedented material such writers explore and ¿the official version¿? What do we find compelling in their challenging of structure, style, chronology, character? Our reading- and writing-intensive seminar will dig into the ways women writers confront, appropriate, subvert, or re-imagine convention, investigating, for example, current debate about the value of ¿dislikable¿ or ¿angry¿ women characters and their impact on readers. While pursuing such issues, you'll write a variety of both essayistic and fictional responses, each of which is designed to complicate and enlarge your creative and critical responsiveness and to spark ideas for your final project. By affirming risk-taking and originality throughout our quarter, seminar conversation will support gains in your close-reading practice and in articulating your views, including respectful dissent, in lively discourse¿in short, skills highly useful in a writer¿s existence. Our texts will come from various genres, including short stories, novels, essays, blog posts, reviews, memoir.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

ENGLISH 191: Intermediate Creative Nonfiction

Continuation of ENGLISH 91. Reading a variety of creative essays, completing short writing exercises, and discussing narrative techniques in class. Students submit a short (2-5 page) and a longer (8-20 page) nonfictional work to be workshopped and revised. Prerequisite ENGLISH 90 or ENGLISH 91. NOTE: First priority to undergrads. Students must attend the first class meeting to retain their roster spot.
Terms: Win | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE | Repeatable 2 times (up to 10 units total)
Instructors: ; Evans, J. (PI)

ENGLISH 196A: Honors Seminar: Critical Approaches to Literature

Overview of literary-critical methodologies, with a practical emphasis shaped by participants' current honors projects. Restricted to students in the English Honors Program.
Terms: Aut | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ENGLISH 224: Doing Literary History: Orwell in the World (HISTORY 200K)

This course will bring together the disciplines of history and literary studies by looking closely at the work of one major twentieth-century author: the British writer and political polemicist George Orwell. In 1946, Orwell writes, "What I have most wanted to do throughout the past ten years is to make political writing into an art." In these years, Orwell writes about-- and often participates in or witnesses first-hand--a series of major events and crises. These include British imperialism in Burma, urban poverty in Europe, class inequality in England, the conflict between Socialism and Fascism in Spain, and the rise of totalitarianism in the Soviet Union. In engaging all of these events, Orwell experiments with different literary forms, moving between fiction and non-fiction, novel and autobiography, essay and memoir, manifesto and fable, literature and journalism. Few writers demand such sustained and equal attention to text and context: in this course we will move back-and-forth between Orwell's varied writing and the urgent social and political contexts it addresses.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-ER

ENGLISH 244: Literature and Technology from Frankenstein to the Futurists (COMPLIT 244, ITALIAN 244, ITALIAN 344)

Overview of defects and disorder across crystalline, amorphous, and glassy phases that are central to function and application, spanning metals, ceramics, and soft/biological matter. Structure and properties of simple 0D/1D/2D defects in crystalline materials. Scaling laws, connectivity and frustration, and hierarchy/distributions of structure across length scales in more disordered materials. Key characterization techniques. Pre-reqs: MATSCI 211 (thermo), 212 (kinetics)
Last offered: Winter 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ENGLISH 255: Speaking Medieval: Ecologies of Inscribed Objects (GERMAN 255)

This class presents a survey of medieval German vernaculars and their documentation in manuscripts and on material objects. The languages include Gothic, Old Norse, Old Frisian, Old Saxon, Old English, and Old High German. Readings will include runic inscriptions, magic charms, proverbs and riddles, apocalyptic visions, heroic lays, and sermons and prayers. (This course must be taken for a letter grade and a minimum of 3 units to satisfy a Ways requirement.)Please note this course meets MW 1:30-2:50 and is taught by Professors Kathryn Starkey and Elaine Treharne.
Last offered: Winter 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ENGLISH 293: Literary Translation: Theory and Practice (COMPLIT 293, DLCL 293)

An overview of translation theories and practices over time. The aesthetic, ethical, and political questions raised by the act and art of translation and how these pertain to the translator's tasks. Discussion of particular translation challenges and the decision processes taken to address these issues. Coursework includes assigned theoretical readings, comparative translations, and the undertaking of an individual translation project.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
Instructors: ; Santana, C. (PI)

ESF 2: Education as Self-Fashioning: How to Become a Global Citizen?

The concept of a liberal arts education was first developed in eighteenth-century Prussia by Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835) and soon adopted by other countries, including the United States. Humboldt considered a liberal arts education to be both a foundational and transformative process in the development of the self, and he was convinced that it was essential in creating moral and ethical citizens in an increasingly global world. From his point of view, the cultivation of oneself leads to the freedom of thought, freedom to act, freedom to assert oneself as an individual, freedom to access knowledge, and freedom to determine one's own role in society. In this course we will explore Humboldt's concept of education and examine the ways in which it is reflected and refracted in debates about university education still today. This course satisfies the Aesthetic and Interpretive Inquiry WAY (AII).
Last offered: Autumn 2018 | Units: 7 | UG Reqs: College, THINK, WAY-A-II, Writing 1

ESF 2A: Education as Self-Fashioning: How to Become a Global Citizen or the German Tradition of Bildung.

This course considers education not as training in external knowledge or skills but as a lifelong process of development and growth in which an individual cultivates her or his spiritual, cultural and social sensibilities. This concept of education - education as a formative and transformative process in the development of the self - is called Bildung in German and has a long tradition reaching back to the Middle Ages. The term first appears in the writings of the mystic Meister Eckhart who defines it as self-composure which he regards as a crucial stage in our spiritual development. The concept of Bildung takes on a secular meaning in the Reformation, when Ulrich von Hutten first coined the phrase that has become Stanford's motto: "Die Luft der Freiheit weht". (The wind of freedom is blowing). What he meant is that the cultivation of oneself leads to the freedom of thought, freedom to act, freedom to assert oneself as an individual, freedom to access knowledge, and freedom to determine one's own role in society. This idea of education as an internal and transformative process is central to debates in the nineteenth century (both in Germany and the United States) in which self-reflection is seen as key to the cultivation of an individual's identity and to her or his role as a member of society. In this course we will read reflections on education as self-fashioning by some of the greatest German thinkers spanning from the Middle Ages to the present. We will also enjoy some contemporary parodies of such reflections. These readings and our discussions will help us to understand Stanford undergraduate education as a transformative process of self-realization in our global society.
Last offered: Autumn 2016 | Units: 7 | UG Reqs: College, THINK, WAY-A-II, Writing 1

ESF 3: Education as Self-Fashioning: How to be a Public Intellectual

Can education impart more than bookish learning? This is the question that critics have posed since the European Renaissance. Through their reflections, these critics posited an alternative ideal of education that prepared the student for life outside the academy. Over the centuries, this ideal would evolve into what we would today call an 'intellectual' - but this modern concept only captures a part of what earlier writers thought learning could achieve. In this course, we will focus on how education can prepare students to engage in public debates and the role that the university can play in public learning.
Last offered: Autumn 2017 | Units: 7 | UG Reqs: College, THINK, WAY-A-II, Writing 1

ESF 3A: Education as Self-Fashioning: How to be a Public Intellectual

Can education impart more than bookish learning? This is the question that critics have posed since the European Renaissance. Through their reflections, these critics posited an alternative ideal of education that prepared the student for life outside the academy. Over the centuries, this ideal would evolve into what we would today call an 'intellectual' - but this modern concept only captures a part of what earlier writers thought learning could achieve. In this course, we will focus on how education can prepare students to engage in public debates and the role that the university can play in public learning.
Last offered: Autumn 2017 | Units: 7 | UG Reqs: College, THINK, WAY-A-II, Writing 1

ESF 6: Education as Self-Fashioning: The Wind of Freedom

Stanford's unofficial motto, "the wind of freedom blows," engraved in German on the university seal, invites us the ponder freedom in the context of education. What is the relation between freedom and the "liberal" arts? Does studying free your mind? Does free will even exist? If so, how does education help you develop its potential? This course will look at various authors -- from antiquity through the 20th century -- who have thought about the blessings, burdens, and obligations of human freedom. Beginning with Eve in the Garden of Eden, we will explore how exercising freedom in your personal choices and conduct not only determines your fate as an individual but carries with it a measure of responsibility for the world. We will place special emphasis on the implications of such responsibility in our own time.nFriday lectures will be held 9:30am-10:50am in Bishop Auditorium.
Last offered: Autumn 2018 | Units: 7 | UG Reqs: College, THINK, WAY-A-II, WAY-ER, Writing 1

ESF 6A: Education as Self-Fashioning: The Wind of Freedom

Stanford's unofficial motto, "the wind of freedom blows," engraved in German on the university seal, invites us the ponder freedom in the context of education. What is the relation between freedom and the "liberal" arts? Does studying free your mind? Does free will even exist? If so, how does education help you develop its potential? This course will look at various authors -- from antiquity through the 20th century -- who have thought about the blessings, burdens, and obligations of human freedom. Beginning with Eve in the Garden of Eden, we will explore how exercising freedom in your personal choices and conduct not only determines your fate as an individual but carries with it a measure of responsibility for the world. We will place special emphasis on the implications of such responsibility in our own time.
Last offered: Autumn 2017 | Units: 7 | UG Reqs: College, THINK, WAY-A-II, WAY-ER, Writing 1

ESF 7: Education as Self-Fashioning: The Transformation of the Self

Socrates famously claimed that the unexamined life is not worth living. Socrates and other ancient thinkers examined themselves and found that they did not match up to their own ideals. They thus set out to transform themselves to achieve a good and happy life. What is the good life? How do we change ourselves to live a good and happy life? How do literature and philosophy help us to understand ourselves and to achieve our social, ethical, and personal ideals? In this class, we examine Socrates and Augustine's lives and ideas. Each struggled to live a good and happy life. In each case, they urge us to transform ourselves into better human beings. The first half of the course focuses on the Athenian Socrates, who was put to death because he rejected traditional Greek ideals and and proclaimed a new kind of ethical goodness. The second half focuses on the North African Augustine, an unhappy soul who became a new man by converting to Christianity. These thinkers addressed questions and problems that we still confront today: What do we consider to be a happy life? Do we need to be good and ethical people to live happily? Is there one correct set of values? How do we accommodate other people's beliefs? Is it possible to experience a transformation of the self? How exactly do we change ourselves to achieve our higher ideals?nFriday lectures will be held 9:30am-10:50am in Bishop Auditorium.
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 7 | UG Reqs: College, THINK, WAY-A-II, WAY-ER, Writing 1

ESF 7A: Education as Self-Fashioning: The Transformation of the Self

Socrates famously claimed that the unexamined life is not worth living.  Socrates and other ancient thinkers examined themselves and found that they did not match up to their own ideals.  They thus set out to transform themselves to achieve a good and happy life.  What is the good life?  How do we change ourselves to live a good and happy life?  How do literature and philosophy help us to understand ourselves and to achieve our social, ethical, and personal ideals? In this class, we examine Socrates and Augustine's lives and ideas.  Each struggled to live a good and happy life.  In each case, they urge us to transform ourselves into better human beings.  The first half of the course focuses on the Athenian Socrates, who was put to death because he rejected traditional Greek ideals and and proclaimed a new kind of ethical goodness.  The second half focuses on the North African Augustine, an unhappy soul who became a new man by converting to Christianity.  These thinkers addressed questions and problems that we still confront today:  What do we consider to be a happy life?  Do we need to be good and ethical people to live happily?  Is there one correct set of values?  How do we accommodate other people's beliefs?  Is it possible to experience a transformation of the self?  How exactly do we change ourselves to achieve our higher ideals?
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 7 | UG Reqs: College, THINK, WAY-A-II, WAY-ER, Writing 1

ESF 8: Education as Self-Fashioning: Recognizing the Self and Its Possibilities

Some philosophers have argued that we have privileged and direct access to our inner selves. If this were true, it would make self-knowledge perhaps the easiest sort of knowledge to obtain. But there are many considerations that mitigate against this view of self-knowledge. Consider, for example, the slave who is so oppressed that he fully accepts his slavery and cannot even imagine the possibility of freedom for himself. Such a slave fails to recognize his own capacity for freedom and autonomous self-governance. Though the slave is perhaps the extreme case, many people, it seems, fail to recognize the full range of possibilities open to them. In this course, we shall examine both some of the ways in which one¿s capacity for self-recognition may be distorted and undermined and the role of education in enabling a person to fully recognize the self and its possibilities. What constrains the range of possibilities we see as really open to us? Contrary to the Cartesian, we shall argue that full self-recognition is an often a hard-won achievement. And we shall ask how education might function to give us a less constricted and more liberating sense of the self and its possibilities. We will consider such questions through the lens of philosophy, literature and psychology.nFriday lectures will be held 9:30am-10:50am in Bishop Auditorium.
Last offered: Autumn 2019 | Units: 7 | UG Reqs: College, THINK, WAY-A-II, WAY-ER, Writing 1

ESF 8A: Education as Self-Fashioning: Recognizing the Self and Its Possibilities

Some philosophers have argued that we have privileged and direct access to our inner selves. If this were true, it would make self-knowledge perhaps the easiest sort of knowledge to obtain. But there are many considerations that mitigate against this view of self-knowledge. Consider, for example, the slave who is so oppressed that he fully accepts his slavery and cannot even imagine the possibility of freedom for himself. Such a slave fails to recognize his own capacity for freedom and autonomous self-governance. Though the slave is perhaps the extreme case, many people, it seems, fail to recognize the full range of possibilities open to them. In this course, we shall examine both some of the ways in which one¿s capacity for self-recognition may be distorted and undermined and the role of education in enabling a person to fully recognize the self and its possibilities. What constrains the range of possibilities we see as really open to us? Contrary to the Cartesian, we shall argue that full self-recognition is an often a hard-won achievement. And we shall ask how education might function to give us a less constricted and more liberating sense of the self and its possibilities. We will consider such questions through the lens of philosophy, literature and psychology.
Last offered: Autumn 2019 | Units: 7 | UG Reqs: College, THINK, WAY-A-II, WAY-ER, Writing 1

ESF 9: Education as Self-Fashioning: Chinese Traditions of the Self

In this class we explore thinking about the self and its cultivation that took root and flourished in China. Chinese civilization was centrally concerned with issues of the self, but it developed methods and ideals of cultivation that have no obvious parallel in the European tradition. We will be concerned primarily with two clusters of Chinese thought and expression. First, we will look at major philosophical traditions (Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism) to see how they structured thinking about education and self-cultivation. The three ¿schools¿ of thought staked out different ideals for the self that provided China with range and flexibility in concepts of personhood. Second, we will examine Chinese aesthetic traditions, especially those of qin music, calligraphy and painting, to understand how the arts were used as a platform for self-cultivation and to communicate the artist¿s essential nature to others. The course also gives attention to the gendering of concepts of the self and to the tradition of martial arts as self-discipline and self-strengthening. Students should emerge from the course with an understanding of how a major civilization located outside Western traditions developed its own answers to these questions of universal human concern.
Last offered: Autumn 2016 | Units: 7 | UG Reqs: College, THINK, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP, Writing 1

ESF 9A: Education as Self-Fashioning: Chinese Traditions of the Self

In this class we explore thinking about the self and its cultivation that took root and flourished in China. Chinese civilization was centrally concerned with issues of the self, but it developed methods and ideals of cultivation that have no obvious parallel in the European tradition. We will be concerned primarily with two clusters of Chinese thought and expression. First, we will look at major philosophical traditions (Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism) to see how they structured thinking about education and self-cultivation. The three ¿schools¿ of thought staked out different ideals for the self that provided China with range and flexibility in concepts of personhood. Second, we will examine Chinese aesthetic traditions, especially those of qin music, calligraphy and painting, to understand how the arts were used as a platform for self-cultivation and to communicate the artist¿s essential nature to others. The course also gives attention to the gendering of concepts of the self and to the tradition of martial arts as self-discipline and self-strengthening. Students should emerge from the course with an understanding of how a major civilization located outside Western traditions developed its own answers to these questions of universal human concern.
Last offered: Autumn 2016 | Units: 7 | UG Reqs: College, THINK, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP, Writing 1

ESF 13: Education as Self-Fashioning: Rebellious Minds

The struggle to know began long before you entered the university. The university as an institution has its origins in the late Middle Ages; it has been reinvented repeatedly as our ideas about education have changed. People have been rebelling against how institutions define learning (and for whom) ever since. This course introduces you to some of the most thoughtful and interesting reflections on the nature and purpose of an education, on knowledge and ignorance, at the birth of the modern world. Understanding the quest to discover the mind and to embrace learning as a lifelong endeavor is a starting point to reflect on the goals of your own education, as an engaged intellectual citizen of the world.
Terms: Aut | Units: 7 | UG Reqs: College, THINK, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI, Writing 1
Instructors: ; Findlen, P. (PI)

ESF 13A: Education as Self-Fashioning: Rebellious Minds

The struggle to know began long before you entered the university. The university as an institution has its origins in the late Middle Ages; it has been reinvented repeatedly as our ideas about education have changed. People have been rebelling against how institutions define learning (and for whom) ever since. This course introduces you to some of the most thoughtful and interesting reflections on the nature and purpose of an education, on knowledge and ignorance, at the birth of the modern world. Understanding the quest to discover the mind and to embrace learning as a lifelong endeavor is a starting point to reflect on the goals of your own education, as an engaged intellectual citizen of the world.
Terms: Aut | Units: 7 | UG Reqs: College, THINK, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI, Writing 1
Instructors: ; Findlen, P. (PI)

ESF 14: Education as Self-Fashioning: The Challenge of Choice

The Challenge of Choice addresses these questions by engaging key texts from the liberal arts tradition that explore decisions and their consequences, exposing the multi-faceted nature of choice. By representing characters with whom we sympathize, as well as those whose experience seems worlds away from our own, artists (novelists, playwrights, filmmakers) ask us to consider the web of circumstance that influences a character to choose one course over another. Distance from our own subjectivity the stories are not ours, but they could be allows these works to shed light on the dilemmas that face us as we go about `choosing the life we think we would like to live. Confronting these works, we find that the kinds of choices we make grow in depth, magnitude, and significance.
Terms: Aut | Units: 7 | UG Reqs: College, THINK, WAY-A-II, Writing 1
Instructors: ; Rehm, R. (PI); Kinsey, V. (GP)

ESF 14A: Education as Self-Fashioning: The Challenge of Choice

The Challenge of Choice addresses these questions by engaging key texts from the liberal arts tradition that explore decisions and their consequences, exposing the multi-faceted nature of choice. By representing characters with whom we sympathize, as well as those whose experience seems worlds away from our own, artists (novelists, playwrights, filmmakers) ask us to consider the web of circumstance that influences a character to choose one course over another. Distance from our own subjectivity the stories are not ours, but they could be allows these works to shed light on the dilemmas that face us as we go about `choosing the life we think we would like to live. Confronting these works, we find that the kinds of choices we make grow in depth, magnitude, and significance.
Terms: Aut | Units: 7 | UG Reqs: College, THINK, WAY-A-II, Writing 1
Instructors: ; Rehm, R. (PI); Swan, L. (GP)

ESF 15: Education as Self-Fashioning: College and the Good Life

Academic study was once concerned with one overriding question: what is the best way to live our lives? What are the ultimate goals and values we should privilege over others? Today we often assume that value choices are personal. But many teachers in Antiquity (and beyond) thought that these choices needed to be debated, and that education demanded that we debate and think them through. In this class, we ask questions about the good life, but we also consider whether college is still designed to raise such questions. We will read thought-provoking, influential texts from Antiquity and modern times, by such writers as Plato, Marcus Aurelius, Montaigne, Voltaire, DuBois, and Martha Nussbaum.nFriday lectures will be held 9:30am-10:50am in Bishop Auditorium.
Last offered: Autumn 2019 | Units: 7 | UG Reqs: College, THINK, WAY-A-II, Writing 1

ESF 15A: Education as Self-Fashioning: College and The Good Life

Academic study was once concerned with one overriding question: what is the best way to live our lives? What are the ultimate goals and values we should privilege over others? Today we often assume that value choices are personal. But many teachers in Antiquity (and beyond) thought that these choices needed to be debated, and that education demanded that we debate and think them through. In this class, we ask questions about the good life, but we also consider whether college is still designed to raise such questions. We will read thought-provoking, influential texts from Antiquity and modern times, by such writers as Plato, Marcus Aurelius, Montaigne, Voltaire, DuBois, and Martha Nussbaum.
Last offered: Autumn 2019 | Units: 7 | UG Reqs: College, THINK, WAY-A-II, Writing 1

ESF 16: Education as Self-Fashioning: Curiosity

Curiosity is a personal interest about something that often has no specific application in the real world or is not part of an overarching goal. Curiosity is often dismissed as irrelevant, useless, and even unethical, but it is just as often touted as the foundation to an intellectually rich life. Albert Einstein once remarked, "I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious," and he insisted that only curiosity makes life worth living. Thomas Fuller, by contrast, warned: "Curiosity is a kernel of the forbidden fruit, which still sticks in the throat of a natural man, sometimes to the danger of his choking." Is it possible to reconcile these opposing views on curiosity? What role does curiosity play in a liberal education? What is the role of curiosity in technology and "progress?" What is the relationship between curiosity and individualism? How does curiosity help us develop as critical thinkers? How does curiosity coexist with (or enable) intellectualism? In this course we¿ll examine cabinets of curiosities, and read a wide variety of texts spanning from Antiquity to today, including the legend of Faust, and texts by Goethe, Kafka, Hoffmann, Aristotle, Plato, and Augustine, that explore the nature of curiosity, its pitfalls and possibilities, as well as its importance for living a fulfilled and interesting life.
Last offered: Autumn 2019 | Units: 7 | UG Reqs: College, THINK, WAY-A-II, Writing 1

ESF 16A: Education as Self-Fashioning: Curiosity

Curiosity is a personal interest about something that often has no specific application in the real world or is not part of an overarching goal. Curiosity is often dismissed as irrelevant, useless, and even unethical, but it is just as often touted as the foundation to an intellectually rich life. Albert Einstein once remarked, "I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious," and he insisted that only curiosity makes life worth living. Thomas Fuller, by contrast, warned: "Curiosity is a kernel of the forbidden fruit, which still sticks in the throat of a natural man, sometimes to the danger of his choking." Is it possible to reconcile these opposing views on curiosity? What role does curiosity play in a liberal education? What is the role of curiosity in technology and "progress?" What is the relationship between curiosity and individualism? How does curiosity help us develop as critical thinkers? How does curiosity coexist with (or enable) intellectualism? In this course we¿ll examine cabinets of curiosities, and read a wide variety of texts spanning from Antiquity to today, including the legend of Faust, and texts by Goethe, Kafka, Hoffmann, Aristotle, Plato, and Augustine, that explore the nature of curiosity, its pitfalls and possibilities, as well as its importance for living a fulfilled and interesting life.
Last offered: Autumn 2019 | Units: 7 | UG Reqs: College, THINK, WAY-A-II, Writing 1

ESF 17: What Can You Do for Your Country?

What does it mean to serve your country? All ethical systems train the individual to relinquish self-interest in favor of a larger communal good. When you applied to Stanford, you answered many application questions designed to elicit evidence of your ability to serve others, which is considered a sign of good character, leadership, and ability to thrive beyond the confines of your family and private world. Knowing you've wrestled with this question at length, showing sacrifice, endurance, empathy, and understanding of higher goods, this course asks you to examine the nation's view. How can the nation present itself as worthy of your personal sacrifice? Do you need to believe in the greatness of your nation to serve? What kind of cause demands your devotion? Nations have differently articulated such a commitment. Some make modest demands and promise you your own sovereignty. Others request only that you dream of national greatness as your own and that you lend a hand. But all nations require at some point, everything from you. What and when are you prepared to give? This course begins with the shortest and most powerful demand for the last full measure your devotion. President Abraham Lincoln's 'Gettysburg Address', which presents the ideals of the American nation as worthy of returning to war. Following this question of devotion to your nation, the course moves to President JF Kennedy's 'What can you do for your nation' speech, and then to diverse periods and perspectives around the globe.
Terms: Aut | Units: 7 | UG Reqs: College, THINK, WAY-A-II, Writing 1
Instructors: ; Berman, R. (PI)

ESF 17A: What Can You Do for Your Country?

What does it mean to serve your country? All ethical systems train the individual to relinquish self-interest in favor of a larger communal good. When you applied to Stanford, you answered many application questions designed to elicit evidence of your ability to serve others, which is considered a sign of good character, leadership, and ability to thrive beyond the confines of your family and private world. Knowing you've wrestled with this question at length, showing sacrifice, endurance, empathy, and understanding of higher goods, this course asks you to examine the nation's view. How can the nation present itself as worthy of your personal sacrifice? Do you need to believe in the greatness of your nation to serve? What kind of cause demands your devotion? Nations have differently articulated such a commitment. Some make modest demands and promise you your own sovereignty. Others request only that you dream of national greatness as your own and that you lend a hand. But all nations require at some point, everything from you. What and when are you prepared to give? This course begins with the shortest and most powerful demand for the last full measure your devotion. President Abraham Lincoln's 'Gettysburg Address', which presents the ideals of the American nation as worthy of returning to war. Following this question of devotion to your nation, the course moves to President JF Kennedy's 'What can you do for your nation' speech, and then to diverse periods and perspectives around the globe.
Terms: Aut | Units: 7 | UG Reqs: College, THINK, WAY-A-II, Writing 1
Instructors: ; Berman, R. (PI)

ESF 18: Between Gods and Beasts: The Struggle for Humanity

Centuries ago, Plotinus famously wrote that humanity was "poised midway between gods and beasts" (Enneads 3.2.8). Some individuals 'grow like to the divine", he asserted, and "others to the brute". Since antiquity, many different societies, east and west, have understood education as a fundamental factor in determining whether individuals became fully realized as human beings, or something less. Considered a civilizing force for individuals and societies, education aimed not only at the acquisition of knowledge and skills, but also at the cultivation of goodness, the attainment of wisdom, and the achievement of happiness. In short, the goal of learning was to live well. What does it mean to live well? How does one cultivate one's nature or become one's best possible self? What kind of personal and intellectual development does this presuppose? Are there limits to the human capacity for self-development and change? In this course we will ponder such questions as we reflect critically on human nature and on historical and contemporary ideas regarding education, self-development, and living well.
Terms: Aut | Units: 7 | UG Reqs: College, THINK, WAY-A-II, Writing 1
Instructors: ; Prodan, S. (PI)

ESF 18A: Between Gods and Beasts: The Struggle for Humanity

Centuries ago, Plotinus famously wrote that humanity was "poised midway between gods and beasts" (Enneads 3.2.8). Some individuals 'grow like to the divine", he asserted, and "others to the brute". Since antiquity, many different societies, east and west, have understood education as a fundamental factor in determining whether individuals became fully realized as human beings, or something less. Considered a civilizing force for individuals and societies, education aimed not only at the acquisition of knowledge and skills, but also at the cultivation of goodness, the attainment of wisdom, and the achievement of happiness. In short, the goal of learning was to live well. What does it mean to live well? How does one cultivate one's nature or become one's best possible self? What kind of personal and intellectual development does this presuppose? Are there limits to the human capacity for self-development and change? In this course we will ponder such questions as we reflect critically on human nature and on historical and contemporary ideas regarding education, self-development, and living well.
Terms: Aut | Units: 7 | UG Reqs: College, THINK, WAY-A-II, Writing 1
Instructors: ; Prodan, S. (PI)

ESF 21: Decolonial Thought

How do we make sense of the colonial foundations of the modern world? What is it to decolonize our institutions, minds and politics? In recent years, the Rhodes Must Fall movement in South Africa has spurred on a vibrant and difficult discussion across the world, about the legacy of colonialism in the modern university. Students and academics have been engaged in devising methods to understand and undo this colonial inheritance and confront the various connected structures of power such as hetero-patriarchy, racism, and class. One aspect of this endeavor has been to delve deep into the intellectual resources developed by anti-colonial and decolonial writers, revolutionaries, academics, and activists from the postcolonial world. This course is designed as a deep engagement with this critical decolonial work by some of the most significant thinkers from the Global South in the last hundred years. We will begin the course by developing a basic understanding of the contemporary call for decolonizing the university and the field of postcolonial and decolonial scholarship. After this, the main focus of this course will be a close reading and reflection on the writings that today constitute a rich reservoir of ideas for contemporary struggles to decolonize, to think critically about structures of power and injustice and to search for languages of liberation.
Terms: Aut | Units: 7 | UG Reqs: College, THINK, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP, Writing 1
Instructors: ; Shil, P. (PI); Anwar, M. (GP)

ESF 21A: Decolonial Thought

How do we make sense of the colonial foundations of the modern world? What is it to decolonize our institutions, minds and politics? In recent years, the Rhodes Must Fall movement in South Africa has spurred on a vibrant and difficult discussion across the world, about the legacy of colonialism in the modern university. Students and academics have been engaged in devising methods to understand and undo this colonial inheritance and confront the various connected structures of power such as hetero-patriarchy, racism, and class. One aspect of this endeavor has been to delve deep into the intellectual resources developed by anti-colonial and decolonial writers, revolutionaries, academics, and activists from the postcolonial world. This course is designed as a deep engagement with this critical decolonial work by some of the most significant thinkers from the Global South in the last hundred years. We will begin the course by developing a basic understanding of the contemporary call for decolonizing the university and the field of postcolonial and decolonial scholarship. After this, the main focus of this course will be a close reading and reflection on the writings that today constitute a rich reservoir of ideas for contemporary struggles to decolonize, to think critically about structures of power and injustice and to search for languages of liberation.
Terms: Aut | Units: 7 | UG Reqs: College, THINK, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP, Writing 1
Instructors: ; Shil, P. (PI); Anwar, M. (GP)

ESF 23: Heroes and Heroism

Drawing upon Chinese, Greek, and Roman literary, philosophical, and historical writings, the seminar would examine, in a comparative light, concepts of heroism and models of courage, fortitude, and leadership in these paradigmatic ancient traditions. Possible authors: Mencius, Sima Qian, Liu Xiang, Guan Hanqing, and Ji Junxiang; Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, Virgil, and Seneca.
Terms: Aut | Units: 7 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-ER

ESF 23A: Heroes and Heroism

Drawing upon Chinese, Greek, and Roman literary, philosophical, and historical writings, the seminar would examine, in a comparative light, concepts of heroism and models of courage, fortitude, and leadership in these paradigmatic ancient traditions. Possible authors: Mencius, Sima Qian, Liu Xiang, Guan Hanqing, and Ji Junxiang; Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, Virgil, and Seneca.
Terms: Aut | Units: 7 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-ER

ETHICSOC 20: Introduction to Moral Philosophy (PHIL 2)

What should I do with my life? What kind of person should I be? How should we treat others? What makes actions right or wrong? What is good and what is bad? What should we value? How should we organize society? Is there any reason to be moral? Is morality relative or subjective? How, if at all, can such questions be answered? Intensive introduction to theories and techniques in contemporary moral philosophy.
Terms: Aut | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-EthicReas, WAY-A-II, WAY-ER

ETHICSOC 130A: Classical Seminar: Origins of Political Thought (CLASSICS 181, CLASSICS 381, PHIL 176A, PHIL 276A, POLISCI 230A, POLISCI 330A)

Political philosophy in classical antiquity, centered on reading canonical works of Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle against other texts and against the political and historical background. Topics include: interdependence, legitimacy, justice; political obligation, citizenship, and leadership; origins and development of democracy; law, civic strife, and constitutional change.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-ER

ETHICSOC 131S: Modern Political Thought: Machiavelli to Marx and Mill (POLISCI 131L)

This course is an introduction to the history of Western political thought from the late fifteenth century through the nineteenth century. We will consider the secularization of politics, the changing relationship between the individual and society, the rise of consent-based forms of political authority, and the development and critiques of liberal conceptions of property. We will cover the following thinkers: Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Wollstonecraft, Mill, and Marx.
Terms: Spr | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:EC-EthicReas, WAY-A-II, WAY-ER

ETHICSOC 170: Ethical Theory (PHIL 170, PHIL 270)

(Taylor's version) In this iteration of the course we will discuss ethical dimensions of personal identity, integrity, friendship, sex, love, commitment, trust, care, childhood, death, and the afterlife. Substantial background in moral philosophy will be assumed (students should have completed Philosophy 2 or its equivalent; if you have questions, please contact the instructor).
Terms: Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-EthicReas, WAY-A-II, WAY-ER
Instructors: ; Madigan, T. (PI)

ETHICSOC 172: History of Modern Moral Philosophy (PHIL 172, PHIL 272)

A critical exploration of some main forms of systematic moral theorizing in Western philosophy from Hobbes onward and their roots in ancient, medieval, and earlier modern ethical thought. Prerequistes are some prior familiarity with utilitarianism and Kantian ethics and a demonstrated interest in philosophy. Grads enroll in 272.
Terms: Win | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-ER
Instructors: ; Hills, D. (PI)

ETHICSOC 175B: Philosophy of Law (PHIL 175, PHIL 275)

This course will explore foundational issues about the nature of law and its relation to morality, and about legal responsibility and criminal punishment. Toward the end we will turn to issues about the criminal culpability of children. Prerequisite: Philosophy 80
Terms: Win | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-ER

ETHICSOC 176: Political Philosophy: The Social Contract Tradition (PHIL 176, PHIL 276, POLISCI 137A, POLISCI 337A)

(Graduate students register for 276.) What makes political institutions legitimate? What makes them just? When do citizens have a right to revolt against those who rule over them? Which of our fellow citizens must we tolerate?Surprisingly, the answers given by some of the most prominent modern philosophers turn on the idea of a social contract. We will focus on the work of Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Rawls.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-ER
Instructors: ; Hills, D. (PI)

FEMGEN 11: Introduction to Dance Studies (CSRE 11, DANCE 11, TAPS 11)

This class is an introduction to dance studies and the complex meanings bodily performances carry both onstage and off. Using critical frames drawn from dance criticism, history and ethnography and performance studies, and readings from cultural studies, dance, theater and critical theory, the class explores how performing bodies make meanings. We will read theoretical and historical texts and recorded dance as a means of developing tools for viewing and analyzing dance and understanding its place in larger social, cultural, and political structures. Special attention will be given to new turns in queer and feminist dance studies. This course blends theory and embodied practice. This means as we read, research, and analyze, we will also dance. Students enrolled should expect to move throughout the quarter and complete a two-part choreographic research project. TAPS 11 has been certified to fulfill the Writing in the Major (WIM) requirement.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
Instructors: ; Jones, T. (PI)

FEMGEN 13N: Women Making Music (MUSIC 14N)

Preference to freshmen. Women's musical activities across times and cultures; how ideas about gender influence the creation, performance, and perception of music.
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-Gender, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

FEMGEN 39: Long Live Our 4Bil. Year Old Mother: Black Feminist Praxis, Indigenous Resistance, Queer Possibility (AFRICAAM 39, CSRE 39, NATIVEAM 39)

How can art facilitate a culture that values women, mothers, transfolks, caregivers, girls? How can black, indigenous, and people of color frameworks help us reckon with oppressive systems that threaten safety and survival for marginalized people and the lands that sustain us? How can these questions reveal the brilliant and inventive forms of survival that precede and transcend harmful systems toward a world of possibility? Each week, this course will call on artists, scholars, and organizers of color who clarify the urgency and interconnection of issues from patriarchal violence to environmental degradation; criminalization to legacies of settler colonialism. These same thinkers will also speak to the imaginative, everyday knowledge and creative healing practices that our forebears have used for millennia to give vision and rise to true transformation.
Last offered: Spring 2020 | Units: 1-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

FEMGEN 53Q: Writing and Gender in the Age of Disruption (ENGLISH 53Q)

In this course, we will read a wide cross-section of British and American women writers who turned to fiction and poetry to examine, and to survive, their times: Virginia Woolf, Nella Larsen, Rebecca West, Zora Neale Hurston, Jean Rhys, Jessie Redmon Fauset, Katherine Mansfield, H.D., Marianne Moore, and Una Marson. You will learn how to pay close attention to the often radically new ways these writers bent language to their purposes to express complex emotions and vexed political realities; in your own essay writing, you will learn how to write clearly and persuasively about small units of text and to craft longer critical analyses attentive to language, history, and culture. Always, students will be encouraged to draw connections between then and now, to ponder what has changed, and what remains to be changed, in our own turbulent times.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Staveley, A. (PI)

FEMGEN 63N: The Feminist Critique: The History and Politics of Gender Equality (AMSTUD 63N, CSRE 63N, HISTORY 63N)

This course explores the long history of ideas about gender and equality. Each week we read, dissect, compare, and critique a set of primary historical documents (political and literary) from around the world, moving from the 15th century to the present. We tease out changing arguments about education, the body, sexuality, violence, labor, politics, and the very meaning of gender, and we place feminist critics within national and global political contexts.
Last offered: Autumn 2020 | Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

FEMGEN 94Q: The Future is Feminine (ENGLISH 94Q)

Gender is one of the great social issues of our time. What does it mean to be female or feminine? How has femininity been defined, performed, punished, or celebrated? Writers are some of our most serious and eloquent investigators of these questions, and in this class we'll read many of our greatest writers on the subject of femininity, as embodied by both men and women, children and adults, protagonists and antagonists. From Virginia Woolf to Ernest Hemingway, from Beloved to Gone Girl (and even "RuPaul's Drag Race"), we'll ask how the feminine is rendered and contested. We'll do so in order to develop a history and a vocabulary of femininity so that we may, in this important time, write our own way in to the conversation. This is first and foremost a creative writing class, and our goals will be to consider in our own work the importance of the feminine across the entire spectrum of gender, sex, and identity. We will also study how we write about femininity, using other writers as models and inspiration. As we engage with these other writers, we will think broadly and bravely, and explore the expressive opportunities inherent in writing. We will explore our own creative practices through readings, prompted exercises, improv, games, collaboration, workshop, and revision, all with an eye toward writing the feminine future.
Terms: Win, Sum | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
Instructors: ; Pufahl, S. (PI)

FEMGEN 100C: History of World Cinema III: Queer Cinemas around the World (ARTHIST 164, ARTHIST 364, CSRE 102C, CSRE 302C, FEMGEN 300C, FILMEDIA 100C, FILMEDIA 300C, GLOBAL 193, GLOBAL 390, TAPS 100C, TAPS 300C)

Provides an overview of cinema from around the world since 1960, highlighting the cultural, political, and economic forces that have shaped various film movements over the last six decades. Specific topics may vary by term/year/instructor. This term's topic, Queer Cinemas around the World, engages with a range of queer cinematic forms and queer spectatorial practices in different parts of the world, as well as BIPOC media from North America. Through film and video from Kenya, Malaysia, India, The Dominican Republic, China, Brazil, Palestine, Japan, Morocco, the US etc., we will examine varied narratives about trans experience, same-sex desire, LGBTQI2S+ rights, censorship, precarity, and hopefulness. This course will attune us to regional cultural specificities in queer expression and representation, prompting us to move away from hegemonic and homogenizing understandings of queer life and media. Notes: Screenings will be held on Fridays at 1:30PM in Oshman Hall. Screening times will vary slightly from week to week.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II | Repeatable 2 times (up to 10 units total)
Instructors: ; Iyer, U. (PI)

FEMGEN 103: Feminist and Queer Theories and Methods Across the Disciplines (COMPLIT 202, FEMGEN 203)

(Graduate Students register for PHIL 279A or FEMGEN 203) This course is an opportunity to explore a variety of historic and current feminist and queer perspectives in the arts, humanities, and social science research. NOTE: This course must be taken for a letter grade and a minimum of 3 units to be eligible for WAYS credit. The 2 unit option is for graduate students only.
Terms: Win | Units: 2-5 | UG Reqs: GER:EC-Gender, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Fischer, J. (PI)

FEMGEN 104: Close Cinematic Analysis - Caste, Sexuality, and Religion in Indian Media (ARTHIST 199, ASNAMST 108, FILMEDIA 101, FILMEDIA 301, TAPS 101F)

India is the world's largest producer of films in over 20 languages, and Bollywood is often its most visible avatar, especially on US university curricula. This course will introduce you to a range of media from the Indian subcontinent across commercial and experimental films, documentaries, streaming media, and online cultures. We will engage in particular with questions of sexuality, gender, caste, religion, and ethnicity in this postcolonial context and across its diasporas, including in the Caribbean. Given this course's emphasis on close cinematic analysis, we will analyze formal aspects of cinematography, editing, mise-en-scene, and performance, and how these generate spectatorial pleasure, star and fan cultures, and particular modes of representation. This course fulfills the WIM requirement for Film and Media Studies majors. Note: Screenings will be held on Thursdays at 5:30 PM. Screening times will vary from week to week and may range from 90 to 180 minutes.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Iyer, U. (PI)

FEMGEN 111A: From Colonialism to K-pop: Race and Gender in South Korean Culture (COMPLIT 111K, CSRE 111A, KOREA 111, KOREA 222)

Some may associate South Korea with the following: BTS, North Korean nukes, Samsung, Hyundai, Squid Games. Some may repeat what South Korea has said about itself: that it is racially homogenous, an ethnic community that can trace their ancestry back 5000 years. Some may wonder how a country that is often perceived as Christian and conservative developed pop culture like K-pop, or queer subcultures, or feminist activism. This class will use South Korea as a case study to think historically and geographically about race and gender through the following topics: when did racial discourses begin to emerge in Korea? What have been South Korea's significant encounters with the figure of the Other in its modern history? How were women implicated in the changing landscape of colonial Korea, the Korean War, Korea's Vietnam War experience, and compressed modernization? How have the influx of migrant labor and North Korean refugees impacted ideas about race in South Korea? And finally, what does K-pop tell us about shifting South Korean views of race and gender? The primary materials that we will analyze will be drawn from Korean fiction, film, and media in translation.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

FEMGEN 112: Passing: Hidden Identities Onscreen (CSRE 113, JEWISHST 112)

Characters who are Jewish, Black, Latinx, women, and LGBTQ often conceal their identities - or "pass" - in Hollywood film. Our course will trace how Hollywood has depicted"passing" from the early 20th century to the present. Just a few of our films will include Gentleman's Agreement (1947), Imitation of Life (1959), School Ties (1992), White Chicks (2004), and Blackkklansman (2018). Through these films, we will explore the overlaps and differences between antisemitism, racism, misogyny, and queerphobia, both onscreen and in real life. In turn, we will also study the ideological role of passing films: how they thrill audiences by challenging social boundaries and hierarchies, only to reestablish familiar boundaries by the end. With this contradiction, passing films often help audiences to feel enlightened without actually challenging the oppressive status quo. Thus, we will not treat films as accurate depictions of real-world passing, but rather as cultural tools that help audiences to manage ideological contradictions about race, gender, sexuality, and class. Students will finish the course by creating their own short films about passing.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Branfman, J. (PI)

FEMGEN 116: Sexual Violence in Asian America (ASNAMST 104)

The course will make connections across historical and everyday violence on Asian American women to think about why violence against Asian women in wartime is hypervisible, yet everyday sexual violence against Asian American women is invisible. Reading texts from Asian American studies and Black and women of color feminism, we will consider the socialization of sexual violence and rape culture historically and within the present. Enrollment is by instructor approval only. If interested in enrolling, please fill out this form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfIar8sr5llpQqqIwZYrFo5b5sVj29G42pwxpviKFKVBsRESA/viewform.
| Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

FEMGEN 131: Introduction to Queer Theory (CSRE 131A, FILMEDIA 131A)

What can Queer Theory help us do and undo? Emerging at the intersections of feminist theory, queer activism, and critical race studies in the 1990's, Queer Theory has become a dynamic interdisciplinary field that informs a wide range of cultural and artistic practices. This course will introduce students to the development of queer theory as well as core concepts and controversies in the field. While considering theoretical frames for thinking gender, sexuality, and sex, we will explore the possibilities--and limitations--of queer theory with a focus on doing and undoing identity, knowledge, and power.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

FEMGEN 133: Transgender Performance and Performativity (TAPS 133T)

This course examines theater, performance art, dance, and embodied practice by transgender artists. Students will learn the history and politics of transgender performance while considering the creative processes and formal aesthetics trans artists use to make art. We will analyze creative work in conversation with critical and theoretical texts from the fields of performance studies, art history, and queer studies.
Last offered: Autumn 2019 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

FEMGEN 139C: American Literature and Social Justice (AMSTUD 139C, ENGLISH 139C)

How have American writers tried to expose and illuminate racism and sexism through fiction, creative nonfiction, journalism, and poetry? How have they tried to focus our attention on discrimination and prejudice based on race, gender, ethnicity, class, religion and national origin? What writing strategies can break through apathy and ignorance? What role, if any, can humor play in this process?
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

FEMGEN 141B: The Pen and the Sword: A Gendered History (COMPLIT 140, HISTORY 261P, ITALIAN 141)

As weapons, the pen and the sword have been used to wound, punish, and condemn as well as to protect, liberate, and elevate. Historically entangled with ideals of heroism, nobility, and civility, the pen and the sword have been the privileged instruments of men. Yet, throughout history, women have picked up the pen and the sword in defense, despair, and outrage as well as with passion, vision, and inspiration. This course is dedicated to them, and to study of works on love, sex, and power that articulate female experience. In our readings and seminars, we will encounter real and fictive women in their own words and in narrations and depictions by others from classical antiquity to the present, with a special focus on the Renaissance and on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Touching on such topics as flattery and slander through the study of misogynistic, protofeminist, and feminist works in the early modern and modern periods in various European literary traditions, we will consider questions of truth and falsehood in fiction and in life. Course materials span a variety genres and media, from poetry, letters, dialogues, public lectures, treatises, short stories, and drama to painting, sculpture, music, and film works regarded for their aesthetic, intellectual, religious, social, and political value and impact.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

FEMGEN 150: Sex, Gender, and Power in Modern China (CHINA 115, CHINA 215, FEMGEN 250)

Investigates how sex, gender, and power are entwined in the Chinese experience of modernity. Topics include anti-footbinding campaigns, free love/free sex, women's mobilization in revolution and war, the new Marriage Law of 1950, Mao's iron girls, postsocialist celebrations of sensuality, and emergent queer politics. Readings range from feminist theory to China-focused historiography, ethnography, memoir, biography, fiction, essay, and film. All course materials are in English.
Last offered: Summer 2021 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-Gender, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

FEMGEN 151: Feminist Life-Writing (LIFE 151)

This course explores life-writing as a form of feminist praxis. Feminist life-writing is an art form grounded in truth-telling, activism, and self-making that emerges from the long tradition of women writing private lives. Beginning with the politicized practices of second wave feminists up through contemporary trends in memoir and autofiction, we will confront an array of intersectional autobiographies that connect personal experience to broader movements, power structures, and oppressions. How has life-writing contributed to the articulation of feminist consciousness? How has feminism impacted the methods marginalized authors use to create forms for belonging and self-determination? As we think about the politics of life-writing, we will also consider feminist rhetorical and aesthetic strategies for confronting issues like trauma, disability, incarceration, motherhood, and friendship. Each student will conduct a large-scale research project focused on an author, genre, or theme of their choice. As we research the critical historical contexts for feminist memoir, we will simultaneously conduct our own creative experiments in life-writing.
Terms: Aut | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Goode, L. (PI)

FEMGEN 153D: Close Listening: Sound, Media, and Performance (FILMEDIA 153E, MUSIC 153E, TAPS 153D)

Are there ways to listen? This new course approaches the question by exploring artist works that have challenged the norms of sonic experience. We will discover that in life, as in the arts, there are practices of listening. We will cover a range of texts on sound media, and we will experience a number of works that reinvent practices of listening. There will be particular attention to the work of feminist sound artists. In conversation with art and theory, we will develop wider awareness for the sounds of everyday life. This course meets once a week, and group listening of select works is part of the class.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Adair, D. (PI)

FEMGEN 154G: Black Magic: Ethnicity, Race, and Identity in Performance Cultures (AFRICAAM 154G, AFRICAAM 254G, CSRE 154D, TAPS 154G, TAPS 354G)

In 2013, CaShawn Thompson devised a Twitter hashtag, #blackgirlmagic, to celebrate the beauty and intelligence of black women. Twitter users quickly adopted the slogan, using the hashtag to celebrate everyday moments of beauty, accomplishment, and magic. The slogan offered a contemporary iteration of an historical alignment: namely, the concept of "magic" with both Black people as well as "blackness." This course explores the legacy of Black magic--and black magic--through performance texts including plays, poetry, films, and novels. We will investigate the creation of magical worlds, the discursive alignment of magic with blackness, and the contemporary manifestation of a historical phenomenon. We will cover, through lecture and discussion, the history of black magic representation as well as the relationship between magic and religion. Our goal will be to understand the impact and history of discursive alignments: what relationship does "black magic" have to and for "black bodies"? How do we understand a history of performance practice as being caught up in complicated legacies of suspicion, celebration, self-definition? The course will give participants a grounding in black performance texts, plays, and theoretical writings. *This course will also satisfy the TAPS department WIM requirement.*
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Robinson, A. (PI)

FEMGEN 159: James Baldwin & Twentieth Century Literature (AFRICAAM 159, AMSTUD 159, ENGLISH 159)

Black, gay and gifted, Baldwin was hailed as a "spokesman for the race", although he personally, and controversially, eschewed titles and classifications of all kinds. This course examines his classic novels and essays as well his exciting work across many lesser-examined domains - poetry, music, theatre, sermon, photo-text, children's literature, public media, comedy and artistic collaboration. Placing his work in context with other writers of the 20C (Faulkner, Wright, Morrison) and capitalizing on a resurgence of interest in the writer (NYC just dedicated a year of celebration of Baldwin and there are 2 new journals dedicated to study of Baldwin), the course seeks to capture the power and influence of Baldwin's work during the Civil Rights era as well as his relevance in the "post-race" transnational 21st century, when his prescient questioning of the boundaries of race, sex, love, leadership and country assume new urgency.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Elam, M. (PI)

FEMGEN 162: Intersectionality and the Politics of Ballet (DANCE 162P, TAPS 162P)

Ballet dancers drag a long and conservative history with them each time they step onstage. Yet recently some of the most radical challenges in dance are coming from ballerinas, featuring prosthetic limbs, non-female identifying dancers en pointe, and Ultra-Orthodox Jewish women performing classical repertoire. This seminar uses dance history to reposition ballet as a daring future-facing art form, one where the politics of nationality, religion, class, gender, race, and disability intersect. These issues are provocatively illuminated by classically trained dancers like South African artist Dada Masilo in her gender-bending Swan Lake and Giselle adaptations, Phil Chan's anti-Orientalist restagings, and activist American dancer Alice Sheppard's showcasing of the art of disability partnered by her wheelchair. What can ballet bring to the pressing social issues of equity, inclusion, and diversity when for centuries it has been considered an exemplar of the static imperialist, Western art form and idealized white body? What has shifted to reveal ballet as a vital medium for registering new global identities and social justice challenges? How can an art form built on obedient bodies be politically dangerous? Exposing limitations of binaries such as masculine/feminine, White/Black, heterosexual/homosexual, and colonial/ colonized histories, we consider how culture is complicated through the ballet repertoire and its techniques for disciplining and gendering bodies. Using live and recorded performances, interviews with practitioners reshaping the field, and close readings of new scholarship, we will see how 21st century politics are being negotiated through ballet in an intersectional frame.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

FEMGEN 167: Censorship in American Art (AMSTUD 167, ARTHIST 160, CSRE 160)

This course examines the art history of censorship in the United States. Paying special attention to the suppression of queer, Black and Latinx visual and performance art, including efforts to vandalize works and defund institutions, students will explore a variety of writing such as news articles, manifestos, letters, protest signs, scholarly texts, and court proceedings. The course approaches censorship as an act to restrict freedom of expression and, however unwittingly, as a mode of provocation and publicity.
Last offered: Autumn 2021 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

FEMGEN 183: Re-Imagining American Borders (AMSTUD 183, CSRE 183)

Borders of all kinds in this America have been tight for a long time, and the four years of the Trump regime have shown new violent dangers in such divisions in race, ethnicity, gender and class in this country. In the inordinately difficult years of 2020-2021 as the pandemic has uncovered even more lethal created divisions via closed crossings and early deaths reflecting difference, our task in this course is to both examine how systemic inequities have been developed as part of American history and our daily life, especially as we see the pandemic effects, and to see how American artists, including novelists, poets, visual and performance artists, filmmakers, photographers and essayists, have developed approaches to examine, resist or re-create how the shards of our fractured identities may make sense to us. Films from Raoul Peck on colonialism and white supremacy in this America, Barry Jenkins and Kara Walker on slavery in visual narratives, poets Shailja Patel, Naomi Shihab Nye, Claudia Rankine, Layli Long Soldier, Janice Lobo Sapiago, Felicia Zamora, Zhenyu Yuan, from within the power of multiple languages, and Ta-Nehisi Coates and Nikole Hannah-Jones of the '1619' Project who bring US education into the story, all speak to recent art and social action. Nearby guest speakers from the newly produced Mini Museum Honoring the Black Panther Party in West Oakland, and creators of the Stanford Graphic Novel Project's visual art book with revelations on California prison conditions will also provide more vivid examples for all. Students' work for the quarter includes both written analysis and creative final projects.
Last offered: Autumn 2021 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II

FEMGEN 187X: Sex, Gender, and Violence: French and Francophone Women Writers Today (FEMGEN 287X, FEMGEN 387X, FRENCH 187, FRENCH 287, FRENCH 387)

Long before the 2017 #Metoo campaign, French women writers have explored through powerful fictions and autobiographies the different shades of economic, social, psychological, physical, or sexual violence that is exerted against, but also by and between, women. How does literature - the power of words - address, deconstruct or comfort power dynamics (during sex and between the sexes) that are usually silenced, taboo or unspeakable? Themes explored: sex and gender, sex and power, rape culture, sexual and moral taboos (incest, abortion, pornography, infanticide, lesbianism), the body as social stigma or source of meaning. Special attention given to narrative and descriptive strategies designed to avert, expose, deconstruct or account for specifically feminine experiences (rape, orgasm, pregnancy). Authors include Nobel Prize Annie Ernaux, Virginie Despentes, Marie Darrieusecq, Christine Angot, Marie NDiaye, Leonora Miano, Leila Slimani, Vanessa Springora along with feminist theory. Discussion in English. Readings in French or English, students choice
| Units: 1-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

FEMGEN 190W: Contemporary Women Writers (ENGLISH 190W)

"Every word a woman writes changes the story of the world, revises the official version¿¿is this what sets contemporary women writers apart? How can we understand the relation between the radically unprecedented material such writers explore and ¿the official version¿? What do we find compelling in their challenging of structure, style, chronology, character? Our reading- and writing-intensive seminar will dig into the ways women writers confront, appropriate, subvert, or re-imagine convention, investigating, for example, current debate about the value of ¿dislikable¿ or ¿angry¿ women characters and their impact on readers. While pursuing such issues, you'll write a variety of both essayistic and fictional responses, each of which is designed to complicate and enlarge your creative and critical responsiveness and to spark ideas for your final project. By affirming risk-taking and originality throughout our quarter, seminar conversation will support gains in your close-reading practice and in articulating your views, including respectful dissent, in lively discourse¿in short, skills highly useful in a writer¿s existence. Our texts will come from various genres, including short stories, novels, essays, blog posts, reviews, memoir.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

FEMGEN 192: Women in Contemporary French Cinema (FILMEDIA 112, FRENCH 192, FRENCH 392)

Women as objects and subjects of the voyeuristic gaze inherent to cinema. The evolution of female characters, roles, actresses, directors in the French film industry from the sexual liberation to #metoo. Women as archetypes, icones, images, or as agents and subjects. Emphasis on filmic analysis: framing, point of view, narrative, camera work as ways to convey meaning. Themes include: sexualization and desire; diversity and intersectionality in films; new theories of the female gaze; gender, ethnicity and class. Filmmakers include Roger Vadim, Agnès Varda, Luis Buñuel, Claude Chabrol, Colline Serreau, Elena Rossi, Tonie Marshall, Houda Benyamina, Eléonore Pourriat, Céline Sciamma. VISIT BY FILM DIRECTORS Elena Rossi and Sciamma (pending).nnFilms in French with subtitles; Discussion in English; 3 units, 4 units or 5 units.
| Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

FEMGEN 205: Songs of Love and War: Gender, Crusade, Politics (FRENCH 205, FRENCH 305, ITALIAN 205, ITALIAN 305)

The course examines the medieval love lyric tradition, including the troubadours, trouvères, and the Italian dolce stil nuovo. Focus on how to understand this tradition in the context of other non-Western lyric and its performative and material contexts such as manuscripts. Study of female lyrics, secondary readings on voice, lyric theory, and medieval textuality. Will be taught in English. FRENCH 205 fulfills DLCL 121: Performing in the Middle Ages core course.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:EC-Gender, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

FEMGEN 236: Literature and Transgression (COMPLIT 236)

Close reading and analysis of erotic-sexual and aesthetic-stylistic transgression in selected works by such authors as Baudelaire, Wilde, Flaubert, Rachilde, Schnitzler, Kafka, Joyce, Barnes, Eliot, Bataille, Burroughs, Thomas Mann, Kathy Acker, as well as in recent digital literature and online communities. Along with understanding the changing cultural, social, and political contexts of what constitutes "transgression" or censorship, students will gain knowledge of influential theories of transgression and conceptual limits by Foucault, Blanchot, and contemporary queer and feminist writers.
Last offered: Autumn 2019 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

FEMGEN 258X: Black Feminist Theater and Theory (AFRICAAM 258, CSRE 258, TAPS 258)

From the rave reviews garnered by Angelina Weld Grimke's lynching play, Rachel to recent work by Lynn Nottage on Rwanda, black women playwrights have addressed key issues in modern culture and politics. We will analyze and perform work written by black women in the U.S., Britain and the Caribbean in the 20th and 21st centuries. Topics include: sexuality, surrealism, colonialism, freedom, violence, colorism, love, history, community and more. Playwrights include: Angelina Grimke, Lorriane Hansberry, Winsome Pinnock, Adrienne Kennedy, Suzan- Lori Parks, Ntozake Shange, Pearl Cleage, Sarah Jones, Anna DeVeare Smith, Alice Childress, Lydia Diamond and Zora Neale Hurston.)
Terms: Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

FEMGEN 262: Sex and the Early Church (CLASSICS 262, FEMGEN 362R, RELIGST 262, RELIGST 362)

Sex and the Early Church examines the ways first- through sixth-century Christians addressed questions regarding human sexuality. We will pay particular attention to the relationship between sexuality and issues of gender, culture, power, and resistance. We will read a Roman gynecological manual, an ancient dating guide, the world's first harlequin romance novels, ancient pornography, early Christian martyrdom accounts, stories of female and male saints, instructions for how to best battle demons, visionary accounts, and monastic rules. These will be supplemented by modern scholarship in classics, early Christian studies, gender studies, queer studies, and the history of sexuality. The purpose of our exploration is not simply to better understand ancient views of gender and sexuality. Rather, this investigation of a society whose sexual system often seems so surprising aims to denaturalize many of our own assumptions concerning gender and sexuality. In the process, we will also examine the ways these first centuries of what eventually became the world's largest religious tradition has profoundly affected the sexual norms of our own time. The seminar assumes no prior knowledge of Judaism, Christianity, the bible, or ancient history. Undergraduates register for 200-level for 5 units. Graduate students register for 300-level for 3-5 units.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Penn, M. (PI); Amin, A. (TA)

FEMGEN 264S: Race, Gender, Justice (COMPLIT 264T, CSRE 264S, TAPS 264S)

The question of justice animates some of the most influential classics and contemporary plays in the dramatic canon. We will examine the relationship between state laws and kinship obligations in Sophocles's Antigone. We will trace the transnational circulation of this text and its adaptations in Gambaro's Argentinian Antigona Furiosa, and Fugard and Kani's South African The Island. We will read Shakespeare's Othello and consider questions of racism, misogyny, and intimate partner violence, investigate the reverberations of these themes in the OJ Simpson trial, and explore its afterlife in Toni Morrison's Desdemona. We will take up questions of sexual violence via John Patrick Shanley's Doubt and Ariel Dorfman's Chilean classic, Death and the Maiden. We will examine themes of police brutality and racial vulnerability in Anna Deavere Smith's Twilight and Aleshea Harris's What to Send Up When it Goes Down. Through close readings of plays, we will explore the inter-articulation of intimacy and violence, intimidation and transgression, vengeance and forgiveness within the context of larger struggles for gender and racial justice. We will read plays in light of contemporary reckonings with the US criminal justice system: the #MeToo movement and the Black Lives Matter movement. While the former appeals to the criminal justice system to restore victims¿ rights, the latter urges a thorough dismantling of the carceral state. How do we understand these divergent responses to augment or abolish punitive structures? Meets WM requirement for TAPS.
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

FEMGEN 287X: Sex, Gender, and Violence: French and Francophone Women Writers Today (FEMGEN 187X, FEMGEN 387X, FRENCH 187, FRENCH 287, FRENCH 387)

Long before the 2017 #Metoo campaign, French women writers have explored through powerful fictions and autobiographies the different shades of economic, social, psychological, physical, or sexual violence that is exerted against, but also by and between, women. How does literature - the power of words - address, deconstruct or comfort power dynamics (during sex and between the sexes) that are usually silenced, taboo or unspeakable? Themes explored: sex and gender, sex and power, rape culture, sexual and moral taboos (incest, abortion, pornography, infanticide, lesbianism), the body as social stigma or source of meaning. Special attention given to narrative and descriptive strategies designed to avert, expose, deconstruct or account for specifically feminine experiences (rape, orgasm, pregnancy). Authors include Nobel Prize Annie Ernaux, Virginie Despentes, Marie Darrieusecq, Christine Angot, Marie NDiaye, Leonora Miano, Leila Slimani, Vanessa Springora along with feminist theory. Discussion in English. Readings in French or English, students choice
Terms: Aut | Units: 1-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Alduy, C. (PI)

FILMEDIA 4: Introduction to Film Study

Introduction to Film Study introduces you to film as art, as entertainment, a field of study, and an everyday cultural practice. This course enables you to analyze films in terms of their formal elements, themes, and narrative structures. You learn to 'read' details of cinematic 'language' such as the arrangement of shots (editing), the composition and framing of a shot (cinematography), the overall look of a film (mise-en-scene), and its sound environment. We not only identify such cinematic details, but also consider how they contribute to the overall meaning of a film. Thinking about film and writing about film are intricately linked and inform each other deeply. Learning to write about film with sophistication requires a grasp of the mechanics of writing, familiarity with film terminology, and an understanding of film theory and history. This course helps you develop skills in critical viewing, reading, and writing. We explore basic concepts that have been important to the study of film, such as genre, authorship, and stardom to comprehend how films make meaning within their social, political, cultural, and historical contexts.
Terms: Aut | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Iyer, U. (PI)

FILMEDIA 4S: Language of Film

This course familiarizes students with various elements of film language (cinematography, editing, sound, etc.) and introduces them to a range of approaches to cinematic analysis (authorship, genre, close formal reading, socio-historical considerations). Different types of films (narrative, documentary, and experimental) will be surveyed. Classical narrative cinema will be compared with alternative modes of story-telling.
Terms: Sum | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Han, G. (PI)

FILMEDIA 6: Media and Mediums (FILMEDIA 306)

What is a medium? This course starts from the assumption that the answer to this question is not as obvious as it might at first appear. Clearly, we know some media when we see them: radio, film, and television are in many ways paradigmatic media of the twentieth century. But what about the computational, networked media of the twenty-first century? Are these still media in the same sense, or has the nature of media changed with the emergence of digital technologies? And what, for that matter, about pre-technical media? Is painting a medium in the same sense that oil or acrylic are media, or in the sense that we speak of mixed media? Is language a medium? Are numbers? Is the body? As we shall see, the question of what a medium is raises a number of other questions of a theoretical or even philosophical nature. How is our experience of the world affected or shaped by media? Are knowledge and perception possible apart from media, or are they always mediated by the apparatuses, instruments, or assemblages of media? What is the relation between the forms and the contents of media, and how does this relation bear on questions of aesthetics, science, technology, or politics? The lecture-based course addresses these and other questions and seeks in this way to introduce a way of thinking about media that goes beyond taken-for-granted ideas and assumptions, and that has a potentially transformative effect on a wide range of theoretical and practical interests.Film & Media Studies majors and minors must enroll for 5 units.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Denson, S. (PI)

FILMEDIA 11Q: Art in the Metropolis (ARTSINST 11Q, ARTSTUDI 11Q, ENGLISH 11Q, MUSIC 11Q, TAPS 11Q)

This seminar is offered in conjunction with the annual "Arts Immersion" trip to New York that takes place over the spring break and is organized by the Stanford Arts Institute (SAI). Enrollment in this course is a requirement for taking part in the spring break trip. The program is designed to provide a group of students with the opportunity to immerse themselves in the cultural life of New York City guided by faculty and SAI staff. Students will experience a broad range and variety of art forms (visual arts, theater, opera, dance, etc.) and will meet with prominent arts administrators and practitioners, some of whom are Stanford alumni. In the seminar, we will prepare for the diverse experiences the trip affords and develop individual projects related to particular works of art, exhibitions, and performances that we'll encounter in person during the stay in New York. Class time will be divided between readings, presentations, and one studio based creative project. The urban setting in which the various forms of art are created, presented, and received will form a special point of focus. A principal aim of the seminar will be to develop aesthetic sensibilities through writing critically about the art that interests and engages us and making art. For further details please visit the Stanford Arts Institute website: https://arts.stanford.edu/for-students/academics/arts-immersion/new-york/
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

FILMEDIA 87N: The New Wave: How The French Reinvented Cinema (FRENCH 87N)

When the French New Wave burst onto the stage in 1959, it changed forever the way films are made and the ways we think about cinema. Shooting on location with small crews, light cameras, unknown actors and improvised scripts, a group of young film critics turned filmmakers circumvented the big studios to craft low-budget films that felt fresh, irreverent and utterly modern. In just a few years, the Nouvelle Vague delivered such landmark works as Truffaut's 400 Blows, Godard's Breathless or Resnais' Hiroshima mon amour. Together with Agn¿s Varda, Eric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol, they redefined the essence of cinema as an art form as complex and multi-layered as literature. Yet, after having been hailed as revolutionary, the Nouvelle Vague was soon dismissed as 'rather vague and not all that new. 'Why did these films look so radically fresh? What is their common aesthetics, when each 'auteur' claimed an utterly personal style for him or herself? And what did their immediate success and early fall from grace tell us about France in the early 60s? This survey course will explore a unique moment in French culture and the history of cinema, when radical politics, youth culture, and jazzy aesthetics coalesced into dazzling experiments on the screen that continue to influence world cinema to this day. Focus is on cultural history, aesthetic analysis, and interpretation of narrative, sound and visual forms. Satisfies Ways AII (Aesthetic and Interpretative Inquiry). Films in French with Subtitles. Taught in English.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Alduy, C. (PI)

FILMEDIA 100A: History of World Cinema I: Silent Film (FILMEDIA 300A)

Provides an overview of cinema made around the globe between its emergence as a mass medium in the late-19th century, and the rise of synchronized sound around 1930. This is a fecund period in which the 'language' of film was at once established, challenged, and expanded. We study key film movements, modes of production, and film theories that emerged in order to develop a formal, historical, and theoretical appreciation of a variety of commercial and art film traditions. Specific topics may vary by term/year/instructor.This term's topic will explore...TBD
Terms: Win | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Bukatman, S. (PI)

FILMEDIA 100B: History of World Cinema II: The Films of Ernst Lubitsch (AMSTUD 100B, FILMEDIA 300B)

Provides an overview of cinema made around the world between 1930 and 1960, highlighting technical, cultural, political, and economic forces that shaped mid-twentieth-century cinema. We study key film movements and national cinemas towards developing a formal, historical, and theoretical appreciation of a variety of commercial and art film traditions. Specific topics may vary by term/year/instructor. This term's topic: Ernst Lubitsch was: a stage actor in Berlin; a comic actor in early German cinema; Germany's most profitable director in the early 1920s; a director of subtle silent comedies in Hollywood in the later `20s; an innovative director of sound musicals and comedies in the 1930s; head of production for Paramount Pictures; and one of the few directors whose name and likeness were familiar to audiences across America, one famed for what became known as The Lubitsch Touch. The course considers Lubitsch in all these contexts. Charts intersections with collaborators, genre conventions, sexuality and censorship, and studio control. Lubitsch's style depends on performance, so attention will be given to film acting as he came to shape it.
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

FILMEDIA 100C: History of World Cinema III: Queer Cinemas around the World (ARTHIST 164, ARTHIST 364, CSRE 102C, CSRE 302C, FEMGEN 100C, FEMGEN 300C, FILMEDIA 300C, GLOBAL 193, GLOBAL 390, TAPS 100C, TAPS 300C)

Provides an overview of cinema from around the world since 1960, highlighting the cultural, political, and economic forces that have shaped various film movements over the last six decades. Specific topics may vary by term/year/instructor. This term's topic, Queer Cinemas around the World, engages with a range of queer cinematic forms and queer spectatorial practices in different parts of the world, as well as BIPOC media from North America. Through film and video from Kenya, Malaysia, India, The Dominican Republic, China, Brazil, Palestine, Japan, Morocco, the US etc., we will examine varied narratives about trans experience, same-sex desire, LGBTQI2S+ rights, censorship, precarity, and hopefulness. This course will attune us to regional cultural specificities in queer expression and representation, prompting us to move away from hegemonic and homogenizing understandings of queer life and media. Notes: Screenings will be held on Fridays at 1:30PM in Oshman Hall. Screening times will vary slightly from week to week.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II | Repeatable 2 times (up to 10 units total)
Instructors: ; Iyer, U. (PI)

FILMEDIA 101: Close Cinematic Analysis - Caste, Sexuality, and Religion in Indian Media (ARTHIST 199, ASNAMST 108, FEMGEN 104, FILMEDIA 301, TAPS 101F)

India is the world's largest producer of films in over 20 languages, and Bollywood is often its most visible avatar, especially on US university curricula. This course will introduce you to a range of media from the Indian subcontinent across commercial and experimental films, documentaries, streaming media, and online cultures. We will engage in particular with questions of sexuality, gender, caste, religion, and ethnicity in this postcolonial context and across its diasporas, including in the Caribbean. Given this course's emphasis on close cinematic analysis, we will analyze formal aspects of cinematography, editing, mise-en-scene, and performance, and how these generate spectatorial pleasure, star and fan cultures, and particular modes of representation. This course fulfills the WIM requirement for Film and Media Studies majors. Note: Screenings will be held on Thursdays at 5:30 PM. Screening times will vary from week to week and may range from 90 to 180 minutes.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Iyer, U. (PI)

FILMEDIA 102: Theories of the Moving Image: The Technologically Mediated Image (FILMEDIA 302)

This course examines influential theories of film and media from the early twentieth century to the present. Prerequisites: FILMEDIA 4.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Holton, D. (TA)

FILMEDIA 105N: Film and Fascism in Europe (COMPLIT 104N, FRENCH 104N, ITALIAN 104N)

Controlling people's minds through propaganda is an integral part of fascist regimes' totalitarianism. In the interwar, cinema, a relatively recent mass media, was immediately seized upon by fascist regimes to produce aggrandizing national narratives, justify their expansionist and extermination policies, celebrate the myth of the "Leader," and indoctrinate the people. Yet film makers under these regimes (Rossellini, Renoir) or just after their fall, used the same media to explore and expose how they manufactured conformism, obedience, and mass murder and to interrogate fascism. We will watch films produced by or under European fascist regimes (Nazi Germany, Italy under Mussolini, Greece's Regime of the Colonels) but also against them. The seminar introduces key film analysis tools and concepts, while offering insights into the history of propaganda and cinema. Taught in English.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Alduy, C. (PI)

FILMEDIA 107N: Documentary Film: Telling it Like it Is?

Documentary films have become a "lingua franca," thanks to ubiquitous streaming services and our devotion to screen time. Offering compelling stories, intriguing "characters," and a lingering resonance, they often function as a Rorschach test that elicits divergent responses. This course decodes the narrative technique, point of view, authorship, and aesthetic approach of nonfiction films that explore scintillating and provocative subject matter. The student develops "visual literacy" skills as we interrogate the inferred relationship between documentary, objectivity, and "truth." In this seminar-style class, we peel back the veneer of the films we watch, examining both form and content.
| Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

FILMEDIA 110N: Coming-of-Age Movies

Physical changes, religious rituals, and new legal rights and responsibilities outwardly mark the transition from childhood to adulthood. They imply inward transformation such as loss of innocence and maturation of perspective. This combination of inward and outward change is generative material for cinema. What does cinema bring to these stories, and what do these stories reveal about cinema's capacities as medium and art? What can we take from such movies as we ask what it means to be an adult?
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

FILMEDIA 112: Women in Contemporary French Cinema (FEMGEN 192, FRENCH 192, FRENCH 392)

Women as objects and subjects of the voyeuristic gaze inherent to cinema. The evolution of female characters, roles, actresses, directors in the French film industry from the sexual liberation to #metoo. Women as archetypes, icones, images, or as agents and subjects. Emphasis on filmic analysis: framing, point of view, narrative, camera work as ways to convey meaning. Themes include: sexualization and desire; diversity and intersectionality in films; new theories of the female gaze; gender, ethnicity and class. Filmmakers include Roger Vadim, Agnès Varda, Luis Buñuel, Claude Chabrol, Colline Serreau, Elena Rossi, Tonie Marshall, Houda Benyamina, Eléonore Pourriat, Céline Sciamma. VISIT BY FILM DIRECTORS Elena Rossi and Sciamma (pending).nnFilms in French with subtitles; Discussion in English; 3 units, 4 units or 5 units.
| Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

FILMEDIA 114: Reading Comics (AMSTUD 114X, FILMEDIA 314)

The modern medium of comics throughout its 150 year history (mostly North American). The flexibility of the medium explored through the genres of humorous and dramatic comic strips, superheroes, undergrounds, independents, kids and comics, journalism, and autobiography. Innovative creators including McCay, Kirby, Barry, Ware, and critical writings including McCloud, Eisner, Groenstee. Topics include text/image relations, panel-to-panel relations, the page, caricature, sequence, subjective expression, seriality, realism vs cartoonism, comics in the context of the fine arts, and relations to other media.
Last offered: Winter 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

FILMEDIA 115: Documentary Issues and Traditions (FILMEDIA 315)

Issues include objectivity/subjectivity, ethics, censorship, representation, reflexivity, responsibility to the audience, and authorial voice. Parallel focus on form and content.
| Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, WAY-A-II

FILMEDIA 120: Superhero Theory (AMSTUD 120B, ARTHIST 120, ARTHIST 320, FILMEDIA 320)

With their fantastic powers, mutable bodies, multiple identities, complicated histories, and visual dynamism, the American superhero has been a rich vehicle for fantasies (and anxieties) for 80+ years across multiple media: comics, film, animation, TV, games, toys, apparel. This course centers upon the body of the superhero as it incarnates allegories of race, queerness, hybridity, sexuality, gendered stereotypes/fluidity, politics, vigilantism, masculinity, and monstrosity. They also embody a technological history that encompasses industrial, atomic, electronic, bio-genetic, and digital.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Bukatman, S. (PI)

FILMEDIA 131A: Introduction to Queer Theory (CSRE 131A, FEMGEN 131)

What can Queer Theory help us do and undo? Emerging at the intersections of feminist theory, queer activism, and critical race studies in the 1990's, Queer Theory has become a dynamic interdisciplinary field that informs a wide range of cultural and artistic practices. This course will introduce students to the development of queer theory as well as core concepts and controversies in the field. While considering theoretical frames for thinking gender, sexuality, and sex, we will explore the possibilities--and limitations--of queer theory with a focus on doing and undoing identity, knowledge, and power.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

FILMEDIA 132A: Bollywood and Beyond: An Introduction to Indian Cinema (FILMEDIA 332A)

This course will provide an overview of cinema from India, the world's largest producer of films. We will trace the history of Indian cinema from the silent era, through the studio period, to state-funded art filmmaking to the contemporary production of Bollywood films as well as the more unconventional multiplex cinema. We will examine narrative conventions, stylistic techniques, and film production and consumption practices in popular Hindi language films from the Bombay film industry as well as commercial and art films in other languages. This outline of different cinematic modes will throw light on the social, political, and economic transformations in the nation-state over the last century.
| Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

FILMEDIA 135: Around the World in Ten Films (FILMEDIA 335, GLOBAL 135)

This is an introductory-level course about the cinema as a global language. We will undertake a comparative study of select historical and contemporary aspects of international cinema, and explore a range of themes pertaining to the social, cultural, and political diversity of the world. A cross-regional thematic emphasis and inter-textual methods of narrative and aesthetic analysis, will ground our discussion of films from Italy, Japan, United States, India, China, France, Brazil, Nigeria, Russia, Iran, Mexico, and a number of other countries. Particular emphasis will be placed on the multi-cultural character and the regional specificities of the cinema as a "universal language" and an inclusive "relational network."There are no prerequisites for this class. It is open to all students; non-majors welcome.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

FILMEDIA 137: Love in the Time of Cinema (FILMEDIA 337, GLOBAL 110, GLOBAL 211)

Romantic coupling is at the heart of mainstream film narratives around the world. Through a range of film cultures, we will examine cinematic intimacies and our own mediated understandings of love and conjugality formed in dialog with film and other media. We will consider genres, infrastructures, social activities (for example, the drive-in theater, the movie date, the Bollywood wedding musical, 90s queer cinema), and examine film romance in relation to queerness, migration, old age, disability, and body politics more broadly.
| Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

FILMEDIA 152: Hollywood/Bollywood: The Musical Two Ways (FILMEDIA 352)

A comparative approach to the musical as Hollywood genre and as fundamental mode in Bollywood (where even horror movies have song-and-dance sequences!). The pleasurable interplay among song, dance, and screen directs us to the interplay of cultural identities (regional, racial, gendered, sexual). Through cinematic travels between America and India, we will examine how the utopian, liberatory energies of musical numbers - physical, emotional, aesthetic, and social - illuminate relations of narrative and spectacle, stardom and performance, gender and space, color and sound.
| Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

FILMEDIA 153E: Close Listening: Sound, Media, and Performance (FEMGEN 153D, MUSIC 153E, TAPS 153D)

Are there ways to listen? This new course approaches the question by exploring artist works that have challenged the norms of sonic experience. We will discover that in life, as in the arts, there are practices of listening. We will cover a range of texts on sound media, and we will experience a number of works that reinvent practices of listening. There will be particular attention to the work of feminist sound artists. In conversation with art and theory, we will develop wider awareness for the sounds of everyday life. This course meets once a week, and group listening of select works is part of the class.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Adair, D. (PI)

FILMEDIA 165B: American Style and the Rhetoric of Fashion (AMSTUD 127, ARTHIST 165B)

Focus on the visual culture of fashion, especially in an American context. Topics include: the representation of fashion in different visual media (prints, photographs, films, window displays, and digital images); the relationship of fashion to its historical context and American culture; the interplay between fashion and other modes of discourse, in particular art, but also performance, music, economics; and the use of fashion as an expression of social status, identity, and other attributes of the wearer. Texts by Thorstein Veblen, Roland Barthes, Dick Hebdige, and other theorists of fashion.
| Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

FILMEDIA 178: Film and History of Latin American Revolutions and Counterrevolutions (HISTORY 78, HISTORY 178, ILAC 178)

In this course we will watch and critique films made about Latin America's 20th century revolutions focusing on the Cuban, Chilean and Mexican revolutions. We will analyze the films as both social and political commentaries and as aesthetic and cultural works, alongside archivally-based histories of these revolutions.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

FILMEDIA 211N: Childish Enthusiasms and Perishable Manias

This course has a simple premise: Effective scholarship need not suck the joy from the world. G. K. Chesterton once wrote that 'it is the duty of every poet, and even of every critic, to dance in respectful imitation of the child.' What could it mean to do scholarship that respects a child's playful and exploratory engagement with the world? Such questions will be filtered through such 'unserious' media as amusement parks, comics, cartoons, musicals, and kidlit.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Bukatman, S. (PI)

FILMEDIA 234: Media Theory and the Sea (GERMAN 234, GERMAN 334)

This seminar serves as an introduction to media theory by turning to the sea as a medium. Designed for third- and fourth-year German majors, the course explores the way the ocean has served as a constant vehicle for poetic and philosophical reflection throughout history, from Homer's Odyssey to Paul Valery's Cemetery by the Sea. Combining theoretical studies of seafaring by Hans Blumenberg and Bernard Siegert with literary writings from Franz Kafka and Friedrich Hölderlin, this course highlights the way nautical activity becomes a theater of political and poetic concerns when our engagement with the ocean is viewed as a metaphor or a cultural technique. In recent years, the sea has also become a flashpoint for environmental concerns due to rising sea levels, leading to calls to take the material status of the ocean itself seriously. The sea, when viewed through the lens of environmental media, continues to serve as a canvas for the projection of human hopes and fears while opening up further questions about the relationship between nature, cultural practices, and theoretical texts. Readings for this course will be in German and English.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

FILMEDIA 256Q: Horror Comics

This seminar will explore the vast array of horror comics. How does horror work in comics, as distinct from prose and cinema? How and why are non-moving images scary? The different narrational strategies of short stories, self-contained works, and continuing series will be explored, as will American, Japanese, and European approaches. Special attention will be given to Frankenstein, in novel, film, illustration, and comics. Example of such sub-genres as literary horror, horrific superheroes, cosmic (Lovecraftian) horror, ecological horror, as well as the horrors of bodies, sexuality, and adolescence will be encountered.Students will read many comics, some comics theory, and will do an in-class presentation on a comic or topic of their choosing. The course is a seminar, so discussion will be continuous and required. Enrollment limited.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

FILMEDIA 264B: Starstuff: Space and the American Imagination (AMSTUD 143X, ARTHIST 264B)

Course on the history of twentieth and twenty-first century American images of space and how they shape conceptions of the universe. Covers representations made by scientists and artists, as well as scientific fiction films, TV, and other forms of popular visual culture. Topics will include the importance of aesthetics to understandings of the cosmos; the influence of media and technology on representations; the social, political, and historical context of the images; and the ways representations of space influence notions of American national identity and of cosmic citizenship.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Kessler, E. (PI)

FILMEDIA 290: Movies and Methods: The Judy Garland Seminar (AMSTUD 290, FILMEDIA 490)

Acting and performance have been prominent in cinema throughout the medium's history, but have received relatively little attention in film studies. Performance provides a compellingly different way of engaging with a film. The Judy Garland Seminar proposes, first, that we attend to the centrality of performance in film, and, second, that the work Garland produced across three decades demonstrates not only a coherence and consistency, but also a variety and richness, that merits close examination. Judy Garland was one of the most accomplished performers of her time, her seeming naturalism a function of her fierce discipline. Her career straddled multiple media: film, recording, live performance and television. From childhood, her life was lived in the public eye and her personal travails were as well known as the characters she incarnated on screen - in fact, her biography informs some of her later film roles. Garland's work in this period occurs primarily in two genres: musical comedy and melodrama (and what we can call the melodramatic musical). Some of her best films were directed by two of the foremost studio directors - Vincente Minnelli and George Cukor - intersections of star, genre, and director will inform the seminar, as will explorations of Garland's work on television and the concert stage. The seminar will begin with an overview of the writing around film acting and the star text while considering some of Judy's earlier film appearances. Classes will be divided between critical engagement with assigned readings and close readings of Judy Garland performances. The screening list will be supplemented with ample clips from other films, and earlier work will be compared to later performances wherever useful. Both a mainstream star and a gay cult icon, Garland's persona was read differently by different audiences, so the seminar will also consider the reception of Judy Garland and her significance then and now.
Terms: Spr | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II | Repeatable 2 times (up to 10 units total)
Instructors: ; Bukatman, S. (PI)

FRENCH 12Q: Humanities Core: Great Books, Big Ideas -- Europe, Middle Ages and Renaissance (DLCL 12Q, HUMCORE 12Q, ILAC 12Q)

This three-quarter sequence asks big questions of major texts in the European and American tradition. What is a good life? How should society be organized? Who belongs? How should honor, love, sin, and similar abstractions govern our actions? What duty do we owe to the past and future? The second quarter focuses on the transition from the Middle Ages to Modernity, Europe's re-acquaintance with classical antiquity and its first contacts with the New World. Authors include Dante, Shakespeare, Machiavelli, Cervantes, and Milton. N.B. This is the second of three courses in the European track. These courses offer an unparalleled opportunity to study European history and culture, past and present. Take all three to experience a year-long intellectual community dedicated to exploring how ideas have shaped our world and future. Students who take HUMCORE 11 and HUMCORE 12Q will have preferential admission to HUMCORE 13Q (a WR2 seminar).
Last offered: Winter 2019 | Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

FRENCH 13: Humanities Core: Great Books, Big Ideas -- Europe, Modern (HISTORY 239C, HUMCORE 13, PHIL 13)

What is a good life? How should society be organized? Who belongs? How should honor, love, sin, and similar abstractions govern our actions? What duty do we owe to the past and future? This course examines tcourse examines these questions in the modern period, from the rise of revolutionary ideas to the experiences of totalitarianism and decolonization in the twentieth century. Authors include Locke, Mary Shelley, Marx, Nietzsche, Primo Levi, and Frantz Fanon. This course is part of the Humanities Core, a collaborative set of global humanities seminars that brings all of its students and faculty into conversation. On Mondays you meet in your own course, and on Wednesdays all the HumCore seminars (in session that quarter) meet together: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-ER

FRENCH 62N: Art and Healing in the Wake of Covid-19: A Health Humanities Perspective (ITALIAN 62N)

How have artists contributed to healing during the Covid-19 pandemic? How does art shape or express diverse cultural understandings of health and illness, medicine and the body, death and spirituality, in response to crisis? How do such understandings directly impact the physical healing but also the life decisions and emotions of individuals, from caregivers to patients? And finally, how do these affect social transformation as part of healing? This course examines the art of COVID-19, from a contemporary and historical perspective, using the tools of Health Humanities, a relatively new discipline that connects medicine to the arts and social sciences. Materials for this course include art from different media (from poetry and fiction to performance and installation), produced during COVID-19 in mostly Western contexts, in diverse communities and with some forays into the rest of the world and into other historical moments of crisis. They also include some non-fiction readings from the disciplines Health Humanities draws from, such as history of medicine, anthropology, psychology, sociology, cultural history, media studies, art criticism, and medicine itself. We will thus be introduced to basics of Health Humanities and its methods while addressing the pandemic as a world-changing event, aided by the unique insights of artists. The course will culminate in final projects that present a critical and contextual appreciation of a specific art project created in response to COVID-19; such appreciations may be creative art projects as well, or more analytical, scholarly evaluations.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

FRENCH 75N: Narrative Medicine and Near-Death Experiences (ITALIAN 75N)

Even if many of us don't fully believe in an afterlife, we remain fascinated by visions of it. This course focuses on Near-Death Experiences and the stories around them, investigating them from the many perspectives pertinent to the growing field of narrative medicine: medical, neurological, cognitive, psychological, sociological, literary, and filmic. The goal is not to understand whether the stories are veridical but what they do for us, as individuals, and as a culture, and in particular how they seek to reshape the patient-doctor relationship. Materials will span the 20th century and come into the present. Taught in English.
Last offered: Autumn 2017 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

FRENCH 87N: The New Wave: How The French Reinvented Cinema (FILMEDIA 87N)

When the French New Wave burst onto the stage in 1959, it changed forever the way films are made and the ways we think about cinema. Shooting on location with small crews, light cameras, unknown actors and improvised scripts, a group of young film critics turned filmmakers circumvented the big studios to craft low-budget films that felt fresh, irreverent and utterly modern. In just a few years, the Nouvelle Vague delivered such landmark works as Truffaut's 400 Blows, Godard's Breathless or Resnais' Hiroshima mon amour. Together with Agn¿s Varda, Eric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol, they redefined the essence of cinema as an art form as complex and multi-layered as literature. Yet, after having been hailed as revolutionary, the Nouvelle Vague was soon dismissed as 'rather vague and not all that new. 'Why did these films look so radically fresh? What is their common aesthetics, when each 'auteur' claimed an utterly personal style for him or herself? And what did their immediate success and early fall from grace tell us about France in the early 60s? This survey course will explore a unique moment in French culture and the history of cinema, when radical politics, youth culture, and jazzy aesthetics coalesced into dazzling experiments on the screen that continue to influence world cinema to this day. Focus is on cultural history, aesthetic analysis, and interpretation of narrative, sound and visual forms. Satisfies Ways AII (Aesthetic and Interpretative Inquiry). Films in French with Subtitles. Taught in English.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Alduy, C. (PI)

FRENCH 102: Jews, Race, and Ethnicity in French Cinema and Literature (CSRE 131B, JEWISHST 131)

How does an officially colorblind country engage with its (in)visible minorities? In a country such as France - which espouses an assimilationist, as opposed to a "melting pot" ideology - one's national belonging is said to transcend their religious, racial, and ethnic particularities. As such, assimilating to a secular, universal model of Frenchness is considered key to the healthy functioning of society. Why might this be so, and has it always been the case? In this class, we will explore this and related questions as they have been articulated in France and the former French Empire from the Revolution through the twenty-first century. Via close study of literature, cinema, and still image, we will (a) examine how the universalist model deals with racial, religious, and ethnic differences, (b) assess how constructions of difference--be they racial, ethnic, or religious--change across time and space, and (c) assess the impact that the colorblind, assimilationist model has on the lived experiences of France's visible and invisible minorities.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Glasberg, R. (PI)

FRENCH 103: Literature and Atheism

France, the land of laïcité and the epicenter of the Enlightenment and of Existentialism, has played a central role in the development of modern western atheism. Its philosophical and literary traditions - traditions in which the line between philosophy and literary writing is often blurred - are rich with discussions of the causes and consequences of atheism. From the seventeenth century, when atheism first emerged as a serious possibility, through to the present day, in which the French population is among the most atheist in the world, the trajectory of French history has been profoundly marked by the rejection of religion. In this course we will focus on texts that foreground questions about what it is like to be an atheist. If one abandons faith in any deity, what does it mean to exist in this universe and in society? What are the moral, psychological and existential implications of disbelief? How does the atheist face death? How does the atheist deal with religion and those who are religious? How has the experience of atheism evolved over time? This course will be taught in French.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

FRENCH 104N: Film and Fascism in Europe (COMPLIT 104N, FILMEDIA 105N, ITALIAN 104N)

Controlling people's minds through propaganda is an integral part of fascist regimes' totalitarianism. In the interwar, cinema, a relatively recent mass media, was immediately seized upon by fascist regimes to produce aggrandizing national narratives, justify their expansionist and extermination policies, celebrate the myth of the "Leader," and indoctrinate the people. Yet film makers under these regimes (Rossellini, Renoir) or just after their fall, used the same media to explore and expose how they manufactured conformism, obedience, and mass murder and to interrogate fascism. We will watch films produced by or under European fascist regimes (Nazi Germany, Italy under Mussolini, Greece's Regime of the Colonels) but also against them. The seminar introduces key film analysis tools and concepts, while offering insights into the history of propaganda and cinema. Taught in English.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Alduy, C. (PI)

FRENCH 110: French Painting from Watteau to Monet (ARTHIST 110, ARTHIST 310, FRENCH 310)

This course offers a survey of painting in France from 1700 to around 1900. It introduces major artists, artworks, and the concepts used by contemporary observers and later art historians to make sense of this extraordinarily rich period. Overarching themes discussed in the class will include the dueling legacies of coloristic virtuosity and classical formalism, new ways of representing visual perception, the opposing artistic effects of absorption and theatricality, the rise and fall of official arts institutions, and the participation of artists and artworks in political upheaval and social change. The course ends with an interrogation of the concept of modernity and its emergence out of dialogue and conflict with artists of the past. Students will learn and practice formal analysis of paintings, as well as interpretations stressing historical context.
Last offered: Winter 2019 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

FRENCH 118: Literature and the Brain (COMPLIT 138, COMPLIT 238, ENGLISH 118, ENGLISH 218, FRENCH 218, PSYC 126, PSYCH 118F)

How does fiction make us better at reading minds? Why do some TV shows get us to believe two contradictory things at once? And can cognitive biases be a writer's best friend? We'll think about these and other questions in the light of contemporary neuroscience and experimental psychology, with the help of Song of Solomon (Toni Morrison), Madame Bovary (Gustave Flaubert), season 1 of Westworld (Lisa Joy / Jonathan Nolan), and short readings from writers like Louise Glück, Jorge Luis Borges, Virginia Woolf, and Marcel Proust. We'll also ask what we see when we read; whether the language we speak affects the way we think; and why different people react differently to the same book. Plus: is free will a fiction, or were you just forced to say that?
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

FRENCH 120: Coffee and Cigarettes: The Making of French Intellectual Culture

Examines a quintessential French figure "l'intellectuel" from a long-term historical perspective. We will observe how this figure was shaped over time by such other cultural types as the writer, the artist, the historian, the philosopher, and the moralist. Proceeding in counter-chronological order, from the late 20th to the 16th century, we will read a collection of classic French works. As this course is a gateway for French studies, special emphasis will be placed on oral proficiency. Taught in French; readings in French.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Edmondson, C. (PI)

FRENCH 130: Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance French Literature

This course serves as an introduction to classic French texts from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and investigates the birth of a national literature. Students will read texts closely, examine their historical contexts from the Crusades to the Wars of Religion, and consider how these works shaped notions of love, duty, gender, otherness, and the self. Readings include major authors and genres of the period, such as texts by Chretien de Troyes, Marie de France, Marguerite de Navarre, Rabelais, Sceve, Ronsard, Louise Labe, and Montaigne. All readings, discussions, and writing in French, with emphasis on close-reading skills and constructing arguments supported by textual evidence. This course fulfills the Writing in the Major (WIM) requirement.
Terms: Aut | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Edmondson, C. (PI)

FRENCH 131: Absolutism, Enlightenment, and Revolution in 17th- and 18th-Century France

The literature, culture, and politics of France from Louis XIV to Olympe de Gouges. How this period produced the political and philosophical foundations of modernity. Readings may include Corneille, Moli¿re, Racine, Lafayette, Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, Beaumarchais, and Gouges. Taught in French. Students are highly encouraged to complete FRENLANG 124 or to successfully test above this level through the Language Center. This course fulfills the Writing in the Major (WIM) requirement.
Terms: Win | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Edmondson, C. (PI)

FRENCH 132: Literature, Revolutions, and Changes in 19th- and 20th-Century France

This course explores central texts of 19th- and 20th-Century French literature, following the evolution of important literary movements during those centuries of cultural and social transformation. We will study texts in all major genres (prose, poetry, theater, film) related to movements such as Romanticism, Realism, Naturalism, Surrealism, Theater of the Absurd, and the Nouveau Roman. We will regularly relate literature and film to developments in other arts, such as painting and music. Authors and filmmakers include Chateaubriand, Stendhal, Balzac, Flaubert, Maupassant, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Apollinaire, Proust, Ionesco, Varda, Godard, Sarraute, and Ernaux. All readings, discussion, and assignments are in French. Students are highly encouraged to complete FRENLANG 124 or to successfully test above this level through the Language Center.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Pesic, A. (PI)

FRENCH 133: Literature and Society in Africa and the Caribbean (AFRICAAM 133, AFRICAST 132, COMPLIT 133, COMPLIT 233A, CSRE 133E, JEWISHST 143)

This course provides students with an introductory survey of literature and cinema from Francophone Africa and the Caribbean in the 20th and 21st centuries. Students will be encouraged to consider the geographical, historical, and political connections between the Maghreb, the Caribbean, and Sub-Saharan Africa. This course will help students improve their ability to speak and write in French by introducing students to linguistic and conceptual tools to conduct literary and visual analysis. While analyzing novels and films, students will be exposed to a diverse number of topics such as national and cultural identity, race and class, gender and sexuality, orality and textuality, transnationalism and migration, colonialism and decolonization, history and memory, and the politics of language. Readings include the works of writers and filmmakers such as Aim¿ C¿saire, Albert Memmi, Ousmane Semb¿ne, Le¿la Sebbar, Mariama B¿, Maryse Cond¿, Dany Laferri¿re, Mati Diop, and special guest L¿onora Miano. Taught in French. Students are encouraged to complete FRENLANG 124 or successfully test above this level through the Language Center. This course fulfills the Writing in the Major (WIM) requirement.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Seck, F. (PI); Yu, K. (TA)

FRENCH 140: Paris: Capital of the Modern World (FRENCH 340, HISTORY 230C, URBANST 184)

This course explores how Paris, between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, became the political, cultural, and artistic capital of the modern world. It considers how the city has both shaped and been shaped by the tumultuous events of modern history- class conflict, industrialization, imperialism, war, and occupation. It will also explore why Paris became the major world destination for intellectuals, artists and writers. Sources will include films, paintings, architecture, novels, travel journals, and memoirs. Course taught in English with an optional French section.
Last offered: Spring 2020 | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

FRENCH 148: Cinema and the Real: Italian Neo-Realism and the French New Wave (FRENCH 248, ITALIAN 148, ITALIAN 248)

Between the 1940s and 1960s, in Italy and France, a handful of movie directors revolutionized the art of cinema. In the wake of World War II they entirely re-defined the aesthetics of the 7th art in films such as "Bicycle Thieves," "400 Blows," "Rome Open City," and "Breathless." These works shared an aesthetic and a philosophy of "the real" - they eschewed big studios and sets in favor of natural light, on-location shooting, and non-professional actors to capture the present moment. This survey course will explore how the dialogue between Italian neo-realism and the French New Wave has yielded some of the most revolutionary filmic masterpieces of both traditions, while raising theoretical and philosophical questions about form, time, space, fiction, representation, and reality. Films: Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio de Sica, Luchino Visconti, Federico Fellini, François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais and Agnès Varda.
Last offered: Autumn 2020 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

FRENCH 149: Love at First Sight: Visual Desire, Attraction, and the Pleasures of Art (ARTHIST 119, ARTHIST 319, FRENCH 349, ITALIAN 149, ITALIAN 349)

Why do dating sites rely on photographs? Why do we believe that love is above all a visual force? How is pleasure, even erotic pleasure, achieved through looking? While the psychology of impressions offers some answers, this course uncovers the ways poets, songwriters, and especially artists have explored myths and promoted ideas about the coupling of love and seeing. Week by week, we will be reflecting on love as political critique, social disruption, and magical force. And we will do so by examining some of the most iconic works of art, from Dante's writings on lovesickness to Caravaggio's Narcissus, studying the ways that objects have shifted from keepsakes to targets of our cares. While exploring the visual roots and evolutions of what has become one of life's fundamental drives, this course offers a passionate survey of European art from Giotto's kiss to Fragonard's swing that elicits stimulating questions about the sensorial nature of desire and the human struggle to control emotions.
Last offered: Summer 2021 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

FRENCH 154: Film & Philosophy (ENGLISH 154F, ITALIAN 154, PHIL 193C)

What makes you the individual you are? Should you plan your life, or make it up as you go along? Is it always good to remember your past? Is it always good to know the truth? When does a machine become a person? What do we owe to other people? Is there always a right way to act? How can we live in a highly imperfect world? And what can film do that other media can't? We'll think about all of these great questions with the help of films that are philosophically stimulating, stylistically intriguing, and, for the most part, gripping to watch: Do The Right Thing (Lee), The Dark Knight (Nolan), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Kaufman), Arrival (Villeneuve), My Dinner with Andr¿ (Malle), Blade Runner (Scott), La Jet¿e (Marker), Fight Club (Fincher), No Country for Old Men (Coen), The Seventh Seal (Bergman), and Memento (Nolan). Attendance at weekly screenings is mandatory; and fun. We will not be using the waitlist on Axess - if you would like to enroll and the course is full/closed please email us to get on the waitlist!
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

FRENCH 159: French Kiss: The History of Love and the French Novel (FRENCH 256, HISTORY 236F)

The history of the French novel is also the history of love. How did individuals experience love throughout history? How do novels reflect this evolution of love through the ages? And, most significantly, how have French novels shaped our own understanding of and expectations for romantic love today? The course will explore many forms of love from the Ancien R¿gime to the 20th century. Sentiment and seduction, passion and desire, the conflict between love and society: students will examine these themes from a historical perspective, in tandem with the evolution of the genre of the novel (the novella, the sentimental novel, the epistolary novel, the 19th-century novel, and the autobiographical novel). Some texts will be paired with contemporary films to probe the enduring relevance of love "¿ la fran¿aise" in the media today. Readings include texts by Lafayette, Pr¿vost, Laclos, Dumas fils, Flaubert, Colette, Yourcenar, and Duras. This is an introductory course to French Studies, with a focus on cultural history, literary history, interpretation of narrative, thematic analysis, and close reading. Undergraduate students should enroll for FRENCH159, while graduate students may enroll for FRENCH256. Readings and discussion in English.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Edmondson, C. (PI)

FRENCH 163: A Brief History of Now: Song and Poetry from Sappho to Taylor Swift (COMPLIT 163)

What techniques do singers share between traditions from antiquity to the present? How do they produce a sense of a moment to be seized, a contrast between hope and despair, and here and now? Transhistorical, comparative analysis of lyric modes and conventions such as apostrophe, the desire to sing and uselessness of doing so, when and where they diverge in different lyric genres and traditions. Poets and songwriters include Catullus, Sappho, Li Qingzhao, troubadours, Dante, Labe, Donne, Taylor Swift, Bob Dylan, SZA. Each week, students will enrich the discussion by introducing to the class their own suggestions of relevant works.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

FRENCH 173: Couture Culture (ARTHIST 273, ARTHIST 473, FRENCH 373)

Fashion, art, and representation in Europe and the US between 1860 and today. Beginning with Baudelaire, Impressionism, the rise of the department store and the emergence of haute couture, culminating in the spectacular fashion exhibitions mounted at the Metropolitan and other major art museums in recent years. Students participate actively in class discussion and pursue related research projects.
Last offered: Autumn 2021 | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

FRENCH 175: CAPITALS: How Cities Shape Cultures, States, and People (COMPLIT 100, DLCL 100, GERMAN 175, HISTORY 206E, ILAC 175, ITALIAN 175, URBANST 153)

This course takes students on a trip to major capital cities at different moments in time, including Renaissance Florence, Golden Age Madrid, colonial Mexico City, imperial Beijing, Enlightenment and romantic Paris, existential and revolutionary St. Petersburg, roaring Berlin, modernist Vienna, and transnational Accra. While exploring each place in a particular historical moment, we will also consider the relations between culture, power, and social life. How does the cultural life of a country intersect with the political activity of a capital? How do large cities shape our everyday experience, our aesthetic preferences, and our sense of history? Why do some cities become cultural capitals? Primary materials for this course will consist of literary, visual, sociological, and historical documents (in translation).
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

FRENCH 181: Philosophy and Literature (CLASSICS 42, COMPLIT 181, ENGLISH 81, GERMAN 181, ILAC 181, ITALIAN 181, PHIL 81, SLAVIC 181)

Can novels make us better people? Can movies challenge our assumptions? Can poems help us become who we are? We'll think about these and other questions with the help of writers like Toni Morrison, Marcel Proust, Jordan Peele, Charlie Kaufman, Rachel Cusk, William Shakespeare, and Samuel Beckett, plus thinkers like Nehamas, Nietzsche, Nussbaum, Plato, and Sartre. We'll also ask whether a disenchanted world can be re-enchanted; when, if ever, the truth stops being the most important thing; why we sometimes choose to read sad stories; whether we ever love someone for who they are; who could possibly want to live their same life over and over again; what it takes to make ourselves fully moral; whether it's ever good to be conflicted; how we can pull ourselves together; and how we can take ourselves apart. (This is the required gateway course for the Philosophy and Literature major tracks. Majors should register in their home department.)
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

FRENCH 185: Texts and Contexts: French-English Translation (COMPLIT 285, CSRE 285, FRENCH 285)

This course introduces students to the ways in which translation has shaped the image of France and the Francophone world. What texts and concepts were translated, how, where, and to what effect? Students will work on a translation project throughout the quarter and translate texts from French to English and English to French. Topics may include the role of translation in the development of cultures; the political dimension of translation, translation in the context of migration, and the socio-cultural frameworks that shape translations. Case studies: Camus, Chamoiseau, Djebar, Fanon, Sow Fall, Proust. Prior knowledge of French language required.
Last offered: Winter 2021 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

FRENCH 187: Sex, Gender, and Violence: French and Francophone Women Writers Today (FEMGEN 187X, FEMGEN 287X, FEMGEN 387X, FRENCH 287, FRENCH 387)

Long before the 2017 #Metoo campaign, French women writers have explored through powerful fictions and autobiographies the different shades of economic, social, psychological, physical, or sexual violence that is exerted against, but also by and between, women. How does literature - the power of words - address, deconstruct or comfort power dynamics (during sex and between the sexes) that are usually silenced, taboo or unspeakable? Themes explored: sex and gender, sex and power, rape culture, sexual and moral taboos (incest, abortion, pornography, infanticide, lesbianism), the body as social stigma or source of meaning. Special attention given to narrative and descriptive strategies designed to avert, expose, deconstruct or account for specifically feminine experiences (rape, orgasm, pregnancy). Authors include Nobel Prize Annie Ernaux, Virginie Despentes, Marie Darrieusecq, Christine Angot, Marie NDiaye, Leonora Miano, Leila Slimani, Vanessa Springora along with feminist theory. Discussion in English. Readings in French or English, students choice
Terms: Aut | Units: 1-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

FRENCH 192: Women in Contemporary French Cinema (FEMGEN 192, FILMEDIA 112, FRENCH 392)

Women as objects and subjects of the voyeuristic gaze inherent to cinema. The evolution of female characters, roles, actresses, directors in the French film industry from the sexual liberation to #metoo. Women as archetypes, icones, images, or as agents and subjects. Emphasis on filmic analysis: framing, point of view, narrative, camera work as ways to convey meaning. Themes include: sexualization and desire; diversity and intersectionality in films; new theories of the female gaze; gender, ethnicity and class. Filmmakers include Roger Vadim, Agnès Varda, Luis Buñuel, Claude Chabrol, Colline Serreau, Elena Rossi, Tonie Marshall, Houda Benyamina, Eléonore Pourriat, Céline Sciamma. VISIT BY FILM DIRECTORS Elena Rossi and Sciamma (pending).nnFilms in French with subtitles; Discussion in English; 3 units, 4 units or 5 units.
| Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

FRENCH 205: Songs of Love and War: Gender, Crusade, Politics (FEMGEN 205, FRENCH 305, ITALIAN 205, ITALIAN 305)

The course examines the medieval love lyric tradition, including the troubadours, trouvères, and the Italian dolce stil nuovo. Focus on how to understand this tradition in the context of other non-Western lyric and its performative and material contexts such as manuscripts. Study of female lyrics, secondary readings on voice, lyric theory, and medieval textuality. Will be taught in English. FRENCH 205 fulfills DLCL 121: Performing in the Middle Ages core course.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:EC-Gender, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

FRENCH 213E: Culture and Revolution in Africa (AFRICAAM 213, COMPLIT 213, HISTORY 243E)

This course investigates the relationship between culture, revolutionary decolonization, and post-colonial trajectories. It probes the multilayered development of 20th and 21st-century African literature amid decolonization and Cold War cultural diplomacy initiatives and the debates they generated about African literary aesthetics, African languages, the production of history, and the role of the intellectual. We will journey through national cultural movements, international congresses, and pan-African festivals to explore the following questions: What role did writers and artists play in shaping the discourse of revolutionary decolonization throughout the continent and in the diaspora? How have literary texts, films, and works of African cultural thought shaped and engaged with concepts such as "African unity" and "African cultural renaissance"? How have these notions influenced the imaginaries of post-independence nations, engendered new subjectivities, and impacted gender and generational dynamics? How did the ways of knowing and modes of writing promoted and developed in these contexts shape African futures?
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Seck, F. (PI)

FRENCH 214: Pirandello, Sartre, and Beckett (COMPLIT 281E, COMPLIT 381E, FRENCH 314, ITALIAN 214, ITALIAN 314)

In this course we will read the main novels and plays of Pirandello, Sartre, and Beckett, with special emphasis on the existentialist themes of their work. Readings include The Late Mattia Pascal, Six Characters in Search of an Author, Henry IV; Nausea, No Exit, "Existentialism is a Humanism"; Molloy, Endgame, Krapp's Last Tape, Waiting for Godot. Taught in English.
Last offered: Spring 2021 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

FRENCH 217: Love, Death and the Afterlife in the Medieval West (FRENCH 317, HISTORY 217D, HISTORY 317D, ITALIAN 217, ITALIAN 317)

Romantic love, it is often claimed, is an invention of the High Middle Ages. The vocabulary of sexual desire that is still current in the twenty-first century was authored in the twelfth and thirteenth, by troubadours, court poets, writers like Dante; even by crusaders returning from the eastern Mediterranean. How did this devout society come to elevate the experience of sensual love? This course draws on primary sources such as medieval songs, folktales, the "epic rap battles" of the thirteenth century, along with the writings of Boccaccio, Saint Augustine and others, to understand the unexpected connections between love, death, and the afterlife from late antiquity to the fourteenth century. Each week, we will use a literary or artistic work as an interpretive window into cultural attitudes towards love, death or the afterlife. These readings are analyzed in tandem with major historical developments, including the rise of Christianity, the emergence of feudal society and chivalric culture, the crusading movement, and the social breakdown of the fourteenth century.
Terms: Aut | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Phillips, J. (PI)

FRENCH 218: Literature and the Brain (COMPLIT 138, COMPLIT 238, ENGLISH 118, ENGLISH 218, FRENCH 118, PSYC 126, PSYCH 118F)

How does fiction make us better at reading minds? Why do some TV shows get us to believe two contradictory things at once? And can cognitive biases be a writer's best friend? We'll think about these and other questions in the light of contemporary neuroscience and experimental psychology, with the help of Song of Solomon (Toni Morrison), Madame Bovary (Gustave Flaubert), season 1 of Westworld (Lisa Joy / Jonathan Nolan), and short readings from writers like Louise Glück, Jorge Luis Borges, Virginia Woolf, and Marcel Proust. We'll also ask what we see when we read; whether the language we speak affects the way we think; and why different people react differently to the same book. Plus: is free will a fiction, or were you just forced to say that?
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

FRENCH 219: Sex, Gender and the Body in Renaissance France (FRENCH 319)

The Renaissance (14-16th c.) was a period of intense exploration: outwards, with the "discovery" and conquest of "new" continents and people; back in time, with the unearthing of Classical texts from antiquity; and inwards, with the first human dissections and the rise of gynecology. From all these experiences emerged multiple models and definitions of gender, conflicting norms of sexualities, and shifting accounts of sexual difference. Bodies became objects of constant scrutiny, speculation, and representation.Scientists, philosophers, writers, theologians, explorers discussed and documented hermaphrodites and animal-human hybrids, trans-gendering, vagrant uterus, male and female cosmic attributes, sexual drives, while poets dabbled in proto-pornography and subverted gender roles.We will look at scientific, literary, and artistic documents from 16th century France to investigate how gender, sex, race, and sexuality intersected in the age of the anatomical gaze.Readings from medical treatises, philosophy, novels (Rabelais), poetry (Scève, Ronsard, Labé), essays (Montaigne), and emblem literature. Taught in French.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Alduy, C. (PI)

FRENCH 228E: Getting Through Proust

Selections from all seven volumes of "In Search of Lost Time". Focus on issues of personal identity (perspective, memory, life-narrative); interpersonal relations (friendship, love, homosexuality, jealousy, indirect expression); knowledge (objective truth, subjective truth, necessary illusions); redemption (enchantment, disenchantment, re-enchantment); aesthetics (music, painting, fiction); and Proust's own style (narrative sequence, sentence structure, irony, metaphor, metonymy, metalepsis). Taught in English; readings in French or English.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Landy, J. (PI)

FRENCH 236: Casablanca - Algiers - Tunis : Cities on the Edge (COMPLIT 236A, CSRE 140S, FRENCH 336, HISTORY 245C, JEWISHST 236A, URBANST 140F)

Casablanca, Algiers and Tunis embody three territories, real and imaginary, which never cease to challenge the preconceptions of travelers setting sight on their shores. In this class, we will explore the myriad ways in which these cities of North Africa, on the edge of Europe and of Africa, have been narrated in literature, cinema, and popular culture. Home to Muslims, Christians, and Jews, they are an ebullient laboratory of social, political, religious, and cultural issues, global and local, between the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries. We will look at mass images of these cities, from films to maps, novels to photographs, sketching a new vision of these magnets as places where power, social rituals, legacies of the Ottoman and French colonial pasts, and the influence of the global economy collude and collide. Special focus on class, gender, and race.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

FRENCH 238: Art and the Market (ARTHIST 238C)

This course examines the relationship between art and the market, from Renaissance artisans to struggling Impressionist painters to the globalized commercial world of contemporary art and NFTs. Using examples drawn from France, this course explores the relationship between artists and patrons, the changing status of artists in society, patterns of shifting taste, and the effects of museums on making and collecting art. Students will read a mixture of historical texts about art and artists, fictional works depicting the process of artistic creation, and theoretical analyses of the politics embedded in artworks. They will examine individual artworks, as well as the market structures in which such artworks were produced and bought. The course will be taught in English, with the option of readings in French for departmental majors.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

FRENCH 239: The Afterlife of the Middle Ages (FRENCH 339)

Literary works that evoke a medieval past in contrast to a historical present, and critical texts that treat aspects of the medieval or medievalism. How does the concept of medievalism emerge and evolve through the ages? Topics include periodization, philology, critical theory, the study of Gothic architecture, and the use of the term medieval in modern political discourse and postcolonial studies. Authors include Burckhardt, Camille, Chateaubriand, Chrétien de Troyes, Didi-Huberman, Jauss, Michelet, Panofsky, Pound, films by Dreyer and Bergman, and contemporary poetry. Taught in English.
Last offered: Autumn 2017 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

FRENCH 246: Body over Mind (FRENCH 346, ITALIAN 346)

How does modern fiction, aided by modern philosophy, give the lie to Descartes' famous "I think therefore I am"? And how does writing convey the desire for a different, perhaps stronger, integration of mind and body? Does the body speak a particular truth that we must learn to hear, that the mind is not always connected to? How do modern metaphors for the mind-body connection shape our experience? These questions will be explored via the works of major French and Italian writers and thinkers, including Pirandello, Calvino, Camus, Houellebecq, Sartre, and Agamben.
Last offered: Autumn 2016 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

FRENCH 248: Cinema and the Real: Italian Neo-Realism and the French New Wave (FRENCH 148, ITALIAN 148, ITALIAN 248)

Between the 1940s and 1960s, in Italy and France, a handful of movie directors revolutionized the art of cinema. In the wake of World War II they entirely re-defined the aesthetics of the 7th art in films such as "Bicycle Thieves," "400 Blows," "Rome Open City," and "Breathless." These works shared an aesthetic and a philosophy of "the real" - they eschewed big studios and sets in favor of natural light, on-location shooting, and non-professional actors to capture the present moment. This survey course will explore how the dialogue between Italian neo-realism and the French New Wave has yielded some of the most revolutionary filmic masterpieces of both traditions, while raising theoretical and philosophical questions about form, time, space, fiction, representation, and reality. Films: Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio de Sica, Luchino Visconti, Federico Fellini, François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais and Agnès Varda.
Last offered: Autumn 2020 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

FRENCH 249: The Algerian Wars (CSRE 249, HISTORY 239G, JEWISHST 249)

From Algiers the White to Algiers the Red, Algiers, the Mecca of the Revolutionaries in the words of Amilcar Cabral, this course offers to study the Algerian Wars since the French conquest of Algeria (1830-) to the Algerian civil war of the 1990s. We will revisit the ways in which the war has been narrated in literature and cinema, popular culture, and political discourse. A special focus will be given to the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962). The course considers the racial representations of the war in the media, the continuing legacies surrounding the conflict in France, Africa, and the United States, from Che Guevara to the Black Panthers. A key focus will be the transmission of collective memory through transnational lenses, and analyses of commemorative events and movies. nReadings from James Baldwin, Assia Djebar, Albert Camus, Frantz Fanon, Mouloud Feraoun. Movies include "The Battle of Algiers," "Days of Glory," and "Viva Laldjérie." nTaught in English.
Last offered: Spring 2018 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

FRENCH 251: Writing, Memory, and the Self (FRENCH 351, ITALIAN 251, ITALIAN 351)

Recent work in psychology and neuroscience emphasizes the narrative quality of the self, as we create it and recreate it through language and writing, shaping memories both personal and historical. This process is circular: we grow into the stories we tell about ourselves, and we tell different stories to fit our changing life experiences. What is the self in the midst of all this? How does it relate to other selves and to the world? This course examines the nature of self, combining the insights of fiction writers (including Luigi Pirandello, Anna Banti, Michel Tournier, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Peter Nádas) with works from philosophy, psychology, medical humanities, and neuroscience (including Edith Wyschogrod, Alexander Nehamas, Ruth Leys, Oliver Sacks). Taught in English.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

FRENCH 252: Art and Power: From Royal Spectacle to Revolutionary Ritual (ARTHIST 252A)

From the Palace of Versailles to grand operas to Jacques-Louis David's portraits of revolutionary martyrs, rarely have the arts been so powerfully mobilized by the State as in early modern France. This course examines how the arts were used from Louis XIV to the Revolution in order to broadcast political authority across Europe. We will also consider the resistance to such attempts to elicit shock-and-awe through artistic patronage. By studying music, architecture, garden design, the visual arts, and theater together, students will gain a new perspective on works of art in their political contexts. But we will also examine the libelous pamphlets and satirical cartoons that turned the monarchy¿s grandeur against itself, ending the course with an examination of the new artistic regime of the French Revolution. The course will be taught in English with the option of French readings for departmental majors.
Last offered: Spring 2018 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

FRENCH 256: French Kiss: The History of Love and the French Novel (FRENCH 159, HISTORY 236F)

The history of the French novel is also the history of love. How did individuals experience love throughout history? How do novels reflect this evolution of love through the ages? And, most significantly, how have French novels shaped our own understanding of and expectations for romantic love today? The course will explore many forms of love from the Ancien R¿gime to the 20th century. Sentiment and seduction, passion and desire, the conflict between love and society: students will examine these themes from a historical perspective, in tandem with the evolution of the genre of the novel (the novella, the sentimental novel, the epistolary novel, the 19th-century novel, and the autobiographical novel). Some texts will be paired with contemporary films to probe the enduring relevance of love "¿ la fran¿aise" in the media today. Readings include texts by Lafayette, Pr¿vost, Laclos, Dumas fils, Flaubert, Colette, Yourcenar, and Duras. This is an introductory course to French Studies, with a focus on cultural history, literary history, interpretation of narrative, thematic analysis, and close reading. Undergraduate students should enroll for FRENCH159, while graduate students may enroll for FRENCH256. Readings and discussion in English.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Edmondson, C. (PI)

FRENCH 260A: Transcultural Perspectives of South-East Asian Music and Arts (COMPLIT 148, COMPLIT 267, MUSIC 146N, MUSIC 246N)

This course will explore the links between aspects of South-East Asian cultures and their influence on modern and contemporary Western art and literature, particularly in France; examples of this influence include Claude Debussy (Gamelan music), Jacques Charpentier (Karnatak music), Auguste Rodin (Khmer art) and Antonin Artaud (Balinese theater). In the course of these interdisciplinary analyses - focalized on music and dance but not limited to it - we will confront key notions in relation to transculturality: orientalism, appropriation, auto-ethnography, nostalgia, exoticism and cosmopolitanism. We will also consider transculturality interior to contemporary creation, through the work of contemporary composers such as Tran Kim Ngoc, Chinary Ung and Tôn-Thât Tiêt. Viewings of sculptures, marionette theater, ballet, opera and cinema will also play an integral role. To satisfy a Ways requirement, this course must be taken for at least 3 units. WIM credit in Music at 4 units and a letter grade.
Terms: Win | Units: 2-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Kretz, H. (PI)

FRENCH 264E: Crossing the Atlantic: Race Identity in the "Old" and"New" African Diasporas (AFRICAAM 264, COMPLIT 264, CSRE 265)

In this course, we will think critically about what we have come to call the African diaspora. We will travel the world virtually while exploring a selection of classic and understudied texts, in order to interrogate the relationship between culture, race, gender and identity in the "old" and "new" African diasporas. From literary texts to popular culture, we will relate each weekly reading to a hot topic. Our goal is to think cross-culturally and cross-linguistically about the themes covered by putting exciting works in conversation. The diverse topics and concepts discussed will include race, class, gender, identity, sexuality, migration, Afro-Caribbean religions, performance, violence, the body, metissage, Negritude, Negrismo, multiculturalism, nationalism, Afropolitanism and Afropean identities.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Seck, F. (PI)

FRENCH 269: Transfigurative Lyric: Baudelaire and Mallarmé

What happens when injustice runs rampant, when democracy fails, and when it's no longer possible to believe in ancient forms of faith? Can lyric poetry console? Can it inspire? Can it re-enchant a disenchanted world? Together we'll read some of the most powerful poetry from late-nineteenth-century France, including what may possibly be the greatest 100-word sonnet ever written. (Poems to be read in French; discussion to be held in English.) We'll think about what modernity is, how "modernist" forms were born, when writers turned away from nature and toward artifice, why poets started trying to outdo music, whether it's possible to fool oneself knowingly, who's left when a lyric poet strives for "impersonality," and which poems have the greatest chance of saving our lives. The class may even serve as our own little haven, twice a week, from the growing chaos around us.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

FRENCH 285: Texts and Contexts: French-English Translation (COMPLIT 285, CSRE 285, FRENCH 185)

This course introduces students to the ways in which translation has shaped the image of France and the Francophone world. What texts and concepts were translated, how, where, and to what effect? Students will work on a translation project throughout the quarter and translate texts from French to English and English to French. Topics may include the role of translation in the development of cultures; the political dimension of translation, translation in the context of migration, and the socio-cultural frameworks that shape translations. Case studies: Camus, Chamoiseau, Djebar, Fanon, Sow Fall, Proust. Prior knowledge of French language required.
Last offered: Winter 2021 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

FRENCH 287: Sex, Gender, and Violence: French and Francophone Women Writers Today (FEMGEN 187X, FEMGEN 287X, FEMGEN 387X, FRENCH 187, FRENCH 387)

Long before the 2017 #Metoo campaign, French women writers have explored through powerful fictions and autobiographies the different shades of economic, social, psychological, physical, or sexual violence that is exerted against, but also by and between, women. How does literature - the power of words - address, deconstruct or comfort power dynamics (during sex and between the sexes) that are usually silenced, taboo or unspeakable? Themes explored: sex and gender, sex and power, rape culture, sexual and moral taboos (incest, abortion, pornography, infanticide, lesbianism), the body as social stigma or source of meaning. Special attention given to narrative and descriptive strategies designed to avert, expose, deconstruct or account for specifically feminine experiences (rape, orgasm, pregnancy). Authors include Nobel Prize Annie Ernaux, Virginie Despentes, Marie Darrieusecq, Christine Angot, Marie NDiaye, Leonora Miano, Leila Slimani, Vanessa Springora along with feminist theory. Discussion in English. Readings in French or English, students choice
Terms: Aut | Units: 1-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Alduy, C. (PI)

GERMAN 68N: Franz Kafka: Literature and the Modern Human Condition

This class will address major works by Franz Kafka and consider Kafka as a modernist writer whose work reflects on modernity. We will also examine the role of Kafka's themes and poetics in the work of contemporary writers.
Last offered: Winter 2020 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

GERMAN 75N: Famous Last Words

What would you say if you knew it would be the last thing you would ever say? Who would you want to hear your words? Would you want to inspire somebody? Terrify them? Shout your defiance or your love in their direction?nThis is a course about last words the final utterances left as legacies for the world in the face of revolution, war, betrayal, heartbreak, or that simplest of endings, death. We will look at a wide variety of last words, including last words codified as genres¿quotations, suicide notes, epitaphs, dying declarations, Japanese death poems, confessions, and the like as literary devices (last sentences, envois, punch lines, epilogues), and as forms of social or cultural practice (the making of heroes, idols, and martyrs in religious, political, and popular culture). We will look at fictional last words, real last words, last words spoken by heroes, gods, and ordinary people. And we will end the course, each of us, by writing out our own last words imagining what we each would write, if we had to sum up what mattered most to us, and if we wanted some small selection of signs to stand in, as it has for many of the authors we will read, for our life and the legacy of it.
Last offered: Autumn 2018 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

GERMAN 97: 10 Poems That Will Change Your Life

This course is for anyone who has ever been afraid of poetry, anyone who has ever thought that poems are too difficult to understand, a course for anyone who has fallen in love with poetry before, and for anyone who has used a poem to make a difference in someone's life. You will learn how to read, understand, and if you don't already like poetry. We will read poems from different centuries, different kinds of writers, and different media (paper, computer screens, and even DNA); they will be about loss and love and war and loyalty and bacteria. Some of them will be about you. You will develop interpretive skills that come with this range of poetic forms and structures and will learn how to think about what it means for something to be poetic, whether it is a poem, a Leonard Cohen song, a last minute field goal, or a toilet. Can the poems in this class really change your life? (What would that even mean? We'll discuss.) Maybe; maybe not. But they're certainly going to try.
Last offered: Autumn 2020 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

GERMAN 101: Germany in 5 Words

This course explores German history, culture and politics by tracing five (largely untranslatable) words and exploring the debates they have engendered in Germany over the past 200 years. This course is intended as preparation for students wishing to spend a quarter at the Bing Overseas Studies campus in Berlin, but is open to everyone. Taught in English.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

GERMAN 106: Turkish-German Literature, Cinema, and Theater (GERMAN 206)

One in five people in Germany now has, as it is termed, a background of migration. Immigration from Turkey is probably the most prominent not only in terms of its massiveness and demographic consequences, but also for its significant role in changing Germany's overall cultural, social, and economic landscape. In this course, through analyzing selected literary works, films, and plays produced by Turkish-German writers and artists, we will discuss complex ideas like migration, ethnicity, race, religion, gender, and class, resorting not to oversimplifications and binary thinking but instead to relevant literary concepts and formative historical moments which have shaped the Turkish-German experience. Taught in English and German.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Deniz, M. (PI)

GERMAN 120A: Berlin: Literature and Culture in the 20th Century and Beyond

For much of the twentieth century Berlin has been at the epicentre of geopolitics, the Berlin Wall standing as the physical manifestation of a fragile world order. Huge social and political upheavals in the city have inspired much cultural production. Through novels, poetry, films, speeches and more we will examine the Golden Era of Weimar Berlin, the National Socialist period, the Cold War division, reunification, and the contemporary city. Authors include Keun, D¿blin, Fallada, Schernikau, Wolf, Brussig, Erpenbeck. Taught in German. Prerequisite: GERLANG 3 or permission of instructor.
Last offered: Spring 2021 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

GERMAN 120B: Fairy Tales

Fairy tales loom largely in our lives. They are 'weird,' but not shallow or irrelevant: they tell the 'extraordinary' in different traditions and facilitate cross-and transcultural dialogues between them. In this course, we will read German fairy tales from the Grimm Brothers, Novalis, Tieck, Bettina von Arnim, E.T.A. Hoffmann, etc., focus on their connections to the stories in other traditions, and explore their transformations in various media from oral storytelling to films, comic books, and music videos. We will reinterpret these fairy tales by using methodologies derived from psychoanalysis, folklore, gender, and race studies and open a creative environment for your own tales. Taught in German. Prerequisite: GERLANG 3 or permission of instructor.
Last offered: Autumn 2021 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

GERMAN 120C: German in Public: 99 German Songs

Germany is the land of Beethoven and Brahms, but has also given the world Marlene Dietrich, Nena, and Rammstein. This course aims to introduce you to a variety of music repertories, and a range of ways through popular songs to think and talk about 200 years of German history, art, culture, and politics. While we explore some of the great ¿classics¿ of the musical canon in the German speaking countries, we will also discover the social, critical, and political impacts expressed and triggered by folksongs, rock, punk, hip-hop, techno, and heavy metal music. Our focus will be on particular German genres and obsessions by listening not only good songs but also bad ones, very goofy and entertaining pieces. A class to hum along to! Taught in German. Prerequisite: One year of German or permission of instructor.
Last offered: Spring 2020 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

GERMAN 120D: The German Graphic Novel

This course is an introduction to the history, theory, and social life of German graphic novels. We will look at early examples of text-and-image (Sebastian Brant's "Ship of Fools," a satire published in 1497, Heinrich Hoffmann's "Der Struwwelpeter," an 1845 children's book detailing various forms of misbehavior in spine-chilling visual detail, or Wilhelm Busch's 1895 tale of the mischievous brothers "Max und Moritz") and modern and contemporary comics, political caricatures, and graphic novels from Swiss, German, and Austrian artists (Nicolas Mahler, Gerhard Haderer, Manfred Deix, Ulli Lust, Max Goldt, or Anke Feuchtenberger). No prior knowledge of the topic is required. You will develop your German reading, speaking, and writing skills through a variety of short creative assignments and in-class discussions, develop critical reading skills as they attend to specific formal features, and improve your abilities to think historically about the emergence and development of aesthetic forms. Taught in German. Prerequisite: GERLANG 3 or permission of instructor.
Last offered: Autumn 2019 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

GERMAN 124: German Jews: Thought, Race, and Identity (CSRE 124B, JEWISHST 124)

This course offers an introduction to German Jewish thought from the 18th century to the present day. We will explore the way Jews in the German-speaking world understood their identities in the face of changing cultural and political contexts and the literary and philosophical works they produced in the face of antisemitism, discrimination, and genocide. This course covers the major themes and events in German-Jewish cultural history, including the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment), fin de si'cle Vienna, Zionism, exile and migration, the Holocaust, and the modern German Jewish renaissance, with readings from Moses Mendelsohn, Karl Marx, Franz Kafka, Hannah Arendt, Max Czollek, and more. We will pay special attention to the way the German Jewish experience challenges our understanding of identity categories such as race and religion, as well as concepts of whiteness, Europeanness, and the modern nation state.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Hodrick, C. (PI)

GERMAN 125: Nietzsche: Life as Performance (GERMAN 325, TAPS 152L, TAPS 325)

Nietzsche famously considered that "there is no 'being' behind the deed, its effect, and what becomes of it; the 'doer' is invented as an afterthought - the doing is everything." How should we understand this idea of a deed without a doer, how might it relate to performance, and what influence has it had on modern culture? In order to answer these questions, we will consider Nietzsche's writings alongside some of the artworks that influenced Nietzsche or were influenced by him.
Last offered: Winter 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

GERMAN 130A: A History of German Opera

When we think of opera, and perhaps especially German opera, a list of stereotypes immediately springs to mind: tenors who refuse to die, horned helmets and blond braids, an artform so elite that it has lost all relevance in the contemporary world. While not discounting those images, this course will position opera at the center of Germany's historical and cultural development over the past three centuries - from early discussions about the country's place between the more culturally hegemonic Italy and France, to its struggle for unification in the 19th century, to the Third Reich's co-opting of all 'German' forms of expression to serve its ends. We will discuss German opera's link to movements like Romanticism and Expressionism, and to philosophers like Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Along the way, we will learn how to listen to and talk about this very strange genre, and gain fluency in a range of musical styles and periods. No musical expertise required; taught in German. Prerequisite: GERLANG 21 or instructor permission.
Last offered: Autumn 2021 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

GERMAN 131: What is German Literature?

How have migration and minority discourses changed the German literary and cultural tradition? What is German literature today, and how does it differ from the traditional notion of Germany as the land of "Dichter und Denker?" We will read texts by Goethe, Novalis, Annette von Droste-H¿lshoff, Thomas Mann, Kafka, Anna Seghers, Brecht, Christa Wolf, Emine Sevgi ¿zdamar, Yoko Tawada, and Sasha Marianna Salzmann, and discuss such topics as identity formation, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, class, and ecocriticism. Taught in German. GERLANG 3 or equivalent required.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

GERMAN 132: Politics in 20th Century German Literature

Is there a difference between art and propaganda? How do writers express their political values? Who gets to decide what counts as literature? Or who counts as German? This introductory course will focus on these questions and more as we discuss works of prose, poetry, theater, and film from the German-speaking world in the context of 20th century political developments, including the World Wars and the Holocaust, the Cold War and German Reunification, and the rise of multiculturalism. Course materials in the original German include selections from Franz Kafka, Bertolt Brecht, Ingeborg Bachmann, May Ayim, and others. Taught in German. GERLANG 3 or equivalent required.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

GERMAN 133: Marx, Nietzsche, Freud

We read and discuss selections from works by the key master thinkers who have exerted a lasting influence by debunking long-cherished beliefs. Do these authors uphold or repudiate Enlightenment notions of rationality, autonomy and progress? How do they assess the achievements of civilization? How do their works illuminate the workings of power in social and political contexts? Readings and discussion in German.
Last offered: Winter 2019 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

GERMAN 137: Green Germany

Since the unification of modern Germany in 1871, the history of German environmental movements has been beset with political, cultural, and racial tension. Some of the earliest environmental activists, such as the composer and conservationist Ernst Rudorff, explicitly conceived of conservation as Heimatschutz; or, protection of the homeland. While Rudorff opposed jews and women from participating in the founding of his Heimatschutz organization, the creator of the modern Umwelt concept, the theoretical biologist Jakob von Uexkill, became an early supporter of the Nazi regime. How do we interrogate this disturbing alliance between racial purity, environmental protection, and nation? What does the history of concepts such as Uexkill's Umwelt or Alexander von Humboldt's natural monument, or Naturdenkmal, have to teach policymakers and intellectuals today in the face of environmental crisis? How does does the relationship between race and environment inform current issues about conservation and energy policy in the present? Taught in English with some readings in German.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Norton, B. (PI)

GERMAN 141A: Mephisto: Your Travel Guide to a Great Novel

In this course, students will read their way through one of the most disputed German novels in the postwar Federal Republic, Klaus Mann's "Mephisto" (1936 published in exile in Amsterdam) a satirical novel about opportunism and the German theater scene during the NS-Regime. Students will meet and discuss the novel weekly, each time under the guidance of a different tour guide Stanford faculty and professors from other institutions. No final paper, no readings other than the novel required. All readings in German (though an English translation will be made available), class discussion in English. NOTE: This course must be taken for a minimum of 3 units and a letter grade to be eligible for Ways credit.
Last offered: Winter 2020 | Units: 1-3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

GERMAN 149: Babylon Berlin

Berlin, 1929. A police inspector and his unlikely partner, a typist and aspiring homicide detective, turn up the case of a lifetime: a far-reaching political conspiracy in the capital of a democracy on the edge. Part noir detective thriller, part historical drama, the blockbuster German television series Babylon Berlin (2017) will serve as our springboard to understand the culture, politics, and society of the Weimar Republic (1918,1933), a fifteen-year experiment in democracy that preceded the rise of the Third Reich. From corruption and criminality to sociopolitical upheaval and a remarkable arts scene: Berlin of the Roaring Twenties, a study in contrasts and conflicts, had it all. Does the Netflix hit harbor, almost eerie parallels to the present, as one German newspaper recently suggested? Weekly viewings of the complete seasons one and two will be accompanied by close study of the era's literature, cinema, and visual arts. Readings will include texts by Alfred Döblin, Hans Fallada, Erich Kästner, Mascha Kaléko, Irmgard Keun, Siegfried Kracauer, Gabriele Tergit, and Kurt Tucholsky. Throughout the term we will also pay careful attention to the media-theoretical implications of the series: What is 'quality TV?' How does seriality influence storytelling and viewing? In what ways does Babylon Berlin reflect on film as a medium? What role do montage and collage play? Assessment will be based on active class participation; a series of short viewing and reading reflections; a midterm scene analysis assignment; and a final research project that will delve into specific historical intertexts (figures, sites, objects) taken up in Babylon Berlin.
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

GERMAN 153: Marx: Politics and Culture (GERMAN 335)

Few thinkers can lay claim to the level of sustained impact Karl Marx has achieved. From eco-socialist movements to contemporary investigations of digital capitalism, Marx's grip on the political and cultural imagination has only been further solidified in recent years. While seeking to come to terms with such relevance, this course turns first and foremost to the writings of Marx himself in order to gain insight into how he responded to the pressing issues of his own day. How does Marx deal with topics related to identity and nation in "On the Jewish Question," for example? How does Marx theorize new forms of value creation enabled by automation in the "Fragment on Machines"? In order to properly appreciate Marx's contemporary relevance, this course seeks to suggest, we must first understand his writings as a product of their own time and place. Readings will be available in both German and English.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

GERMAN 174: The Poem as Medium (GERMAN 374)

Since Marshall McLuhan formulated his theory of "media" as "extensions of ourselves," we've come to understand the history of human communication in terms of its physical carriers, tools, and technologies. From cuneiform, hieroglyphs, and logographic writing systems, to the alphabet, to algorithms; from clay tablets, to papyrus, to LED screens; from scrolls, to books, to the gramophone, to DNA - the medium and the message shape how we store and communicate information. Poetry's place in this history of media has been both elusive and strangely consistent. In media theory, the poem, which Hans Magnus Enzensberger once called an "archaic medium" and Niklas Luhman a "paradoxical form of communication," often serves as an example of the non-ordinary, of opacity, untranslatability, self-mediation, or hypermediacy. We will read (often lesser known) texts by media theorists (McLuhan, Kittler, Flusser, Benjamin, Luhmann, Siegfried J. Schmidt, Hayles) and a selection of pre-media theory texts on the mediality and mediacy of poetry (Lessing, Hegel, Herder Schleiermacher, Hamburger), as well as one poem each week as we explore the relation between medium and message, content and form. Taught in German.
Last offered: Spring 2020 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

GERMAN 175: CAPITALS: How Cities Shape Cultures, States, and People (COMPLIT 100, DLCL 100, FRENCH 175, HISTORY 206E, ILAC 175, ITALIAN 175, URBANST 153)

This course takes students on a trip to major capital cities at different moments in time, including Renaissance Florence, Golden Age Madrid, colonial Mexico City, imperial Beijing, Enlightenment and romantic Paris, existential and revolutionary St. Petersburg, roaring Berlin, modernist Vienna, and transnational Accra. While exploring each place in a particular historical moment, we will also consider the relations between culture, power, and social life. How does the cultural life of a country intersect with the political activity of a capital? How do large cities shape our everyday experience, our aesthetic preferences, and our sense of history? Why do some cities become cultural capitals? Primary materials for this course will consist of literary, visual, sociological, and historical documents (in translation).
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

GERMAN 181: Philosophy and Literature (CLASSICS 42, COMPLIT 181, ENGLISH 81, FRENCH 181, ILAC 181, ITALIAN 181, PHIL 81, SLAVIC 181)

Can novels make us better people? Can movies challenge our assumptions? Can poems help us become who we are? We'll think about these and other questions with the help of writers like Toni Morrison, Marcel Proust, Jordan Peele, Charlie Kaufman, Rachel Cusk, William Shakespeare, and Samuel Beckett, plus thinkers like Nehamas, Nietzsche, Nussbaum, Plato, and Sartre. We'll also ask whether a disenchanted world can be re-enchanted; when, if ever, the truth stops being the most important thing; why we sometimes choose to read sad stories; whether we ever love someone for who they are; who could possibly want to live their same life over and over again; what it takes to make ourselves fully moral; whether it's ever good to be conflicted; how we can pull ourselves together; and how we can take ourselves apart. (This is the required gateway course for the Philosophy and Literature major tracks. Majors should register in their home department.)
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

GERMAN 185: Understanding International Politics Today: From the German Philosophers to Modern Social Science

This course is being offered in collaboration with Stanford in Berlin, Bing Overseas Study Program. International politics is beset by problems. States go to war. The global economy is volatile and unequal. The human community is divided into multiple nation-states. Some states dominate others. People commit acts of evil. Luckily, we are not the first people to have noticed that international politics is not characterized exclusively by peace and harmony. War, capitalism, racism, and totalitarianism have all been subjects about which German thinkers - many based in Berlin - have made profound contributions over the last two centuries. Do their ideas and arguments stand up in the cold light of modern social science? What can we learn from them - and what do we need to discard? This course will introduce students to perennial problems in international politics from two perspectives: those of key German political thinkers, and those of modern social science. It is structured around five core questions: Why do states go to war and what could be the basis for a lasting peace? If war is unavoidable, what is the role of morality in war? How can/should the world be governed in the absence of a world state? How has international politics been transformed by capitalism? What role has been and is played by race and racism in international politics?
Last offered: Spring 2021 | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

GERMAN 188: In Search of the Holy Grail: Percival's Quest in Medieval Literature (COMPLIT 188, COMPLIT 388, GERMAN 388)

This course focuses on one of the most famous inventions of the Middle Ages: the Holy Grail. The grail - a mysterious vessel with supernatural properties - is first mentioned in Chrétien de Troyes' "Perceval," but the story is soon rewritten by authors who alter the meaning of both the grail and the quest. By reading three different versions, we will explore how they respond differently to major topics in medieval culture and relevant to today: romantic love, family ties, education, moral guilt, and spiritual practice. The texts are: Chrétien de Troyes' "Perceval," Wolfram von Eschenbach's "Parzival," and the anonymous "Queste del Saint Graal." All readings will be available in English.
Last offered: Winter 2020 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

GERMAN 206: Turkish-German Literature, Cinema, and Theater (GERMAN 106)

One in five people in Germany now has, as it is termed, a background of migration. Immigration from Turkey is probably the most prominent not only in terms of its massiveness and demographic consequences, but also for its significant role in changing Germany's overall cultural, social, and economic landscape. In this course, through analyzing selected literary works, films, and plays produced by Turkish-German writers and artists, we will discuss complex ideas like migration, ethnicity, race, religion, gender, and class, resorting not to oversimplifications and binary thinking but instead to relevant literary concepts and formative historical moments which have shaped the Turkish-German experience. Taught in English and German.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Deniz, M. (PI)

GERMAN 213: Medieval Germany, 900-1250 (GERMAN 313, HISTORY 213F, HISTORY 313F)

(Undergraduates may sign up for German 213 or History 213F, graduate students should sign up for German 313 or History 313F. This course may be taken for variable units. Check the individual course numbers for unit spreads.) This course will provide a survey of the most important political, historical, and cultural events and trends that took place in the German-speaking lands between 900 and 1250. Important themes include the evolution of imperial ideology and relations with Rome, expansion along the eastern frontier, the crusades, the investiture controversy, the rise of powerful cities and civic identities, monastic reform and intellectual renewal, and the flowering of vernacular literature. This course must be taken for a minimum of 3 units and a letter grade to be eligible for Ways credit
Terms: Spr | Units: 1-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Kamenzin, M. (PI)

GERMAN 222: Myth and Modernity (COMPLIT 222A, GERMAN 322, JEWISHST 242G, JEWISHST 342)

Masters of German 20th- and 21st-Century literature and philosophy as they present aesthetic innovation and confront the challenges of modern technology, social alienation, manmade catastrophes, and imagine the future. Readings include Nietzsche, Freud, Rilke, Musil, Brecht, Kafka, Doeblin, Benjamin, Juenger, Arendt, Musil, Mann, Adorno, Celan, Grass, Bachmann, Bernhardt, Wolf, and Kluge. Taught in English. Note for German Studies grad students: GERMAN 322 will fulfill the grad core requirement since GERMAN 332 is not being offered this year. NOTE: Enrollment requires Professor Eshel's consent. Please complete the following form to be considered for the class: https://forms.gle/zq3EwGWc1Ff7xn7T9. Enrollment is limited to 20 students. Students will be notified about their acceptance by March 20th and given a permission code. UPDATE 3/2/23 - There was a problem with the original form. Please edit your response to include your name.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

GERMAN 234: Media Theory and the Sea (FILMEDIA 234, GERMAN 334)

This seminar serves as an introduction to media theory by turning to the sea as a medium. Designed for third- and fourth-year German majors, the course explores the way the ocean has served as a constant vehicle for poetic and philosophical reflection throughout history, from Homer's Odyssey to Paul Valery's Cemetery by the Sea. Combining theoretical studies of seafaring by Hans Blumenberg and Bernard Siegert with literary writings from Franz Kafka and Friedrich Hölderlin, this course highlights the way nautical activity becomes a theater of political and poetic concerns when our engagement with the ocean is viewed as a metaphor or a cultural technique. In recent years, the sea has also become a flashpoint for environmental concerns due to rising sea levels, leading to calls to take the material status of the ocean itself seriously. The sea, when viewed through the lens of environmental media, continues to serve as a canvas for the projection of human hopes and fears while opening up further questions about the relationship between nature, cultural practices, and theoretical texts. Readings for this course will be in German and English.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

GERMAN 253: Hannah Arendt: Facing Totalitarianism (COMPLIT 353B, GERMAN 353, JEWISHST 243A)

Like hardly any other thinker of the modern age, Hannah Arendt's thought offers us timeless insights into the fabric of the modern age, especially regarding the perennial danger of totalitarianism. This course offers an in-depth introduction to Arendt's most important works in their various contexts, as well as a consideration of their reverberations in contemporary philosophy and literature. Readings include Arendt's <em>The Origin of Totalitarianism</em>, <em>The Human Condition, Between Past and Future</em>, <em>Men in Dark Times</em>, <em>On Revolution</em>,<em>Eichmann in Jerusalem</em>, and <em>The Life of the Mind</em>, as well as considerations of Hannah Arendt's work by Max Frisch, Jürgen Habermas, Seyla Benhabib, Judith Butler, Giorgio Agamben, and others. Special attention will be given to Arendt's writings on literature with an emphasis on Kafka, Brecht, Auden, Sartre, and Camus. This course will be synchronously conducted, but will also use an innovative, Stanford-developed, online platform called Poetic Thinking. Poetic Thinking allows students to share both their scholarly and creative work with each other. Based on the newest technology and beautifully designed, it greatly enhances their course experience.
Last offered: Autumn 2020 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

GERMAN 255: Speaking Medieval: Ecologies of Inscribed Objects (ENGLISH 255)

This class presents a survey of medieval German vernaculars and their documentation in manuscripts and on material objects. The languages include Gothic, Old Norse, Old Frisian, Old Saxon, Old English, and Old High German. Readings will include runic inscriptions, magic charms, proverbs and riddles, apocalyptic visions, heroic lays, and sermons and prayers. (This course must be taken for a letter grade and a minimum of 3 units to satisfy a Ways requirement.)Please note this course meets MW 1:30-2:50 and is taught by Professors Kathryn Starkey and Elaine Treharne.
Last offered: Winter 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

GERMAN 276: Martin Heidegger: Off the Beaten Track (COMPLIT 266, COMPLIT 363)

Martin Heidegger is one of the most influential and contested philosophers of the modern era. This seminar will offer close readings of Heidegger's first book following the Second World War: Martin Heidegger: Off the Beaten Track (Holzwege). We will discuss Heidegger's aesthetic theory ("The Origin of the Work of Art"), his reaction to Hegel's notion of experience, Nietzsche's dictum "God is dead," and Heidegger's unique understanding of poetry, poetics and poetic thinking in "Why Poets?" The seminar will also explore how some of Heidegger's ideas have left a lasting mark in contemporary discussions regarding truth, experience, art, and literature.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

GERMAN 287: Hope in the Modern Age (COMPLIT 287, JEWISHST 287)

Immanuel Kant famously considered "What may I hope?" to be the third and final question of philosophy. This course considers the thinkers, from Immanuel Kant to Judith Butler, who have attempted to answer this question from within the context of modernity. Has revolution replaced religion as the object of our hope? Has Enlightenment lived up to its promises? These topics and more will be discussed, with readings from thinkers including Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Benjamin, Adorno, and Arendt, alongside the literature of writers such as Kafka, Celan, Nelly Sachs, among others, and with particular focus on the question of hope within the German-Jewish tradition.
Last offered: Autumn 2021 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

GLOBAL 41Q: The Ape Museum: Exploring the Idea of the Ape in Global History, Science, Art and Film (HISTORY 41Q)

This course will explore the idea of "the ape" in global history, science, art, and film. The idea that apes might be humanity's nearest animal relatives is only about 200 years old. From the start, the idea developed in a global context: living fossil apes were found in Africa and Asia, and were immediately embroiled in international controversies about theories of human origins and racial hierarchies. This class will look at how and why "the ape" became a generative and controversial new concept in numerous national and regional contexts. We'll explore some of the many ways humans have looked at, studied, and thought about apes around the world: the "out of Asia" versus "out of Africa" hypothesis for human origins; Nim Chimpsky, the chimpanzee raised as a human child; Koko, the gorilla who may have learned sign language; Congo, the chimpanzee who made "abstract" paintings; films such as King Kong, Planet of the Apes, and 2001: Space Odyssey; the ape in World War II and Cold War propaganda in Japan, the Soviet Union, Germany, and the United States; Jane Goodall's study of chimpanzees "culture" and "personality"; the place of apes in natural history museums and zoos around the world; and Stanford's own fraught history of comparing apes and humans through the archival writings of eugenicist founding president David Starr Jordan. Taught in conjunction with an exhibit on global ape imagery at the Stanford Library curated by Professors Riskin and Winterer in 2024, the course will culminate in students' own miniature exhibits for a class-generated "Ape Museum."
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

GLOBAL 110: Love in the Time of Cinema (FILMEDIA 137, FILMEDIA 337, GLOBAL 211)

Romantic coupling is at the heart of mainstream film narratives around the world. Through a range of film cultures, we will examine cinematic intimacies and our own mediated understandings of love and conjugality formed in dialog with film and other media. We will consider genres, infrastructures, social activities (for example, the drive-in theater, the movie date, the Bollywood wedding musical, 90s queer cinema), and examine film romance in relation to queerness, migration, old age, disability, and body politics more broadly.
Last offered: Autumn 2019 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

GLOBAL 120: Stories at the Border (COMPLIT 156, ENGLISH 155)

How authors and filmmakers represent the process of border-making as a social experience? How do the genres in which they work shape our understandings of the issues themselves? We will explore several different genres of visual and textual representation from around the world that bear witness to border conflict - including writing by China Miéville, Carmen Boullosa, Joe Sacco, and Agha Shahid Ali - many of which also trouble the borders according to which genres are typically separated and defined.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

GLOBAL 135: Around the World in Ten Films (FILMEDIA 135, FILMEDIA 335)

This is an introductory-level course about the cinema as a global language. We will undertake a comparative study of select historical and contemporary aspects of international cinema, and explore a range of themes pertaining to the social, cultural, and political diversity of the world. A cross-regional thematic emphasis and inter-textual methods of narrative and aesthetic analysis, will ground our discussion of films from Italy, Japan, United States, India, China, France, Brazil, Nigeria, Russia, Iran, Mexico, and a number of other countries. Particular emphasis will be placed on the multi-cultural character and the regional specificities of the cinema as a "universal language" and an inclusive "relational network."There are no prerequisites for this class. It is open to all students; non-majors welcome.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

GLOBAL 145: Space, Public Discourse and Revolutionary Practices (ARTHIST 118A, CSRE 95I)

This course examines the mediums of public art that have been voices of social change, protestnand expressions of community desire. It will offer a unique glimpse into Iran¿sncontemporary art and visual culture through the investigation of public art practices such asngraffiti and street art, as well as older traditions of Naghali and Iranian Coffeehouse Painting.nnBeginning Iranian case studies will be expanded in comparison with global examples that spannprojects that include Insite (San Diego/Tijuana), Project Row Houses (Houston, TX) the DMZnProject (Korea), Munster Skulpture Projects (Germany), among others. Students will alsonexamine the infrastructural conditions of public art, such as civic, public, and private funding,nrelationships with local communities, and the life of these projects as they move in and out ofnthe artworld. This encompassing view anchors a legacy of Iranian cultural contributions in largerntrajectories of art history, contemporary art, and community arts practice. Guest artists,ncurators, and researchers with site visits included. Students will propose either new public artnproposals, exhibitions, or research to provoke their own ideas while engaging the ever changingnstate of public discourse in these case studies
Last offered: Autumn 2019 | Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

GLOBAL 193: History of World Cinema III: Queer Cinemas around the World (ARTHIST 164, ARTHIST 364, CSRE 102C, CSRE 302C, FEMGEN 100C, FEMGEN 300C, FILMEDIA 100C, FILMEDIA 300C, GLOBAL 390, TAPS 100C, TAPS 300C)

Provides an overview of cinema from around the world since 1960, highlighting the cultural, political, and economic forces that have shaped various film movements over the last six decades. Specific topics may vary by term/year/instructor. This term's topic, Queer Cinemas around the World, engages with a range of queer cinematic forms and queer spectatorial practices in different parts of the world, as well as BIPOC media from North America. Through film and video from Kenya, Malaysia, India, The Dominican Republic, China, Brazil, Palestine, Japan, Morocco, the US etc., we will examine varied narratives about trans experience, same-sex desire, LGBTQI2S+ rights, censorship, precarity, and hopefulness. This course will attune us to regional cultural specificities in queer expression and representation, prompting us to move away from hegemonic and homogenizing understandings of queer life and media. Notes: Screenings will be held on Fridays at 1:30PM in Oshman Hall. Screening times will vary slightly from week to week.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II | Repeatable 2 times (up to 10 units total)
Instructors: ; Iyer, U. (PI)

GLOBAL 249A: The Iranian Cinema: Image and Meaning

This course will focus on the analysis of ten Iranian films with the view of placing them in discourse on the semiotics of Iranian art and culture. The course will also look at the influence of a wide array of cinematic traditions from European, American, and Asian masters on Iranian cinema. This course must be taken for a minimum of 3 units and a letter grade to be eligible for WAYS credit.
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 1-3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

GLOBAL 249B: Iranian Cinema in Diaspora (COMPLIT 249B)

Despite enormous obstacles, immigrant Iranian filmmakers, within a few decades (after the Iranian Revolution), have created a slow but steady stream of films outside Iran. They were originally started by individual spontaneous attempts from different corners of the world and by now we can identify common lines of interest amongst them. There are also major differences between them. These films have never been allowed to be screened inside Iran, and without any support from the global system of production and distribution, as independent and individual attempts, they have enjoyed little attention. Despite all this, Iranian cinema in exile is in no sense any less important than Iranian cinema inside Iran. In this course we will view one such film, made outside Iran, in each class meeting and expect to reach a common consensus in identifying the general patterns within these works and this movement. Questions such as the ones listed below will be addressed in our meetings each week: What changes in aesthetics and point of view of the filmmaker are caused by the change in his or her work environment? Though unwantedly these films are made outside Iran, how related are they to the known (recognized) cinema within Iran? And in fact, to what extent do these films express things that are left unsaid by the cinema within Iran? NOTE: To satisfy a WAYS requirement, this course must be taken for a minimum 3 units and a letter grade. Please contact your academic advisor for University policy regarding WAYS.
Terms: Win | Units: 1-3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Beyzaie, B. (PI)

GLOBAL 249C: Contemporary Iranian Theater (COMPLIT 249C)

Today, Iranian plays both in traditional and contemporary styles are staged in theater festivals throughout the world and play their role in forming a universal language of theater which combine the heritages from countries in all five continents. Despite many obstacles, some Iranian plays have been translated into English and some prominent Iranian figures are successful stage directors outside Iran. Forty-six years ago when "Theater in Iran" (a monograph on the history of Iranian plays) by Bahram Beyzaie was first published, it put the then contemporary Iranian theater movement "which was altogether westernizing itself blindly" face to face with a new kind of self-awareness. Hence, today's generation of playwrights and stage directors in Iran, all know something of their theatrical heritage. In this course we will spend some class sessions on the history of theater in Iran and some class meetings will be concentrating on contemporary movements and present day playwrights. Given the dearth of visual documents, an attempt will be made to present a picture of Iranian theater to the student. Students are expected to read the recommended available translated plays of the contemporary Iranian playwrights and participate in classroom discussions. NOTE: To satisfy WAYS requirements, you must enroll in the course for a minimum of 3 units. Please contact your academic advisor for more information regarding University WAYS requirements.
Terms: Spr | Units: 1-3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Beyzaie, B. (PI)

HISTORY 3S: A Global History of the Apocalypse: Millenarian Movements in the Modern World

This course will examine the rise, fall, and legacy of modern millenarian movements-- movements that claim that our corrupt world is about to be swept away, to be replaced with a particular version of paradise-- in a global perspective. Drawing on an array of sources ranging from proclamations, diaries, criminal confessions, newspaper accounts, cartoons, songs, photographs, and films, we will explore what, if anything, these movements had in common, and their connections to and influences on one another.
Last offered: Spring 2020 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

HISTORY 4N: What is Nature? Discovering the History of Nature at Stanford

Nature is everywhere. It pops up in advertisements, in news stories, and popular culture. We talk about nature all the time, sometimes without even realizing it: conserving nature, loving nature, and being in nature. But what actually is nature? Are oak trees nature? What about gardens, sunsets, or garbage? Are human beings nature, or is nature a state one can enter into? Do you have to go outdoors to be in nature? In this course we'll get out of the classroom and use the Stanford campus to explore how people in the past have thought about nature and why it has been and continues to be such a potent idea that is so hard to define. Together in this seminar we'll examine the history and design of Stanford University. We'll explore a range of narrative approaches to nature stories. And we'll consider current problems and debates about nature from pollution, to drought, to wildfire, and climate change. The course will culminate in a fun, hands-on project.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

HISTORY 9S: Life Histories of Enslaved Africans around the Globe from the Early Modern Period to the Present

Is there any possibility of hearing silenced voices of enslaved people? If it is so, how and where can we find their own voices? If we find the sources, to what extent can our findings help us differentiate between the lived and remembered experience of bondage? Can experiences of enslaved people fall under one category or can we talk about differences in defining their statuses? Throughout this course, we will be endeavoring to answer these questions by looking at individual experiences. Moreover, we will aim to see whether we can sympathize with the members of this exploited class by arguing that it is of value to know about their experiences. As much as the course benefits from different historical methods and thoughts, the overarching agenda is to contribute to global history through the life stories of enslaved Africans.
Terms: Win | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Ozdemir, O. (PI)

HISTORY 12S: Multiculturalism in the Middle Ages: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Medieval Spain (JEWISHST 12S)

Before the year 1492, Spain had been a dynamic and complex region of Muslim and Christian kingdoms populated by Christians, Muslims, and Jews for nearly 800 years. What political, economic, and military exchanges took place among peoples of the three faiths in medieval Spain? Did community leaders and governments attempt to regulate and prohibit fluid identity boundaries? How has 20th-century Spanish nationalism shaped our understanding of medieval Spain? How have 21st-century questions of multiculturalism impacted our view of medieval Spain? These are the kinds of questions that this course will explore through chronicles, poetry, letters, legal documents, art, and architecture.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

HISTORY 13P: Media and Communication from the Middle Ages to the Printing Press (ENGLISH 13P, ENGLISH 113P, HISTORY 113P, MUSIC 13P, MUSIC 113P)

Did you know that the emperor Charlemagne was illiterate, yet his scribes revolutionized writing in the West? This course follows decisive moments in the history of media and communication, asking how new recording technologies reshaped a society in which most people did not read or write--what has been described as the shift "from memory to written record." To understand this transformation, we examine forms of oral literature and music, from the Viking sagas, the call to crusade, and medieval curses (Benedictine maledictions), to early popular authors such as Dante and the 15th-century feminist scribe, Christine de Pizan. We trace the impact of musical notation, manuscript and book production, and Gutenberg's print revolution. To paraphrase Marshall McLuhan's famous dictum, how did the medium shape the message? Along the way, we will consider how the medieval arts of memory and divine reading (lectio divina) can inform communication in the digital world. This is a hands-on course: students will handle medieval manuscripts and early printed books in Special Collections, and will participate in an "ink-making workshop," following medieval recipes for ink and for cutting quills, then using them to write on parchment. The course is open to all interested students.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Phillips, J. (PI)

HISTORY 32S: Utopian Dreams, Dystopian Nightmares: Visions of the Ideal Society in Early Modern Britain

Visions of the ideal society are a mainstay in the European imagination, from Plato¿s Republic to Charles Fourier¿s phalanstère. Yet utopianism has always been maligned as idealistic, impracticable, or naïve, while its proponents accused variously of hypocrisy, totalitarianism, and abject failure. Nowhere more so has the utopian impulse been felt than in early modern Britain during the age of imperial, scientific, and industrial revolution. This course asks how British writers imagined better futures, starting with Thomas More¿s genre-defining Utopia and ending with the utopian socialists and communitarian experiments of the early nineteenth century. We will ask what utopias can tell us about the societies which imagined them, and appraise their lasting legacies in political thought, social science, and critical theory. Covering themes such as empire, capitalism, gender, enlightenment, and socialism, we will engage with a range of primary sources, including literary texts, cartographic images, political and scientific tracts, and letters, aided by secondary literature from the history of political thought, literary history, the history of science, and theory.
Last offered: Spring 2021 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

HISTORY 35Q: Convict Australia: "Rogues," "Whores," and "Savages"

In 1787, the British government made the audacious decision to send its prisoners to a continent on the other side of the globe about which very little was known. In this new colony, a motley crew had to learn to live together: military men, who were determined to make their unlucky posting pay off; the convicts, who found themselves exiled from their families and homes most often for petty crimes of poverty; the female convicts, who served primarily to fulfill the sexual needs of the men; and the Indigenous peoples, who were deemed absolute "savages" by their invaders. Through early starvation days, rebellions, and frontier wars, a new society was contentiously formed, as various groups battled for supremacy, status, or simply survival and norms of race, class, and gender adapted to a unique environment. In this hands-on IntroSem, we will do the work of the historian: read and interpret primary sources. During class time, we will work in groups, essentially crowd sourcing primary research, in order to piece together what life was like on the ground. We will debate the extent to which we can trust the sources and how best to use "biased" reports. We will also read the interpretations of historians and decide whether or not we agree with them. In doing so, we will see that the writing of history is never complete.
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Burkett, M. (PI)

HISTORY 38S: All That Glitters is not Gold: The Country House in Modern Britain

The country house is more than just the setting for period dramas starring Maggie Smith; its story, from construction to demolition, is also that of modern Britain. This class is a biography of the country house, told each week as a chapter of historical methodology. From palace to military hospital to 'heritage' property of the National Trust, we will use the country house--its occupants, decor, and collections--to see how this symbol of class hierarchy came to be a national rallying point for Brexiteers.
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

HISTORY 40A: The Scientific Revolution

(Same as History 140A. 40A is 3 units; 140A is 5 units.) What do people know and how do they know it? What counts as scientific knowledge? In the 16th and 17th centuries, understanding the nature of knowledge engaged the attention of individuals and institutions including Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes, Newton, the early Royal Society, and less well-known contemporaries. New meanings of observing, collecting, experimenting, and philosophizing, and political, religious, and cultural ramifications in early modern Europe.
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

HISTORY 41Q: The Ape Museum: Exploring the Idea of the Ape in Global History, Science, Art and Film (GLOBAL 41Q)

This course will explore the idea of "the ape" in global history, science, art, and film. The idea that apes might be humanity's nearest animal relatives is only about 200 years old. From the start, the idea developed in a global context: living fossil apes were found in Africa and Asia, and were immediately embroiled in international controversies about theories of human origins and racial hierarchies. This class will look at how and why "the ape" became a generative and controversial new concept in numerous national and regional contexts. We'll explore some of the many ways humans have looked at, studied, and thought about apes around the world: the "out of Asia" versus "out of Africa" hypothesis for human origins; Nim Chimpsky, the chimpanzee raised as a human child; Koko, the gorilla who may have learned sign language; Congo, the chimpanzee who made "abstract" paintings; films such as King Kong, Planet of the Apes, and 2001: Space Odyssey; the ape in World War II and Cold War propaganda in Japan, the Soviet Union, Germany, and the United States; Jane Goodall's study of chimpanzees "culture" and "personality"; the place of apes in natural history museums and zoos around the world; and Stanford's own fraught history of comparing apes and humans through the archival writings of eugenicist founding president David Starr Jordan. Taught in conjunction with an exhibit on global ape imagery at the Stanford Library curated by Professors Riskin and Winterer in 2024, the course will culminate in students' own miniature exhibits for a class-generated "Ape Museum."
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

HISTORY 41S: The Spirit in Motion: Desire in Early Modern Europe

How did people experience and express desire -- for objects, for ideas, or for each other -- in the early modern period? From lusting after a beautiful woman to frantically seeking gold in the farthest corners of the earth, early modern individuals and societies were shaped by the many things they craved. This course will use desire as a lens to better understand its impacts on daily life and culture, and to explore what it meant to want in early modern Europe.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

HISTORY 42N: The Missing Link

This course explores the history of evolutionary science, focusing upon debates surrounding the evolutionary place of human beings in the natural world, by examining the history of the idea of a "missing link," an intermediate form between humans and apes. We will consider famous hoaxes such as the Piltdown Man, and films and stories such as King Kong and Planet of the Apes, as well as serious scientific work such as that of Eugène Dubois, the paleoanthropologist and geologist who discovered Homo erectus (first called Java Man and then Pithecanthropus erectus) and first developed the notion of a missing link. We will take an interest not only in scientific aspects of missing-link theories but in their accompanying political, social and cultural implications. And we'll watch some classic monster films.
Last offered: Autumn 2020 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

HISTORY 42Q: Animal Archives: History Beyond the Human

There's a great big world out there. We humans are just one of a million or more animate beings on this planet. Nonhuman animals have their own histories that influence, intersect with, and stand apart from our own. This IntroSem takes animals seriously as subjects of historical study. Together we'll explore how the study of animals--from platypus to (plastic) pink flamingo--offers new ways of seeing human history. We'll examine how animals have shaped historical events and, inversely, how animals are historical artifacts. And we'll spend the majority of the course puzzling through challenges that arise when studying nonhumans. Can we understand creatures that do not communicate the way we do? Do nonhumans tell stories and chronicle their own histories? Are animals themselves archives of historical information? If so, how do we read them? This course will introduce you to diverse ways of studying historical animals and contemporary creatures too. You'll write animal biographies, practice slow witnessing of the more-than-human world, and conduct research deep dives into nonhuman narratives. You'll encounter multi-disciplinary approaches to our core questions, including historical and cultural analysis, ethnography, scientific inquiry, and technological surveillance. Ultimately, you'll gain insight into how scholars reconstruct the past and know the lives of others, whether human or nonhuman. The creative research skills and critical analysis that you exercise in Animal Archives will serve you in other history courses and beyond.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

HISTORY 45B: Introduction to African Studies I: Africa in the 20th Century

(AFRICAAM/HISTORY 45B is 3 units; AFRICAAM/HISTORY 145B is 5 units.) CREATIVITY. AGENCY. RESILIENCE. This is the African history with which this course will engage. African scholars and knowledge production of Africa that explicitly engages with theories of race and global Blackness will take center stage. TRADE. RELIGION. CONQUEST. MIGRATION. These are the transformations of the 20th century which we shall interrogate and reposition. Yet these groundbreaking events did not happen in a vacuum. As historians, we also think about the continent's rich traditions and histories prior to the 20th century. FICTION. NONFICTION. FILM. MUSIC. Far from being peripheral to political transformation, African creative arts advanced discourse on gender, technology, and environmental history within the continent and without. We will listen to African creative artists not only as creators, but as agents for change.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

HISTORY 46N: Show and Tell: Creating Provenance Histories of African Art (AFRICAAM 46N, AFRICAST 46N)

Provenance refers to the chain of custody of a particular art object during its lifetime. Put another way, provenance refers to all the individuals, communities, and institutions who have owned (both legally and illegally), kept, stored, exhibited, displayed, managed, and sold an art object. Knowledge of provenance can both inflate and deflate the value of an art object and it can also shed light upon legal and ethical questions including assessing repatriation and restitution claims for African art objects. Furthermore, by telling the story of how a particular object moved through multiple pairs of hands, often over the course of centuries and across several continents, we gain nuanced appreciation of the social currency of artwork as well as of changing perceptions of aesthetic and monetary value, and insight into the extractive dynamics of colonialism and postcolonial global economies. For this class, you will have the unique opportunity to work first hand with an important African art collection in North America: the Richard H. Scheller Collection at Stanford University. You will select one object from the collection and create a detailed provenance history, documenting and detailing its origins, its movement across space and time, and its arrival to the Scheller collection in Silicon Valley. You will use archival materials from Scheller¿s collection, online databases and archives, and secondary literature. Your final project for the class will be to create a visual StoryMap that allows you to display your provenance history with narrative text and multimedia content. In this way, you will not only have completed a class assignment: you will also have constructed for posterity a remarkable hitherto unknown history of an important African art object.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

HISTORY 48: The Egyptians (AFRICAAM 30, CLASSICS 82, HISTORY 148)

This course traces the emergence and development of the distinctive cultural world of the ancient Egyptians over nearly 4,000 years. Through archaeological and textual evidence, we will investigate the social structures, religious beliefs, and expressive traditions that framed life and death in this extraordinary region. Students with or without prior background are equally encouraged.
Last offered: Autumn 2020 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

HISTORY 48S: African Voices: Literature and Arts in 20th Century South Africa (AFRICAAM 149)

How did South African Black intellectuals and artists utilize literature and other artistic forms to articulate their increasingly precarious position in the country's political landscape in the 20th century? What hopes and visions were captured through their works? Engaging with numerous sources ranging from speeches, newspapers, short stories, novels, music, film, paintings to photographs, we will explore what Ntongela Masilela calls "New African modernity"--a movement pioneered by different generations of Black intellectuals and artists. We will grapple with the notion of art as political, and the salience of Black women's works in contexts of double marginalization. This class lies at the intersection of intellectual, cultural, and literary histories.
| Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

HISTORY 50A: Colonial and Revolutionary America

(Same as HISTORY 150A. 50A is 3 units; 150A is 5 units.) Survey of the origins of American society and polity in the 17th and 18th centuries. Topics: the migration of Europeans and Africans and the impact on native populations; the emergence of racial slavery and of regional, provincial, Protestant cultures; and the political origins and constitutional consequences of the American Revolution.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

HISTORY 54: The History of Ideas in America, Part I (to 1900) (AMSTUD 54)

(Same as HISTORY 154. 54 is 3 units; 154 is 5 units.) How Americans considered problems such as slavery, imperialism, and sectionalism. Topics include: the political legacies of revolution; biological ideas of race; the Second Great Awakening; science before Darwin; reform movements and utopianism; the rise of abolitionism and proslavery thought; phrenology and theories of human sexuality; and varieties of feminism. Sources include texts and images.
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

HISTORY 54B: The History of Ideas in America, Part II (AMSTUD 54B, AMSTUD 154B, HISTORY 154B)

This course explores intellectual life and culture in the United States during the twentieth century, examining the work and lives of social critics, essayists, artists, scientists, journalists, novelists, and sundry other thinkers. We will look at the life of the mind as a narrative of ongoing yet contested secularization and a series of debates about the meaning and nature of truth, knowing, selfhood, and the American democratic experience. Persistent themes include modernism and anti-modernism, shifts and changes in political liberalism and conservatism, disagreements about the role of the United States in the world, and the importance of distinctions based on race, ethnicity, religion, class, and gender.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

HISTORY 54N: African American Women's Lives (AMSTUD 54N)

This course encourages students to think critically about historical sources and to use creative and rigorous historical methods to recover African American women's experiences, which often have been placed on the periphery of American history and American life.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-Gender, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Hobbs, A. (PI)

HISTORY 63N: The Feminist Critique: The History and Politics of Gender Equality (AMSTUD 63N, CSRE 63N, FEMGEN 63N)

This course explores the long history of ideas about gender and equality. Each week we read, dissect, compare, and critique a set of primary historical documents (political and literary) from around the world, moving from the 15th century to the present. We tease out changing arguments about education, the body, sexuality, violence, labor, politics, and the very meaning of gender, and we place feminist critics within national and global political contexts.
Last offered: Autumn 2020 | Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

HISTORY 69Q: American Road Trips (AMSTUD 109Q)

"Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road." --Jack Kerouac, On the Road, 1957. From Jack Kerouac's On the Road to Cheryl Strayed's Wild, this course explores epic road trips of the twentieth century. Travel is a fundamental social and cultural practice through which Americans have constructed ideas about the self, the nation, the past, and the future. The open road, as it is often called, offered excitement, great adventure, and the space for family bonding and memory making. But the footloose and fancy-free nature of travel that Jack Kerouac celebrated was available to some travelers but not to all. Engaging historical and literary texts, film, autobiography, memoir, photography, and music, we will consider the ways that travel and road trips have been represented in American culture. This course examines the following questions: How did men and women experience travel differently? How did the motivations for travel change over time? What role did race, ethnicity, class, relationships, and sexuality play in these trips? Students will work together to plan a road trip of their own which the class will take during the quarter.
Last offered: Autumn 2017 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

HISTORY 78: Film and History of Latin American Revolutions and Counterrevolutions (FILMEDIA 178, HISTORY 178, ILAC 178)

In this course we will watch and critique films made about Latin America's 20th century revolutions focusing on the Cuban, Chilean and Mexican revolutions. We will analyze the films as both social and political commentaries and as aesthetic and cultural works, alongside archivally-based histories of these revolutions.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

HISTORY 111B: Exploring the New Testament (CLASSICS 43, JEWISHST 86, RELIGST 86)

To explore the historical context of the earliest Christians, students will read most of the New Testament as well as many documents that didn't make the final cut. Non-Christian texts, Roman art, and surviving archeological remains will better situate Christianity within the ancient world. Students will read from the Dead Sea Scrolls, explore Gnostic gospels, hear of a five-year-old Jesus throwing divine temper tantrums while killing (and later resurrecting) his classmates, peruse an ancient marriage guide, and engage with recent scholarship in archeology, literary criticism, and history.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

HISTORY 112C: What Didn't Make the Bible (CLASSICS 9N, JEWISHST 4, RELIGST 4)

Over two billion people alive today consider the Bible to be sacred scripture. But how did the books that made it into the bible get there in the first place? Who decided what was to be part of the bible and what wasn't? How would history look differently if a given book didn't make the final cut and another one did? Hundreds of ancient Jewish and Christian texts are not included in the Bible. "What Didn't Make It in the Bible" focuses on these excluded writings. We will explore the Dead Sea Scrolls, Gnostic gospels, hear of a five-year-old Jesus throwing temper tantrums while killing (and later resurrecting) his classmates, peruse ancient romance novels, explore the adventures of fallen angels who sired giants (and taught humans about cosmetics), tour heaven and hell, encounter the garden of Eden story told from the perspective of the snake, and learn how the world will end. The course assumes no prior knowledge of Judaism, Christianity, the bible, or ancient history. It is designed for students who are part of faith traditions that consider the bible to be sacred, as well as those who are not. The only prerequisite is an interest in exploring books, groups, and ideas that eventually lost the battles of history and to keep asking the question "why." In critically examining these ancient narratives and the communities that wrote them, you will investigate how religions canonize a scriptural tradition, better appreciate the diversity of early Judaism and Christianity, understand the historical context of these religions, and explore the politics behind what did and did not make it into the bible.
Terms: Aut | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Penn, M. (PI); Persad, S. (GP)

HISTORY 113P: Media and Communication from the Middle Ages to the Printing Press (ENGLISH 13P, ENGLISH 113P, HISTORY 13P, MUSIC 13P, MUSIC 113P)

Did you know that the emperor Charlemagne was illiterate, yet his scribes revolutionized writing in the West? This course follows decisive moments in the history of media and communication, asking how new recording technologies reshaped a society in which most people did not read or write--what has been described as the shift "from memory to written record." To understand this transformation, we examine forms of oral literature and music, from the Viking sagas, the call to crusade, and medieval curses (Benedictine maledictions), to early popular authors such as Dante and the 15th-century feminist scribe, Christine de Pizan. We trace the impact of musical notation, manuscript and book production, and Gutenberg's print revolution. To paraphrase Marshall McLuhan's famous dictum, how did the medium shape the message? Along the way, we will consider how the medieval arts of memory and divine reading (lectio divina) can inform communication in the digital world. This is a hands-on course: students will handle medieval manuscripts and early printed books in Special Collections, and will participate in an "ink-making workshop," following medieval recipes for ink and for cutting quills, then using them to write on parchment. The course is open to all interested students.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Phillips, J. (PI)

HISTORY 114: Origins of History in Greece and Rome (CLASSICS 88)

What's the history of `History'? The first ancient historians wrote about commoners and kings, conquest and power - those who had it, those who wanted it, those without it. Their powerful ways of recounting the past still resonate today and can be harnessed to tell new stories. We will look at how ancients like Herodotus, Thucydides, Tacitus, and Livy turned stories about the past into compelling narratives of loss, growth and decline - inventing 'History' as we know it. All readings in English.
Last offered: Spring 2019 | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

HISTORY 116M: "You Know Nothing, Jon Snow": Representations and Misrepresentations of the Middle Ages in Film

Throughout the history of film, writers, directors and producers have made the Middle Ages one of the most popular settings featured in the medium. Some films attempt to faithfully represent this fascinating period in great historical detail. Other films use a deformed image of the Middle Ages as an inspiration for movies that propagate misleading depictions of this important time. Finally, most films could be placed somewhere on the spectrum between these two extremes. This class will examine eight films and one broad theme (e.g., violence, women, politics, etc.) featured in them. Through examination of primary and secondary sources, students will investigate these themes within the context of medieval history, critique their cinematic representation and discuss medievalism and its proponents.
Last offered: Summer 2020 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

HISTORY 116N: Howard Zinn and the Quest for Historical Truth (EDUC 116N)

With more than two million copies in print, Howard Zinn's A People's History is a cultural icon. We will use Zinn's book to probe how we determine what was true in the past. A People's History will be our point of departure, but our journey will visit a variety of historical trouble spots: debates about whether the US was founded as a Christian nation, Holocaust denial, and the "Birther" controversy of President Obama.
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

HISTORY 140A: The Scientific Revolution

(History 140A is 5 units; History 40A is 3 units.) What do people know and how do they know it? What counts as scientific knowledge? In the 16th and 17th centuries, understanding the nature of knowledge engaged the attention of individuals and institutions including Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes, Newton, the early Royal Society, and less well-known contemporaries. New meanings of observing, collecting, experimenting, and philosophizing, and political, religious, and cultural ramifications in early modern Europe.
Terms: Win | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

HISTORY 145B: Introduction to African Studies I: Africa in the 20th Century (AFRICAAM 145B)

(AFRICAAM/HISTORY 45B is 3 units; AFRICAAM/HISTORY 145B is 5 units.) CREATIVITY. AGENCY. RESILIENCE. This is the African history with which this course will engage. African scholars and knowledge production of Africa that explicitly engages with theories of race and global Blackness will take center stage. TRADE. RELIGION. CONQUEST. MIGRATION. These are the transformations of the 20th century which we shall interrogate and reposition. Yet these groundbreaking events did not happen in a vacuum. As historians, we also think about the continent's rich traditions and histories prior to the 20th century. FICTION. NONFICTION. FILM. MUSIC. Far from being peripheral to political transformation, African creative arts advanced discourse on gender, technology, and environmental history within the continent and without. We will listen to African creative artists not only as creators, but as agents for change.
Terms: Aut | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

HISTORY 148: The Egyptians (AFRICAAM 30, CLASSICS 82, HISTORY 48)

This course traces the emergence and development of the distinctive cultural world of the ancient Egyptians over nearly 4,000 years. Through archaeological and textual evidence, we will investigate the social structures, religious beliefs, and expressive traditions that framed life and death in this extraordinary region. Students with or without prior background are equally encouraged.
Last offered: Autumn 2020 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

HISTORY 150A: Colonial and Revolutionary America (AMSTUD 150A)

(HISTORY 50A is 3 units. HISTORY 150A is 5 units) This course surveys early American history from the onset of English colonization of North America in the late sixteenth century through the American Revolution and the creation of the United States in the late eighteenth. It situates the origins and the development of colonial American society as its peoples themselves experienced it, within the wider histories of the North American continent and the Atlantic basin. It considers the diversity of peoples and empires that made up these worlds as well as the complex movement of goods, peoples, and ideas that defined them. The British North American colonies were just one interrelated part of this wider complex. Yet out of that interconnected Atlantic world, those particular colonies produced a revolution for national independence that had a far-reaching impact on the world. The course, accordingly, explores the origins of this revolutionary movement and the nation state that it wrought, one that would rapidly ascend to hemispheric and then global prominence.
Terms: Aut | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

HISTORY 151: The American West (AMSTUD 124A, ARTHIST 152, ENGLISH 124, POLISCI 124A)

The American West is characterized by frontier mythology, vast distances, marked aridity, and unique political and economic characteristics. This course integrates several disciplinary perspectives into a comprehensive examination of Western North America: its history, physical geography, climate, literature, art, film, institutions, politics, demography, economy, and continuing policy challenges. Students examine themes fundamental to understanding the region: time, space, water, peoples, and boom and bust cycles.
Terms: Win | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

HISTORY 154: The History of Ideas in America, Part I (to 1900) (AMSTUD 154)

(Same as HISTORY 54. 154 is 5 units; 54 is 3 units.) How Americans considered problems such as slavery, imperialism, and sectionalism. Topics include: the political legacies of revolution; biological ideas of race; the Second Great Awakening; science before Darwin; reform movements and utopianism; the rise of abolitionism and proslavery thought; phrenology and theories of human sexuality; and varieties of feminism. Sources include texts and images.
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

HISTORY 154B: The History of Ideas in America, Part II (AMSTUD 54B, AMSTUD 154B, HISTORY 54B)

This course explores intellectual life and culture in the United States during the twentieth century, examining the work and lives of social critics, essayists, artists, scientists, journalists, novelists, and sundry other thinkers. We will look at the life of the mind as a narrative of ongoing yet contested secularization and a series of debates about the meaning and nature of truth, knowing, selfhood, and the American democratic experience. Persistent themes include modernism and anti-modernism, shifts and changes in political liberalism and conservatism, disagreements about the role of the United States in the world, and the importance of distinctions based on race, ethnicity, religion, class, and gender.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

HISTORY 168: American History in Film Since World War ll

U.S. society, culture, and politics since WW II through feature films. Topics include: McCarthyism and the Cold War; ethnicity and racial identify; changing sex and gender relationships; the civil rights and anti-war movements; and mass media. Films include: The Best Years of Our Lives, Salt of the Earth, On the Waterfront, Raisin in the Sun, Kramer v Kramer, and Falling Down.
Last offered: Summer 2019 | Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

HISTORY 178: Film and History of Latin American Revolutions and Counterrevolutions (FILMEDIA 178, HISTORY 78, ILAC 178)

In this course we will watch and critique films made about Latin America's 20th century revolutions focusing on the Cuban, Chilean and Mexican revolutions. We will analyze the films as both social and political commentaries and as aesthetic and cultural works, alongside archivally-based histories of these revolutions.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

HISTORY 194G: Humanities Core: Technology and Media in Modern Japan

This course considers the political, economic, social, cultural, and artistic effects of the introduction of new technologies and media to modern China and Japan. The methodology will integrate techniques gleaned from the disciplines of history and literary studies. Our cross-discipline exploration will encompass printed books and images, language reform, communication technology, serialized fiction and commercial journalism, propaganda and censorship, cinema, comics, animation and television, gaming, and the internet. Through examination of these topics we will investigate a wide range of issues including nationality, ethnic identity, class, revolution, cultural identification, gender, sexuality, literacy, colonialism, imperialism, consumerism, materialism, and globalism, to name just a few. Throughout the course we will be attentive not only to the ways that new technology and media are represented in cultural materials but also how they are materialized in these products through the acts of adaptation, translation, transliteration, and remediation.nnStudents will survey, collect, and synthesize archival materials, engage in media analysis, and undertake close readings to illuminate narrative strategies and other signifying effects. This work will in part be facilitated by the Massive Multiplayer Humanities pedagogical model, which involves flipped classrooms, faculty curated online archives, and student initiated group work.
Last offered: Spring 2018 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

HISTORY 200C: Doing the History of Race and Ethnicity

How does ethnicity and race operate in different time periods, and across different historical, national, and cultural contexts? This course guides students through an historical and cross-cultural exploration of ethnoracial identity formation, racism, ethnopolitics, migration, belonging, and exclusion, using primary and secondary sources to examine how the lived experience of race and ethnicity shapes and is shaped by local, regional, and global dimensions. This course forms part of the "Doing History" series: rigorous undergraduate colloquia that introduce the practice of history within a particular field or thematic area.
Last offered: Autumn 2021 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

HISTORY 200D: Doing the History of Science and Technology

An active, activist-oriented exploration of history of science methods, using exploration of the tobacco industry's secret documents as basic research materials. This is a fun class looking at how history of science methods were used to document the diseases caused by cigarettes, and how cigarette makers used (and abused) science to create doubt about their products. We also look at the rise of climate change denialism, which was largely based on "doubt is out product" techniques developed by cigarette makers. Students will produce an paper based on original research into the cigarette industry's formerly secret archives!
Terms: Aut | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Proctor, R. (PI)

HISTORY 200K: Doing Literary History: Orwell in the World (ENGLISH 224)

This course will bring together the disciplines of history and literary studies by looking closely at the work of one major twentieth-century author: the British writer and political polemicist George Orwell. In 1946, Orwell writes, "What I have most wanted to do throughout the past ten years is to make political writing into an art." In these years, Orwell writes about-- and often participates in or witnesses first-hand--a series of major events and crises. These include British imperialism in Burma, urban poverty in Europe, class inequality in England, the conflict between Socialism and Fascism in Spain, and the rise of totalitarianism in the Soviet Union. In engaging all of these events, Orwell experiments with different literary forms, moving between fiction and non-fiction, novel and autobiography, essay and memoir, manifesto and fable, literature and journalism. Few writers demand such sustained and equal attention to text and context: in this course we will move back-and-forth between Orwell's varied writing and the urgent social and political contexts it addresses.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-ER

HISTORY 200U: Doing History: Beyond the Book

This class will teach you how to look for clues in the historical record beyond the usual written texts. The past took place in three dimensions, involved five senses, and included actors that were not human beings. This course takes seriously the challenges of recovering a larger source base than books (although we will also consider books in their materiality as books). What are some of these non-text sources? How should we approach them? What are their prospects and limitations? What do we do when there aren't many sources for our subject? "How do we know what to look for?" is one of the most profound and important questions for historians - and scholars more generally - to ask themselves.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

HISTORY 201D: History Goes Pop! Songwriting the Past (HISTORY 301D)

Historical research doesn't always take the form of a thesis, an article, or a book. Sometimes, research leads to film, museum exhibits, works of art, or... music. In this class, students will collaborate to write, record, and produce original pop music (perhaps even an entire album) based on original research in Stanford's wealth of archives and Special Collections. Background in music is NOT required.
Last offered: Spring 2020 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

HISTORY 204A: Reimagining History: A Workshop (HISTORY 304A)

This class explores, through analysis and practice, the ways in which history can be told and experienced through means other than traditional scholarly narratives. Approaches include literary fiction and non-fiction, digital media, graphic arts, maps, exhibitions, and film. A final project will require students to produce their own innovative work of history.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

HISTORY 206D: Global Humanities: The Grand Millennium, 800-1800 (DLCL 52, HUMCORE 52, JAPAN 52)

How should we live? This course explores ethical pathways in European, Islamic, and East Asian traditions: mysticism and rationality, passion and duty, this and other worldly, ambition and peace of mind. They all seem to be pairs of opposites, but as we'll see, some important historical figures managed to follow two or more of them at once. We will read works by successful thinkers, travelers, poets, lovers, and bureaucrats written between 800 and 1900 C.E. We will ask ourselves whether we agree with their choices and judgments about what is a life well lived.
Last offered: Winter 2020 | Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-ER

HISTORY 206E: CAPITALS: How Cities Shape Cultures, States, and People (COMPLIT 100, DLCL 100, FRENCH 175, GERMAN 175, ILAC 175, ITALIAN 175, URBANST 153)

This course takes students on a trip to major capital cities at different moments in time, including Renaissance Florence, Golden Age Madrid, colonial Mexico City, imperial Beijing, Enlightenment and romantic Paris, existential and revolutionary St. Petersburg, roaring Berlin, modernist Vienna, and transnational Accra. While exploring each place in a particular historical moment, we will also consider the relations between culture, power, and social life. How does the cultural life of a country intersect with the political activity of a capital? How do large cities shape our everyday experience, our aesthetic preferences, and our sense of history? Why do some cities become cultural capitals? Primary materials for this course will consist of literary, visual, sociological, and historical documents (in translation).
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

HISTORY 207F: Crafting Digital Stories

Historians tell stories. Using digital methods, we can tell these stories in creative and innovative ways. This digital humanities course is a hands-on experience of working with different methods of digital storytelling. This course is best suited for students interested in mapping, podcasting, digital publishing, and creating visualizations to present research. Students will interpret historical primary sources in addition to secondary sources to engage in the process of interpreting stories like a historian. There is also a degree of creativity and freedom with the creation of your digital stories.This course is designed to not only teach practical digital storytelling skills, but to also analyze the practicalities of telling historical stories and how to present the information through digital means. In addition, students will have to consider copyright laws, ethics of digital publishing, and concepts of equity of digital storytelling methods. Students will engage in workshops and discussions. No prior technical experience is required.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; McDivitt, A. (PI)

HISTORY 210J: Fascism and Authoritarianism

This course introduces students to the history of fascist and authoritarian movements in modern Europe, from their origins through the post-WWII era. Germany and Italy will serve as central case studies, though the course will consider other examples as well. Through analytical consideration of secondary sources, primary texts, and art as political propaganda, we will interrogate the meanings and applications of these fraught and complex terms, the different forms taken by fascist and authoritarian movements, and their relationship to nationalism, race, religion, gender, and economic and political institutions. Why did millions of Europeans accept -- and even enthusiastically support -- fascist and authoritarian regimes? To what extent was a single, charismatic leader central to the success or failure of such governments? The course will conclude with an opportunity to reflect on the degree to which fascism and authoritarianism are concepts that remain relevant to political discourse in the twenty-first century.
Last offered: Winter 2021 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

HISTORY 212D: Dante's World: A Medieval and Renaissance Journey

700 years ago this year Dante Alighieri died. The Italian poet, philosopher, politician, and humanist crafted one of the great epics of world literature, The Divine Comedy. For seven centuries, his journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven has been a source of inspiration and fascination for countless artists, critics, and students from all over the world. Yet, at heart, his tale is a commentary upon the complex, violent, wealthy, and deeply religious world to which Dante belonged. In this class, we will investigate Dante's world. Medieval Italy held a privileged place in Latin Christendom. Its location upon a peninsula, jutting out into the Mediterranean Sea, meant it was wedged between and deeply affected by the Islamic and Byzantine worlds. It was home to merchants, bankers, nobles, university students, friars, nuns, and heretics, popes, prostitutes, and the city-states in which they all lived together. Italy played a leading role throughout the Middle Ages in economy, art, culture, religion, and politics and gives us the opportunity to jump into a rich and fascinating world, much different from our own. Our guide and witness to this world will be Dante. Each week students will read selected portions of Dante's journey through the afterlife in order to make their own journey through the world of Italy in the Middle Ages.
Last offered: Autumn 2021 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

HISTORY 213F: Medieval Germany, 900-1250 (GERMAN 213, GERMAN 313, HISTORY 313F)

(Undergraduates may sign up for German 213 or History 213F, graduate students should sign up for German 313 or History 313F. This course may be taken for variable units. Check the individual course numbers for unit spreads.) This course will provide a survey of the most important political, historical, and cultural events and trends that took place in the German-speaking lands between 900 and 1250. Important themes include the evolution of imperial ideology and relations with Rome, expansion along the eastern frontier, the crusades, the investiture controversy, the rise of powerful cities and civic identities, monastic reform and intellectual renewal, and the flowering of vernacular literature. This course must be taken for a minimum of 3 units and a letter grade to be eligible for Ways credit
Terms: Spr | Units: 1-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Kamenzin, M. (PI)

HISTORY 214C: Renaissances: Living, Learning, and Loving around the Mediterranean (800-1500 CE)

This course explores three watershed moments in Mediterranean history: the Carolingian Renaissance, the Twelfth-Century Renaissance, and the Italian Renaissance. The class examines how each renaissance redefined a specific place and how those changes influenced connections across the Mediterranean world.
Last offered: Winter 2020 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

HISTORY 215B: Race and Ethnicity in Premodern Europe (ARTHIST 207D, ARTHIST 407D, HISTORY 315B)

How do historians, art historians, and literary historians of premodern Europe shape their research and their teaching around questions of race? How do current debates on race theory shape our perception of the past and deepen historical inquiry? This graduate colloquium focuses on the most recent publications on race in medieval and early modern studies to reflect on such questions while examining the challenges that race studies put on historical definitions, research methodologies, as well as teaching institutions.
Last offered: Winter 2021 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

HISTORY 216D: Nationalism, Colonialism, and the Lord of the Rings: The Middle Ages in the Modern World

From its inception the term "Middle Ages" carried negative connotations. Renaissance humanists bewailed the fall of the Roman Empire and its replacement with "barbarian" kingdoms. Enlightenment philosophes abhorred the Middle Ages even more intensely than their Renaissance forerunners and decried medieval "superstition" and "barbarism." Nevertheless, as part of their rejection of the Enlightenment, nineteenth-century Romantics embraced the Middle Ages and sought inspiration for political and cultural renewal within medieval civilization. From nationalist movements, to colonialism, to movements within high and popular culture interest in the Middle Ages helped fashion the modern world in important ways. This class will explore the complex history associated with the images of the Middle Ages in the modern world.
Last offered: Winter 2021 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

HISTORY 217D: Love, Death and the Afterlife in the Medieval West (FRENCH 217, FRENCH 317, HISTORY 317D, ITALIAN 217, ITALIAN 317)

Romantic love, it is often claimed, is an invention of the High Middle Ages. The vocabulary of sexual desire that is still current in the twenty-first century was authored in the twelfth and thirteenth, by troubadours, court poets, writers like Dante; even by crusaders returning from the eastern Mediterranean. How did this devout society come to elevate the experience of sensual love? This course draws on primary sources such as medieval songs, folktales, the "epic rap battles" of the thirteenth century, along with the writings of Boccaccio, Saint Augustine and others, to understand the unexpected connections between love, death, and the afterlife from late antiquity to the fourteenth century. Each week, we will use a literary or artistic work as an interpretive window into cultural attitudes towards love, death or the afterlife. These readings are analyzed in tandem with major historical developments, including the rise of Christianity, the emergence of feudal society and chivalric culture, the crusading movement, and the social breakdown of the fourteenth century.
Terms: Aut | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Phillips, J. (PI)

HISTORY 218: The Holy Dead: Saints and Spiritual Power in Medieval Europe (HISTORY 318, RELIGST 218X, RELIGST 318X)

Examines the cult of saints in medieval religious thought and life. Topics include martyrs, shrines, pilgrimage, healing, relics, and saints' legends.
Last offered: Winter 2022 | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

HISTORY 230C: Paris: Capital of the Modern World (FRENCH 140, FRENCH 340, URBANST 184)

This course explores how Paris, between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, became the political, cultural, and artistic capital of the modern world. It considers how the city has both shaped and been shaped by the tumultuous events of modern history- class conflict, industrialization, imperialism, war, and occupation. It will also explore why Paris became the major world destination for intellectuals, artists and writers. Sources will include films, paintings, architecture, novels, travel journals, and memoirs. Course taught in English with an optional French section.
Last offered: Spring 2020 | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

HISTORY 231: Leonardo's World: Science, Technology, and Art (ARTHIST 231, ARTHIST 431, HISTORY 331, ITALIAN 231, ITALIAN 331)

Leonardo da Vinci is emblematic of creativity and innovation. His art is iconic, his inventions legendary. His understanding of nature, the human body, and machines made him a scientist and engineer as well as an artist. His fascination with drawing buildings made him an architect, at least on paper. This class explores the historical Leonardo, considering his interests and accomplishments as a product of the society of Renaissance Italy. Why did this world produce a Leonardo? Special attention will be given to interdisciplinary connections between religion, art, science, and technology.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

HISTORY 231G: The Battle for Souls: Europe's Religious Reformations, 1500-1650

How do you get to heaven, and who has the right to decide? The Reformation ruptured Europe and ultimately fractured Western Christianity with competing claims about the soul's health, and the necessary personal beliefs and communal norms to sustain it. It plunged this world into compounding crises of faith, politics, and conscience. At the same time, a media revolution heralded an age of propaganda and censorship. The emergent technology of printing unleashed fiercely public debates that encouraged people to question everything, giving rise to new ideas about skepticism, doubt, and certainty, and new social methods of controlling opinion. We will examine the Reformation by looking at the intersections of media, science, and politics with faith, and grapple with religion's inadvertent role in secularizing society.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Thun-Hohenstein, C. (PI)

HISTORY 235L: Alien Imaginations: Extraterrestrial Speculations in Modern European History

(History 235L is an undergraduate course offered for 5 units; History 335L is a graduate course offered for 4-5 units.) This course will examine the historical basis and evolution of modern European beliefs concerning the existence and nature of alien life throughout the universe, and the ways in which these imagined alien beings have historically reflected an interplay of social, religious, political, and scientific assumptions, hopes, fears, and preoccupations. We will explore the relationship between belief in extraterrestrial life and historical themes and episodes in European history including the debate over heliocentrism, deism and freethought, theories of life and of human nature, changing concepts of national identity, and the intertwined histories of immigration, colonialism, race, and gender. We will particularly examine how and why concepts of the alien took a dark and sinister turn across the late nineteenth- and early-to-mid-twentieth centuries.
Last offered: Summer 2021 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

HISTORY 236F: French Kiss: The History of Love and the French Novel (FRENCH 159, FRENCH 256)

The history of the French novel is also the history of love. How did individuals experience love throughout history? How do novels reflect this evolution of love through the ages? And, most significantly, how have French novels shaped our own understanding of and expectations for romantic love today? The course will explore many forms of love from the Ancien R¿gime to the 20th century. Sentiment and seduction, passion and desire, the conflict between love and society: students will examine these themes from a historical perspective, in tandem with the evolution of the genre of the novel (the novella, the sentimental novel, the epistolary novel, the 19th-century novel, and the autobiographical novel). Some texts will be paired with contemporary films to probe the enduring relevance of love "¿ la fran¿aise" in the media today. Readings include texts by Lafayette, Pr¿vost, Laclos, Dumas fils, Flaubert, Colette, Yourcenar, and Duras. This is an introductory course to French Studies, with a focus on cultural history, literary history, interpretation of narrative, thematic analysis, and close reading. Undergraduate students should enroll for FRENCH159, while graduate students may enroll for FRENCH256. Readings and discussion in English.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Edmondson, C. (PI)

HISTORY 237B: Michelangelo: Gateway to Early Modern Italy (ARTHIST 218A, ARTHIST 418A, HISTORY 337B, ITALIAN 237, ITALIAN 337)

Revered as one of the greatest artists in history, Michelangelo Buonarroti's extraordinarily long and prodigious existence (1475-1564) spanned the Renaissance and the Reformation in Italy. The celebrity artist left behind not only sculptures, paintings, drawings, and architectural designs, but also an abundantly rich and heterogeneous collection of artifacts, including direct and indirect correspondence (approximately 1400 letters), an eclectic assortment of personal notes, documents and contracts, and 302 poems and 41 poetic fragments. This course will explore the life and production of Michelangelo in relation to those of his contemporaries. Using the biography of the artist as a thread, this interdisciplinary course will draw on a range of critical methodologies and approaches to investigate the civilization and culture of Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Course themes will follow key tensions that defined the period and that found expression in Michelangelo: physical-spiritual, classical-Christian, tradition-innovation, individual-collective.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

HISTORY 238C: Virtual Italy (ARCHLGY 117, CLASSICS 115, ENGLISH 115, ITALIAN 115)

Classical Italy attracted thousands of travelers throughout the 1700s. Referring to their journey as the "Grand Tour," travelers pursued intellectual passions, promoted careers, and satisfied wanderlust, all while collecting antiquities to fill museums and estates back home. What can computational approaches tell us about who traveled, where and why? We will read travel accounts; experiment with parsing; and visualize historical data. Final projects to form credited contributions to the Grand Tour Project, a cutting-edge digital platform. No prior programming experience necessary.
Terms: Win | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Ceserani, G. (PI)

HISTORY 238E: Narrating the British Empire (HUMCORE 138)

In this course, we will read major British literary works of the age of empire to explore the relationship between imperialism and modern literature. We will attend to the way imperialism shaped the evolution of a range of genres, from romantic to gothic to mystery to the spy novel, fantasy, and modernism, reading works by authors such as Charlotte Bronte, Rudyard Kipling, Joseph Conrad, E. M. Forster, Agatha Christie, and others. This course is part of the Humanities Core, a collaborative set of global humanities seminars that brings all of its students and faculty into conversation. On Mondays you meet in your own course, and on Wednesdays all the HumCore seminars (in session that quarter) meet together: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

HISTORY 239C: Humanities Core: Great Books, Big Ideas -- Europe, Modern (FRENCH 13, HUMCORE 13, PHIL 13)

What is a good life? How should society be organized? Who belongs? How should honor, love, sin, and similar abstractions govern our actions? What duty do we owe to the past and future? This course examines tcourse examines these questions in the modern period, from the rise of revolutionary ideas to the experiences of totalitarianism and decolonization in the twentieth century. Authors include Locke, Mary Shelley, Marx, Nietzsche, Primo Levi, and Frantz Fanon. This course is part of the Humanities Core, a collaborative set of global humanities seminars that brings all of its students and faculty into conversation. On Mondays you meet in your own course, and on Wednesdays all the HumCore seminars (in session that quarter) meet together: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-ER

HISTORY 239G: The Algerian Wars (CSRE 249, FRENCH 249, JEWISHST 249)

From Algiers the White to Algiers the Red, Algiers, the Mecca of the Revolutionaries in the words of Amilcar Cabral, this course offers to study the Algerian Wars since the French conquest of Algeria (1830-) to the Algerian civil war of the 1990s. We will revisit the ways in which the war has been narrated in literature and cinema, popular culture, and political discourse. A special focus will be given to the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962). The course considers the racial representations of the war in the media, the continuing legacies surrounding the conflict in France, Africa, and the United States, from Che Guevara to the Black Panthers. A key focus will be the transmission of collective memory through transnational lenses, and analyses of commemorative events and movies. nReadings from James Baldwin, Assia Djebar, Albert Camus, Frantz Fanon, Mouloud Feraoun. Movies include "The Battle of Algiers," "Days of Glory," and "Viva Laldjérie." nTaught in English.
Last offered: Spring 2018 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

HISTORY 239T: What is Time?

At a basic level, history is the study of change over time. But the modern discipline of history, as it was formed during the Enlightenment, radically changed conceptions of time itself: from something at times understood as cyclical or directionless to something linear and teleological. Modern history then prompted further reconceptualizations of time: Capitalism introduced new ways of valuing time; the Darwinian revolution introduced a new scale of earthly time; the world wars dented faith in the idea that time passed in the direction of progress; and now climate change has altered conceptions of time in a new way. This course examines evolving understandings of the medium of the historian's craft: what is time? We will examine poetic, scientific, literary, and geographical conceptions of time and trace time's modern history: how colonialism and capitalism produced new experiences of time, and anticolonial and anticapitalist critiques of those experiences. Throughout, we will consider how this history should shape the way historians think about change over time, in terms of questions of scale, human experience, and disciplinary purpose.
Last offered: Winter 2022 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

HISTORY 240C: Great Minds of the Italian Renaissance and their World (ARTHIST 210, ITALIAN 140, ITALIAN 240)

What enabled Leonardo da Vinci to excel in over a dozen fields from painting to engineering and to anticipate flight four hundred years before the first aircraft took off? How did Michelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel Ceiling? What forces and insights led Machiavelli to write "The Prince"? An historical moment and a cultural era, the Italian Renaissance famously saw monumental achievements in literature, art, and architecture, influential developments in science and technology, and the flourishing of multi-talented individuals who contributed profoundly, expertly, and simultaneously to very different fields. In this course on the great thinkers, writers, and achievers of the Italian Renaissance, we will study these "universal geniuses" and their world. Investigating the writings, thought, and lives of such figures as Leonardo da Vinci, Niccol¿ Machiavelli, and Galileo Galilei, we will interrogate historical and contemporary ideas concerning genius, creativity, and the phenomenon of "Renaissance man" known as polymathy. Taught in English. In 2023-24, this course is part of the Humanities Core, a collaborative set of global humanities seminars that brings all of its students and faculty into conversation. On Tuesdays you meet in your own course, and on Thursday all the HumCore seminars in session that quarter meet together: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

HISTORY 243E: Culture and Revolution in Africa (AFRICAAM 213, COMPLIT 213, FRENCH 213E)

This course investigates the relationship between culture, revolutionary decolonization, and post-colonial trajectories. It probes the multilayered development of 20th and 21st-century African literature amid decolonization and Cold War cultural diplomacy initiatives and the debates they generated about African literary aesthetics, African languages, the production of history, and the role of the intellectual. We will journey through national cultural movements, international congresses, and pan-African festivals to explore the following questions: What role did writers and artists play in shaping the discourse of revolutionary decolonization throughout the continent and in the diaspora? How have literary texts, films, and works of African cultural thought shaped and engaged with concepts such as "African unity" and "African cultural renaissance"? How have these notions influenced the imaginaries of post-independence nations, engendered new subjectivities, and impacted gender and generational dynamics? How did the ways of knowing and modes of writing promoted and developed in these contexts shape African futures?
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Seck, F. (PI)

HISTORY 245C: Casablanca - Algiers - Tunis : Cities on the Edge (COMPLIT 236A, CSRE 140S, FRENCH 236, FRENCH 336, JEWISHST 236A, URBANST 140F)

Casablanca, Algiers and Tunis embody three territories, real and imaginary, which never cease to challenge the preconceptions of travelers setting sight on their shores. In this class, we will explore the myriad ways in which these cities of North Africa, on the edge of Europe and of Africa, have been narrated in literature, cinema, and popular culture. Home to Muslims, Christians, and Jews, they are an ebullient laboratory of social, political, religious, and cultural issues, global and local, between the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries. We will look at mass images of these cities, from films to maps, novels to photographs, sketching a new vision of these magnets as places where power, social rituals, legacies of the Ottoman and French colonial pasts, and the influence of the global economy collude and collide. Special focus on class, gender, and race.
Last offered: Spring 2021 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

HISTORY 248: Religion, Radicalization and Media in Africa since 1945 (AFRICAST 248, AFRICAST 348, HISTORY 348, RELIGST 230X, RELIGST 330X)

What are the paths to religious radicalization, and what role have media- new and old- played in these conversion journeys? We examine how Pentecostal Christians and Reformist Muslims in countries such as South Africa, Nigeria, Sudan, and Ethiopia have used multiple media forms- newspapers, cell phones, TV, radio, and the internet- to gain new converts, contest the authority of colonial and post-colonial states, construct transnational communities, and position themselves as key political players.
Last offered: Spring 2021 | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

HISTORY 248C: Curating the Image: African Photography and the Politics of Exhibitions (AFRICAAM 248C, HISTORY 348C)

This course will be built around a photography exhibition at the Cantor Art Center, featuring the images of South African photographer, Sabelo Mlangeni. The class will invite students to consider both the history and the present-day state of photography on the African continent, exploring themes such as social-realist documentary photography and an African tradition of studio photography. The class will also reflect upon curatorial questions, including how, where, and why certain photographic work is displayed, and the aesthetics as well as politics of museum display.
Terms: Aut | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Cabrita, J. (PI)

HISTORY 251C: The American Enlightenment (AMSTUD 251C)

The eighteenth century saw the rise of many exciting new political, religious, and scientific theories about human happiness, perfectibility, and progress that today we call "the Enlightenment." Most people associate the Enlightenment with Europe, but in this course we will explore the many ways in which the specific conditions of eighteenth-century North America --such as slavery, the presence of large numbers of indigenous peoples, a colonial political context, and even local animals, rocks, and plants--also shaped the major questions and conversations of the people who strove to become "enlightened." We'll also explore how American Enlightenment ideas have profoundly shaped the way Americans think today about everything from politics to science to race. The class is structured as lecture and discussion, with deep reading in primary sources from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Last offered: Summer 2021 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

HISTORY 252: Originalism and the American Constitution: History and Interpretation (HISTORY 352)

Except for the Bible no text has been the subject of as much modern interpretive scrutiny as the United States Constitution. This course explores both the historical dimensions of its creation as well as the meaning such knowledge should bring to bear on its subsequent interpretation. In light of the modern obsession with the document's "original meaning," this course will explore the intersections of history, law, and textual meaning to probe what an "original" interpretation of the Constitution looks like.
Terms: Aut | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Gienapp, J. (PI)

HISTORY 253F: Thinking the American Revolution (AMSTUD 253F, HISTORY 353F)

No period in American history has generated as much creative political thinking as the era of the American Revolution. This course explores the origins and development of that thought from the onset of the dispute between Great Britain and its American colonies over liberty and governance through the debates surrounding the construction and implementation of the United States federal Constitution.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

HISTORY 254: Popular Culture and American Nature

Despite John Muir, Aldo Leopold, and Rachel Carson, it is arguable that the Disney studios have more to do with molding popular attitudes toward the natural world than politicians, ecologists, and activists. Disney as the central figure in the 20th-century American creation of nature. How Disney, the products of his studio, and other primary and secondary texts see environmentalism, science, popular culture, and their interrelationships.
Last offered: Autumn 2019 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

HISTORY 261P: The Pen and the Sword: A Gendered History (COMPLIT 140, FEMGEN 141B, ITALIAN 141)

As weapons, the pen and the sword have been used to wound, punish, and condemn as well as to protect, liberate, and elevate. Historically entangled with ideals of heroism, nobility, and civility, the pen and the sword have been the privileged instruments of men. Yet, throughout history, women have picked up the pen and the sword in defense, despair, and outrage as well as with passion, vision, and inspiration. This course is dedicated to them, and to study of works on love, sex, and power that articulate female experience. In our readings and seminars, we will encounter real and fictive women in their own words and in narrations and depictions by others from classical antiquity to the present, with a special focus on the Renaissance and on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Touching on such topics as flattery and slander through the study of misogynistic, protofeminist, and feminist works in the early modern and modern periods in various European literary traditions, we will consider questions of truth and falsehood in fiction and in life. Course materials span a variety genres and media, from poetry, letters, dialogues, public lectures, treatises, short stories, and drama to painting, sculpture, music, and film works regarded for their aesthetic, intellectual, religious, social, and political value and impact.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

HISTORY 290: North Korea in a Historical and Cultural Perspective (HISTORY 390, KOREA 190X, KOREA 290X)

North Korea has been dubbed secretive, its leaders unhinged, its people mindless dupes. Such descriptions are partly a result of the control that the DPRK exerts over texts and bodies that come through its borders. Filtered through foreign media, North Korea's people and places can seem to belong to another planet. However, students interested in North Korea can access the DPRK through a broad and growing range of sources including satellite imagery, archival documents, popular magazines, films, literature, art, tourism, and through interviews with former North Korean residents (defectors). When such sources are brought into conversation with scholarship about North Korea, they yield new insights into North Korea's history, politics, economy, and culture. This course will provide students with fresh perspectives on the DPRK and will give them tools to better contextualize its current position in the world. Lectures will be enriched with a roster of guest speakers.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Moon, Y. (PI)

HISTORY 298E: Chinese Pop Culture: A History

This discussion course examines the evolution of popular culture in the Chinese-speaking world and diaspora from the late imperial era to the present. Analyzing myth, literature, medicine, music, art, film, fashion, and internet culture will help students understand the revolutionary social and political changes that have transformed modern East Asia.
Last offered: Summer 2021 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

HPS 60: Introduction to Philosophy of Science (PHIL 60)

This course introduces students to tools for the philosophical analysis of science. We will cover issues in observation, experiment, and reasoning, questions about the aims of science, scientific change, and the relations between science and values.
Terms: Aut | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

HUMBIO 162L: The Literature of Psychosis (ANTHRO 82P, PSYC 82, PSYC 282)

One of the great gifts of literature is its ability to give us insight into the internal worlds of others. This is particularly true of that state clinicians call "psychosis." But psychosis is a complex concept. It can be terrifying and devastating for patients and families, and yet shares characteristics with other, less pathological states, such as mysticism and creativity. How then can we begin to make sense of it? In this course, we will examine the first-hand experience of psychosis. We will approach it from multiple perspectives, including clinical descriptions, works of art, and texts by writers ranging from Shakespeare, to the science fiction writer Philip K. Dick, to patients attempting to describe their experience. This class is not only for students thinking of careers in medicine, psychology or anthropology, but also readers and writers interested exploring extraordinary texts. There are no prerequisites necessary; all that is needed is a love of language and a curiosity about the secrets of other minds.
Last offered: Spring 2021 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP | Repeatable 2 times (up to 10 units total)

HUMBIO 177: Disability Literature

This course explores literary and filmic narratives about disability in the Global South. Authors including Edwidge Danticat, Bapsi Sidhwa, and Ricardo Padilla highlight the unique aesthetic potential of what Michael Davidson calls the defamiliar body and Ato Quayson describes as aesthetic nervousness. While engaging universal issues of disability stigma, they also emphasize the specific geopolitics of disability and how people in the Global South face greater rates of impairment based on unequal exposure to embodied risk. The course particularly welcomes students with interests in fields of medicine, policy, or public health.
Last offered: Autumn 2018 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

HUMBIO 178A: Intro to Disability Studies: Disability and Technology

For a long time, disability studies has focused on the past, early representations of people with disabilities and histories of the movement for disability rights. This course turns toward the future, looking at activism and speculative fiction as critical vehicles for change. Drawing on fiction by Samuel Beckett, Muriel Rukeyser, and Octavia Butler, this course will address the question of the future through an interrogation of the relationship between disability and technology, including assistive technology, genetic testing, organ transplantation.
Last offered: Autumn 2021 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

HUMBIO 179B: Music and Healing (MUSIC 39B)

To what extent can sound or music heal? This interdisciplinary course asks questions about music and healing around the world, drawing on the fields of medical ethnomusicology, medical anthropology, sound studies, and music therapy. Our case studies will be multi-sited, as we interrogate sound-based healings and healing sounds from diverse cross-cultural, global, and historic perspectives. No musical background is needed to interrogate these issues. We begin with the knowledge that the social, cultural, and political contexts where definitions of music and healing are created inform sound and its various and often conflicting interpretations and meanings. This course is currently full for Autumn Quarter 22-23 enrollment.
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

HUMCORE 12Q: Humanities Core: Great Books, Big Ideas -- Europe, Middle Ages and Renaissance (DLCL 12Q, FRENCH 12Q, ILAC 12Q)

This three-quarter sequence asks big questions of major texts in the European and American tradition. What is a good life? How should society be organized? Who belongs? How should honor, love, sin, and similar abstractions govern our actions? What duty do we owe to the past and future? The second quarter focuses on the transition from the Middle Ages to Modernity, Europe's re-acquaintance with classical antiquity and its first contacts with the New World. Authors include Dante, Shakespeare, Machiavelli, Cervantes, and Milton. N.B. This is the second of three courses in the European track. These courses offer an unparalleled opportunity to study European history and culture, past and present. Take all three to experience a year-long intellectual community dedicated to exploring how ideas have shaped our world and future. Students who take HUMCORE 11 and HUMCORE 12Q will have preferential admission to HUMCORE 13Q (a WR2 seminar).
Last offered: Winter 2019 | Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

HUMCORE 13: Humanities Core: Great Books, Big Ideas -- Europe, Modern (FRENCH 13, HISTORY 239C, PHIL 13)

What is a good life? How should society be organized? Who belongs? How should honor, love, sin, and similar abstractions govern our actions? What duty do we owe to the past and future? This course examines tcourse examines these questions in the modern period, from the rise of revolutionary ideas to the experiences of totalitarianism and decolonization in the twentieth century. Authors include Locke, Mary Shelley, Marx, Nietzsche, Primo Levi, and Frantz Fanon. This course is part of the Humanities Core, a collaborative set of global humanities seminars that brings all of its students and faculty into conversation. On Mondays you meet in your own course, and on Wednesdays all the HumCore seminars (in session that quarter) meet together: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-ER

HUMCORE 21: Humanities Core: Love and Betrayal in Asia (CHINA 21, JAPAN 21, KOREA 21)

Why are lovers in storybooks East and West always star-crossed? Why do love and death seem to go together? For every Romeo and Juliet, there are dozens of doomed lovers in the Asian literary repertoires, from Genji's string of embittered mistresses, to the Butterfly lovers in early modern China, to the voices of desire in Koryo love songs, to the devoted adolescent cousins in Dream of the Red Chamber, to the media stars of Korean romantic drama, now wildly popular throughout Asia. In this course, we explore how the love story has evolved over centuries of East Asian history, asking along the way what we can learn about Chinese, Japanese, and Korean views of family and community, gender and sexuality, truth and deception, trust and betrayal, ritual and emotion, and freedom and solidarity from canonical and non-canonical works in East Asian literatures. N.B. This is the second of three courses in the East Asian track. These courses offer an unparalleled opportunity to study East Asian history and culture, past and present. Take all three to experience a year-long intellectual community dedicated to exploring how ideas have shaped our world and future.
Last offered: Winter 2020 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

HUMCORE 21Q: Humanities Core: Love and Betrayal in Asia (CHINA 21Q, JAPAN 21Q, KOREA 21Q)

Why are lovers in storybooks East and West always star-crossed? Why do love and death seem to go together? For every Romeo and Juliet, there are dozens of doomed lovers in the Asian literary repertoires, from Genji's string of embittered mistresses, to the Butterfly lovers in early modern China, to the voices of desire in Koryo love songs, to the devoted adolescent cousins in Dream of the Red Chamber, to the media stars of Korean romantic drama, now wildly popular throughout Asia. In this course, we explore how the love story has evolved over centuries of East Asian history, asking along the way what we can learn about Chinese, Japanese, and Korean views of family and community, gender and sexuality, truth and deception, trust and betrayal, ritual and emotion, and freedom and solidarity from canonical and non-canonical works in East Asian literatures. N.B. This is the second of three courses in the East Asian track. These courses offer an unparalleled opportunity to study East Asian history and culture, past and present. Take all three to experience a year-long intellectual community dedicated to exploring how ideas have shaped our world and future.
Last offered: Winter 2019 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

HUMCORE 22: Humanities Core: Everybody Eats: The Language, Culture, and Ethics of Food in East Asia (CHINA 118, JAPAN 118, KOREA 118)

Many of us have grown up eating "Asian" at home, with friends, on special occasions, or even without full awareness that Asian is what we were eating. This course situates the three major culinary traditions of East Asia--China, Japan, and Korea--in the histories and civilizations of the region, using food as an introduction to their rich repertoires of literature, art, language, philosophy, religion, and culture. It also situates these seemingly timeless gastronomies within local and global flows, social change, and ethical frameworks. Specifically, we will explore the traditional elements of Korean court food, and the transformation of this cuisine as a consequence of the Korean War and South Korea¿s subsequent globalizing economy; the intersection of traditional Japanese food with past and contemporary identities; and the evolution of Chinese cuisine that accompanies shifting attitudes about the environment, health, and well-being. Questions we will ask ourselves during the quarter include, what is "Asian" about Asian cuisine? How has the language of food changed? Is eating, and talking about eating, a gendered experience? How have changing views of the self and community shifted the conversation around the ethics and ecology of meat consumption?
Last offered: Spring 2020 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, Writing 2

HUMCORE 52: Global Humanities: The Grand Millennium, 800-1800 (DLCL 52, HISTORY 206D, JAPAN 52)

How should we live? This course explores ethical pathways in European, Islamic, and East Asian traditions: mysticism and rationality, passion and duty, this and other worldly, ambition and peace of mind. They all seem to be pairs of opposites, but as we'll see, some important historical figures managed to follow two or more of them at once. We will read works by successful thinkers, travelers, poets, lovers, and bureaucrats written between 800 and 1900 C.E. We will ask ourselves whether we agree with their choices and judgments about what is a life well lived.
Last offered: Winter 2020 | Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-ER

HUMCORE 111: Texts that Changed the World from the Ancient Middle East (COMPLIT 31, JEWISHST 150, RELIGST 150)

This course traces the story of the cradle of human civilization. We will begin with the earliest human stories, the Gilgamesh Epic and biblical literature, and follow the path of the development of law, religion, philosophy and literature in the ancient Mediterranean or Middle Eastern world, to the emergence of Jewish and Christian thinking. We will pose questions about how this past continues to inform our present: What stories, myths, and ideas remain foundational to us? How did the stories and myths shape civilizations and form larger communities? How did the earliest stories conceive of human life and the divine? What are the ideas about the order of nature, and the place of human life within that order? How is the relationship between the individual and society constituted? This course is part of the Humanities Core: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-ER

HUMCORE 112: Great Books, Big Ideas from Ancient Greece and Rome (CLASSICS 37, DLCL 11)

This course will journey through ancient Greek and Roman literature from Homer to St. Augustine, in constant conversation with the other HumCore travelers in the Ancient Middle East, Africa and South Asia, and Early China. It will introduce participants to some of its fascinating features and big ideas (such as the idea of history); and it will reflect on questions including: What is an honorable life? Who is the Other? How does a society fall apart? Where does human subjectivity fit into a world of matter, cause and effect? Should art serve an exterior purpose? Do we have any duties to the past? This course is part of the Humanities Core, a collaborative set of global humanities seminars that brings all of its students and faculty into conversation. On Mondays you meet in your own course, and on Wednesdays all the HumCore seminars (in session that quarter) meet together: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

HUMCORE 113: Looking for the Way (Dao) in East Asia (CHINA 163A)

This course looks at foundations of East Asian thought, including Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism as well as other cultural traditions. The ideologies were first articulated in ancient China (or India) and from there spread to Korea, Japan, and throughout Southeast Asia, where they remain important today. We will read selections from seminal texts including "The Confucian Analects", "Daode jing", "Zhuangzi", and "The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch". Attention is also given to other perennial (and often problematic) themes of Asian life and society, including those of conflicting loyalties and violent revenge. Finally, the course examines aesthetic expression in painting and calligraphy that became the embodiment of classical philosophical values and their own articulation of an aestheticized Way, still widely practiced and admired. This course is part of the Humanities Core, a collaborative set of global humanities seminars that brings all of its students and faculty into conversation. On Mondays you meet in your own course, and on Wednesdays all the HumCore seminars (in session that quarter) meet together: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/.
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

HUMCORE 121: Ancient Knowledge, New Frontiers: How the Greek Legacy Became Islamic Science (CLASSICS 47, COMPLIT 107A)

What is the relation between magic and science? Is religion compatible with the scientific method? Are there patterns in the stars? What is a metaphor? This course will read key moments in Greek and Islamic science and philosophy and investigate the philosophy of language, mathematical diagrams, manuscripts, the madrasa, free will, predestination, and semantic logic. We will read selections from Ibn Taymiya, Ibn Haytham, Omar Khayyam, Baha al-Din al-Amili, and others. This course is part of the Humanities Core, a collaborative set of global humanities seminars that brings all of its students and faculty into conversation. On Tuesdays you meet in your own course, and on Thursdays all the HumCore seminars (in session that quarter) meet together: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Netz, R. (PI)

HUMCORE 122: Humanities Core: Great Minds of the Italian Renaissance and their World (ENGLISH 112C)

What enabled Leonardo da Vinci to excel in over a dozen fields from painting to engineering and to anticipate flight four hundred years before the first aircraft took off? How did Michelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel Ceiling? What forces and insights led Machiavelli to write "The Prince"? An historical moment and a cultural era, the Italian Renaissance famously saw monumental achievements in literature, art, and architecture, influential developments in science and technology, and the flourishing of multi-talented individuals who contributed profoundly, expertly, and simultaneously to very different fields. In this course on the great thinkers, writers, and achievers of the Italian Renaissance, we will study these "universal geniuses" and their world. Investigating the writings, thought, and lives of such figures as Leonardo da Vinci, Niccol¿ Machiavelli, and Galileo Galilei, we will interrogate historical and contemporary ideas concerning genius, creativity, and the phenomenon of "Renaissance man" known as polymathy. Taught in English. On Tuesdays you meet in your own course, and on Thursday all the HumCore seminars in session that quarter meet together: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

HUMCORE 123: Beauty and Renunciation in Japan (JAPAN 163A)

Is it okay to feel pleasure? Should humans choose beauty or renunciation? This is the main controversy of medieval Japan. This course introduces students to the famous literary works that created a world of taste, subtlety, and sensuality. We also read essays that warn against the risks of leading a life of gratification, both in this life and in the afterlife. And we discover together the ways in which these two positions can be not that far from each other. Does love always lead to heartbreak? Is the appreciation of nature compatible with the truths of Buddhism? Is it good to have a family? What kind of house should we build for ourselves? Can fictional stories make us better persons? Each week, during the first class meeting, we will focus on these issues in Japan. During the second class meeting, we will participate in a collaborative conversation with the other students and faculty in Humanities Core classes, about other regions and issues. This course is taught in English. This course is part of the Humanities Core, a collaborative set of global humanities seminars that brings all of its students and faculty into conversation. On Mondays you meet in your own course, and on Wednesdays all the HumCore seminars (in session that quarter) meet together: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

HUMCORE 131: Modernity and Politics in Middle Eastern Literatures (COMPLIT 43)

This course will investigate cultural and literary responses to modernity in the Middle East. The intense modernization process that started in mid 19th century and lingers to this day in the region caused Arabic, Persian, and Turkish literary cultures to encounter rapid changes; borders dissolved, new societies and nations were formed, daily life westernized, and new literary forms took over the former models. In order to understand how writers and individuals negotiated between tradition and modernity and how they adapted their traditions into the modern life we will read both canonical and graphic novels comparatively from each language group and focus on the themes of nation, identity, and gender. All readings will be in English translation. This course is part of the Humanities Core: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Karahan, B. (PI)

HUMCORE 133: Humanities Core: How to be Modern in East Asia (CHINA 24, COMPLIT 44, JAPAN 24, KOREA 24)

Modern East Asia was almost continuously convulsed by war and revolution in the 19th and 20th centuries. But the everyday experience of modernity was structured more profoundly by the widening gulf between the country and the city, economically, politically, and culturally. This course examines literary and cinematic works from China and Japan that respond to and reflect on the city/country divide, framing it against issues of class, gender, national identity, and ethnicity. It also explores changing ideas about home/hometown, native soil, the folk, roots, migration, enlightenment, civilization, progress, modernization, nationalism, cosmopolitanism, and sustainability. All materials are in English. This course is part of the Humanities Core: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Reichert, J. (PI); Xu, L. (PI)

HUMCORE 135: Atlantic Folds: Indigeneity and Modernity (COMPLIT 46)

The Atlantic as an infinite doubling of ancient and modern. The Atlantic as an endless, watery cloth of African, American, and European folds, unfolding and refolding through bodies and ideas: blackness, whiteness, nature, nurture, water, blood, cannibal, mother, you, and I. The Atlantic as a concept, a space, a muse, a goddess. The Atlantic as birth and burial. One ocean under God, divisible, with salt enough for all who thirst. Authors include: Paul Gilroy, Gilles Deleuze, Chimamanda Adichie, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Davi Kopenawa, Pepetela, Beyoncé, and José Vasconcelos. This course is part of the Humanities Core: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/
Last offered: Spring 2021 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

HUMCORE 138: Narrating the British Empire (HISTORY 238E)

In this course, we will read major British literary works of the age of empire to explore the relationship between imperialism and modern literature. We will attend to the way imperialism shaped the evolution of a range of genres, from romantic to gothic to mystery to the spy novel, fantasy, and modernism, reading works by authors such as Charlotte Bronte, Rudyard Kipling, Joseph Conrad, E. M. Forster, Agatha Christie, and others. This course is part of the Humanities Core, a collaborative set of global humanities seminars that brings all of its students and faculty into conversation. On Mondays you meet in your own course, and on Wednesdays all the HumCore seminars (in session that quarter) meet together: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

ILAC 12Q: Humanities Core: Great Books, Big Ideas -- Europe, Middle Ages and Renaissance (DLCL 12Q, FRENCH 12Q, HUMCORE 12Q)

This three-quarter sequence asks big questions of major texts in the European and American tradition. What is a good life? How should society be organized? Who belongs? How should honor, love, sin, and similar abstractions govern our actions? What duty do we owe to the past and future? The second quarter focuses on the transition from the Middle Ages to Modernity, Europe's re-acquaintance with classical antiquity and its first contacts with the New World. Authors include Dante, Shakespeare, Machiavelli, Cervantes, and Milton. N.B. This is the second of three courses in the European track. These courses offer an unparalleled opportunity to study European history and culture, past and present. Take all three to experience a year-long intellectual community dedicated to exploring how ideas have shaped our world and future. Students who take HUMCORE 11 and HUMCORE 12Q will have preferential admission to HUMCORE 13Q (a WR2 seminar).
Last offered: Winter 2019 | Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ILAC 102: Spanish Through Poetry

This Spanish poetry course is designed for intermediate and advanced speakers interested in environmental issues. It examines how poetry reflects and reimagines the environment, specifically in Latin America, including Latinx poetry, from the 70s to the present. The course explores different aesthetic and theoretical approaches to poetry related to nature, ecopoetry, postnatural poetry, and poetry of place. Students will analyze and discuss poetry in different media and formats, including single-authored, collective, serial, and multimedia poems. We will explore how environmental concerns are expressed through formal language and imagery. We will examine whether poetic devices obscure or reveal environmental inquiries and how poetic language can highlight power dynamics and promote ecological consciousness. We will delve into the formal aspects of poetry and the material processes involved in creating environmental poetic imagery and connect poetry to environmental activism. Students must also enroll in the related course SPANLANG 121 "Concurrent Writing Support" for language learning.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Castro, A. (PI)

ILAC 103E: Archeology of Computer Science: Islamic, Iberian, and Pre-Columbian Roots

This course examines the history of computer science before there were computers and before there was a scientific field. It makes use of an archaeology of knowledge to find traces in the past for ideas and practices common in our present. We will explore in this course some of the ideas and devices that foreshadowed, during the Middle Ages and Early Modernity, the field of computation. We will also explore the different uses that were given or were meant to be given to these ideas and devices. In this journey, we will discover how different cultures created, used, or imagined different devices for computation. Some of the topics that we will cover are: al-Khwarizmi's algebra, al-Jazari's clocks, Raymond Llull's combinatorial diagrams, Peruvian Quipus, and Leibniz's binary numbers. Our focus is cultural, philosophical, and historical, the course will not involve programming and knowing how to program is not a prerequisite. Taught in English.
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

ILAC 104: The Female Gaze: 20th-21st Century Iberian Literature and Visual Culture

What is gazing in Literature, Photography, and Film? Is there such a thing as a "female gaze"? In this course, we will explore the concept of "the gaze" in Modern and Contemporary Iberian Literature and Visual Culture from a gender perspective and a multimedia approach. We will examine narrative, photographic, and cinematic works produced in Spain and Portugal from the 1930s to today by major authors such as Mercè Rodoreda, Lídia Jorge, "Colita", Icíar Bollaín, or Carlos Saura, among others. We will pay attention to perspective and positionality to explore how women gaze and are gazed as new technologies and ways of seeing evolve. Students will learn to visually analyze cultural artifacts and to compare how different media and forms question notions of gender and (in)visibility. Students will improve their interpretative and communication skills in Spanish. Taught in Spanish. Non-majors may write in English.
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ILAC 105: Climate Change and Latin American Naturecultures

In this course, we will explore fundamental concepts of the environmental humanities as they relate to the inseparable natural and cultural phenomena that constitute climate change in Latin America. The course will be structured around different ecological themes, such as energy and extractive industries, the Amazon, the desert, the Andes, the Caribbean, and urban habitats, that will be examined through twentieth- and twenty-first-century Latin American novels, films, short stories, and songs. Possible authors include Gloria Anzald¿a, Macarena G¿mez-Barris, Gabriel Garc¿a M¿rquez, and Jos¿ Eustasio Rivera. We will consider the ethics and politics of climate change in the Americas, how the methodologies of literary and decolonial studies can generate insights into contemporary climate change impacts in Latin America, and what role culture has in a period defined by chronic and slow-moving environmental crisis and recovery. Taught in Spanish. Students must also enroll in the related course SPANLANG 121 "Concurrent Writing Support" for language learning.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Briceno, X. (PI)

ILAC 111Q: Texts and Contexts: Spanish/English Literary Translation Workshop (COMPLIT 111Q, DLCL 111Q)

The Argentinian writer and translator, Jorge Luis Borges, once said, 'Cada idioma es un modo de sentir el universo.' How are modes of feeling and perception translated across languages? How does the historical context of a work condition its translation into and out of a language? In this course, you will translate from a variety of genres that will teach you the practical skills necessary to translate literary texts from Spanish to English and English to Spanish. By the end of the term, you will have translated and received feedback on a project of your own choosing. Discussion topics may include: the importance of register, tone, and audience; the gains, in addition to the losses, that translations may introduce; the role of ideological, social-political, and aesthetic factors on the production of translations; and comparative syntaxes, morphologies, and semantic systems. Preference will be given to sophomores but freshman through seniors have enjoyed this course in the past. Course taught in Spanish.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

ILAC 113Q: Borges and Translation (DLCL 113Q)

Borges's creative process and practice as seen through the lens of translation. How do Borges's texts articulate the relationships between reading, writing, and translation? Topics include authorship, fidelity, irreverence, and innovation. Readings will draw on Borges's short stories, translations, and essays. Taught in Spanish. Prerequisite: 100-level course in Spanish or permission of instructor.
Last offered: Autumn 2017 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

ILAC 116: Approaches to Spanish and Spanish American Literature

Short stories, poetry, and theater. What analytical tools do the "grammars" of different genres call for? What contact zones exist between these genres? How have ideologies, the power of patronage, and shifting poetics shaped their production over time? Authors may include Arrabal, Borges, Cort¿zar, Cernuda, Garc¿a M¿rquez, Lorca, Neruda, Rivas. Taught in Spanish. Prerequisite: 100-level course in Spanish or permission of instructor.
Last offered: Autumn 2018 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ILAC 116Q: Not Quite White?: Whiteness in and Across the Americas

Is Brazilian model Gisele Bundchen a woman of color? Does the answer to that question change whether she is in Brazil or in the United States? Why was there a backlash in the Mexican entertainment industry to the stardom of visibly and proudly indigenous actors Yalitza Aparicio (the star of the film Roma) and Tenoch Huerta (Wakanda Forever)? Would a white-presenting person with one Black grandmother be eligible for university admissions through Brazil¿s socioeconomic and racial quotas? In this seminar style IntroSem, we will explore these questions through an investigation of whiteness and white supremacy in the Americas, with a focus on Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, the Southern Cone, and the US and the Latinx community. Through in-class discussions and collaborative curation projects, we will analyze historical documents, current events, films, and, yes, Twitter debates, to think critically about whiteness in Latin America, how it relates to discourses of racial democracy, and how its ambiguity perpetuates national and regional identities founded on anti-Indigenous and anti-Black racism. You will engage with a wide range of methodological approaches to studying whiteness, including ethnography and psychology, as well as theoretical traditions like Black feminism and decoloniality. Your multidisciplinary final projects will showcase the skills you develop in using historical and cultural analysis as an entry point to examine and compare the different ways in which whiteness works throughout the Americas. Taught in English.
| Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

ILAC 119: The Memory of the Eye: Iberian Cinema from Buñuel to Almodóvar

An introduction to Spanish, Portuguese, Basque, and Catalan cinema through films from the 1920s and 30s to the present. How film uses a visual grammar of the image to tackle social questions and construct a collective memory. This course will consider the problems of individual recollection under conditions of collective trauma and distortion of the past, exploring the relation between film and history. The course will also focus on how images can be used to explore subjectivity and the passions. We will be watching outstanding films by Luis Buñuel, Carlos Saura, Víctor Erice, Bigas Luna, Pedro Almodóvar, Miguel Gomes, Julio Medem, Ventura Pons, Iciar Bollaín, and Isabel Coixet. Students will be responsible for watching all the films, engaging in lively discussion, in preparation for which, they will be asked to consider certain issues in writing before each class. Each student will present on one of the films for about fifteen minutes. There will be one short midterm essay and one final paper "on a different film."
Last offered: Spring 2020 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ILAC 122: Drugs, Literatures and Visual Cultures in Latin America

This course aims to study the visibility of the drug object in some fin-de-siècle (19th and 20th centuries) Latin American literary practices, magazines, and journals of the time. Through the examination of this corpus of texts and images, we will discuss the idea of the cultural, geographical, social, sensorial crossings or borders and its critical connections with a literary narrative where the ethnographic journey (within the city or on the geopolitical boundaries of the nation) and the exploration of the limits of sensitivity are intertwined. In the same way, this course will study the different aspects of visual culture related to the representation of drugs in order to reposit images and texts in a dynamic cultural and sensory border and thus try to shake the narcographic maps of modernism.T his course will be taught in Spanish. This will be taught by visiting Professor Contreras.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ILAC 122A: Radical Poetry: The Avant-garde in Latin America and Spain (COMPLIT 122A)

The first few decades of the 20th century ushered in a dynamic literary and aesthetic renewal in Spain and Latin America. Young poets sought a radical change in response to a rapidly changing world, one marked by the horrors of World War I and the rise of a new technological urban society. This course will focus on the poetry and attendant manifestos of movements such as Creacionismo, Ultraismo, Estridentismo, Surrealismo and other -ismos. How did the European avant-garde (e.g. Futurism, Dada, and Surrealism) inform such aesthetic turns? In what ways did poetry assimilate modern visual culture while questioning established poetics? Authors may include Aleixandre, Borges, Cansino-Assens, G. Diego, G. de Torre, Huidobro, Larrea, Lorca, Maples Arce, Neruda, Tablada, and Vallejo. Taught in Spanish.
Last offered: Autumn 2021 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ILAC 123A: Resisting Coloniality: Then and Now (COMPLIT 123A)

What are the different shapes that Western colonialism took over the centuries? How did people resist the symbolic and material oppressions engendered by such colonialist endeavors? This course offers a deep dive into history of the emergence of Western colonialism (alt: Spanish and Portuguese empires) by focusing on literary and cultural strategies of resisting coloniality in Latin America, from the 16th century to the present. Students will examine critiques of empire through a vast array of sources (novel, letter, short story, sermon, history, essay), spanning from early modern denunciations of the oppression of indigenous and enslaved peoples to modern Latin American answers to the three dominant cultural paradigms in post-independence period: Spain, France, and the United States. Through an examination of different modes of resistance, students will learn to identify the relation between Western colonialism and the discriminatory discourses that divided people based on their class, gender, ethnicity, and race, and whose effects are still impactful for many groups of people nowadays. Authors may include Isabel Guevara, Catalina de Erauso, el Inca Garcilaso, Sor Juana, Simón Bolívar, Flora Tristán, Silvina Ocampo, Jorge Luis Borges, and Gabriel García Márquez. Taught in Spanish.
Last offered: Summer 2021 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

ILAC 124: Coming of Age in Latin America

What can a novel tell us about coming of age? How does a novel shape a character when they do not conform to social norms? This course interrogates how the coming of age novel the Bildungsroman may combine, successfully or not, a narrative of national social progress and of personal growth. We will compare and contrast short selections from 19th, 20th and 21st centuries novels, while analyzing two masterpieces in depth. Taught in Spanish.
Last offered: Spring 2021 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ILAC 126: Latin American Art and Literature: 100 Years of Modernisms (ARTHIST 293A)

This course will explore the different kinds of modernisms and modernities that Latin American artists and authors have produced from the early twentieth century to the present. Defined as a break with the past and with tradition, the term "modernism" in Latin America has signified specific transformations that speak to the continent¿s long history of colonialism and alleged marginality in relation to Europe and the United States. How have Latin American artistic and literary movements drawn from and broken with European modernisms and avant-gardes? What meanings of "tradition" and "modernity" emerge from their works, especially in their engagement with Indigenous and Afro-Latin American cultures? By examining artworks together with literary texts, we will address their aesthetic dimensions, as well as the socio-historical and political conditions that made them possible. Some movements may include Antropofagia (Brazil), Mexican Muralism, Surrealism, Indigenisms, Afro-Caribbean art and literature, Abstractionism, Neo-Concretism, and Tropicalia. Course content and discussions will be in English. ILAC/Spanish majors should take the course for 5 units and must do the readings and assignments in Spanish.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

ILAC 127: After Dictatorship: Facts, Fiction, and Justice in Latin America

In the wake of dictatorships across twentieth-century Latin America, writers and artists (as well as laws and truth commissions) have confronted past human rights violations. Today, authors across disciplines and genres continue to grapple with past atrocities. In this course, as we examine the stories we tell about the past, we will focus on concepts such as memory, truth, and justice. What kind of truth can fiction uncover? Whose stories are either remembered or excluded? How do different types of narratives confront issues of human rights and justice? And what can these narratives teach us about issues we continue to face today? Course will be taught in Spanish with the option to write in English (majors should write in Spanish). Readings will be in Spanish (and in Portuguese with translation) and will include fictional and "true crime" narratives as well as legal/historical texts and manifestos. Authors may include Alia Trabucco Zerán, Gonzálo Eltesch, Selva Almada, Mariana Enríquez, Neusa Maria Pereira, and Julián Fuks.
Last offered: Winter 2021 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ILAC 128: Spanish through Comics (CHILATST 128)

The course, an exploration of the graphic narrative medium in Spanish, is open to intermediate and advanced Spanish speakers. We'll analyze vignettes, sections, or chapters from both auteur and pop-culture series. These may include Arrugas and Lola Vendetta (Spain), Mafalda, Macanudo, Naftalina, and El eternauta (Argentina), Los once and Caminos condenados (Colombia), Nos vamos (Ecuador/ Colombia), Vivos se los llevaron (Mexico), as well as Spy vs. Spy and My Favorite Thing is Monsters (ChicanX/LatinX). Secondary sources include McCloud, Mbembe, Chute, and Aldama. The through line will be representations and instantiations of power struggles in this deceivingly naive form. Visual narratological aspects and the specificity of the medium will also be discussed at length. Language learners and everyone who wants detailed feedback on their Spanish must enroll in the cognate course SPANLANG 121 "Concurrent Writing Support."
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

ILAC 130: Introduction to Iberia: Cultural Perspectives

The purpose of this course is to study major figures and historical trends in modern Iberia against the background of the linguistic plurality and cultural complexity of the Iberian world. We will cover the period from the loss of the Spanish empire, through the civil wars and dictatorships to the end of the Portuguese Estado Novo and the monarchic restoration in Spain. Particular attention will be given to the Peninsula's difficult negotiation of its cultural and national diversity, with an emphasis on current events. This course is designed to help prepare students for their participation in the Stanford overseas study program in Spain. Taught in Spanish.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

ILAC 131: Introduction to Latin America: Cultural Perspectives

This course focuses on the emergence of Latin America in modern times. How did the distinct nations and cultures of Latin America develop out of Spain and Portugal's former territories? The foundational, tumultuous period from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-twentieth century witnessed rebellions and revolts; independence and abolition; liberal reforms and revolutions; urbanization and the consolidation of national cultures. Students will give special consideration to the formation of political bodies in the nineteenth century and cultural identities in the twentieth century, all while considering the strategic means by which these processes effectively excluded or included large sectors of the population. Knowledge of this period in the region is crucial to understanding the world today. Taught in Spanish.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Hoyos, H. (PI); Viana, J. (SI)

ILAC 132: Drug Wars: from Pablo Escobar to the Mara Salvatrucha to Iguala Mass Student Kidnapping

This course will study the ways in which Latin American Narcos are represented in feature films, documentaries, essays, and novels. We will choose two regions and times: Pablo Escobar's Colombia (1949-1993) and current Mexico (1990-2015), including the mass students kidnappings in Iguala, México, 2014. Films: Sins of my Father (Entel, 2009); Pablo's Hippos (Lawrence Elman, 2010); True Story of Killing Pablo, David Keane (2002), Sumas y restas (Víctor Gaviria, 2003); La vida loca (Poveda, 2009), Sin nombre (Cary Fukunaga, 2009), El velador (Almada, 2011); La jaula de oro (Quemada-Díez, 2013); La bestia (Pedro Ultreras, 2010); Cartel Land (Heineman, 2015); The Missing 43 (Vice, 2015). Books: Alejandra Inzunza, José Luis Pardo, Pablo Ferri: Narco America, de los Andes a Manhattan (2015); Sergio González Rodríguez: El hombre sin cabeza (2010); Rafael Ramírez Heredia: La Mara (2004).
Last offered: Winter 2020 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

ILAC 136: Modern Iberian Literatures

1800 to the mid 20th century. Topics include: romanticism; realism and its variants; the turn of the century; modernism and the avant garde; the Civil War; and the first half of the 20th century. Authors may include Mariano Jose de Larra, Gustavo Adolfo Becquer, Rosalia de Castro, Benito Perez Galdos, Jacint Verdaguer, Eca de Queiros, Miguel de Unamuno, Ramon de Valle-Inclan, Antonio Machado, and Federico García Lorca. Taught in Spanish. Prerequisites: SPANLANG 13 or equivalent.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Surwillo, L. (PI)

ILAC 140: Migration in 21st Century Latin American Film (CHILATST 140)

Focus on how images and narratives of migration are depicted in recent Latin American film. It compares migration as it takes place within Latin America to migration from Latin America to Europe and to the U.S. We will analyze these films, and their making, in the global context of an ever-growing tension between "inside" and "outside"; we consider how these films represent or explore precariousness and exclusion; visibility and invisibility; racial and gender dynamics; national and social boundaries; new subjectivities and cultural practices. Films include: Bolivia, Copacabana, La teta asustada, Norteado, Sin nombre, Migraci¿n, Ulises, among others. Films in Spanish, with English subtitles. Discussions and assignments in Spanish.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Briceno, X. (PI)

ILAC 142: Decadent Interiorities: Modernismo in Spanish

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the concept of interior realm (reino interior) refers to a series of writings and creative practices that name ways in which the modern subject confronts this "new" sensorial and affective territory of interiority. We will study private zones of introspection and imagination through different historical media: poetry, short story, letters, visual arts, and magazines. Spanish proficiency is required.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Contreras, A. (PI)

ILAC 145: Poets, Journalists and Collectors: Latin American Modernismo

Discusses the different artistic avatars exercised by Latin American modernistas at the turn of the 19th Century in the context of growing capitalism, technological innovation and social transformation. We focus on how modernistas as poets, journalists and collectors explored and transgressed the limits of the individual and his/her situation. We consider topics like cosmopolitanism, dandysm, autonomy of art, and the aesthetic cultivation of the self. Authors include: Delmira Agustini, Rubén Darío, Julián del Casal, Leopoldo Lugones, José Martí, Manuel Gutierrez Nájera, José Enrique Rodó, José Asunción Silva, and Abraham Valdelomar. Spanish proficiency required.
Last offered: Spring 2018 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ILAC 146: The Poetics of Crisis: Imaginación poética y crisis social en la poesía mexicana moderna

This class will focus on the intersection of poetics and politics in modern Mexican poetry, from the transformations of the mid-century, the turmoil of 1968 student movement, to the "War on drugs" and neoliberal policies that have reshaped Mexican society at the beginning of the 21st century. This class explores the relationship between textual strategies and the ongoing social and diverse forms of political crisis in Modern Mexico. The course will include readings from key authors such as Rosario Castellanos, Octavio Paz, Maria Rivera, Cristina Rivera Garza, Dolores Dorantes, Hubert Matiúwàa and Heriberto Yépez. The purpose of this class is to introduce students to new ways of understanding the relationship between literature and society, and particularly between poetry and politics, and to understand the new voices of poetry in Mexico. Taught in Spanish. Instructor: Dr. Hugo García Manríquez
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

ILAC 147: Spanish Through Documentaries

The use of cameras in our cellphones and the constant register of everyday life through the internet has turned "documentary" into an elusive category. The course situates documentary practices in Spanish-language films. Rather than working towards the ultimate definition of documentary, this course engages in a rich discussion of different aspects of the documentary impulse and its modes. Students will develop visual literacy skills in Spanish, while we move from Third Cinema classic examples from the 60s and 70s to contemporary re-elaborations of the documentary. We explore different aesthetic approaches to nonfiction films and question the charged relationships they create between document, testimonio, documentary, fiction, objectivity, and truth. The course is open to students with an intermediate and advanced Spanish proficiency level. Language learners must enroll in the cognate course SPANLANG 121.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ILAC 149: The Laboring of Diaspora & Border Literary Cultures (COMPLIT 149, CSRE 149)

Focus is given to emergent theories of culture and on comparative literary and cultural studies. How do we treat culture as a social force? How do we go about reading the presence of social contexts within cultural texts? How do ethno-racial writers re-imagine the nation as a site with many "cognitive maps" in which the nation-state is not congruent with cultural identity? How do diaspora and border narratives/texts strive for comparative theoretical scope while remaining rooted in specific local histories. Note: This course must be taken for a letter grade to be eligible for WAYS credit.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

ILAC 151: Cuban Literature and Film: Imagination, Revolt, and Melancholia.

Since the late nineteenth century, the island of Cuba has been at the center of a number of key epochal disputes: between colonialism and independence, racism and racial justice, neocolonialism and revolution, liberalism and socialism, isolationism and globalization. In the arts, the turn of the century launched a period of great aesthetic invention. Considering the singular place of Cuba in Latin America, the Caribbean, and the globe, this course addresses some of the most representative works of Cuban literature and film since independence until the present time. Special attention will be given to Afrocubanismo, ethnographic literature, the avant-garde aesthetics of the group Orígenes, Marvelous Realism, testimony, revolution, socialist experimental film, diaspora, the Special Period, and post-Soviet life. Taught in Spanish.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ILAC 155: Rivers That Were: Latin American Ecopoetry (COMPLIT 155)

For over a century, poetry in Latin America has been tracing the connections between the human and the nonhuman. We will examine closely the ways in which such poetry registers environmental degradation and its disproportionate impacts along axes of race, gender, and class. How does such poetry unearth a history of colonialism and extractivism that continues to manifest socio-politically and economically in the Latin American landscape? What futures do these eco-poets imagine and advocate? In its encounter with the natural world, poetry makes us feel: how might it inspire us to act? Texts include works by Mistral, Neruda, Parra, Cardenal, Pacheco, Aridjis, Calderón, and Huenún. Taught in Spanish.
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

ILAC 157: Medieval and Early Modern Iberian Literatures

From roughly 1000 to 1700 CE. A survey of significant authors and works of early Iberian literatures, focusing on fictional/historical prose and poetry. Topics include lyric poetry and performance, the rise of European empire, Islam in the West, the rise of the novel, early European accounts of Africa and the Americas. Authors may include: Andalusi lyric poets, Llull, the Archpriest of Hita, Zurara, March, Rojas, Vaz de Caminha, Cabeza de Vaca, Sá de Miranda, Monte(ay)or, Teresa of Ávila, Camões, Mendes Pinto, Góngora, Sóror Violante do Céu, Sor Juana, Calderón, and Cervantes. Taught in Spanish.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Barletta, V. (PI)

ILAC 159: Don Quijote

Focus is on a close reading of Miguel de Cervantes's prose masterpiece. Topics include: the rise of the novel, problems of authorship and meaning, modes of reading, the status of Muslim and Jewish converts in early modern Spain, the rise of capitalism, masochistic desire. Taught in Spanish. Prerequisites: SPANLANG 13 or equivalent.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Barletta, V. (PI)

ILAC 161: Modern Latin American Literature

A survey of significant authors and works of Hispanic and Brazilian Portuguese literatures, focusing on fictional prose and poetry. Topics include romantic allegories of the nation; modernism and postmodernism; avant-garde poetry; regionalism versus cosmopolitanism; Indigenous and indigenist literature; magical realism and the literature of the boom; Afro-Hispanic literature; and testimonial narrative. Authors may include: Bol¿var, Bello, G¿mez de Avellaneda, Isaacs, Sarmiento, Machado de Assis, Dar¿o, Mart¿, Agustini, Vallejo, Huidobro, Borges, Cort¿zar, Neruda, Guillon, Rulfo, Ramos, Garc¿a Marquez, Lispector, and Bola¿o. Taught in Spanish.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Hughes, N. (PI); Kim, Y. (TA)

ILAC 175: CAPITALS: How Cities Shape Cultures, States, and People (COMPLIT 100, DLCL 100, FRENCH 175, GERMAN 175, HISTORY 206E, ITALIAN 175, URBANST 153)

This course takes students on a trip to major capital cities at different moments in time, including Renaissance Florence, Golden Age Madrid, colonial Mexico City, imperial Beijing, Enlightenment and romantic Paris, existential and revolutionary St. Petersburg, roaring Berlin, modernist Vienna, and transnational Accra. While exploring each place in a particular historical moment, we will also consider the relations between culture, power, and social life. How does the cultural life of a country intersect with the political activity of a capital? How do large cities shape our everyday experience, our aesthetic preferences, and our sense of history? Why do some cities become cultural capitals? Primary materials for this course will consist of literary, visual, sociological, and historical documents (in translation).
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

ILAC 178: Film and History of Latin American Revolutions and Counterrevolutions (FILMEDIA 178, HISTORY 78, HISTORY 178)

In this course we will watch and critique films made about Latin America's 20th century revolutions focusing on the Cuban, Chilean and Mexican revolutions. We will analyze the films as both social and political commentaries and as aesthetic and cultural works, alongside archivally-based histories of these revolutions.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

ILAC 181: Philosophy and Literature (CLASSICS 42, COMPLIT 181, ENGLISH 81, FRENCH 181, GERMAN 181, ITALIAN 181, PHIL 81, SLAVIC 181)

Can novels make us better people? Can movies challenge our assumptions? Can poems help us become who we are? We'll think about these and other questions with the help of writers like Toni Morrison, Marcel Proust, Jordan Peele, Charlie Kaufman, Rachel Cusk, William Shakespeare, and Samuel Beckett, plus thinkers like Nehamas, Nietzsche, Nussbaum, Plato, and Sartre. We'll also ask whether a disenchanted world can be re-enchanted; when, if ever, the truth stops being the most important thing; why we sometimes choose to read sad stories; whether we ever love someone for who they are; who could possibly want to live their same life over and over again; what it takes to make ourselves fully moral; whether it's ever good to be conflicted; how we can pull ourselves together; and how we can take ourselves apart. (This is the required gateway course for the Philosophy and Literature major tracks. Majors should register in their home department.)
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

ILAC 193: All about Almodovar

Pedro Almod¿var is one of the most recognizable auteur directors in the world today. His films express a hybrid and eclectic visual style and the blurring of frontiers between mass and high culture. Special attention is paid to questions of sexuality and the centering of usually marginalized characters. This course studies Pedro Almod¿var's development from his directorial debut to the present, from the "shocking" value of the early films to the award-winning mastery of the later ones. Prerequisite: ability to understand spoken Spanish. Readings in English. Midterm and final paper can be in English for non-ILAC degree students. ILAC minors and majors should complete their assignments in Spanish.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-Gender, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Schriefer, E. (PI)

ILAC 194G: Black Brazil: Afro-Brazilian Music, Literature, and Art (AFRICAAM 294, CSRE 194)

More enslaved people from Africa were forced to Brazil than any other country and Brazil was the last country to abolish the practice of slavery in the Americas. How do these two facts impact the cultural history of Brazil? How and why was the country mythologized as a 'racial democracy' in the twentieth century? This class engages these questions to explore the origins, development, and centrality of Afro-Brazilian culture. We will immerse ourselves in the cities of Salvador and Rio de Janeiro, explore samba and Carnaval, take a dive into syncretic religious practices such as Candomblé, observe dances like capoeira, and study literary and artistic expressions from an anti-racist perspective to gain a fuller picture of Brazilian society today. Taught in English.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

ILAC 200E: War and the Modern Novel

From the turn of the 19th century to well into the 20th century, novelists developed the theme of alienation and the decline of civilization. Along with the fall of centuries-old empires, World War I brought about the collapse of traditional European values and the dissociation of the subject. The aestheticizing of violence and the ensuing insecurity inaugurated the society of totally administered life, based on universal suspicion and pervasive guilt. The seminar will study narrative responses to these developments in some of the foremost authors of the 20th century from several European literatures: Knut Hamsun, Joseph Roth, Ernst Jünger, Virginia Woolf, Franz Kafka, Curzio Malaparte, Thomas Mann, Mercè Rodoreda, Antonio Lobo Antunes, and Jaume Cabré. Taught in English.
Last offered: Winter 2018 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

ILAC 207: Cuba: Modernity, Subjection, Revolution

This course will explore Cuba's intellectual currents and cultural objects from the late-eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries. How did different ideas about modernity, subjection, and revolution emerge and interact with one another in literary texts, visual artifacts, and legal documents throughout Cuban history? How does a conceptual history of these terms look like if we center the island's political, artistic, scientific, and religious movements? How does Cuba and its history inform our own ideas about freedom, slavery, and racial relations? While addressing these questions, we will also reflect on the island's past and present position in relation to other parts of the Caribbean, the Americas, and the Atlantic world. Ultimately, this course aims to challenge and historicize the most common connotations attributed to modernity, subjection, and revolution by examining not only European-based philosophical thought, but also cultural objects and discourses produced within the specific contexts of Cuba and the Caribbean. Taught in Spanish.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

ILAC 211: Existentialism, from Moral Quest to Novelistic Form (COMPLIT 258A, ILAC 311)

This seminar intends to follow the development of Existentialism from its genesis to its literary expressions in the European postwar. The notions of defining commitment, of moral ambiguity, the project of the self, and the critique of humanism will be studied in selected texts by Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Unamuno, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Joan Sales.
Last offered: Winter 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-ER

ILAC 218: Shipwrecks and Backlands: Getting Lost in Literature (COMPLIT 214, COMPLIT 314A, ILAC 318)

This course takes students on a journey through tales of getting lost in the Portuguese and Spanish empires. We will read harrowing stories of being caught adrift at sea and mystical interpretations of island desertion. The course begins with sea-dominated stories of Portuguese voyages to Asia, Africa, and Brazil then turns to how the Amazon and the sertão, or backlands, became a driving force of Brazilian literature. Official historians, poets, and novelists imbued the ocean and the backlands with romanticism, yet these spaces were the backdrop to slavery and conquest. Instead of approaching shipwreck and captivity narratives as eyewitness testimonies, as many have, we will consider how they produced 'the sea' and 'the wilderness' as poetic constructions in Western literature while also offering glimpses of the 'darker side' of Iberian expansion. Taught in English with all texts offered both in English and the original Portuguese or Spanish. Optional guest lectures in Portuguese.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Hughes, N. (PI)

ILAC 220E: Renaissance Africa (AFRICAST 220E, COMPLIT 220, ILAC 320E)

Literature, art, and culture in Central/Southern Africa during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Emphasis on forms of exchange between Europeans and Africans in the Kingdom of Kongo and Angola. Readings in Portuguese and English. Taught in English.
Last offered: Autumn 2021 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

ILAC 240E: Borges and Philosophy

Analysis of the Argentine author's literary renditions of philosophical ideas. Topics may include: time, free will, infinitude, authorship and self, nominalism vs. realism, empiricism vs. idealism, skepticism, peripheral modernities, postmodernism, and Eastern thought. Close reading of short stories, poems, and essays from Labyrinths paired with selections by authors such as Augustine, Berkeley, James, and Lao Tzu. The course will be conducted in English; Spanish originals will be available. Satisfies the capstone seminar requirement for the major in Philosophy and Literature. An optional Spanish language discussion section will be offered upon request and according to availability.
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

ILAC 241: Fiction Workshop in Spanish

Spanish and Spanish American short stories approached through narrative theory and craft. Assignments are creative in nature and focus on the formal elements of fiction (e.g. character and plot development, point of view, creating a scene, etc.). Students will write, workshop, and revise an original short story throughout the term. No previous experience with creative writing is required. Readings may include works by Ayala, Bolaño, Borges, Clarín, Cortázar, García Márquez, Piglia, Rodoreda, and others. Enrollment limited.
Last offered: Winter 2018 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

ILAC 243: Latin American Aesthetics

As the branch of philosophy that deals with the principles of beauty and artistic taste, aesthetics is, purportedly, universal. The course interrogates its conspicuous omission of Latin American theorization and cultural production. Three thematic axes are vanguardia, colonialidad, and populismo; a central concern is aesthetic responses to precariousness. Argentine, Brazilian, Chilean, Colombian, and Cuban essayism and visual arts from the mid 20th century to the present, notably origenismo, neo-baroque, and indigenismo. In collaboration with a cognate course at UC Berkeley. Taught in Spanish.nNOTE: This course must be taken for a minimum of 3 units and a letter grade to be eligible for WAYS credit.
Last offered: Autumn 2017 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

ILAC 249: Women and Wolves in Film and Literature (ILAC 355)

This course deconstructs the foundational narrative that corrals women into capitalist patriarchy, together with animals. Paying close attention to interspecies bonds between canidae and homo sapiens, we study novels and films where women, wolves and dogs resist the male gaze. Ever heard of Little Red Riding Hood? What if there could be a liberating alliance between her and the wolf? Taught in Spanish.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ILAC 254: Crónicas: Soccer, Pop Icons, Shipwrecks, and Populism

In this course, Mexican scholar and writer Juan Villoro analyzes Latin American works that sit halfway between fiction and non-fiction ("crónicas"). A survey on the shifting Latin-American cultural and political landscape, and its narrative representations. Authors include Nobel-laureate Gabriel García Márquez, Elena Ponitowska, and her groundbreaking account of social movements in Mexico. Martín Camparrós (biographer of Boca Juniors),queer activist auteur Pedro Lemebel (Chile), contemporary Argentine journalist Leila Guerriero, and selections from Tomás Eloy Martínez's epochal Santa Evita.
Last offered: Spring 2020 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ILAC 263: Visions of the Andes

Themes like "people," "revolt," "community," "utopia" and "landscape" are central to 20th century Andean narrative and its accompanying critical apparatus. The course reviews major works of Andean literature to reconsider the aesthetic and intellectual legacy of modernity and modernization in the region. We discuss changes in recent literature and film. Special attention is payed to post-conflict Peru and Evo Morales' Bolivia.
Last offered: Autumn 2018 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ILAC 272: New Brazilian Cinema

This course studies cinema from Brazil with a focus on films from the last decade. We will consider how to effectively talk and write about film, particularly according to Brazil's specific historical and cultural context and from a perspective of social realism. Numerous readings and discussions will bolster our viewings of fiction films and documentaries. Directors include Kleber Mendonça Filho, Anna Muylaert, Gabriel Mascaro, Karim Aïnouz, Aly Muritiba, and Petra Costa. Taught in English; films shown with English subtitles.
Last offered: Winter 2020 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ILAC 273: Kids: Youth Cultures in Contemporary Latin America

To the rhythm of Latin trap and K-Pop, a new generation of artists portrays the youth cultures that revolutionize contemporary Latin America: Juli Delgado (Colombia), Claudia Huaquimilla (Chile), and Ioshua (Argentina), among others. From a selection of movies, plays, and short stories produced by these emerging artists, we will delve into the strategies deployed by Latin American teenagers to face the challenges of a convulsed present: forced migration, labor exploitation, racial violence, and sexual discrimination. Taught in Spanish.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Opazo Retamal, C. (PI)

ILAC 277: Senior Seminar: The Power of Chisme--Gossip, Rumor, and Hearsay in Latin America

This course explores gossip, rumor, and hearsay in cultures and histories of the Hispanic world. From asserting hegemonic moral values to organizing subversive movements and uprisings; from intrusions in people's private lives to community building, gossip, rumors, and hearsay have helped produce worlds and knowledge in different periods of Spanish and Latin American histories. We will examine plays, novels, short stories, historical documents, telenovelas, and other cultural objects from the seventeenth to the twentieth century in which chisme - or its cousins murmuraci¿n, rumor, and ciza¿a - operates as a device that either helps maintain or destabilize power relations. In doing so, we will consider the role of gossip, rumor, and hearsay in narrative-making; the multiple definitions of chisme and the values associated with it in different historical periods, as well as the relationship between rumors and official or "legitimate" sources of information. Ultimately, we aim to address questions such as the following: How did chisme become such a fundamental feature in different Latin American cultures? What are the tropes and stereotypes associated with gossip, and what are their histories? Are we readers of literature mere chismosos? In addressing these questions, we will also confront matters related to orality, trustworthiness, intimacy, race, and gender. Classes will be a mixture of short lectures, discussions, student presentations, and conversations with invited scholars. Taught in Spanish. Students must have taken SPANLANG 13 or equivalent.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Fraga, I. (PI)

ILAC 278A: Senior Seminar: Food Studies

This transhistorical research seminar introduces students to the field of food studies while examining Iberian cultures from the Middle Ages to the present. Topics addressed include culture and authenticity, food and the performance of religious identity, maritime expansion, contemporary fishing treaties, agriculture in the medieval Muslim world, contemporary racial violence, monastic life, the Spanish Civil War, and more. Most weeks students will prepare and taste iconic culinary treats. In Spanish. This course must be taken for a minimum of 3 units and a letter grade to be eligible for Ways credit. Section participation for students enrolled for 4-5 units.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ISLAMST 149C: Introduction to Islamic Art (ARTHIST 149)

This course surveys the art and architecture of societies where Muslims were dominant or where they formed significant minorities from the emergence of Islam until the present. It examines the form and function of architecture and works of art as well as the social, historical and cultural contexts, patterns of use, and evolving meanings attributed to art by the users. The course follows a chronological order, where selected visual materials are treated along chosen themes. Themes include the creation of a distinctive visual culture in the emerging Islamic polity; the development of urban institutions; key architectural types such as the mosque, madrasa, caravanserai, dervish lodge and mausoleum; art objects and the arts of the illustrated book; self-representation; cultural interconnections along trade and pilgrimage routes; westernization and modernization in art and architecture.
Terms: Win | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ITALIAN 62N: Art and Healing in the Wake of Covid-19: A Health Humanities Perspective (FRENCH 62N)

How have artists contributed to healing during the Covid-19 pandemic? How does art shape or express diverse cultural understandings of health and illness, medicine and the body, death and spirituality, in response to crisis? How do such understandings directly impact the physical healing but also the life decisions and emotions of individuals, from caregivers to patients? And finally, how do these affect social transformation as part of healing? This course examines the art of COVID-19, from a contemporary and historical perspective, using the tools of Health Humanities, a relatively new discipline that connects medicine to the arts and social sciences. Materials for this course include art from different media (from poetry and fiction to performance and installation), produced during COVID-19 in mostly Western contexts, in diverse communities and with some forays into the rest of the world and into other historical moments of crisis. They also include some non-fiction readings from the disciplines Health Humanities draws from, such as history of medicine, anthropology, psychology, sociology, cultural history, media studies, art criticism, and medicine itself. We will thus be introduced to basics of Health Humanities and its methods while addressing the pandemic as a world-changing event, aided by the unique insights of artists. The course will culminate in final projects that present a critical and contextual appreciation of a specific art project created in response to COVID-19; such appreciations may be creative art projects as well, or more analytical, scholarly evaluations.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

ITALIAN 75N: Narrative Medicine and Near-Death Experiences (FRENCH 75N)

Even if many of us don't fully believe in an afterlife, we remain fascinated by visions of it. This course focuses on Near-Death Experiences and the stories around them, investigating them from the many perspectives pertinent to the growing field of narrative medicine: medical, neurological, cognitive, psychological, sociological, literary, and filmic. The goal is not to understand whether the stories are veridical but what they do for us, as individuals, and as a culture, and in particular how they seek to reshape the patient-doctor relationship. Materials will span the 20th century and come into the present. Taught in English.
Last offered: Autumn 2017 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

ITALIAN 101: Italy: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Renowned for its rich cultural tradition, Italy is also one of the most problematic nations in Europe. This course explores the contradictions at the heart of Italy by examining how art and literature provide a unique perspective onto modern Italian history. We will focus on key phenomena that contribute both positively and negatively to the complex "spirit" of Italy, such as the presence of the past, political realism and idealism, revolution, corruption, decadence, war, immigration, and crises of all kinds. Through the study of historical and literary texts, films, and news media, the course seeks to understand Italy's current place in Europe and its future trajectory by looking to its past as a point of comparison. Taught in English.
Last offered: Spring 2018 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

ITALIAN 103: Future Text: AI and Literatures, Cultures, and Languages (DLCL 103)

How do AI language models work and what is their impact on education? In this course we will: Experiment with translation; Experiment with textual analysis of specific texts from different contexts and historical periods and cultures; Experiment with large data questions that are very hard to do by a single person; Experiment with ways to fact-check an AI generated work: we know AI creates false assertions, and backs them up with false references; Experiment with collaborating with AI to write a final paper, a blog, a newspaper article, etc.
Terms: Aut | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

ITALIAN 104N: Film and Fascism in Europe (COMPLIT 104N, FILMEDIA 105N, FRENCH 104N)

Controlling people's minds through propaganda is an integral part of fascist regimes' totalitarianism. In the interwar, cinema, a relatively recent mass media, was immediately seized upon by fascist regimes to produce aggrandizing national narratives, justify their expansionist and extermination policies, celebrate the myth of the "Leader," and indoctrinate the people. Yet film makers under these regimes (Rossellini, Renoir) or just after their fall, used the same media to explore and expose how they manufactured conformism, obedience, and mass murder and to interrogate fascism. We will watch films produced by or under European fascist regimes (Nazi Germany, Italy under Mussolini, Greece's Regime of the Colonels) but also against them. The seminar introduces key film analysis tools and concepts, while offering insights into the history of propaganda and cinema. Taught in English.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Alduy, C. (PI)

ITALIAN 115: Virtual Italy (ARCHLGY 117, CLASSICS 115, ENGLISH 115, HISTORY 238C)

Classical Italy attracted thousands of travelers throughout the 1700s. Referring to their journey as the "Grand Tour," travelers pursued intellectual passions, promoted careers, and satisfied wanderlust, all while collecting antiquities to fill museums and estates back home. What can computational approaches tell us about who traveled, where and why? We will read travel accounts; experiment with parsing; and visualize historical data. Final projects to form credited contributions to the Grand Tour Project, a cutting-edge digital platform. No prior programming experience necessary.
Terms: Win | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Ceserani, G. (PI)

ITALIAN 115A: The Italian Renaissance, or the Art of Success (ARTHIST 115, ARTHIST 315, ITALIAN 315A)

How come that, even if you have never set foot in Italy, you have heard of Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael? What made them so incredibly famous, back then as well as today? This course examines the shooting of those, and other, artists to fame. It provides in-depth analyses of their innovative drawing practices and the making of masterpieces, taking you through a virtual journey across some of the greatest European and American collections. At the same time, this course also offers a study of the mechanics of success, how opportunities are created and reputations managed, and what role art plays in the construction of class and in today's national politics.
| Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ITALIAN 117: Is Horror (also) Italian?

Horror haunts our world. We associate it with manmade and natural catastrophes. But horror is also a genre. And haven't we all experienced something horrible? In this class, we take up the task of understanding what horror means, why it fascinates us, and to what extent it belongs to our lives. Our laboratory is perhaps an unexpected one: Italy. In the popular imagination, Italy is the land of fashion and Vespas, sunshine and romance: this class reveals its darker side. After finding the roots of Italian horror in Dante and Boccaccio's descriptions of Hell and the plague, we will then focus on horror in more recent Italian literature, comics, and cinema - covering supernatural sources, such as a haunted dance school, and horrifyingly real ones, such as the concentration camp. Centering on the Italian twentieth and twenty-first century, this class introduces students to a genre which is also, at the same time, an experience - and vice versa. Participants will reflect on questions such as: why and how do we represent horror? Is there anything philosophical about horror, and can we learn anything from it? Does horror presuppose gore or monsters, or specifically belong to certain canons and motifs? Are we all equally exposed to horror or can it be, for instance, a gendered experience? Taught in English. Readings available both in Italian and in translation. Authors include Dante, Boccaccio, Giacomo Leopardi, Curzio Malaparte, Primo Levi, Dario Argento, Giorgio de Maria, Elena Ferrante.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ITALIAN 127: Inventing Italian Literature: Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca

Why have the Italian poets Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), Francis Petrarch (1304-1374), and Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) been conventionally considered the three foundational authorities of the Italian literary tradition? What was their role in the formation of the Italian vernacular language, which is at the core of Italy's linguistic identity? What is the ideological significance of the grouping of these Three Crowns (tre corone), and how does it impact our critical understanding of the origins of Italian literature, as well as of the process of constructing Italy's cultural identity? To what extent has the intellectual legacy of the Three Italian Crowns contributed to shaping the formation of the literary canons of the main European nations? In order to address these and other questions, this course will explore the major works of these three authors within the context of medieval Italian literature and culture by focusing on the stylistic and critical analyses of specific genres: lyric poetry (the Sicilian school, the Dolce Stil Novo, Dante's early poetry, Petrarch's Canzoniere), long narrative poetry (Dante's Commedia), and short story or novella (Boccaccio's Decameron, its antecedent, Il Novellino, and some of its late medieval epigoni). As a continuation of the study of the Italian language, this course will also aim at improving the students' level of reading, writing, and speaking through the discussion of complex theoretical topics, as well as through the formulation and defense of critical arguments at an advanced linguistic level. For this reason, the course is taught in Italian and all class discussion, reading, and writing will be in Italian; the selected primary texts in medieval vernacular will be accompanied by paraphrases in modern Italian and by an exhaustive apparatus of critical and explanatory notes.
Terms: Aut | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Giorgetti, L. (PI)

ITALIAN 128: The Italian Renaissance and the Path to Modernity

Are humans free and self-determining agents possessed of infinite potential or limited beings subject to the vagaries of fortune? What is the relationship between love and beauty? Is it better for a leader to inspire love or fear? These are the kind of questions Renaissance thinkers asked and we will pursue in our study of the literature, art, and history of Italy from the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries. In this course, you will become acquainted with major writers, thinkers, and artists, and key ideas, innovations, and movements. Examining masterpieces of literature (poetry and prose), art (painting, drawing and sculpture), theater and music, including works of the High Renaissance, we will explore such topics as love, power, faith, reason, and contingency in human affairs. With the themes of discovery, invention and adaption as our guide, we will reflect on perennial tensions between imitation and inspiration, tradition and innovation, and conformity and transgression in Renaissance and early modern Italy. Taught in Italian. Recommended: ITALLANG 22A or equivalent (2 years of Italian). This course fulfills the Writing in the Major (WIM) requirement.
Terms: Win | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Giorgetti, L. (PI)

ITALIAN 129: Introduction to Modern Italian Literature and Culture

Ancient, yet new; united, yet fractured; central, yet marginal; imperial subject, aspirant empire: what historical, political, and social dynamics have shaped the Italian nation over the course of the last two centuries? How do we make sense of this Italy - at once monolithic and multitudinous, longstanding and newborn? Through the study of literary, filmic, and musical works from the period of Italian unification to the turn of the 21st century, students will reflect on how artists, writers, cultural and political movements expressed, influenced, and encoded Italy¿s many, paradoxical modernities. The course is an introduction to modern Italian literature and culture and a continuation of the study of the Italian language. All class discussions, reading, and writing will be in Italian. Please do not hesitate to contact the instructor should you have doubts about your language level.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Dule, G. (PI)

ITALIAN 140: Great Minds of the Italian Renaissance and their World (ARTHIST 210, HISTORY 240C, ITALIAN 240)

What enabled Leonardo da Vinci to excel in over a dozen fields from painting to engineering and to anticipate flight four hundred years before the first aircraft took off? How did Michelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel Ceiling? What forces and insights led Machiavelli to write "The Prince"? An historical moment and a cultural era, the Italian Renaissance famously saw monumental achievements in literature, art, and architecture, influential developments in science and technology, and the flourishing of multi-talented individuals who contributed profoundly, expertly, and simultaneously to very different fields. In this course on the great thinkers, writers, and achievers of the Italian Renaissance, we will study these "universal geniuses" and their world. Investigating the writings, thought, and lives of such figures as Leonardo da Vinci, Niccol¿ Machiavelli, and Galileo Galilei, we will interrogate historical and contemporary ideas concerning genius, creativity, and the phenomenon of "Renaissance man" known as polymathy. Taught in English. In 2023-24, this course is part of the Humanities Core, a collaborative set of global humanities seminars that brings all of its students and faculty into conversation. On Tuesdays you meet in your own course, and on Thursday all the HumCore seminars in session that quarter meet together: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ITALIAN 141: The Pen and the Sword: A Gendered History (COMPLIT 140, FEMGEN 141B, HISTORY 261P)

As weapons, the pen and the sword have been used to wound, punish, and condemn as well as to protect, liberate, and elevate. Historically entangled with ideals of heroism, nobility, and civility, the pen and the sword have been the privileged instruments of men. Yet, throughout history, women have picked up the pen and the sword in defense, despair, and outrage as well as with passion, vision, and inspiration. This course is dedicated to them, and to study of works on love, sex, and power that articulate female experience. In our readings and seminars, we will encounter real and fictive women in their own words and in narrations and depictions by others from classical antiquity to the present, with a special focus on the Renaissance and on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Touching on such topics as flattery and slander through the study of misogynistic, protofeminist, and feminist works in the early modern and modern periods in various European literary traditions, we will consider questions of truth and falsehood in fiction and in life. Course materials span a variety genres and media, from poetry, letters, dialogues, public lectures, treatises, short stories, and drama to painting, sculpture, music, and film works regarded for their aesthetic, intellectual, religious, social, and political value and impact.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ITALIAN 148: Cinema and the Real: Italian Neo-Realism and the French New Wave (FRENCH 148, FRENCH 248, ITALIAN 248)

Between the 1940s and 1960s, in Italy and France, a handful of movie directors revolutionized the art of cinema. In the wake of World War II they entirely re-defined the aesthetics of the 7th art in films such as "Bicycle Thieves," "400 Blows," "Rome Open City," and "Breathless." These works shared an aesthetic and a philosophy of "the real" - they eschewed big studios and sets in favor of natural light, on-location shooting, and non-professional actors to capture the present moment. This survey course will explore how the dialogue between Italian neo-realism and the French New Wave has yielded some of the most revolutionary filmic masterpieces of both traditions, while raising theoretical and philosophical questions about form, time, space, fiction, representation, and reality. Films: Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio de Sica, Luchino Visconti, Federico Fellini, François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais and Agnès Varda.
Last offered: Autumn 2020 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ITALIAN 149: Love at First Sight: Visual Desire, Attraction, and the Pleasures of Art (ARTHIST 119, ARTHIST 319, FRENCH 149, FRENCH 349, ITALIAN 349)

Why do dating sites rely on photographs? Why do we believe that love is above all a visual force? How is pleasure, even erotic pleasure, achieved through looking? While the psychology of impressions offers some answers, this course uncovers the ways poets, songwriters, and especially artists have explored myths and promoted ideas about the coupling of love and seeing. Week by week, we will be reflecting on love as political critique, social disruption, and magical force. And we will do so by examining some of the most iconic works of art, from Dante's writings on lovesickness to Caravaggio's Narcissus, studying the ways that objects have shifted from keepsakes to targets of our cares. While exploring the visual roots and evolutions of what has become one of life's fundamental drives, this course offers a passionate survey of European art from Giotto's kiss to Fragonard's swing that elicits stimulating questions about the sensorial nature of desire and the human struggle to control emotions.
Last offered: Summer 2021 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ITALIAN 152: Boccaccio's Decameron: The Ethics of Storytelling (ITALIAN 352)

This course involves an in-depth study of Boccaccio's Decameron in the context of medieval theories of poetry and interpretation. The goal is to understand more fully the relationship between literature and lived experience implied by Boccaccio's fictions. We will address key critical issues and theoretical approaches related to the text. Taught in English translation, there will be an optional supplementary Italian discussion section during weeks 2-9.
Last offered: Autumn 2017 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ITALIAN 154: Film & Philosophy (ENGLISH 154F, FRENCH 154, PHIL 193C)

What makes you the individual you are? Should you plan your life, or make it up as you go along? Is it always good to remember your past? Is it always good to know the truth? When does a machine become a person? What do we owe to other people? Is there always a right way to act? How can we live in a highly imperfect world? And what can film do that other media can't? We'll think about all of these great questions with the help of films that are philosophically stimulating, stylistically intriguing, and, for the most part, gripping to watch: Do The Right Thing (Lee), The Dark Knight (Nolan), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Kaufman), Arrival (Villeneuve), My Dinner with Andr¿ (Malle), Blade Runner (Scott), La Jet¿e (Marker), Fight Club (Fincher), No Country for Old Men (Coen), The Seventh Seal (Bergman), and Memento (Nolan). Attendance at weekly screenings is mandatory; and fun. We will not be using the waitlist on Axess - if you would like to enroll and the course is full/closed please email us to get on the waitlist!
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

ITALIAN 155: The Mafia in Society, Film, and Fiction

The mafia has become a global problem through its infiltration of international business, and its model of organized crime has spread all over the world from its origins in Sicily. At the same time, film and fiction remain fascinated by a romantic, heroic vision of the mafia. Compares both Italian and American fantasies of the Mafia to its history and impact on Italian and global culture. Taught in English.
Last offered: Spring 2021 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

ITALIAN 175: CAPITALS: How Cities Shape Cultures, States, and People (COMPLIT 100, DLCL 100, FRENCH 175, GERMAN 175, HISTORY 206E, ILAC 175, URBANST 153)

This course takes students on a trip to major capital cities at different moments in time, including Renaissance Florence, Golden Age Madrid, colonial Mexico City, imperial Beijing, Enlightenment and romantic Paris, existential and revolutionary St. Petersburg, roaring Berlin, modernist Vienna, and transnational Accra. While exploring each place in a particular historical moment, we will also consider the relations between culture, power, and social life. How does the cultural life of a country intersect with the political activity of a capital? How do large cities shape our everyday experience, our aesthetic preferences, and our sense of history? Why do some cities become cultural capitals? Primary materials for this course will consist of literary, visual, sociological, and historical documents (in translation).
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

ITALIAN 181: Philosophy and Literature (CLASSICS 42, COMPLIT 181, ENGLISH 81, FRENCH 181, GERMAN 181, ILAC 181, PHIL 81, SLAVIC 181)

Can novels make us better people? Can movies challenge our assumptions? Can poems help us become who we are? We'll think about these and other questions with the help of writers like Toni Morrison, Marcel Proust, Jordan Peele, Charlie Kaufman, Rachel Cusk, William Shakespeare, and Samuel Beckett, plus thinkers like Nehamas, Nietzsche, Nussbaum, Plato, and Sartre. We'll also ask whether a disenchanted world can be re-enchanted; when, if ever, the truth stops being the most important thing; why we sometimes choose to read sad stories; whether we ever love someone for who they are; who could possibly want to live their same life over and over again; what it takes to make ourselves fully moral; whether it's ever good to be conflicted; how we can pull ourselves together; and how we can take ourselves apart. (This is the required gateway course for the Philosophy and Literature major tracks. Majors should register in their home department.)
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

ITALIAN 190: The Celluloid Gaze: Gender, Identity and Sexuality in Cinema

This course examines femininity and gender representation in cinema. The rich tradition of film theory, from the key semiotic approaches of the 1970s-1990s until the current and equally influential methodologies, will provide the framework for an informed analysis of the films. Topics: the question of the gaze, the power of looking, of being looked at, and of looking back; women as disruption in the patriarchal/cultural text; maternity both as a sign of normalcy as well as a locus for obsession and manic concerns; the woman¿s body as a place of illness and sexuality. Our main object of investigation will be Italian cinema but we will also analyze a few Hollywood films which have inspired much feminist debate; we will focus as well on recent cinematic re-conceptualizations of gender and sexuality. Students will become familiar with key theoretical concepts such as the gaze, desire, intersectionality, masochism and masquerade, as well as modes of feminist resistance to traditional gender hierarchies. Taught in English.
Last offered: Spring 2020 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

ITALIAN 205: Songs of Love and War: Gender, Crusade, Politics (FEMGEN 205, FRENCH 205, FRENCH 305, ITALIAN 305)

The course examines the medieval love lyric tradition, including the troubadours, trouvères, and the Italian dolce stil nuovo. Focus on how to understand this tradition in the context of other non-Western lyric and its performative and material contexts such as manuscripts. Study of female lyrics, secondary readings on voice, lyric theory, and medieval textuality. Will be taught in English. FRENCH 205 fulfills DLCL 121: Performing in the Middle Ages core course.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:EC-Gender, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

ITALIAN 214: Pirandello, Sartre, and Beckett (COMPLIT 281E, COMPLIT 381E, FRENCH 214, FRENCH 314, ITALIAN 314)

In this course we will read the main novels and plays of Pirandello, Sartre, and Beckett, with special emphasis on the existentialist themes of their work. Readings include The Late Mattia Pascal, Six Characters in Search of an Author, Henry IV; Nausea, No Exit, "Existentialism is a Humanism"; Molloy, Endgame, Krapp's Last Tape, Waiting for Godot. Taught in English.
Last offered: Spring 2021 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

ITALIAN 217: Love, Death and the Afterlife in the Medieval West (FRENCH 217, FRENCH 317, HISTORY 217D, HISTORY 317D, ITALIAN 317)

Romantic love, it is often claimed, is an invention of the High Middle Ages. The vocabulary of sexual desire that is still current in the twenty-first century was authored in the twelfth and thirteenth, by troubadours, court poets, writers like Dante; even by crusaders returning from the eastern Mediterranean. How did this devout society come to elevate the experience of sensual love? This course draws on primary sources such as medieval songs, folktales, the "epic rap battles" of the thirteenth century, along with the writings of Boccaccio, Saint Augustine and others, to understand the unexpected connections between love, death, and the afterlife from late antiquity to the fourteenth century. Each week, we will use a literary or artistic work as an interpretive window into cultural attitudes towards love, death or the afterlife. These readings are analyzed in tandem with major historical developments, including the rise of Christianity, the emergence of feudal society and chivalric culture, the crusading movement, and the social breakdown of the fourteenth century.
Terms: Aut | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Phillips, J. (PI)

ITALIAN 231: Leonardo's World: Science, Technology, and Art (ARTHIST 231, ARTHIST 431, HISTORY 231, HISTORY 331, ITALIAN 331)

Leonardo da Vinci is emblematic of creativity and innovation. His art is iconic, his inventions legendary. His understanding of nature, the human body, and machines made him a scientist and engineer as well as an artist. His fascination with drawing buildings made him an architect, at least on paper. This class explores the historical Leonardo, considering his interests and accomplishments as a product of the society of Renaissance Italy. Why did this world produce a Leonardo? Special attention will be given to interdisciplinary connections between religion, art, science, and technology.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

ITALIAN 237: Michelangelo: Gateway to Early Modern Italy (ARTHIST 218A, ARTHIST 418A, HISTORY 237B, HISTORY 337B, ITALIAN 337)

Revered as one of the greatest artists in history, Michelangelo Buonarroti's extraordinarily long and prodigious existence (1475-1564) spanned the Renaissance and the Reformation in Italy. The celebrity artist left behind not only sculptures, paintings, drawings, and architectural designs, but also an abundantly rich and heterogeneous collection of artifacts, including direct and indirect correspondence (approximately 1400 letters), an eclectic assortment of personal notes, documents and contracts, and 302 poems and 41 poetic fragments. This course will explore the life and production of Michelangelo in relation to those of his contemporaries. Using the biography of the artist as a thread, this interdisciplinary course will draw on a range of critical methodologies and approaches to investigate the civilization and culture of Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Course themes will follow key tensions that defined the period and that found expression in Michelangelo: physical-spiritual, classical-Christian, tradition-innovation, individual-collective.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ITALIAN 238A: Dante's "Inferno" (COMPLIT 238A, ITALIAN 338A)

Intensive reading of Dante's "Inferno" (the first canticle of his three canticle poem The Divine Comedy). Main objective: to learn how to read the Inferno in detail and in depth, which entails both close textual analysis as well as a systematic reconstruction of the Christian doctrines that subtend the poem. The other main objective is to understand how Dante's civic and political identity as a Florentine, and especially his exile from Florence, determined his literary career and turned him into the author of the poem. Special emphasis on Dante's moral world view and his representation of character. Taught in English.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ITALIAN 238B: Dante's "Purgatorio" and "Paradiso" (COMPLIT 238B, ITALIAN 338B)

Reading the second and third canticles of Dante's "Divine Comedy." Prerequisite: students must have read Dante's "Inferno" in a course or on their own. Taught in English. Recommended: reading knowledge of Italian.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ITALIAN 240: Great Minds of the Italian Renaissance and their World (ARTHIST 210, HISTORY 240C, ITALIAN 140)

What enabled Leonardo da Vinci to excel in over a dozen fields from painting to engineering and to anticipate flight four hundred years before the first aircraft took off? How did Michelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel Ceiling? What forces and insights led Machiavelli to write "The Prince"? An historical moment and a cultural era, the Italian Renaissance famously saw monumental achievements in literature, art, and architecture, influential developments in science and technology, and the flourishing of multi-talented individuals who contributed profoundly, expertly, and simultaneously to very different fields. In this course on the great thinkers, writers, and achievers of the Italian Renaissance, we will study these "universal geniuses" and their world. Investigating the writings, thought, and lives of such figures as Leonardo da Vinci, Niccol¿ Machiavelli, and Galileo Galilei, we will interrogate historical and contemporary ideas concerning genius, creativity, and the phenomenon of "Renaissance man" known as polymathy. Taught in English. In 2023-24, this course is part of the Humanities Core, a collaborative set of global humanities seminars that brings all of its students and faculty into conversation. On Tuesdays you meet in your own course, and on Thursday all the HumCore seminars in session that quarter meet together: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ITALIAN 244: Literature and Technology from Frankenstein to the Futurists (COMPLIT 244, ENGLISH 244, ITALIAN 344)

Overview of defects and disorder across crystalline, amorphous, and glassy phases that are central to function and application, spanning metals, ceramics, and soft/biological matter. Structure and properties of simple 0D/1D/2D defects in crystalline materials. Scaling laws, connectivity and frustration, and hierarchy/distributions of structure across length scales in more disordered materials. Key characterization techniques. Pre-reqs: MATSCI 211 (thermo), 212 (kinetics)
Last offered: Winter 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ITALIAN 248: Cinema and the Real: Italian Neo-Realism and the French New Wave (FRENCH 148, FRENCH 248, ITALIAN 148)

Between the 1940s and 1960s, in Italy and France, a handful of movie directors revolutionized the art of cinema. In the wake of World War II they entirely re-defined the aesthetics of the 7th art in films such as "Bicycle Thieves," "400 Blows," "Rome Open City," and "Breathless." These works shared an aesthetic and a philosophy of "the real" - they eschewed big studios and sets in favor of natural light, on-location shooting, and non-professional actors to capture the present moment. This survey course will explore how the dialogue between Italian neo-realism and the French New Wave has yielded some of the most revolutionary filmic masterpieces of both traditions, while raising theoretical and philosophical questions about form, time, space, fiction, representation, and reality. Films: Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio de Sica, Luchino Visconti, Federico Fellini, François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais and Agnès Varda.
Last offered: Autumn 2020 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ITALIAN 251: Writing, Memory, and the Self (FRENCH 251, FRENCH 351, ITALIAN 351)

Recent work in psychology and neuroscience emphasizes the narrative quality of the self, as we create it and recreate it through language and writing, shaping memories both personal and historical. This process is circular: we grow into the stories we tell about ourselves, and we tell different stories to fit our changing life experiences. What is the self in the midst of all this? How does it relate to other selves and to the world? This course examines the nature of self, combining the insights of fiction writers (including Luigi Pirandello, Anna Banti, Michel Tournier, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Peter Nádas) with works from philosophy, psychology, medical humanities, and neuroscience (including Edith Wyschogrod, Alexander Nehamas, Ruth Leys, Oliver Sacks). Taught in English.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

ITALIAN 265: Word and Image (ARTHIST 265A, ARTHIST 465A, COMPLIT 225, ITALIAN 365)

What impact do images have on our reading of a text? How do words influence our understanding of images or our reading of pictures? What makes a visual interpretation of written words or a verbal rendering of an image successful? These questions will guide our investigation of the manifold connections between words and images in this course on intermediality and the relations and interrelations between writing and art from classical antiquity to the present. Readings and discussions will include such topics as the life and afterlife in word and image of Ovid's "Metamorphoses," Dante's "Divine Comedy," Ludovico Ariosto's "Orlando Furioso," and John Milton's "Paradise Lost;" the writings and creative production of poet-artists Michelangelo Buonarroti, William Blake, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti; innovations in and correspondences between literature and art in the modern period, from symbolism in the nineteenth century through the flourishing of European avant-garde movements in the twentieth century.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ITALIC 91: Why Art?

Why art? Why choose art? What does art do for you and for the world? What can you do, say, feel, or know through art that might be difficult to accomplish by other means? How does art stimulate an engagement with the world and, in turn, how do we use that engagement to better understand ourselves? Whether you go on to be a practicing artist, a patron, an avid reader, or a weekend museum-goer, how can the principles of art help you reflect on the life you make for yourself?
Terms: Aut | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: College, THINK, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Beil, K. (PI); Sax, S. (PI)

ITALIC 93: Art Everywhere: How Art Moves and Moves Us

How does art move around the world? Most university courses in the history of the arts are divided either by geography or time period, as well as artistic discipline. But these simple distinctions are not natural to the production or reception of art itself. Although it might be easy to assume that art is made out of materials close at hand and seen or experienced chiefly by local makers, artists have often sought out distant materials and unfamiliar ideas, which are prized for their scarcity or their very distance from what is local and familiar. Historically these movements have revealed global power structures, as well as local interest and agency in ways that can be both far reaching and narrowly focused. Globalization is commonly equated with contemporary multinational corporations, from Apple to Amazon to AliExpress, but earlier periods of global exchange have also materially shaped what art is and can be. Art can reflect and reveal a global movement of peoples and ideas, as well as the raw materials that make art possible - whether words, woods, animals, minerals or melodies. We will focus in this class on a series of case studies that explore how art moves - and why these movements move artists and the people who are influenced by their work. Lectures will feature scholars and artists who address aspects of global exchange or movement in their work. In a series of workshops, students will work towards creating a genealogical project that similarly investigates how origins and movement have enabled and inspired art-making. We think of the class as an atlas for your own investigations into how art moves and how it may move you.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: College, THINK, WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
Instructors: ; Beil, K. (PI); Sax, S. (PI)

JAPAN 21: Humanities Core: Love and Betrayal in Asia (CHINA 21, HUMCORE 21, KOREA 21)

Why are lovers in storybooks East and West always star-crossed? Why do love and death seem to go together? For every Romeo and Juliet, there are dozens of doomed lovers in the Asian literary repertoires, from Genji's string of embittered mistresses, to the Butterfly lovers in early modern China, to the voices of desire in Koryo love songs, to the devoted adolescent cousins in Dream of the Red Chamber, to the media stars of Korean romantic drama, now wildly popular throughout Asia. In this course, we explore how the love story has evolved over centuries of East Asian history, asking along the way what we can learn about Chinese, Japanese, and Korean views of family and community, gender and sexuality, truth and deception, trust and betrayal, ritual and emotion, and freedom and solidarity from canonical and non-canonical works in East Asian literatures. N.B. This is the second of three courses in the East Asian track. These courses offer an unparalleled opportunity to study East Asian history and culture, past and present. Take all three to experience a year-long intellectual community dedicated to exploring how ideas have shaped our world and future.
Last offered: Winter 2020 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

JAPAN 21Q: Humanities Core: Love and Betrayal in Asia (CHINA 21Q, HUMCORE 21Q, KOREA 21Q)

Why are lovers in storybooks East and West always star-crossed? Why do love and death seem to go together? For every Romeo and Juliet, there are dozens of doomed lovers in the Asian literary repertoires, from Genji's string of embittered mistresses, to the Butterfly lovers in early modern China, to the voices of desire in Koryo love songs, to the devoted adolescent cousins in Dream of the Red Chamber, to the media stars of Korean romantic drama, now wildly popular throughout Asia. In this course, we explore how the love story has evolved over centuries of East Asian history, asking along the way what we can learn about Chinese, Japanese, and Korean views of family and community, gender and sexuality, truth and deception, trust and betrayal, ritual and emotion, and freedom and solidarity from canonical and non-canonical works in East Asian literatures. N.B. This is the second of three courses in the East Asian track. These courses offer an unparalleled opportunity to study East Asian history and culture, past and present. Take all three to experience a year-long intellectual community dedicated to exploring how ideas have shaped our world and future.
Last offered: Winter 2019 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

JAPAN 24: Humanities Core: How to be Modern in East Asia (CHINA 24, COMPLIT 44, HUMCORE 133, KOREA 24)

Modern East Asia was almost continuously convulsed by war and revolution in the 19th and 20th centuries. But the everyday experience of modernity was structured more profoundly by the widening gulf between the country and the city, economically, politically, and culturally. This course examines literary and cinematic works from China and Japan that respond to and reflect on the city/country divide, framing it against issues of class, gender, national identity, and ethnicity. It also explores changing ideas about home/hometown, native soil, the folk, roots, migration, enlightenment, civilization, progress, modernization, nationalism, cosmopolitanism, and sustainability. All materials are in English. This course is part of the Humanities Core: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Reichert, J. (PI); Xu, L. (PI)

JAPAN 52: Global Humanities: The Grand Millennium, 800-1800 (DLCL 52, HISTORY 206D, HUMCORE 52)

How should we live? This course explores ethical pathways in European, Islamic, and East Asian traditions: mysticism and rationality, passion and duty, this and other worldly, ambition and peace of mind. They all seem to be pairs of opposites, but as we'll see, some important historical figures managed to follow two or more of them at once. We will read works by successful thinkers, travelers, poets, lovers, and bureaucrats written between 800 and 1900 C.E. We will ask ourselves whether we agree with their choices and judgments about what is a life well lived.
Last offered: Winter 2020 | Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-ER

JAPAN 60: Asian Arts and Cultures (ARTHIST 2)

An exploration of the visual arts of East and South Asia from ancient to modern times, in their social, religious, literary and political contexts. Analysis of major monuments of painting, sculpture and architecture will be organized around themes that include ritual and funerary arts, Buddhist art and architecture across Asia, landscape and narrative painting, culture and authority in court arts, and urban arts in the early modern world.
Last offered: Winter 2022 | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-A-II

JAPAN 118: Humanities Core: Everybody Eats: The Language, Culture, and Ethics of Food in East Asia (CHINA 118, HUMCORE 22, KOREA 118)

Many of us have grown up eating "Asian" at home, with friends, on special occasions, or even without full awareness that Asian is what we were eating. This course situates the three major culinary traditions of East Asia--China, Japan, and Korea--in the histories and civilizations of the region, using food as an introduction to their rich repertoires of literature, art, language, philosophy, religion, and culture. It also situates these seemingly timeless gastronomies within local and global flows, social change, and ethical frameworks. Specifically, we will explore the traditional elements of Korean court food, and the transformation of this cuisine as a consequence of the Korean War and South Korea¿s subsequent globalizing economy; the intersection of traditional Japanese food with past and contemporary identities; and the evolution of Chinese cuisine that accompanies shifting attitudes about the environment, health, and well-being. Questions we will ask ourselves during the quarter include, what is "Asian" about Asian cuisine? How has the language of food changed? Is eating, and talking about eating, a gendered experience? How have changing views of the self and community shifted the conversation around the ethics and ecology of meat consumption?
Last offered: Spring 2020 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, Writing 2

JAPAN 121: Translating Japan, Translating the West (COMPLIT 142B, JAPAN 221)

Translation lies at the heart of all intercultural exchange. This course introduces students to the specific ways in which translation has shaped the image of Japan in the West, the image of the West in Japan, and Japan's self-image in the modern period. What texts and concepts were translated by each side, how, and to what effect? No prior knowledge of Japanese language necessary.
Last offered: Winter 2020 | Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

JAPAN 123: Critical Translation Studies (COMPLIT 228, JAPAN 223)

This course does not teach students how to translate, but rather how to incorporate translation into their critical thinking. Critical translation studies comprises wide-ranging ruminations on the complex interplay between languages, cultures, power, and identity. How can we integrate translation into our thinking about the processes that shape literary, political, ethical, and aesthetic sensibilities, and what do we stand to gain by doing so? Course readings introduce key works from inter-lingual perspectives that range across English, Hebrew, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Tagalog, Bengali, Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian, and Québécois. (Students need only have some knowledge of a language other than Standard American English to productively engage with the readings.) Class discussions and workshop assignments are designed to prepare students to integrate critical thinking about translation into their own research and intellectual interests.
Last offered: Winter 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

JAPAN 125: Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka and Beyond: Place in Modern Japan (COMPLIT 125J, JAPAN 225)

From the culturally distinct urban centers of Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka to the sharp contrasts between the southernmost and northernmost parts of Japan, modern Japanese literature and film present rich characterizations of place that have shaped Japanese identities at the national, regional, and local levels. This course focuses attention on how these settings operate in key works of literature and film, with an eye toward developing students' understanding of diversity within modern Japan. FOR UNDERGRADS: This course must be taken for a minimum of 3 units and a letter grade to be eligible for Ways credit
Terms: Spr | Units: 2-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

JAPAN 126: Japanese Functional Objects (JAPAN 226)

This course focuses on the creation of objects at the boundary between the aesthetic allure of fine art and the utilitarian practicality of everyday life. It is also about how we value the objects with which we surround ourselves, connected to issues that go from sustainability to the intimacy of the handmade - of the little but precise tool marks that evoke the skilled expertise of years spent at the workbench. Traditionally in Japan the distinction between a work of art and a utilitarian object was inessential. An aesthetic object acquired its cultural identity and social value precisely because it could be used. Famous examples of this duality can be found in tea ceremony ceramics, complex architectural joinery, lavish fabric design, and fine temple-inspired cuisine. This is true even for painting and calligraphy: illustrated paper-covered architectural partitions were as useful in keeping a room warm as in serving as the highlight of a social gathering; hanging scrolls and flower arrangements displayed in a purpose-built alcove (tokonoma) conveyed delicate political and cultural messages. At a modern museum, as soon as an object is acquired and accessioned into the collection, it ceases to be available to be touched, smelled, or weighed in one's hands. The only contact with warm bodies comes now through the gloved hands of a few trained professionals. A tokonoma alcove, by contrast, has no glass. What is more, a mere hint by the guest will prompt the host to retrieve the object displayed and offer it for close examination, or, as was often the case, actual use by the guests. The sense of closeness between object and body in premodern Japan was intensified by the fact that users were often makers themselves. Socialized utilization became the perfect venue for the assessment, evaluation, and explication of both the techniques of fabrication and the decisions inherent to artistic creation. For these reasons, the ideal way to study Japanese functional objects is to immerse oneself in the tradition by trying one's hand at the fundamental tools and techniques. This course will combine readings, lectures, and practical hands-on training in two core traditional disciplines: woodworking and ceramics. Traditional hand tools will be provided for students to customize and keep. This dimension of the course is made possible by the generous support of the Halpern Family Foundation. Attempts to broker a place for traditional craftsmanship in a context of mass production are at the core of modern movements such as William Morris's Arts and Crafts, Walter Gropius's Bauhaus, and Yanagi Soetsu's Mingei. This course is designed for students with interests in making, art history, engineering, anthropology, studio, intellectual history, and the material culture of East Asia more generally. No previous technical expertise required. Course taught in English. Venue: PRL
Last offered: Winter 2022 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

JAPAN 138: Introduction to Modern Japanese Literature and Culture (JAPAN 238)

This class introduces key literary texts from Japan's modern era (1868-present), locating these works in the larger political, social, and cultural trends of the period. The goal of the class is to use literary texts as a point of entry to understand the grand narrative of Japan's journey from its tentative re-entry into the international community in the 1850s, through the cataclysm of the Pacific War, the remarkable prosperity of the bubble years in the 1980s until most recent, post-3/11 catastrophe-evoked Zeitgeist.We will examine a variety of primary texts by such authors as Futabatei Shimei, Higuchi Ichiy¿, Natsume S¿seki, Tanizaki Jun'ichir, Miyamoto Yuriko, Kawabata Yasunari, ¿e Kenzabur¿, Yoshimoto Banana, Tawada Yko, and Yu Miri among others. Each text will be discussed in detail paying attention to its specific character and contextualized within larger political trends (e.g., the modernization program of the Meiji regime, the policies of Japan's wartime government, and postwar Japanese responses to the cold war), social developments (e.g., changing notions of social class, the women's rights movement, the social effects of the postwar economic expansion, ecocriticism), and cultural movements (e.g., literary reform movement of the 1890s, modernism of the 1920s and 30s, postmodernism of the 1980s, and exophony). Students will also be encouraged to think about the ways these texts relate to each other and a variety of issues beyond the Japanese socio-cultural and historical context.No prior knowledge of Japanese is required for this course, although students with sufficient proficiency are welcome to refer to original sources. Prerequisites: None
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Reichert, J. (PI)

JAPAN 151B: The Nature of Knowledge: Science and Literature in East Asia (CHINA 151B, CHINA 251B, JAPAN 251B, KOREA 151, KOREA 251)

"The Nature of Knowledge" explores the intersections of science and humanities East Asia. It covers a broad geographic area (China, Japan, and Korea) along a long temporal space (14th century - present) to investigate how historical notions about the natural world, the human body, and social order defied, informed, and constructed our current categories of science and humanities. The course will make use of medical, geographic, and cosmological treatises from premodern East Asia, portrayals and uses of science in modern literature, film, and media, as well as theoretical and historical essays on the relationships between literature, science, and society.As part of its exploration of science and the humanities in conjunction, the course addresses how understandings of nature are mediated through techniques of narrative, rhetoric, visualization, and demonstration. In the meantime, it also examines how the emergence of modern disciplinary "science" influenced the development of literary language, tropes, and techniques of subject development. This class will expose the ways that science has been mobilized for various ideological projects and to serve different interests, and will produce insights into contemporary debates about the sciences and humanities.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI | Repeatable 2 times (up to 10 units total)
Instructors: ; Zur, D. (PI); Sigley, A. (TA)

JAPAN 163A: Beauty and Renunciation in Japan (HUMCORE 123)

Is it okay to feel pleasure? Should humans choose beauty or renunciation? This is the main controversy of medieval Japan. This course introduces students to the famous literary works that created a world of taste, subtlety, and sensuality. We also read essays that warn against the risks of leading a life of gratification, both in this life and in the afterlife. And we discover together the ways in which these two positions can be not that far from each other. Does love always lead to heartbreak? Is the appreciation of nature compatible with the truths of Buddhism? Is it good to have a family? What kind of house should we build for ourselves? Can fictional stories make us better persons? Each week, during the first class meeting, we will focus on these issues in Japan. During the second class meeting, we will participate in a collaborative conversation with the other students and faculty in Humanities Core classes, about other regions and issues. This course is taught in English. This course is part of the Humanities Core, a collaborative set of global humanities seminars that brings all of its students and faculty into conversation. On Mondays you meet in your own course, and on Wednesdays all the HumCore seminars (in session that quarter) meet together: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

JAPAN 164: Introduction to Premodern Japanese (JAPAN 264)

Readings from Heian, Kamakura, Muromachi, and early Edo periods with focus on grammar and reading comprehension. Prerequisite: JAPANLNG 129B or 103, or equivalent.
Last offered: Autumn 2019 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

JAPAN 170: The Tale of Genji and Its Historical Reception (JAPAN 270)

Approaches to the tale including 12th-century allegorical and modern feminist readings. Influence upon other works including poetry, Noh plays, short stories, modern novels, and comic book ( manga) retellings. Prerequisite for graduate students: JAPANLNG 129B or 103, or equivalent.nnThis course must be taken for a minimum of 3 units and a letter grade to be eligible for Ways credit.
Last offered: Autumn 2017 | Units: 2-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

JAPAN 188: The Japanese Tea Ceremony: The History, Aesthetics, and Politics Behind a National Pastime (ARTHIST 287A, JAPAN 288)

This course on the Japanese tea ceremony ('water for tea') introduces the world of the first medieval tea-masters and follows the transformation of chanoyu into a popular pastime, a performance art, a get-together of art connoisseurs, and a religious path for samurai warriors, merchants, and artists in early-modern Japan. It also explores the metamorphosis of chanoyu under 20th century nationalisms and during the postwar economic boom, with particular attention to issues of patronage, gender, and social class.
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

JAPAN 217A: The Lotus Sutra in Japanese Buddhism (JAPAN 317A, RELIGST 217, RELIGST 317)

This seminar explores the influence of the Lotus Sutra, one of the most important Mahayana scriptures, in Japan. We will study how different Japanese Buddhist schools have interpreted this sutra and analyze a wide range of religious practices, art works, and literature associated with this text. All readings will be in English. Prerequisites: Solid foundation in either Buddhist studies or East Asian Studies. You must have taken at least one other course in Buddhist Studies. NOTE: Undergraduates must enroll for 5 units; graduate students can enroll for 3-5 units.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Mross, M. (PI)

JEWISHST 4: What Didn't Make the Bible (CLASSICS 9N, HISTORY 112C, RELIGST 4)

Over two billion people alive today consider the Bible to be sacred scripture. But how did the books that made it into the bible get there in the first place? Who decided what was to be part of the bible and what wasn't? How would history look differently if a given book didn't make the final cut and another one did? Hundreds of ancient Jewish and Christian texts are not included in the Bible. "What Didn't Make It in the Bible" focuses on these excluded writings. We will explore the Dead Sea Scrolls, Gnostic gospels, hear of a five-year-old Jesus throwing temper tantrums while killing (and later resurrecting) his classmates, peruse ancient romance novels, explore the adventures of fallen angels who sired giants (and taught humans about cosmetics), tour heaven and hell, encounter the garden of Eden story told from the perspective of the snake, and learn how the world will end. The course assumes no prior knowledge of Judaism, Christianity, the bible, or ancient history. It is designed for students who are part of faith traditions that consider the bible to be sacred, as well as those who are not. The only prerequisite is an interest in exploring books, groups, and ideas that eventually lost the battles of history and to keep asking the question "why." In critically examining these ancient narratives and the communities that wrote them, you will investigate how religions canonize a scriptural tradition, better appreciate the diversity of early Judaism and Christianity, understand the historical context of these religions, and explore the politics behind what did and did not make it into the bible.
Terms: Aut | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Penn, M. (PI); Persad, S. (GP)

JEWISHST 12S: Multiculturalism in the Middle Ages: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Medieval Spain (HISTORY 12S)

Before the year 1492, Spain had been a dynamic and complex region of Muslim and Christian kingdoms populated by Christians, Muslims, and Jews for nearly 800 years. What political, economic, and military exchanges took place among peoples of the three faiths in medieval Spain? Did community leaders and governments attempt to regulate and prohibit fluid identity boundaries? How has 20th-century Spanish nationalism shaped our understanding of medieval Spain? How have 21st-century questions of multiculturalism impacted our view of medieval Spain? These are the kinds of questions that this course will explore through chronicles, poetry, letters, legal documents, art, and architecture.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

JEWISHST 37Q: Zionism and the Novel (COMPLIT 37Q)

At the end of the nineteenth century, Zionism emerged as a political movement to establish a national homeland for the Jews, eventually leading to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. This seminar uses novels to explore the changes in Zionism, the roots of the conflict in the Middle East, and the potentials for the future. We will take a close look at novels by Israelis, both Jewish and Arab, in order to understand multiple perspectives, and we will also consider works by authors from the North America and from Europe. Note: This course must be taken for a letter grade to be eligible for WAYS credit.
Terms: Aut, Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP, Writing 2
Instructors: ; Berman, R. (PI)

JEWISHST 53: Exploring Jewish Spirituality (RELIGST 53)

It was once accepted as fact that Judaism is, at its core, a rational religion devoid of any authentic mystical tradition. But the past century of scholarship has reversed this claim, demonstrating that the spiritual life has been integral to Judaism's vital heart since ancient times. This yearning for a direct immediate experience of God's Presence, a longing to grasp the mysteries of the human soul and know the inner dynamics of the Divine realm, has taken on many different forms across the centuries. <br>This course will introduce students to the major texts--from theological treatises to poems and incantations--and core ideas of Jewish mysticism and spirituality, tracking their development from the Hebrew Bible to the dawn of modernity. Close attention will be paid to the historical context of these sources, and we will also engage with broader methodological approaches--from phenomenology to philology--regarding the academic study of religion and the comparative consideration of mysticism in particular. <br>This course assumes no prior background of Judaism or any other religious traditions. All readings will be made available in English. Students are, however, invited to challenge themselves with the "optional/advanced" readings of sources both primary and secondary. Pending interest, students with facility in the original languages (Hebrew or Aramaic) will be given the opportunity to do so.
Last offered: Autumn 2020 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

JEWISHST 80A: Jewish Music of the Diaspora (MUSIC 80A)

Through the perspective of Jewish music, the students will be exposed to diverse musical cultures from around the globe while simultaneously being exposed to the rich and multi-faceted cultures of Jewish music. Because the Jews were dispersed around the globe, discrete musical styles and genres evolved for the same texts. The various styles differ from each other in their tonal and rhythmic organizations; instrumentation, tora recitations.¿¿The course examines these aspects as well as the influence of Jewish music on classical music and vice versa. No prior knowledge of Jewish history, Judaism and music theory is required. ¿
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

JEWISHST 86: Exploring the New Testament (CLASSICS 43, HISTORY 111B, RELIGST 86)

To explore the historical context of the earliest Christians, students will read most of the New Testament as well as many documents that didn't make the final cut. Non-Christian texts, Roman art, and surviving archeological remains will better situate Christianity within the ancient world. Students will read from the Dead Sea Scrolls, explore Gnostic gospels, hear of a five-year-old Jesus throwing divine temper tantrums while killing (and later resurrecting) his classmates, peruse an ancient marriage guide, and engage with recent scholarship in archeology, literary criticism, and history.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

JEWISHST 112: Passing: Hidden Identities Onscreen (CSRE 113, FEMGEN 112)

Characters who are Jewish, Black, Latinx, women, and LGBTQ often conceal their identities - or "pass" - in Hollywood film. Our course will trace how Hollywood has depicted"passing" from the early 20th century to the present. Just a few of our films will include Gentleman's Agreement (1947), Imitation of Life (1959), School Ties (1992), White Chicks (2004), and Blackkklansman (2018). Through these films, we will explore the overlaps and differences between antisemitism, racism, misogyny, and queerphobia, both onscreen and in real life. In turn, we will also study the ideological role of passing films: how they thrill audiences by challenging social boundaries and hierarchies, only to reestablish familiar boundaries by the end. With this contradiction, passing films often help audiences to feel enlightened without actually challenging the oppressive status quo. Thus, we will not treat films as accurate depictions of real-world passing, but rather as cultural tools that help audiences to manage ideological contradictions about race, gender, sexuality, and class. Students will finish the course by creating their own short films about passing.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Branfman, J. (PI)

JEWISHST 124: German Jews: Thought, Race, and Identity (CSRE 124B, GERMAN 124)

This course offers an introduction to German Jewish thought from the 18th century to the present day. We will explore the way Jews in the German-speaking world understood their identities in the face of changing cultural and political contexts and the literary and philosophical works they produced in the face of antisemitism, discrimination, and genocide. This course covers the major themes and events in German-Jewish cultural history, including the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment), fin de si'cle Vienna, Zionism, exile and migration, the Holocaust, and the modern German Jewish renaissance, with readings from Moses Mendelsohn, Karl Marx, Franz Kafka, Hannah Arendt, Max Czollek, and more. We will pay special attention to the way the German Jewish experience challenges our understanding of identity categories such as race and religion, as well as concepts of whiteness, Europeanness, and the modern nation state.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Hodrick, C. (PI)

JEWISHST 131: Jews, Race, and Ethnicity in French Cinema and Literature (CSRE 131B, FRENCH 102)

How does an officially colorblind country engage with its (in)visible minorities? In a country such as France - which espouses an assimilationist, as opposed to a "melting pot" ideology - one's national belonging is said to transcend their religious, racial, and ethnic particularities. As such, assimilating to a secular, universal model of Frenchness is considered key to the healthy functioning of society. Why might this be so, and has it always been the case? In this class, we will explore this and related questions as they have been articulated in France and the former French Empire from the Revolution through the twenty-first century. Via close study of literature, cinema, and still image, we will (a) examine how the universalist model deals with racial, religious, and ethnic differences, (b) assess how constructions of difference--be they racial, ethnic, or religious--change across time and space, and (c) assess the impact that the colorblind, assimilationist model has on the lived experiences of France's visible and invisible minorities.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Glasberg, R. (PI)

JEWISHST 143: Literature and Society in Africa and the Caribbean (AFRICAAM 133, AFRICAST 132, COMPLIT 133, COMPLIT 233A, CSRE 133E, FRENCH 133)

This course provides students with an introductory survey of literature and cinema from Francophone Africa and the Caribbean in the 20th and 21st centuries. Students will be encouraged to consider the geographical, historical, and political connections between the Maghreb, the Caribbean, and Sub-Saharan Africa. This course will help students improve their ability to speak and write in French by introducing students to linguistic and conceptual tools to conduct literary and visual analysis. While analyzing novels and films, students will be exposed to a diverse number of topics such as national and cultural identity, race and class, gender and sexuality, orality and textuality, transnationalism and migration, colonialism and decolonization, history and memory, and the politics of language. Readings include the works of writers and filmmakers such as Aim¿ C¿saire, Albert Memmi, Ousmane Semb¿ne, Le¿la Sebbar, Mariama B¿, Maryse Cond¿, Dany Laferri¿re, Mati Diop, and special guest L¿onora Miano. Taught in French. Students are encouraged to complete FRENLANG 124 or successfully test above this level through the Language Center. This course fulfills the Writing in the Major (WIM) requirement.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Seck, F. (PI); Yu, K. (TA)

JEWISHST 147B: The Hebrew and Jewish Short Story (COMPLIT 127B)

Short stories from Israel, the US and Europe including works by Agnon, Kafka, Keret, Castel-Bloom, Kashua, Singer, Benjamin, Freud, biblical myths and more. The class will engage with questions related to the short story as a literary form and the history of the short story. Reading and discussion in English. Note: To be eligible for WAYS credit, you must take the course for a Letter Grade.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

JEWISHST 148: Writing Between Languages: The Case of Eastern European Jewish Literature (JEWISHST 348, SLAVIC 198, SLAVIC 398)

Eastern European Jews spoke and read Hebrew, Yiddish, and their co-territorial languages (Russian, Polish, etc.). In the modern period they developed secular literatures in all of them, and their writing reflected their own multilinguality and evolving language ideologies. We focus on major literary and sociolinguistic texts. Reading and discussion in English; students should have some reading knowledge of at least one relevant language as well. This course must be taken for a minimum of 3 units and a letter grade to be eligible for WAYS credit. In 2020-21, a 'letter' or 'CR' grade will satisfy the WAYS requirement.
Last offered: Spring 2021 | Units: 1-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

JEWISHST 149: Tails from the Russian Empire: Animals in Russian and Yiddish Literatures (SLAVIC 149)

Unless you subscribe to certain extreme life philosophies, animals probably constitute some of your existence and environment - whether living with pets, hearing birds around campus, or confronting our human selves every morning, most of us would struggle to completely avoid animals in daily life. In this course, we explore different types of media and texts - though predominantly Russian and Yiddish literatures from 19th-century Russia in English translation - ventriloquizing, problematizing, and otherwise instrumentalizing non-human animals. Through our animal readings on narration and theory, we reconsider concepts of relation, humanism, sustainability, responsibility. Students can apply their refined understandings to create art pieces of digital humanities projects using the Textile Makerspace.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Kim, E. (PI)

JEWISHST 150: Texts that Changed the World from the Ancient Middle East (COMPLIT 31, HUMCORE 111, RELIGST 150)

This course traces the story of the cradle of human civilization. We will begin with the earliest human stories, the Gilgamesh Epic and biblical literature, and follow the path of the development of law, religion, philosophy and literature in the ancient Mediterranean or Middle Eastern world, to the emergence of Jewish and Christian thinking. We will pose questions about how this past continues to inform our present: What stories, myths, and ideas remain foundational to us? How did the stories and myths shape civilizations and form larger communities? How did the earliest stories conceive of human life and the divine? What are the ideas about the order of nature, and the place of human life within that order? How is the relationship between the individual and society constituted? This course is part of the Humanities Core: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-ER

JEWISHST 236A: Casablanca - Algiers - Tunis : Cities on the Edge (COMPLIT 236A, CSRE 140S, FRENCH 236, FRENCH 336, HISTORY 245C, URBANST 140F)

Casablanca, Algiers and Tunis embody three territories, real and imaginary, which never cease to challenge the preconceptions of travelers setting sight on their shores. In this class, we will explore the myriad ways in which these cities of North Africa, on the edge of Europe and of Africa, have been narrated in literature, cinema, and popular culture. Home to Muslims, Christians, and Jews, they are an ebullient laboratory of social, political, religious, and cultural issues, global and local, between the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries. We will look at mass images of these cities, from films to maps, novels to photographs, sketching a new vision of these magnets as places where power, social rituals, legacies of the Ottoman and French colonial pasts, and the influence of the global economy collude and collide. Special focus on class, gender, and race.
| Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

JEWISHST 242G: Myth and Modernity (COMPLIT 222A, GERMAN 222, GERMAN 322, JEWISHST 342)

Masters of German 20th- and 21st-Century literature and philosophy as they present aesthetic innovation and confront the challenges of modern technology, social alienation, manmade catastrophes, and imagine the future. Readings include Nietzsche, Freud, Rilke, Musil, Brecht, Kafka, Doeblin, Benjamin, Juenger, Arendt, Musil, Mann, Adorno, Celan, Grass, Bachmann, Bernhardt, Wolf, and Kluge. Taught in English. Note for German Studies grad students: GERMAN 322 will fulfill the grad core requirement since GERMAN 332 is not being offered this year. NOTE: Enrollment requires Professor Eshel's consent. Please complete the following form to be considered for the class: https://forms.gle/zq3EwGWc1Ff7xn7T9. Enrollment is limited to 20 students. Students will be notified about their acceptance by March 20th and given a permission code. UPDATE 3/2/23 - There was a problem with the original form. Please edit your response to include your name.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

JEWISHST 243A: Hannah Arendt: Facing Totalitarianism (COMPLIT 353B, GERMAN 253, GERMAN 353)

Like hardly any other thinker of the modern age, Hannah Arendt's thought offers us timeless insights into the fabric of the modern age, especially regarding the perennial danger of totalitarianism. This course offers an in-depth introduction to Arendt's most important works in their various contexts, as well as a consideration of their reverberations in contemporary philosophy and literature. Readings include Arendt's <em>The Origin of Totalitarianism</em>, <em>The Human Condition, Between Past and Future</em>, <em>Men in Dark Times</em>, <em>On Revolution</em>,<em>Eichmann in Jerusalem</em>, and <em>The Life of the Mind</em>, as well as considerations of Hannah Arendt's work by Max Frisch, Jürgen Habermas, Seyla Benhabib, Judith Butler, Giorgio Agamben, and others. Special attention will be given to Arendt's writings on literature with an emphasis on Kafka, Brecht, Auden, Sartre, and Camus. This course will be synchronously conducted, but will also use an innovative, Stanford-developed, online platform called Poetic Thinking. Poetic Thinking allows students to share both their scholarly and creative work with each other. Based on the newest technology and beautifully designed, it greatly enhances their course experience.
Last offered: Autumn 2020 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

JEWISHST 249: The Algerian Wars (CSRE 249, FRENCH 249, HISTORY 239G)

From Algiers the White to Algiers the Red, Algiers, the Mecca of the Revolutionaries in the words of Amilcar Cabral, this course offers to study the Algerian Wars since the French conquest of Algeria (1830-) to the Algerian civil war of the 1990s. We will revisit the ways in which the war has been narrated in literature and cinema, popular culture, and political discourse. A special focus will be given to the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962). The course considers the racial representations of the war in the media, the continuing legacies surrounding the conflict in France, Africa, and the United States, from Che Guevara to the Black Panthers. A key focus will be the transmission of collective memory through transnational lenses, and analyses of commemorative events and movies. nReadings from James Baldwin, Assia Djebar, Albert Camus, Frantz Fanon, Mouloud Feraoun. Movies include "The Battle of Algiers," "Days of Glory," and "Viva Laldjérie." nTaught in English.
Last offered: Spring 2018 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

JEWISHST 249A: Levinas and Literature (COMPLIT 259A)

Focus is on major works by French phenomenologist Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995) and their import for literary studies. Aim is to discuss and evaluate Levinas's (often latent) aesthetics through a close reading of his work in phenomenology, ethics, and Jewish philosophy. If poetry has come to seem barbaric (or at least useless) in a world so deeply shaped by genocide, forced migration, and climate change, Levinas offers a clear and deeply engaged path forward. If you love literature but still haven't figured out what on earth it might be good for, this course is for you. Readings and discussion in English.
Last offered: Winter 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

JEWISHST 287: Hope in the Modern Age (COMPLIT 287, GERMAN 287)

Immanuel Kant famously considered "What may I hope?" to be the third and final question of philosophy. This course considers the thinkers, from Immanuel Kant to Judith Butler, who have attempted to answer this question from within the context of modernity. Has revolution replaced religion as the object of our hope? Has Enlightenment lived up to its promises? These topics and more will be discussed, with readings from thinkers including Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Benjamin, Adorno, and Arendt, alongside the literature of writers such as Kafka, Celan, Nelly Sachs, among others, and with particular focus on the question of hope within the German-Jewish tradition.
Last offered: Autumn 2021 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

JEWISHST 333: Comparative Mysticism (RELIGST 233, RELIGST 333)

This seminar will explore the mystical writings of the major religious traditions represented in our department: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism. It will address major issues in the study of mysticism, exposing students to a wide variety of religious thinkers and literary traditions, while simultaneously interrogating the usefulness of the concept of "mysticism" as a framework in the study of religion. We will consider various paradigms of method (comparative, constructivist, essentialist), and examine the texts with an eye to historical and social context together with the intellectual traditions that they represent. Preserving the distinctiveness of each religious tradition, the class will be structured as a series of five units around these traditions, but our eyes will be continuously trained upon shared topics or themes, including: language; gender; notions of sainthood; scripture and exegesis; autobiography and writing; mysticism and philosophy; poetry and translation; mysticism and social formation; the interface of law, devotion, and spirit; science and mysticism; perceptions of inter-religious influence; mysticism and the modern/ post-modern world. Advanced reading knowledge of at least one language of primary-source scholarship in one of the above traditions is required. Undergraduates register for 200-level for 5 units. Graduate students register for 300-level for 3-5 unit.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

KOREA 21: Humanities Core: Love and Betrayal in Asia (CHINA 21, HUMCORE 21, JAPAN 21)

Why are lovers in storybooks East and West always star-crossed? Why do love and death seem to go together? For every Romeo and Juliet, there are dozens of doomed lovers in the Asian literary repertoires, from Genji's string of embittered mistresses, to the Butterfly lovers in early modern China, to the voices of desire in Koryo love songs, to the devoted adolescent cousins in Dream of the Red Chamber, to the media stars of Korean romantic drama, now wildly popular throughout Asia. In this course, we explore how the love story has evolved over centuries of East Asian history, asking along the way what we can learn about Chinese, Japanese, and Korean views of family and community, gender and sexuality, truth and deception, trust and betrayal, ritual and emotion, and freedom and solidarity from canonical and non-canonical works in East Asian literatures. N.B. This is the second of three courses in the East Asian track. These courses offer an unparalleled opportunity to study East Asian history and culture, past and present. Take all three to experience a year-long intellectual community dedicated to exploring how ideas have shaped our world and future.
Last offered: Winter 2020 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

KOREA 21Q: Humanities Core: Love and Betrayal in Asia (CHINA 21Q, HUMCORE 21Q, JAPAN 21Q)

Why are lovers in storybooks East and West always star-crossed? Why do love and death seem to go together? For every Romeo and Juliet, there are dozens of doomed lovers in the Asian literary repertoires, from Genji's string of embittered mistresses, to the Butterfly lovers in early modern China, to the voices of desire in Koryo love songs, to the devoted adolescent cousins in Dream of the Red Chamber, to the media stars of Korean romantic drama, now wildly popular throughout Asia. In this course, we explore how the love story has evolved over centuries of East Asian history, asking along the way what we can learn about Chinese, Japanese, and Korean views of family and community, gender and sexuality, truth and deception, trust and betrayal, ritual and emotion, and freedom and solidarity from canonical and non-canonical works in East Asian literatures. N.B. This is the second of three courses in the East Asian track. These courses offer an unparalleled opportunity to study East Asian history and culture, past and present. Take all three to experience a year-long intellectual community dedicated to exploring how ideas have shaped our world and future.
Last offered: Winter 2019 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

KOREA 24: Humanities Core: How to be Modern in East Asia (CHINA 24, COMPLIT 44, HUMCORE 133, JAPAN 24)

Modern East Asia was almost continuously convulsed by war and revolution in the 19th and 20th centuries. But the everyday experience of modernity was structured more profoundly by the widening gulf between the country and the city, economically, politically, and culturally. This course examines literary and cinematic works from China and Japan that respond to and reflect on the city/country divide, framing it against issues of class, gender, national identity, and ethnicity. It also explores changing ideas about home/hometown, native soil, the folk, roots, migration, enlightenment, civilization, progress, modernization, nationalism, cosmopolitanism, and sustainability. All materials are in English. This course is part of the Humanities Core: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Reichert, J. (PI); Xu, L. (PI)

KOREA 101N: Kangnam Style: K-pop and the Globalization of Korean Soft Power

For over a decade now, South Korea has established itself as a tireless generator of soft power, the popularity of its pop-culture spreading from Asia to the rest of the world. This class will look into the economic engine that moves this "cultural contents" industry, and will examine some of its expressions in the form of K-pop. Class meets in East Asia Library (Lathrop Library), Rm 338.
Last offered: Autumn 2019 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

KOREA 111: From Colonialism to K-pop: Race and Gender in South Korean Culture (COMPLIT 111K, CSRE 111A, FEMGEN 111A, KOREA 222)

Some may associate South Korea with the following: BTS, North Korean nukes, Samsung, Hyundai, Squid Games. Some may repeat what South Korea has said about itself: that it is racially homogenous, an ethnic community that can trace their ancestry back 5000 years. Some may wonder how a country that is often perceived as Christian and conservative developed pop culture like K-pop, or queer subcultures, or feminist activism. This class will use South Korea as a case study to think historically and geographically about race and gender through the following topics: when did racial discourses begin to emerge in Korea? What have been South Korea's significant encounters with the figure of the Other in its modern history? How were women implicated in the changing landscape of colonial Korea, the Korean War, Korea's Vietnam War experience, and compressed modernization? How have the influx of migrant labor and North Korean refugees impacted ideas about race in South Korea? And finally, what does K-pop tell us about shifting South Korean views of race and gender? The primary materials that we will analyze will be drawn from Korean fiction, film, and media in translation.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

KOREA 118: Humanities Core: Everybody Eats: The Language, Culture, and Ethics of Food in East Asia (CHINA 118, HUMCORE 22, JAPAN 118)

Many of us have grown up eating "Asian" at home, with friends, on special occasions, or even without full awareness that Asian is what we were eating. This course situates the three major culinary traditions of East Asia--China, Japan, and Korea--in the histories and civilizations of the region, using food as an introduction to their rich repertoires of literature, art, language, philosophy, religion, and culture. It also situates these seemingly timeless gastronomies within local and global flows, social change, and ethical frameworks. Specifically, we will explore the traditional elements of Korean court food, and the transformation of this cuisine as a consequence of the Korean War and South Korea¿s subsequent globalizing economy; the intersection of traditional Japanese food with past and contemporary identities; and the evolution of Chinese cuisine that accompanies shifting attitudes about the environment, health, and well-being. Questions we will ask ourselves during the quarter include, what is "Asian" about Asian cuisine? How has the language of food changed? Is eating, and talking about eating, a gendered experience? How have changing views of the self and community shifted the conversation around the ethics and ecology of meat consumption?
Last offered: Spring 2020 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, Writing 2

KOREA 120: Narratives of Modern and Contemporary Korea (COMPLIT 222, KOREA 220)

This introductory survey will examine the development of South and North Korean literature from the turn of the 20th century until the present. The course will be guided by historical and thematic inquiries as we explore literature in the colonial period, in the period of postwar industrialization, and contemporary literature from the last decade. We will supplement our readings with critical writing about Korea from the fields of cultural studies and the social sciences in order to broaden the terms of our engagement with our primary texts.
Last offered: Winter 2022 | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

KOREA 121: Doing the Right Thing: Ethical Dilemmas in Korean Film (KOREA 221)

Ethics and violence seem to be contradictory terms, yet much of Korean film and literature in the past five decades has demonstrated that they are an intricate and in many ways justifiable part of the fabric of contemporary existence. Film exposes time and again the complex ways in which the supposed vanguards of morality, religious institutions, family, schools, and the state are sites of condoned transgression, wherein spiritual and physical violation is inflicted relentlessly. This class will explore the ways in which questions about Truth and the origins of good and evil are mediated through film in the particular context of the political, social, and economic development of postwar South Korea. Tuesday classes will include a brief introduction followed by a film screening that will last on average for two hours; students that are unable to stay until 5 pm will be required to watch the rest of the film on their own.
| Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-ER

KOREA 151: The Nature of Knowledge: Science and Literature in East Asia (CHINA 151B, CHINA 251B, JAPAN 151B, JAPAN 251B, KOREA 251)

"The Nature of Knowledge" explores the intersections of science and humanities East Asia. It covers a broad geographic area (China, Japan, and Korea) along a long temporal space (14th century - present) to investigate how historical notions about the natural world, the human body, and social order defied, informed, and constructed our current categories of science and humanities. The course will make use of medical, geographic, and cosmological treatises from premodern East Asia, portrayals and uses of science in modern literature, film, and media, as well as theoretical and historical essays on the relationships between literature, science, and society.As part of its exploration of science and the humanities in conjunction, the course addresses how understandings of nature are mediated through techniques of narrative, rhetoric, visualization, and demonstration. In the meantime, it also examines how the emergence of modern disciplinary "science" influenced the development of literary language, tropes, and techniques of subject development. This class will expose the ways that science has been mobilized for various ideological projects and to serve different interests, and will produce insights into contemporary debates about the sciences and humanities.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI | Repeatable 2 times (up to 10 units total)
Instructors: ; Zur, D. (PI); Sigley, A. (TA)

KOREA 190X: North Korea in a Historical and Cultural Perspective (HISTORY 290, HISTORY 390, KOREA 290X)

North Korea has been dubbed secretive, its leaders unhinged, its people mindless dupes. Such descriptions are partly a result of the control that the DPRK exerts over texts and bodies that come through its borders. Filtered through foreign media, North Korea's people and places can seem to belong to another planet. However, students interested in North Korea can access the DPRK through a broad and growing range of sources including satellite imagery, archival documents, popular magazines, films, literature, art, tourism, and through interviews with former North Korean residents (defectors). When such sources are brought into conversation with scholarship about North Korea, they yield new insights into North Korea's history, politics, economy, and culture. This course will provide students with fresh perspectives on the DPRK and will give them tools to better contextualize its current position in the world. Lectures will be enriched with a roster of guest speakers.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Moon, Y. (PI)

LIFE 151: Feminist Life-Writing (FEMGEN 151)

This course explores life-writing as a form of feminist praxis. Feminist life-writing is an art form grounded in truth-telling, activism, and self-making that emerges from the long tradition of women writing private lives. Beginning with the politicized practices of second wave feminists up through contemporary trends in memoir and autofiction, we will confront an array of intersectional autobiographies that connect personal experience to broader movements, power structures, and oppressions. How has life-writing contributed to the articulation of feminist consciousness? How has feminism impacted the methods marginalized authors use to create forms for belonging and self-determination? As we think about the politics of life-writing, we will also consider feminist rhetorical and aesthetic strategies for confronting issues like trauma, disability, incarceration, motherhood, and friendship. Each student will conduct a large-scale research project focused on an author, genre, or theme of their choice. As we research the critical historical contexts for feminist memoir, we will simultaneously conduct our own creative experiments in life-writing.
Last offered: Spring 2021 | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

LIFE 180: Art, Meditation, and Creation (ARTHIST 180, ARTSINST 280)

Art and meditation invite us to be fully present in our minds and bodies. This class will give you tools to integrate mind and body as you explore artworks on display at the university's museums and throughout campus. In your engagement with activity-based learning at these venues, you will attend to perception and embodiment in the process of writing and making creative work about art. You will also learn meditation techniques and be exposed to authors who foreground the importance of the body in both writing and making art. For your meditation-centered and research-based final creative project, you will have the option of writing an experimental visual analysis or devising a performance.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

MUSIC 1A: Music, Mind, and Human Behavior

An introductory exploration of how and why music is a pervasive and fundamental aspect of human existence across cultures. The class will introduce aspects of music perception and cognition as well as anthropological and cultural considerations.
Last offered: Winter 2021 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

MUSIC 2C: An Introduction to Opera

The lasting appeal of opera as a lavishly hybrid genre from the 1600s to the present. How and why does opera set its stories to music? What is operatic singing? Who is the audience? How do words, music, voices, movement, and staging collaborate in different operatic eras and cultures? Principal works by Monteverdi, Handel, Mozart, Verdi, Wagner, Strauss, Britten, and Adams. Class studies and attends two works performed by the San Francisco Opera.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Grey, T. (PI)

MUSIC 7B: Musical Cultures of the World

Ethnomusicologists study music in human life. Music is with us as we articulate and define social identities -- punk rocker, student, Japanese-American, member of a sorority, Catholic, radical, etc. --and as we acquire new identities through rites of passage such as weddings, graduations, and initiation ceremonies. Many of life's most intense moments are accompanied or created by music, but music can also be part of the everyday, with us as we work, move, and socialize. This course is about what music does in human life and what it means to participants. In other words, it is about the myriad ways that music makes us human. We will address musical meanings and practices in selected regions of Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. As you encounter music in an increasingly connected world, this course will provide you with a new awareness of musical diversity and of the social implications of music making. To satisfy a Ways requirement, this course must be taken for at least 3 units.
Terms: Aut | Units: 2-3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

MUSIC 8A: Rock, Sex, and Rebellion

Development of critical listening skills and musical parameters through genres in the history of rock music. Focus is on competing aesthetic tendencies and subcultural forces that shaped the music. Rock's significance in American culture, and the minority communities that have enriched rock's legacy as an expressively diverse form. Lectures, readings, listening, and video screenings. Attendance at all lectures is required.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

MUSIC 11N: Harmonic Convergence: Music's Intersections with Science, Mathematics, History, and Literature

Topics include music and the brain; tuning and temperament; musical form; connections between music and mathematics; and readings in history and literature with strong musical elements. Readings include "The Power of Music" (Mannes), "Musicophilia" (Sacks), "From Music to Mathematics" (Roberts), "The Kreutzer Sonata" (Tolstoy), "A Clockwork Orange" and "Honey for the Bears" (Burgess). Compositions by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Debussy, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, and others will be studied. Goals: increased understanding of music's relationship to other fields; improved writing skills. While ability to read music is not required, students with musical ability will be encouraged to perform relevant works in class.
Last offered: Winter 2020 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

MUSIC 11Q: Art in the Metropolis (ARTSINST 11Q, ARTSTUDI 11Q, ENGLISH 11Q, FILMEDIA 11Q, TAPS 11Q)

This seminar is offered in conjunction with the annual "Arts Immersion" trip to New York that takes place over the spring break and is organized by the Stanford Arts Institute (SAI). Enrollment in this course is a requirement for taking part in the spring break trip. The program is designed to provide a group of students with the opportunity to immerse themselves in the cultural life of New York City guided by faculty and SAI staff. Students will experience a broad range and variety of art forms (visual arts, theater, opera, dance, etc.) and will meet with prominent arts administrators and practitioners, some of whom are Stanford alumni. In the seminar, we will prepare for the diverse experiences the trip affords and develop individual projects related to particular works of art, exhibitions, and performances that we'll encounter in person during the stay in New York. Class time will be divided between readings, presentations, and one studio based creative project. The urban setting in which the various forms of art are created, presented, and received will form a special point of focus. A principal aim of the seminar will be to develop aesthetic sensibilities through writing critically about the art that interests and engages us and making art. For further details please visit the Stanford Arts Institute website: https://arts.stanford.edu/for-students/academics/arts-immersion/new-york/
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Berlier, T. (PI)

MUSIC 13P: Media and Communication from the Middle Ages to the Printing Press (ENGLISH 13P, ENGLISH 113P, HISTORY 13P, HISTORY 113P, MUSIC 113P)

Did you know that the emperor Charlemagne was illiterate, yet his scribes revolutionized writing in the West? This course follows decisive moments in the history of media and communication, asking how new recording technologies reshaped a society in which most people did not read or write--what has been described as the shift "from memory to written record." To understand this transformation, we examine forms of oral literature and music, from the Viking sagas, the call to crusade, and medieval curses (Benedictine maledictions), to early popular authors such as Dante and the 15th-century feminist scribe, Christine de Pizan. We trace the impact of musical notation, manuscript and book production, and Gutenberg's print revolution. To paraphrase Marshall McLuhan's famous dictum, how did the medium shape the message? Along the way, we will consider how the medieval arts of memory and divine reading (lectio divina) can inform communication in the digital world. This is a hands-on course: students will handle medieval manuscripts and early printed books in Special Collections, and will participate in an "ink-making workshop," following medieval recipes for ink and for cutting quills, then using them to write on parchment. The course is open to all interested students.
| Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

MUSIC 14N: Women Making Music (FEMGEN 13N)

Preference to freshmen. Women's musical activities across times and cultures; how ideas about gender influence the creation, performance, and perception of music.
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-Gender, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

MUSIC 16N: Behind "Swingposium:" Activism in Performing Arts (ASNAMST 16N)

Swingposium (https://taiko.org/swingposium) is an immersive theater production, being presented by San Jose Taiko at Stanford in November. It tells the hidden history of Japanese Americans boosting morale in WWII Incarceration Camps through swing dances with live big band music, and will include student performers from Stanford Jazz Orchestra, Stanford Taiko, Swingtime, and the Asian American Theater Project. This class - through readings and discussion, conversations with artists, and hands-on experience with taiko, theater and swing music/dance - explores foundations of this production: the Japanese American community, North American taiko, African American roots of big band and swing, and immersive and Asian American theater.
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

MUSIC 18A: Jazz History: Ragtime to Bebop, 1900-1940 (AMSTUD 18A)

From the beginning of jazz to the war years.
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Low, M. (PI); Haines, Z. (TA)

MUSIC 18B: Jazz History: Bebop to Present, 1940-Present (AFRICAAM 18B, AMSTUD 18B)

Modern jazz styles from Bebop to the current scene. Emphasis is on the significant artists of each style.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Low, M. (PI); Koplitz, D. (TA)

MUSIC 18N: Musical Dishonesty: Fakes, Forgeries, Counterfeits, Hoaxes, Deceptions, Illusions, and Artifice

Dishonesty is everywhere. Is anything still honest? To answer we examine the myriad types of musical dishonesty, some harmless and fanciful, others deliberate and pernicious: artfully misleading deceptive cadences and fake endings; evident frauds (the fictional band Spinal Tap) and purposely obscured ones (the lip-syncing of Milli Vanilli); psychoacoustic illusions (infinitely ascending Shepard tones); biographical deceptions of "dangerous" rappers and metal bands; fake Mozart manuscripts; ghost composers and AI generated music; the question of sampling; self-mythologized artists from KISS to P-Funk; and so on. Students will also explore examples beyond music, such as current political events and contemporary conspiracy theories.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Applebaum, M. (PI)

MUSIC 19A: Introduction to Music Theory

For non-music majors and Music majors or minors unable to pass the proficiency test for entry to MUSIC 21. The fundamentals of music theory and notation, basic sight reading, sight singing, ear training, keyboard harmony; melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic dictation. Skill oriented, using piano and voice as basic tools to develop listening and reading skills.
Terms: Aut, Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
Instructors: ; Berger, T. (PI); Rose, F. (PI)

MUSIC 19B: Intermediate Music Theory

This course is an introduction to music theory geared toward students who have basic literacy skills (i.e. fundamental notation, identifying major and minor scales, keys, etc). Using musical materials from repertoire selected from campus and area concerts, and incorporating the opportunity to attend these concerts, the course will introduce elements of harmony, melody, form, orchestration and arrangement. The course is an appropriate successor to Music 19A. Students who successfully complete Music 19B can go on directly to Music 21.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
Instructors: ; Berger, T. (PI)

MUSIC 20A: Jazz Theory (AFRICAAM 20A)

Introduces the language and sounds of jazz through listening, analysis, and compositional exercises. Students apply the fundamentals of music theory to the study of jazz. Prerequisite: Music 19, consent of instructor, or satisfactory demonstration of basic musical skills proficiency on qualifying examination on first day of class. This class is closed by design. Please register on the waitlist and show up on the first day of class to receive a permission number for enrollment.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
Instructors: ; Nadel, J. (PI)

MUSIC 20AX: The Singer-Songwriter & American Popular Culture

This is a course about the emergence of a mythological figure in twentieth-century American popular culture: the singer-songwriter. From the storied travels of Woody Guthrie across the Great Plains, to the rebellious genius of Bob Dylan, whose poetic lyrics won him the Nobel Prize in Literature, to the genre-bending feminist icon of our modern age, Taylor Swift, singer-songwriters have been at the heart of American cultural expression for nearly a century. By taking seriously how both individual and national identity are shaped by discourses of race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality, we will explore how political transformations in American social life might help us to understand the careers of Guthrie, Dylan, Swift and many others, as well as vice-versa: how singer-songwriters transformed American social life in the mid to late twentieth century. What remains so alluring about these poet-performers? What can their enduring significance tell us about the development of American popular culture in the twentieth century and today? Note: No musical training is required to take this course.
Terms: Sum | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Gilbert, M. (PI)

MUSIC 20B: Advanced Jazz Theory

Approaches to improvisation and composed jazz lines through listening, transcribing, analysis, and compositional exercises. Topics include: chord/scale theory, melodic minor harmony, altered chords, and substitute harmony. Prerequisite: 20A or consent of instructor.
Terms: Win, Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
Instructors: ; Nadel, J. (PI)

MUSIC 20C: Jazz Arranging and Composition

Jazz arranging and composition for small ensembles. Foundation for writing for big band. Prerequisite: 20A or consent of instructor.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

MUSIC 21: Introduction to Tonal Theory

Preference to majors. Introduction to tonal theory. Practice and analysis. Diatonic harmony focusing on melodic and harmonic organization, functional relationships, voice-leading, and tonal structures. Students must concurrently enroll in an Ear-training and musicianship lab (MUSIC 24a, 24b, or 24c as appropriate). Music majors must take 4 courses in ear training, and pass an ear training exit exam in their Junior year. Enrollment limited to 40. Prerequisites: (1) Piano Proficiency Exam (must be passed within the first two weeks of the term) or MUSIC 12A (may be taken concurrently); (2) Passing grade on a basic musical skills proficiency examination on the first day of class or MUSIC 19.
Terms: Aut, Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

MUSIC 22: Intermediate Tonal Theory

Preference to majors. Introduction to chromatic harmony focusing on secondary functions, modulations, and harmonic sequences.  Analysis of musical forms and harmonizations complemented by harmonic and melodic dictation, sight-singing, and other practical skills. Students must concurrently enroll in an ear-training and musicianship lab ( MUSIC 24A, 24B, or 24C as appropriate). Music majors must take 4 courses in ear training, and pass an ear training exit exam in their Junior year. Prerequisites: (1) MUSIC 21; (2) Piano Proficiency Exam or MUSIC 12B (may be taken concurrently); or consent of instructor.
Terms: Win, Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

MUSIC 23: Advanced Tonal Theory

Preference to majors. Continuation of chromatic harmony such as mode mixture, Neapolitan, augmented sixth chords, enharmonic modulation, complex forms of the late Romantic and early Modern period, and the transition to post-tonal theory (church modes, octatonic, pentatonic, whole-tone scales, amongst other topics). Students must concurrently enroll in an ear-training and musicianship lab ( MUSIC 24A, 24B, or 24C as appropriate). Music majors must take 4 courses in ear training, and pass an ear training exit exam in their Junior year. Prerequisites: (1) MUSIC 22; (2) Piano Proficiency Exam or MUSIC 12C (may be taken concurrently); or consent of instructor.
Terms: Aut, Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

MUSIC 25: Decoding Anime

Anime as an artistic form often boasts highly imaginative graphics, striking music, vibrant characters, and fantastical stories. The course aims at decoding the expressive power of anime by applying a method of multimedia analysis that focuses on the interaction between its component elements: story, image, sound and music. Through close reading of works by five leading and innovative directors the students will develop tools to analyze anime and interpret it in a larger cultural context.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

MUSIC 26N: Japanese Arts: a Creative Exploration

The striking originality of Japanese contemporary culture seems to defy unifying pressures of globalization. What are the sources of this originality? Can it be traced to the unique and sophisticated art forms like rock gardens, haiku, tea ceremony, martial arts, ikebana and Noh Theater or to the illusive aesthetic notions of wabi, sabi, y¿gen, ma or jo-ha-ky¿? Exploration of Japanese arts through comparative examination and direct engagement. Creative projects and workshops in traditional Japanese arts.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

MUSIC 31N: Behind the Big Drums: Exploring Taiko (ASNAMST 31N)

Preference to Freshman. Since 1992 generations of Stanford students have heard, seen, and felt the power of taiko, big Japanese drums, at Admit Weekend, NSO, or Baccalaureate. Taiko is a relative newcomer to the American music scene. The contemporary ensemble drumming form, or kumidaiko, developed in Japan in the 1950s. The first North American taiko groups emerged from the Japanese American community shortly after and coincided with increased Asian American activism. In the intervening years, taiko has spread into communities in the UK, Europe, Australia, and South America. What drives the power of these drums? In this course, we explore the musical, cultural, historical, and political perspectives of taiko through readings and discussion, conversations with taiko artists, and learn the fundamentals of playing. With the taiko as our focal point, we find intersections of Japanese music, Japanese American history, and Asian American activism, and explore relations between performance, cultural expression, community, and identity.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Sano, S. (PI); Uyechi, L. (PI)

MUSIC 33N: Beethoven

This seminar is designed as an in-depth introduction to the music of Ludwig van Beethoven. In addition to exploring the composer's principal works in a variety of genres (symphonies, piano sonatas, string quartets, opera, etc.), we will consider broader questions of biography and reception history. How have images of the composer and the fortunes of his music changed over time? How did his compositions come to define the paradigm of Western classical music? What impact has he had on popular culture? The class is open to all levels of musical expertise; the ability to read music is not a requirement. Come prepared to discover -- or rediscover -- some great music!
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Hinton, S. (PI)

MUSIC 34N: Performing America: The Broadway Musical

Musical theater and the representation of American identities in the twentieth century to the present. Issues of class, race, gender, and sexuality; intersections with jazz, rock, and pop; roles of lyricist, composer, director, choreographer, producer, performers. Individual shows (Showboat, Oklahoma, West Side Story, Company, Les Mis¿rables, Into the Woods, Wicked, Hamilton, Dear Evan Hansen, Heathers); musical theater "song types" across eras; show tunes in popular culture at large; musicals on film, television, and social media. Opportunities for performance and attending local productions.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
Instructors: ; Grey, T. (PI)

MUSIC 35N: Black Music Revealed: Black composers, performers, and themes from the 18th century to the present (AFRICAAM 134, CSRE 35N)

Online seminar on the achievements of Black composers and performers in ragtime, jazz, and classical music, from Chevalier de Saint-Georges, whose music influenced Mozart, and George Bridgetower, for whom Beethoven composed his "Kreutzer" Sonata, to Anthony Davis's opera "The Central Park Five". Students will examine issues of cultural borrowing in operas by Mozart and Verdi, and shows like Showboat and Porgy and Bess. Guest speakers will include composers and performers. Students will work together in groups to produce materials on course topics in coordination with the African American Museum & Library at Oakland. (Cardinal Course certified by the Haas Center)
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

MUSIC 39B: Music and Healing (HUMBIO 179B)

To what extent can sound or music heal? This interdisciplinary course asks questions about music and healing around the world, drawing on the fields of medical ethnomusicology, medical anthropology, sound studies, and music therapy. Our case studies will be multi-sited, as we interrogate sound-based healings and healing sounds from diverse cross-cultural, global, and historic perspectives. No musical background is needed to interrogate these issues. We begin with the knowledge that the social, cultural, and political contexts where definitions of music and healing are created inform sound and its various and often conflicting interpretations and meanings. This course is currently full for Autumn Quarter 22-23 enrollment.
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

MUSIC 40: Music History to 1600

Pre- or corequisite: 21.
Terms: Win | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

MUSIC 41: Music History 1600-1830

Pre- or corequisite: 22.
Terms: Aut | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Kinney, M. (PI)

MUSIC 42: Music History Since 1830

Pre- or corequisite: 23.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Graham, P. (PI)

MUSIC 80A: Jewish Music of the Diaspora (JEWISHST 80A)

Through the perspective of Jewish music, the students will be exposed to diverse musical cultures from around the globe while simultaneously being exposed to the rich and multi-faceted cultures of Jewish music. Because the Jews were dispersed around the globe, discrete musical styles and genres evolved for the same texts. The various styles differ from each other in their tonal and rhythmic organizations; instrumentation, tora recitations.¿¿The course examines these aspects as well as the influence of Jewish music on classical music and vice versa. No prior knowledge of Jewish history, Judaism and music theory is required. ¿
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

MUSIC 113P: Media and Communication from the Middle Ages to the Printing Press (ENGLISH 13P, ENGLISH 113P, HISTORY 13P, HISTORY 113P, MUSIC 13P)

Did you know that the emperor Charlemagne was illiterate, yet his scribes revolutionized writing in the West? This course follows decisive moments in the history of media and communication, asking how new recording technologies reshaped a society in which most people did not read or write--what has been described as the shift "from memory to written record." To understand this transformation, we examine forms of oral literature and music, from the Viking sagas, the call to crusade, and medieval curses (Benedictine maledictions), to early popular authors such as Dante and the 15th-century feminist scribe, Christine de Pizan. We trace the impact of musical notation, manuscript and book production, and Gutenberg's print revolution. To paraphrase Marshall McLuhan's famous dictum, how did the medium shape the message? Along the way, we will consider how the medieval arts of memory and divine reading (lectio divina) can inform communication in the digital world. This is a hands-on course: students will handle medieval manuscripts and early printed books in Special Collections, and will participate in an "ink-making workshop," following medieval recipes for ink and for cutting quills, then using them to write on parchment. The course is open to all interested students.
| Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

MUSIC 118: Musics and Appropriation Throughout the World (AFRICAAM 218, CSRE 118D)

This course critically examines musical practices and appropriation through the amplification of intersectionality. We consider musics globally through recourse to ethnomusicological literature and critical race theories. Our approach begins from an understanding that the social and political contexts where musics are created, disseminated, and consumed inform disparate interpretations and meanings of music, as well as its sounds. Our goal is to shape our ears to hear the effects of slavery, colonialism, capitalism, nationalism, class, gender difference, militarism, and activism. We interrogate the process of appropriating musics throughout the world by making the power structures that shape privileges and exclusions audible.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

MUSIC 122A: Counterpoint

Analysis and composition of contrapuntal styles from the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Use of keyboard, ear training, and sight singing underlies all written work. Prerequisites: MUSIC 23 and MUSIC 24C; passing piano-proficiency examination; or, consent of instructor.
Terms: Aut | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

MUSIC 122B: Analysis of Tonal Music

Complete movements, or entire shorter works of the 18th and 19th centuries, are analyzed in a variety of theoretical approaches. Prerequisites: MUSIC 23 and MUSIC 24C; passing piano-proficiency examination; or, consent of instructor.
Terms: Win | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

MUSIC 122C: Introduction to Post-Tonal Analysis

Survey and analysis of a broad array of 20th-century examples, including compositional options.  Prerequisites: MUSIC 23 and MUSIC 24C; passing piano-proficiency examination; or, consent of instructor.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Ulman, E. (PI)

MUSIC 123I: Undergraduate Seminar in Composition: Music, Art, and Intermedia (ARTSTUDI 123I)

How do music and art relate? How does one speak for, with, the other? In the past century, Western visual art turned towards abstraction and time-based works. Techniques and processes for interaction between image and sound expanded dramatically. What better place to learn about them than the Anderson Collection? Through students' own visual and aural creations, we will explore and share individual approaches to time, symbol, memory, and meaning. Previous experience in music composition is welcome but not required. This course must be taken for a minimum of 3 units and a letter grade to be eligible for Ways-AII credit.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 2-3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

MUSIC 143F: Nineteenth-Century Pianism: History, Works, & Performance Practices (MUSIC 243F)

This seminar narrows the divide between performance and musicology. With nineteenth-century pianism as an extended case study, this course will explore representative and less common composers, works, and performers. Subtopics will include historical performance practices, notation, critical editions, period pianos, hermeneutics, recording analysis, and the cultural politics of performing and listening. Students will hone writing, research, and performance skills through a variety of assignments, seminar discussions, and in-class exercises, culminating with a lecture-recital. Possible field trips will include Stanford's Archive of Recorded Sound and selected live performances. Prerequisites: Intermediate to advanced performance ability; intermediate or higher music theory. WIM at 4 units only.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
Instructors: ; Graham, P. (PI)

MUSIC 143J: Studies in Music of the Classical Period: Haydn and Mozart: Music in the Age of Enlightenment (MUSIC 243J)

Music and Musicians in the Age of EnlightenmentnPrerequisites: MUSIC 22, MUSIC 41. (WIM at 4-unit level only.)
Last offered: Winter 2021 | Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

MUSIC 146N: Transcultural Perspectives of South-East Asian Music and Arts (COMPLIT 148, COMPLIT 267, FRENCH 260A, MUSIC 246N)

This course will explore the links between aspects of South-East Asian cultures and their influence on modern and contemporary Western art and literature, particularly in France; examples of this influence include Claude Debussy (Gamelan music), Jacques Charpentier (Karnatak music), Auguste Rodin (Khmer art) and Antonin Artaud (Balinese theater). In the course of these interdisciplinary analyses - focalized on music and dance but not limited to it - we will confront key notions in relation to transculturality: orientalism, appropriation, auto-ethnography, nostalgia, exoticism and cosmopolitanism. We will also consider transculturality interior to contemporary creation, through the work of contemporary composers such as Tran Kim Ngoc, Chinary Ung and Tôn-Thât Tiêt. Viewings of sculptures, marionette theater, ballet, opera and cinema will also play an integral role. To satisfy a Ways requirement, this course must be taken for at least 3 units. WIM credit in Music at 4 units and a letter grade.
Terms: Win | Units: 2-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Kretz, H. (PI)

MUSIC 146S: Sound Tracks: Music, Memory, Migration (CSRE 146S)

Music records racial and ethnic histories. How can critically listening to the musics of diasporic and migratory peoples attune us to the processes of identity formation, racialization, and self-understanding? In this course will gain deeper insights into how communities have used music to respond to the challenges of migration and minoritization under ever-changing nationalist frames. As we listen to musics from the Romani, Jewish, African, and Latinx diasporas, we explore how race, ethnicity, identity, heritage, nationalism, minoritization, hybridity, and diversity are refracted through sound. WIM at 4 units only.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Costache, I. (PI)

MUSIC 150U: The Arts and Social Justice (MUSIC 250D)

A survey of how art addressed and addresses issues of social justice across history and cultures
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II | Repeatable 2 times (up to 6 units total)

MUSIC 153E: Close Listening: Sound, Media, and Performance (FEMGEN 153D, FILMEDIA 153E, TAPS 153D)

Are there ways to listen? This new course approaches the question by exploring artist works that have challenged the norms of sonic experience. We will discover that in life, as in the arts, there are practices of listening. We will cover a range of texts on sound media, and we will experience a number of works that reinvent practices of listening. There will be particular attention to the work of feminist sound artists. In conversation with art and theory, we will develop wider awareness for the sounds of everyday life. This course meets once a week, and group listening of select works is part of the class.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Adair, D. (PI)

MUSIC 155: Intermedia Workshop (ARTSTUDI 239, MUSIC 255)

Students develop and produce intermedia works. Musical and visual approaches to the conceptualisation and shaping of time-based art. Exploration of sound and image relationship. Study of a wide spectrum of audiovisual practices including experimental animation, video art, dance, performance, non-narrative forms, interactive art and installation art. Focus on works that use music/sound and image as equal partners. Limited enrollment. Prerequisites: consent of instructors, and one of FILMPROD 114, ARTSTUDI 131, 138, 167, 177, 179, or MUSIC 123, or equivalent. May be repeated for credit
Terms: Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE | Repeatable 2 times (up to 8 units total)

MUSIC 159M: Gay Guerilla: a hands-on experience of the life, music and legacy of Julius Eastman

This hands-on course explores the life and music of Julius Eastman, in which he endeavored to be "Black to the fullest, a musician to the fullest, and a homosexual to the fullest". His music deals with issues of race, gender, sexual orientation, and class, and was stylistically groundbreaking in many ways, preceding some of the earliest examples of minimalism and particularly marking the downtown New York scene of the 70s and 80s. Class meetings will include guest lectures, labs, and the opportunity to participate in and/or contribute to a live presentation of Eastman's music by Stanford Live at Bing Concert Hall. This course must be taken for a minimum of three units and a letter grade to be eligible for WAY-AII credit. For WAY-CE, the course may be taken for fewer than three units (note that if you take a WAY-CE class for only one unit you will need to take another unit of WAY-CE from the same department, as you need at least two units of WAY-CE). Please note that this course also counts towards African and African-American Studies minor/major.
Terms: Win | Units: 1-3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
Instructors: ; Kretz, H. (PI)

MUSIC 183F: Songs of Love and Longing (COMPLIT 141, COMPLIT 241B, MUSIC 283F)

This course will take us on a journey from the Balkans to South Asia as we explore the nexus of poetry and song practiced by bards across a vast geographic and cultural space. Specifically, we will survey the Persianate genre of ghazal lyric, the storytelling traditions of Central Asia, the spiritual concert of certain Sufi orders, the mystical poems and music of Alevi ashiks in Turkey and the Balkans, the life and legend of Armenian poet-composer Sayat Nova, the spiritual practices of the Kurdish Ahl-e Haqq in Iran, the art forms of khyal and qawwali in India and Pakistan, and the syncretistic mysticism of the Bauls of Bengal. Students will engage in listening exercises, analysis of cinematic examples, and a comparison with the European troubadour tradition. There are no prerequisites for this course apart from a desire to engage with poetry as an existential performance. Taught in English.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

MUSIC 220B: Compositional Algorithms, Psychoacoustics, and Computational Music

The use of high-level programming language as a compositional aid in creating musical structures. Advanced study of sound synthesis techniques. Simulation of a reverberant space and control of the position of sound within the space. To satisfy a Ways requirement, this course must be taken for at least 3 units. See http://ccrma.stanford.edu/. Prerequisite: 220A.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

MUSIC 283F: Songs of Love and Longing (COMPLIT 141, COMPLIT 241B, MUSIC 183F)

This course will take us on a journey from the Balkans to South Asia as we explore the nexus of poetry and song practiced by bards across a vast geographic and cultural space. Specifically, we will survey the Persianate genre of ghazal lyric, the storytelling traditions of Central Asia, the spiritual concert of certain Sufi orders, the mystical poems and music of Alevi ashiks in Turkey and the Balkans, the life and legend of Armenian poet-composer Sayat Nova, the spiritual practices of the Kurdish Ahl-e Haqq in Iran, the art forms of khyal and qawwali in India and Pakistan, and the syncretistic mysticism of the Bauls of Bengal. Students will engage in listening exercises, analysis of cinematic examples, and a comparison with the European troubadour tradition. There are no prerequisites for this course apart from a desire to engage with poetry as an existential performance. Taught in English.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

NATIVEAM 39: Long Live Our 4Bil. Year Old Mother: Black Feminist Praxis, Indigenous Resistance, Queer Possibility (AFRICAAM 39, CSRE 39, FEMGEN 39)

How can art facilitate a culture that values women, mothers, transfolks, caregivers, girls? How can black, indigenous, and people of color frameworks help us reckon with oppressive systems that threaten safety and survival for marginalized people and the lands that sustain us? How can these questions reveal the brilliant and inventive forms of survival that precede and transcend harmful systems toward a world of possibility? Each week, this course will call on artists, scholars, and organizers of color who clarify the urgency and interconnection of issues from patriarchal violence to environmental degradation; criminalization to legacies of settler colonialism. These same thinkers will also speak to the imaginative, everyday knowledge and creative healing practices that our forebears have used for millennia to give vision and rise to true transformation.
Last offered: Spring 2020 | Units: 1-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

OBGYN 81Q: Perspectives on the Abortion Experience in Western Fiction

Explores the role of media in delivering abortion-related messages as well as the broader questions of how abortion and related issues are fundamentally integrated into the social fabric of US and global societies. Abortion remains one of the most controversial and polarizing challenges of our time. Yet, it has been a clinical, social, political, and cultural fact in a broad swath of societies for centuries. As is common for such lightning rod issues, the topic of abortion has featured prominently in novels and films. Each treatment provides a unique perspective on at least one aspect of abortion, whether it be clinical, social, political or cultural. How abortion is portrayed in novels and films provides the student of history, anthropology, and biology with insights into the author's or director's perspectives, and into societal attitudes and mores.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

OCEANS 3N: Views of a Changing Sea: Literature & Science

The state of a changing world ocean, particularly in the eastern Pacific, will be examined through historical and contemporary fiction, non-fiction and scientific publications. Issues will include harvest and mariculture fisheries, land-sea interactions and oceanic climate change in both surface and deep waters.
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER: DB-NatSci, WAY-A-II

OCEANS 157H: Creative Writing & Science: The Artful Interpreter (ENGLISH 91AI, OCEANS 257H)

What role does creativity play in the life of a scientist? How has science inspired great literature? How do you write accessibly and expressively about things like whales, DNA or cancer? This course provides a unique opportunity for students to directly engage with marine animals, coastal habitats and environmental concerns of Monterey Bay. As historian Jill Lepore writes of Rachel Carson: "She could not have written Silent Spring if she hadn't, for decades, scrambled down rocks, rolled up her pant legs, and waded into tide pools, thinking about how one thing can change another..." Students will complete and workshop three original nonfiction essays that explore the intersection between personal narrative and scientific curiosity. You will develop a more patient and observant eye and improve your ability to articulate scientific concepts to a general readership. Students must submit a Google Form to request enrollment by December 1st: https://forms.gle/yoPriHjyE1GHrCJh7 If selected for enrollment, students must attend the first class meeting to retain their roster spot. **Course taught in-person only at Hopkins Marine Station.** Please note: Depending on enrollment across the courses offered on Fridays at Hopkins, a university shuttle will be made available or carpool mileage reimbursements will be provided. Carpool reimbursement is subject to specific terms and conditions; class lists will be distributed for this purpose. However, if a university shuttle is provided, carpool reimbursements will not be honored.
Terms: Win | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
Instructors: ; Michas-Martin, S. (PI)

OCEANS 158H: Science Meets Literature on the Monterey Peninsula (ENGLISH 158H, OCEANS 258H)

(Graduate students register for 258H) This course will consider the remarkable nexus of scientific research and literature that developed on the Monterey Peninsula in the first half of the 20th century and how the two areas of creativity influenced each other. The period of focus begins with the 1932 association of John and Carol Steinbeck, Ed Ricketts, and Joseph Campbell, all of whom were highly influenced by the Carmel poet, Robinson Jeffers ¿ and ends with the novels Cannery Row (1945) and Sweet Thursday (1954). An indisputable high-tide mark, Sea of Cortez: A Leisurely of Travel and Research (1941) will be considered in detail. Weekend field trips will include intertidal exploration, a tour of the Jeffers Tor House in Carmel, and whale watching on Monterey Bay. Formally BIOHOPK 158H & 258H.
| Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

ORALCOMM 123: Crafting Concept Albums: Big Tales, Small Grooves, and the Art of Musical Narrative

Cultures all around the world tell the stories of their history, beliefs, and identities through song. The Greeks set their epic tales of love, life, and death to music, Renaissance composers followed suit, and popular music artists do the same today. In this hybrid workshop-seminar, students will explore musical narratives by analyzing seminal concept albums and then producing their own single-story album through written lyrics. Students will examine how artists use craft elements such as setting, characters, and plot, cover art, and musical form and instrumentation, then apply that learning in their own productions. Creating music, beats, soundscapes, and artwork will be encouraged, but the final project need only be a cycle of recorded, spoken song lyrics. We¿ll focus in particular on narratives of race, class, gender, and sexuality and their social implications as we examine works from artists across musical genres¿from classic and punk rock artists such as Pink Floyd, David Bowie, and Green Day; to hip-hop, pop, and EDM performers such as Beyoncé, Lupe Fiasco, Janelle Monáe, Daft Punk, and Kendrick Lamar. Students will work in groups to choose genre, develop a sense of place and time, select narrative structures, and craft lyrics. No prior experience in music or creative writing is required.
Last offered: Spring 2020 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

OSPBER 17: Split Images: A Century of Cinema

20th-century German culture through film. The silent era, Weimar, and the instrumentalization of film in the Third Reich. The postwar era: ideological and aesthetic codes of DEFA, new German cinema, and post-Wende filmmaking including: Run Lola Run and Goodbye Lenin. Aesthetic aspects of the films including image composition, camera and editing techniques, and relation between sound and image.
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Kramer, K. (PI)

OSPBER 22: Everyday Life in a Global Metropolis: Exploring Berlin through History, Society, and Culture

What is Berlin, who is a Berliner, and how have the inhabitants of this global metropolis made their city? We will seek answers to these questions by exploring central topics in everyday life - youth, music, and popular culture; food and drink; religion; nature; and the connection between history and memory. We will discuss research papers, visit sites, and talk to Berliners from different backgrounds. In this process, we will co-create a product that communicates our findings and invites our audience to engage with our answers.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

OSPBER 28: German Opera

This course is designed to provide an introduction to opera in general and German opera in particular. The syllabus is linked specifically to productions of German operas currently being presented at Berlin's opera houses. During class we will prepare ourselves for the various performances by discussing each work in detail, looking at the libretto, analyzing the relationship between music and text, listening to recordings, and reading secondary literature. We will also share our post-performance impressions. The principal aim of the course is informed appreciation of the genre of opera.
Last offered: Winter 2020 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

OSPBER 33: The Politics of Memorializing World War II

This course will explore the politics of memorializing World War II specifically in the city of Berlin, as the city offers numerous examples of how the past is rendered present. Students will consider debates surrounding the Holocaust Memorial established once the Wall came down. They will engage the ethical conundrums of memorializing perpetrators along with victims, and the political issues of memorializing the resistance. Finally, memorializing mass murder and genocide also raises a number of aesthetic conundrums. All these issues will be engaged by visiting a variety of memorials in Berlin, along with an introduction to the relevant literature and documentation.
Last offered: Winter 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-ER

OSPBER 55: Music and Society: Perspectives from Berlin

This course examines music's place in society - its production, its consumption, and its contested role in social relations and structures. Why do we prefer certain songs, artists, and musical genres over others? How do we 'use' music to signal group membership and create social categories like class, race, ethnicity, and gender? How does music perpetuate, but also challenge, broader inequalities? Why do some songs become hits? What effects are technology and digital media having on the ways we experience and think about music? Course readings and lectures will explore the various answers to these questions by introducing students to key concepts and ideas. Class time will be spent moving between core theories, listening sessions, discussion of current musical events, and an interrogation of students' own musical experiences. Students will undertake short research and writing assignments that call on them to make sense of music in their own lives, in the lives of others, and in society at large.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Stuart, F. (PI)

OSPBER 60: Cityscape as History: Architecture and Urban Design in Berlin

Diversity of Berlin's architecture and urban design resulting from its historical background. Architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and his artistic ancestors. Role of the cultural exchange between Germany and the U.S. Changing nature of the city from the 19th century to the present.
Terms: Aut | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

OSPBER 66: Theory from the Bleachers: Reading German Sports and Culture

German culture past and present through the lens of sports. Intellectual, societal, and historical-political contexts. Comparisons to Britain, France, and the U.S. The concepts of Körperkultur, Leistung, Show, Verein, and Haltung. Fair play, the relation of team and individual, production and deconstruction of sports heroes and heroines, and sports nationalism. Sources include sports narrations and images, attendance at sports events, and English and German texts. Will be taught in German if there are enough students with sufficient knowledge of German.
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, WAY-A-II

OSPBER 73: CyberKant: a User Interface

We take online traffic for granted. It is well known that readily intelligible navigation of today's virtual surround was made possible by the graphical user interface. This driver of digital literacy, famously associated with Xerox PARC, was popularized by Steve Jobs in the 1980s. Less well known is that the visual vocabulary informing our computational practices first developed with the urban sprawl of Berlin. Kantian philosophy and German High Modernism played a key role in the process. These cultural resources advanced a workable template for the user-friendly conceit of intuitive signage and wayfinding. We will visit sites across the city that speak to this historical legacy.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; von Xylander, C. (PI)

OSPBER 77: Understanding Intl' Politics Today:¿From the German Philosophers to Modern Social Science

International politics is beset by problems. States go to war. The global economy is volatile and unequal. The human community is divided into multiple nation-states. Some states dominate others. People commit acts of evil. Luckily, we are not the first people to have noticed that international politics is not characterized exclusively by peace and harmony. War, capitalism, racism, and totalitarianism have all been subjects about which German thinkers - many based in Berlin - have made profound contributions over the last two centuries. Do their ideas and arguments stand up in the cold light of modern social science? What can we learn from them - and what do we need to discard? This course will introduce students to perennial problems in international politics from two perspectives: those of key German political thinkers, and those of modern social science. It is structured around five core questions: Why do states go to war and what could be the basis for a lasting peace? If war is unavoidable, what is the role of morality in war? How can/should the world be governed in the absence of a world state? How has international politics been transformed by capitalism? What role has been and is played by race and racism in international politics?
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

OSPBER 88: Religion & the Third Reich

This course attempts to grapple with this complex and troubling chapter of Central Europe¿s history--one whose effects continue to be felt today and whose marks are visible in Berlin--by exploring the Nazi leadership¿s various attitudes and policies toward the Protestant and Catholic churches; the fascination on the part of some Nazis toward new religious movements anchored in occult practices, pseudo-scientific theories, and Nordic religious mythologies; the responses of religious actors and organizations to government attempts to coopt them via ¿Gleichschaltung¿ (coordination)--ranging from reluctant accommodation to enthusiastic cooperation to resistance; the so-called ¿Kirchenkampf¿ (church struggle) within the Protestant regional and national churches; the distinct response of German Roman Catholic bishops and the Pope (Pacelli) to National Socialism; the predicament and sometimes tragic decisions of Jewish Councils and other victims to manage the catastrophe; and the attempts of a handful of resistors, who out of religious conviction and/or reasons of conscience, attempted to ¿drive a spoke into the wheel itself¿ of National Socialism. The course is designed to take maximum advantage of those sites and museums in Berlin that were a part of the history and people we will be studying.
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

OSPBER 101A: Contemporary Theater

Texts of plays supplemented by theoretical texts or reviews. Weekly theater visits and discussions with actors, directors, or other theater professionals. In German. Prerequisite: completion of GERLANG 3 or equivalent.
Terms: Aut, Spr | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Kramer, K. (PI)

OSPCPTWN 28: Reimagining Histories of Africa: A Workshop

This class explores, through analysis and practice, the ways in which histories of Africa (with a special focus on Cape Town and South Africa more generally) can be told, narrated, captured, produced, and experienced through means other than what might be called traditional "scholarly" or "academic" historical narratives. While professional historians have long-established methodologies for writing about the past, history is continuously explored by people removed from the academy and uninterested in engaging with many of the historiographical and methodological issues that concern scholars. Put another way, many people think about, relate to, and recreate the past in ways that lack footnotes, citations, and sometimes even words. The course has two main components. First, we will consider how aspects of African history have been treated by non-academics from various walks of life, including artists, writers, archivists, photographers, and engaged citizens. In this aspect of the class, Cape Town will be our laboratory; we will take multiple field trips to museums, historical sites, archives, and other relevant exhibitions. If possible, we will schedule meetings with people working to bring the past to life, either through museum work, archival projects, or artistic expression. Approaches will include graphic histories, creative non-fiction, oral histories, art installations, performance and reenactments, and sites of memory, such as museums. Much of our class discussion will be structured around experiencing, critiquing, and understanding the methods used to produce these reflections on the past. We will assess, through weekly exposure to examples, what works, how it works, what doesn't work, and why. But the course is also essentially a creative and research-oriented endeavor. Our analysis of others' works of exhibitions, art, and documentary is undertaken in the service of thinking about students' own projects. Run essentially as a workshop, the latter part of the course will help students develop and create their own reflections on aspects of African history, memory, or the past. Throughout the course, students will start to develop both a subject and a method to capture a historical experience, event, or episode in a way that allows them to express effectively its import ? emotional, political, personal, or otherwise ? for the present. Along the way, students will be expected to help lead discussions, produce short assignments, and make presentations on the development of their project. The main goal of the class, though, will be the production of a final project ? an innovative work of history, a personal and engaging reflection on the past.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Daughton, J. (PI)

OSPCPTWN 35: In and Out of the Margins: The Plays of Athol Fugard

This seminarfocuseson the plays of Athol Fugard, the most well-known, influential, and accomplished of South African playwrights. His innovative dramatic style (drawing orignally on improvisation, Brecht, and Greek tragedy,before shifting into realistic situations and dialogue);his apartheid-challenging collaborations with black South African theater artists (especially Zekes Mokei, John Kani, and Winston N'Tshona);and his extraordinarily long career (over the past sevendecades) makehis work of particular interest to students of history, theater, and politics. Through Fugard's plays, students confront signifcant issues in apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa. Set in the confines of the theater, these confrontations paradoxically generate a fuller engagement with the issues than we often get from accounts in the disciplines of history orpolitcal science. As Picasso once said, "Art is the lie that tells the truth," and Fugard's theater tries to do that. In studying his plays, students will learn a different kind of truth about social and historical realities that have faced South Africans over the past six decades.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

OSPCPTWN 55: Arts of Change

How might we understand the creative arts in South Africa in terms of their variety and impact? What social issues do they reflect? What impact might they yet have? Students will have the opportunity for a related practicum. Course must be taken for a minimum of 3 units to satisfy a Ways requirement.
Last offered: Summer 2023 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

OSPCPTWN 78: Postcolonial Modernist Art Movements in Africa

Introduction to the complexities and contradictions of 'modernity' and 'modernism(s)' in postcolonial Africa. With a focus on ideology-driven interdisciplinary artistic movements in Senegal, Nigeria, Sudan, Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia and South Africa, examine various schools of thought that were part of modern consciousness that characterised the independence decades. Role that art centres, workshops, collectives and mission schools played in histories of European expansion and colonialism. Debates regarding notions of 'appropriation,' 'natural synthesis' and 'assimilation' interpreted in the context of postcolonial theory. Different modes of production and methodological approaches.
Last offered: Summer 2019 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

OSPFLOR 11: Film, Food and the Italian Identity

Food in Italian cinema staged as an allegory of Italy's social, political and cultural milieu. Intersections between food, history and culture as they are reflected in and shaped by Italian cinema from the early 1900s until today. Topics include: farmer's tradition during Fascism; lack of food during WWII and its aftermath; the Economic Miracle; food and the Americanization of Italy; La Dolce Vita; the Italian family; ethnicity, globalization and the re-discovery of regional culinary identity in contemporary Italy. Impact of cinema in both reflecting and defining the relationship between food and culture.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-A-II

OSPFLOR 25F: Sculpting the Renaissance: Aesthetics, Materials & Innovation

The course aims to present a history of Florentine sculpture between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with a focus on materiality, the symbolic value of mediums, as well as the commissioning and execution of each work of art. The classes will be inspired by current methodologies, linked to a tradition interested in the objecthood of artistic creation and the relationship between stylistic choices and the limitations of technologies. The collections of the Florentine museums and the city's extraordinary heritage, will allow direct contact with the works we will discuss in class. Proximity will also make it possible to gain knowledge about places of production and procurement of materials (the Carrara quarries, the ancient casting places, for example). This approach will not only problematize fundamental issues pertaining to the very concept of the "artisticness" of an artifact, but-in following a chronological span-will reflect on the periodization of formal languages characterizing the early modern era, at the same time confronting topics relevant to the current historiographical debate. Such investigations, in addition to offering an updated and problematic look at some of the most iconic figurative texts for the art-historical discussion about early modern period (from Donatello's David to Michelangelo's, via masterpieces by artists such as Luca della Robbia, Benvenuto Cellini and Giambologna), will provide students with useful paraphernalia for confronting canonized and, so to speak, sacralized figurative testimonies, putting into context the drives and motives, the conditioning and expectations behind their very creation.
Terms: Aut | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

OSPFLOR 27F: Renaissance Facades: Architecture in the Age of Representation

The art of the Italian Renaissance is one that engaged broadly with questions of representation, in both practice and theory, with long-lasting consequences for the visual culture of the Western world. If such a phenomenon might be especially evident in the figural arts, it is perhaps even more important for the more abstract language of architecture. Indeed, the Italian architecture of the fifteenth and sixteenth century formulated the vocabulary and rules of a new idiom, that of classicism, which soon became predominant in all of Europe before migrating to the New World. How does one decipher such a popular albeit cryptic language? What are the principles that regulate this method of composition? And what are the cultural conflicts and political messages that lie behind the apparent normativity of this style?
Terms: Win | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

OSPFLOR 29: The People Amid the Monuments

From both chronological and thematic approaches, examine the efforts of English-speaking writers (and, latterly, film-makers) to get to grips with Italy and the Italians. Beginning in the England of Queen Elizabeth and ending at the present day, cover a variety of themes such as Italy's historical role as a haven for the LGBT community and the modern interest in neglected southern Italy. Illustrative multimedia content with visits to sites of relevance in Florence.
Last offered: Spring 2021 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

OSPFLOR 30F: Italy through the Eye of the Camera

This course is ambitious in its aim and scope. It has two main objectives. One, to analyze and discuss Italian cinema and its history; two, to develop your skills in cinematic formal analysis and in film theory. We will start with the cinema in the Fascist years (1922-1945), we will then focus on the revolutionary and heavily politicized practice by the Neorealists (Zavattini, Rossellini, De Sica), in the aftermath of WWII (1945-1949). We will turn to the great Italian auteurs such as Federico Fellini; Michelangelo Antonioni, and Bernardo Bertolucci. Further, we will analyze the so called "comedy Italian style," the "spaghetti westerns" as well as the politically committed films of the 1980s and 90s. Finally, we will explore the "new Italian cinema," with its many and sometimes contradictory forms. Studying and enjoying Italian cinema will help us to uncover the socio-political, economic and cultural developments in Italian life during the 20th and 21st century (the family, otherness, gender roles, politics, etc.).
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Campani, E. (PI)

OSPFLOR 33: The Body of Love: Romance, Love and Sex in Italian Cinema

What is Love? This course will look at the many ways in which cinema has represented and thematized the seemingly universal concept of love. We will begin by watching Casablanca (M. Curtiz, 1942) and Pretty Woman (G. Marshall, 1990), two Hollywood classics in matters of romance. Their analysis will help us set the stage for a few critical and theoretical considerations right at the outset of our course. It will also give us the opportunity to discuss the "love" genres of classical Hollywood, which have laid the foundations for much "love cinema" to come.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Campani, E. (PI)

OSPFLOR 34: The Virgin Mother, Goddess of Beauty, Grand Duchess, and the Lady: Women in Florentine Art

Influence and position of women in the history of Florence as revealed in its art. Sculptural, pictorial, and architectural sources from a social, historical, and art historical point of view. Themes: the virgin mother (middle ages); the goddess of beauty (Botticelli to mannerism); the grand duchess (late Renaissance, Baroque); the lady, the woman (19th-20th centuries).
Last offered: Autumn 2019 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-Gender, WAY-A-II

OSPFLOR 48: Sharing Beauty in Florence: Collectors, Collections and the Shaping of the Western Museum Tradition

The city's art and theories of how art should be presented. The history and typology of world-class collections. Social, economic, political, and aesthetic issues in museum planning and management. Collections include the Medici, English and American collectors of the Victorian era, and modern corporate and public patrons.
Last offered: Winter 2021 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

OSPFLOR 49: On-Screen Battles: Filmic Portrayals of Fascism and World War II

Structural and ideological attributes of narrative cinema, and theories of visual and cinematic representation. How film directors have translated history into stories, and war journals into visual images. Topics: the role of fascism in the development of Italian cinema and its phenomenology in film texts; cinema as a way of producing and reproducing constructions of history; film narratives as fictive metaphors of Italian cultural identity; film image, ideology, and politics of style.
Last offered: Winter 2021 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

OSPFLOR 54: High Renaissance and Mannerism: the Great Italian Masters of the 15th and 16th Centuries

The development of 15th- and early 16th-century art in Florence and Rome. Epochal changes in the art of Michelangelo and Raphael in the service of Pope Julius II. The impact of Roman High Renaissance art on masters such as Fra' Bartolomeo and Andrea del Sarto. The tragic circumstances surrounding the early maniera: Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino and the transformation of early Mannerism into the elegant style of the Medicean court. Contemporary developments in Venice.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

OSPFLOR 55F: Florence and the Global Renaissance

Introduction to the geographic reaches of the Renaissance, focus on global artistic exchange within the city of Florence. The course aims to reconnect the city-state of Florence and its artistic production to distant spaces with which it had historical contact, from the Ottoman Empire to Mesoamerica
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

OSPFLOR 58: Space as History: Social Vision and Urban Change

A thousand years of intentional change in Florence. Phases include programmatic enlargement of ecclesiastical structures begun in the 11th century; aggressive expansion of religious and civic space in the 13th and 14th centuries; aggrandizement of private and public buildings in the 15th century; transformation of Florence into a princely capital from the 16th through the 18th centuries; traumatic remaking of the city's historic core in the 19th century; and development of new residential areas on the outskirts and in neighboring towns in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Last offered: Spring 2021 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

OSPFLOR 61: Rinascimento conteso: Florence's Early Modern Art Reframed

Against the persistent myth of a triumphant Renaissance and the teleological interpretations of a supposedly optimistic period, this course focuses on the artistic production of fifteenth to sixteenth-century Florence as paradigmatic of the tensions, anxieties, and eccentric trends that emerged in Europe's visual culture during the Early Modern Age. If traditional conceptualizations of the Florentine Renaissance described it as the rebirth of naturalism, which set the canon of Western classicism, recent critical voices have revealed the tensions, ruptures, and erosions that were active underneath that surface, with profound consequences on artmaking and the world of images. Building on such debate, through direct experience and close observation of the context, these classes will propose a different narrative of mainstream Renaissance Florence. By looking with fresh eyes to painted, sculpted, and architectural works, they will reframe early modern Florentine art as a profoundly polyphonic one, which sheds light on many unsettling aspects of modernity: materialism, and the germs of historical pessimism; technology and capitalist modes of production; the fragility of nature; sensuality, tactility, and the private life of objects; the otherness of uncanny bodies; religious tensions as the expression of the individual's anxiety; the colonial appropriation of a newly expanded world. With an interest for the contaminated and the intermediate, by privileging continuities over oppositions, the course will thus offer a new understanding of the period in order to deconstruct any elitist interpretation and instead reveal its lively, diverse nature.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

OSPFLOR 67: Women in Film

This course examines femininity and gender representation in Italian cinema. Feminist film theory, from the 1970 until the current and equally influential methodologies, will provide the framework for an informed analysis of the films. Topics covered will include: the question of the gaze, the power of looking, of being looked at, and of looking back; women as disruption in the patriarchal/cultural text; maternity; the woman?s body as a place of illness and sexuality; the family and domesticity.
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-Gender, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Campani, E. (PI)

OSPFLOR 87: What is Love? The Amorous Discourse from Dante to Ferrante

Talking about love was the main reason humans ever began to speak in the first place. From the moment words were invented, they have been used to interpret and describe, in verse and prose, this powerful and mysterious force, in an attempt to interpret and describe our very selves. Lyric poetry was specifically designed for that, but even when telling stories about war, adventure, or the meaning of life and death, as well as when narrating comic or tragic events, countless writers have often endeavored to answer the question: What is love? By combining close readings of texts with a study of their literary, cultural, and historical context, and by paying attention to individual innovations as well as one's dialogue with tradition (a gendered tradition, that nonetheless stimulates fluid and even queer responses from the Renaissance forward), we will discover Dante's love, a means of damnation or salvation; Petrarch's love, which is sinful distraction, the source of poetry, and a path to glory; Boccaccio's love, so sensual and yet so deeply rooted in the human soul as to cause the greatest joy or the deepest despair; Ariosto's love, a dangerous force that can drive people to madness in a world where, after all, everyone is somehow in love and therefore partly (and delightfully) crazy; Machiavelli's love, which can sharpen one's wits and bring with it great achievements, unless it clouds one's judgement and leads to failure; Aretino's love, so unabashedly physical and graphically explicit as to cause scandal and amazement all over Europe. We will also look at how love is described by Veronica Gambara, Vittoria Colonna, Gaspara Stampa and other women poets of the Renaissance who renewed the lyrical code from within, giving new meanings to old words. We will also listen to the various kinds of love put to music in operas from Don Giovanni to Traviata and Bohème, and we will investigate how love interrelates with history in Manzoni's Promessi sposi and other Romantic historical novels. Finally, we will explore how the previous (male) narratives about love were reconfigured and reinvented by female novelists of the 20th century such as Goliarda Sapienza, Natalia Ginzburg and Elsa Morante, who will lead us to delve into Elena Ferrante's works, where love constantly interplays with friendship, and often confirms that, for better or for worse, appearances can be deceiving. Instructor: L. Degl'Innocenti
Last offered: Summer 2023 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

OSPFLOR 96: Leonardo!

In this 500th anniversary year of the death of Leonardo this class will be an immersive and interactive experience with this most remarkable and complex artist and thinker. Focus on Leonardo's insights into human perception, tapping the very sounds and sights of the city that drove his fascination and inspired his work. Leonardo's conviction that the soul was the point of convergence of all the senses, prompted him to ponder how sensory information is received and processed. His writings foreshadow gestalt psychology and psychoacoustics centuries before these were studied by scientists. Leonardo's fascination with perception and emotion are manifest in his art and in his inventions. Together we will explore the city that inspired da Vinci's work, and delve into the deep implications of some of his insights and inventions as they effect contemporary art, science and life.
Last offered: Winter 2021 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

OSPFLOR 111Y: Florence and the Renaissance: The 15th Century

Lectures, site visits, and readings reconstruct the circumstances that favored the flowering of architecture, sculpture, and painting in Florence and Italy, late 13th to early 16th century. Emphasis is on the classical roots; the particular relationship with nature; the commitment to human expressiveness; and rootedness in the real-world experience, translated in sculpture and painting as powerful plasticity, perspective space, and interest in movement and emotion.
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

OSPFLOR 115Y: Building the Cathedral and the Town Hall: Constructing and Deconstructing Symbols of a Civilization

The history, history of art, and symbolism of the two principal monuments of Florence: the cathedral and the town hall. Common meaning and ideological differences between the religious and civic symbols of Florence's history from the time of Giotto and the first Guelf republic to Bronzino and Giovanni da Bologna and the Grand Duchy.
Last offered: Autumn 2021 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

OSPHONGK 25: Cultural History of China

Multi-disciplinary approach to the study of Chinese cultural history conceived of as a succession of modes of rationality (philosophical, bureaucratic, and economic processes of rationalization). Focus on the moments of paradigm shift from one mode of rationality to another. For moment, examine cultural facts and artifacts¿thought, literature, ritual¿in relationship to changing social, political, and economic systems. This semester, focus on the emergence of modern China in the Song-Yuan (960-1368) and of today's China 1850 to the present. How the modern attack on religion, redefined as "superstition", led not only to religious reform movements but also to a society in which science and the nation became the primary value systems promoted by the state.
Last offered: Autumn 2021 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

OSPHONGK 26: East Asian Film Genres in a Globalizing World

Connections between different cinemas within East Asia and between East Asia and the rest of the world explored from a genre perspective. Hong Kong and Korean gangster movies, Chinese swordplay and Japanese samurai films, and horror films from Japan and Thailand as examples of the transnational circulation of genres, involving processes of both localization and globalization. Focus on three interrelated genres: the martial arts film, the Eastern Western and the film noir/crime film. Explore Hollywood-centered genre theory, trace complex webs of creative influences, and appreciate the sameness and difference that characterizes both genre films and our globalizing world. Make a short "genre film" for screening at the end of the term
Last offered: Autumn 2020 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

OSPHONGK 43: Mainstream Chinese Philosophical Thought

Introduction to the philosophical thought of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism, to provide a deeper understanding of the roots of Chinese values and culture. As a cornerstone of Chinese culture, Confucianism contributes to the establishment of the human moral way by articulating a conception of humans as moral subjects. Taoism stresses the pursuit of an ideal life by understanding the changes of the universe, while Buddhism applies the concept of karma to show how the ultimate cause of human suffering lies in ignorance. Other Chinese philosophical thought such as Mohism, Legalism, and the School of Yin and Yang may be covered.
Last offered: Autumn 2020 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

OSPKYOTO 13: Contemporary Religion in Japan's Ancient Capital: Sustaining and Recasting Tradition

Japanese attitudes to religion and popular forms of religiosity. Syncretic nature of beliefs and practices drawn on a variety of interwoven concepts, beliefs, customs and religious activities of native Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and Indian origins as background. Topics include: pursuit of worldly benefits, religion and healing, fortune-telling, ascetic practices, pilgrimage, festivals (matsuri), new religions and their image, impact of the internet, response of religion in times of crisis.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Ludvik, C. (PI); Hugh, M. (GP)

OSPKYOTO 28: The Aesthetics and Ethics of Japanese Tea Practice

In this course, we will explore the history and aesthetics of Japanese tea practice, with particular attention to how the embodied forms of the practice and the material culture of the tea setting create the conditions for states of being and relating that reflect core ethical values. This course will combine lecture, reflection, discussion, and embodied experience as ways of inquiry. Our classroom will extend to the rich tea environs of Kyoto where we will experience historic and contemporary tea rooms from the Zen temple setting to the public garden. We will explore the poetic resonance of teaware at the family museum of a traditional lineage of teabowl artisans. We will sit as guests to tea, learn to make confections, and visit a tea farm where we will join in the harvesting of tea itself.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

OSPKYOTO 42: Gardens of Kyoto: Spaces of Aesthetic and Spiritual Contemplation

Chronological stroll through Japanese gardens of different types and functions, spanning from the Heian period (794-1185), when the ancient capital of Kyoto was established, through to contemporary times. Weekly field trips to a selection of Kyoto gardens and garden-related activities, in order to gain an understanding of the historical development and functions of Japanese gardens, including their design principles, techniques, and elements.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Ludvik, C. (PI)

OSPKYOTO 58: A Journey into the Buddhist Visual Arts of Japan

Impact of Buddhism on the arts and culture of Japan as seen in the ancient capital of Kyoto. Image production, iconography, representational strategies, as well as the ritual and visual functions of Buddhist sculpture and painting with a focus on selected historical temples and their icons. Also examination of architectural and landscape elements of temple layouts, within which iconographic programs are framed, images are enlivened, and practices centered on these devotional and ritual art.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Ludvik, C. (PI); Hugh, M. (GP)

OSPMADRD 8A: Cities and Creativity: Cultural and Architectural Interpretations of Madrid

Architecture and the city, with a focus on recent currents in the progress of both, such as sustainability, environmentalism and the relationship with nature. Topics underpinned by discussion of theory, and illustrated by a study of the city of Madrid: an example of a hybrid architectural/planning experiential environment that looks to the future with an ambition for modernization. Limited Enrollment
Terms: Aut | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

OSPMADRD 18: Exploring Music and Society: Understanding Flamenco

Origins and history of flamenco and its place in Spanish culture, including both theory and actual dance instruction.*This course must be taken for a minimum of 3 units and a letter grade to be eligible for WAYS credit*
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 2-3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

OSPMADRD 29: Spanish Golden Age Theater & Overseas Empire

This course takes students to the theater - literally, to see shows at Madrid's most celebrated venues, and imaginatively, as we read, study, and occasionally improvise performances. The famous period of cultural flourishing known as Spain's Golden Age (ca.1580-1700) followed over a century of Iberian trade, conquest, and plunder overseas. Students in this course will develop critical perspectives on this period and its legacy by reading its most emblematic dramas alongside lesser-known plays that its most famous playwrights composed about Spanish imperial expansion. Special attention will be paid to how they intervened in contentious debates surrounding Iberian conquest, colonization, and evangelization. The course will consider theatrical practice in Castile as well as Portuguese court dramas; dramaturges in the Americas who arguably surpassed their metropolitan counterparts; and translations and adaptations of Golden Age drama into the Indigenous languages of Nahuatl and Quechua. Playwrights may include Lope de Vega Carpio, Ana Caro de Mallen, Tirso de Molina, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Pedro Calderon de la Barca, and Don Bartolome de Alva Ixtlilxochitl. Taught in Spanish. Students in this course should have already completed or be concurrently enrolled in SPANLANG 13C, or else have an equivalent level of Spanish
Terms: Win | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Hughes, N. (PI)

OSPMADRD 43: The Jacobean Star Way and Europe: Society, Politics and Culture

The Saint James' Way as a tool to understand historic dynamics from a global perspective. Its effect on the structures that form a political and institutional system, and its society, economy, and ideology. Enrollment limited.
Terms: Spr | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Reyes, O. (PI)

OSPMADRD 45: Women in Art: Case Study in the Madrid Museums

Viewing the collections at the Prado Museum through study and analysis of the representations of women. Contemporary literary texts and images that situate paintings in the historical, social, and political conditions that produced the works.
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-Gender, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

OSPMADRD 47: Cultural Relations between Spain and the United States:Historical Perceptions and Influences, 1776-2

Critical historical thinking about international cultural relations, using Spain and U.S. as case studies examples, with references to Atlantic world contexts, from 1776 to the present. Insights into the continuing social and political relevance of their contested legacies. interpretive perspectives grounded in different ideologies, interests and collective identities within both societies. Introduction to pertinent social scientific theory regarding identity formation, self-image, and perceptions of and interactions with ethnic and cultural otherness. Differences between history, historiography and memory through consideration of diverse forms of expression and vehicles of transmission of collective memory.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Hilton, S. (PI)

OSPMADRD 62: Flamenco and Jazz: An Appraisal of the Creative Encounters between two Improvised Genres

Jazz and Flamenco are music genres that originated and evolved in subaltern groups. They are both artistic practices that sufficiently resemble one another, thus inviting a comparative study. This course is multi-disciplinary in scope, and consciously emphasizes the links between history, politics, and expressive culture employing readings and theoretical frameworks from the areas of ethnomusicology, jazz studies. Jazz criticism, anthropology, flamencology, and folklore. Note: This course must be taken for a minimum of 3 units and a letter grade to be eligible for Ways credit.
Terms: Spr | Units: 2-3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

OSPMADRD 67: Dissimilar Early Modern Bodies: the visual representation of the "Other".

Dissimilar Early Modern Bodies: the visual representation of the "Other". Enrollment is Limited.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

OSPMADRD 69: Gardens of Earthly Delight: Spain, Landscape, Culture

This course will examine the cultural geography of Spain's landscapedsocial spaces as sites for the development of personal, social, and politicalSpanish cultural identities. Focusing on landscape art, garden design, gardenhistory and the relationship of gardens to literary forms in Madrid and its environs,this course studies the roles of landscape and garden design and the ways thatthese arts represent the cultural and social ideology of their times. Based onmethods from aesthetics, cultural history, literary history, and landscape design,the course introduces students to the major trends that the built landscapes ofSpain have evolved from the early modern to the contemporary era. Madridand its near environs are home to a range of magnificent gardens, includingMadrid's Parque del Buen Retiro with its magnificent Crystal Palace andRosaleda Garden, the Botanic Gardens and grounds of El Prado Museum, theSabatini Gardens and the Campo del Moro near the Royal Palace, the grounds2of the Museo Sorolla, the Parque Madrid Río, running along the banks of theManzanares River, the less-visited but stunning El Capricho Park, the magnificentEl Escorial Gardens, the Aranjuez, and the Generalife summer palace for theNasrid Emirs of the Emirate of Granada in El Andalus. Each of these sites offersextraordinary opportunities for students to learn about the multi-ethnic,complexly layered, religious, political and social history of Spain as represented inits world-renowned gardens and public spaces.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

OSPMADRD 80: Word, Image and Power

Relationships and uses of oral discourse, art, and iconography in politics in different countries through history. Case studies from ancient Egypt, the Greek Paideia, Cesar Augustus, medieval Europe, Spanish modern empire, French revolutionary discourse, and proletarian national identity in Russia and China.
Last offered: Autumn 2020 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

OSPMADRD 84: Madrid Through My Eyes: A Theoreticl/Practical Documentary Film Workshop

Theoretical and practical view of Spanish language documentary cinema; potential of this type of film making as a form of personal expression. Tools for understanding and analyzing this type of cinema. Creative and analytical reflection on student 's Madrid experience; develop individual visual discourse to portray life in the city by filming a short documentary.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

OSPMADRD 102M: Composition and Writing Workshop for Students in Madrid

Advanced. Writing as craft and process, emphasizing brainstorming, planning, outlining, drafting, revising, style, diction, and editing. Students choose topics related to their studies. Prerequisite: 13, 23B, or equivalent placement.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

OSPOXFRD 10: Conditions of England

This course will examine how writers and artists have imagined and represented British society in fiction and film from 1848 to the present. The "condition of England" novels of the mid-nineteenth-century famously advanced the idea that a work of literature could aim to capture the nature of society as a whole, and, in particular, to convey the relationship between different social classes within England. Is it possible for a single novel, or film, or painting to represent society as a whole, or to show a nation to itself? What are the opportunities, and the pitfalls, of this kind of artistic project? We'll look at how this kind of project develops across two hundred years of British culture, from Victorian realism to contemporary multicultural fiction and film. Possible authors include Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Dickens, George Orwell, Virginia Woolf, Mike Leigh, Stephen Frears, Zadie Smith.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

OSPOXFRD 13: Know Thyself ! The Philosophy and Psychology of Self-Examination

The word philosophy literally means a love of wisdom. This suggests that philosophy is not a collection of theories, but an emotional attitude toward a certain way of being. A philosopher is a person who is emotionally committed to becoming wise. The maxim Know Thyself! is regarded a main guiding principle in the philosopher's search for wisdom. It points us back towards ourselves, and presents our own personality as a subject to be studied and examined critically. Many have argued that this is not optional for those who wish to live well: as Socrates put it, the unexamined life is not worth living! Over the next ten weeks, we'll ask what it means to lead an examined life. We'll start by considering the opposite attitude, of the unthinking person who no longer cares to know truth from falsehood. We'll then ask how knowing oneself may differ from knowing others. Is there anything only you can know about yourself? Are there special, introspective means of coming to know yourself? If so, are they immune to error, or can you be mistaken about yourself? How can there be self-deception, where you're both the deceiver and the deceived? We cannot know ourselves fully without knowing our moral character, our virtues and vices, in addition to our thoughts and feelings and wishes. Knowing oneself is arguably a moral obligation, therefore, and thoughtlessness the hallmark of evil. Yet there is another pitfall to avoid, as self-reflection must not collapse into narcissistic self- preoccupation. This distinction will take us into the realm of the Unconscious, which by definition is not accessible to conscious reflection and thus limits how much we can know about ourselves. Despite our best efforts, it may be that we will ultimately remain a mystery to ourselves.
Terms: Win | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

OSPOXFRD 17: Novels of Sensation: Gothic, Detective Story, Prohibition, and Transgression in Victorian Fiction

In this course we will study and discuss examples of the gothic, sensation, and detective fiction that flooded the literary market during the Victorian period. Like their eighteenth-century gothic predecessors, many of these texts lacked literary respectability, though they achieved best seller status. Far beyond simply providing a jaded reading public with scandalous and suspenseful narratives loaded with sex, crime, mystery and even the supernatural, these texts attempted to expose not only the secrets of their protagonists, but also the seamy underbelly of outwardly respectable Victorian society, epitomized by the family with its angel of the house. Topics for discussion will include the literary and moral value of these sub-genres of the novel and what they reveal about Victorian society's anxiety over transgressive - and therefore prohibited - elements in the domestic and public sphere.
Terms: Aut | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

OSPOXFRD 24: Layered Landscapes: Traces of the British Past

What kinds of evidence exists to allow contemporary students to evaluate a country's history of human endeavor? What different roles do buildings, monuments, and records play in forming collective memory? What other kinds of cultural objects - like art, music, and literature - create and augment varying identities within political borders? What role does a nation's established record and its interpretations play in perpetuating particular perspectives?This course asks how and why British communities and institutions preserve and sustain their material record asking how monuments were built, used, and described. We shall explore how (the potentially collective) memories of Britain are gathered, categorized, described, made accessible and felt. We shall investigate how to read the traces of landscapes layered through time, and inquire about the work archives, museums, public monuments, and tourist sites do to testify to a past that was glorious for some and deeply oppressive and violent for others. The course will introduce students to the fundamental skills and methodological framework required for working with an informed humanities expertise; a professional expertise that is critical, recognizing complexity, different viewpoints, and open-ended interpretation. Students will learn to read and interpret archival sources, and to practice the description, analysis, and public-facing discussion of primary materials. Among the places we may visit are the Bodleian Library, Oxford History Centre, and the museums in Oxford; the British Library and the British Museum in London; Stonehenge and Salisbury Cathedral in Wiltshire; Offa's Dyke (Shropshire); and a variety of monuments and preserved features in the local landscape.
Terms: Aut, Win | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Treharne, E. (PI)

OSPOXFRD 41: Western Thought: Origins of Twentieth Century Semiotics

Story of semiotic exploration, its contributions to literary critical theory, Marxist critique and feminist critique, in development of twentieth century thought. Close look at principle authors and circumstances that engendered their writings. Questions about the relationship between thought and environment, and between ideology and action raised by looking at the way twentieth century events influenced thinkers to consider the purposes of language in society, in identity , and in authority.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

OSPOXFRD 52: Shakespeare and Performance

This class is designed to enhance students' understanding of Shakespeare's place in the UK performance (and political landscape) through analysis of landmark productions on British stages and screens. We will apply range of scholarly approaches to these works and their lives on film and in the theatre, including close reading, performance studies, critical race studies, queer studies, and gender studies. Students will be introduced to these methodological frameworks early in the course, and are free to apply any of them in their assignments. Throughout our exploration of these canonical works, we will consider how today's theatre and film makers, as well as their audiences, engage with these plays to make new meanings and interventions in contemporary culture. Central to our discussion will be an interrogation of the place of Shakespeare in contemporary British culture, chiefly through analysis of performances of his plays and those of his contemporaries in major national institutions: Shakespeare's Globe, the National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the BBC, and the mainstream film industry. At the same time, however, we will be equally concerned with how marginalised groups, including minority ethnic and queer artists, have turned to Shakespeare's plays in order to reposition his works, and themselves, on the global and political stage. These in-class discussions, supported by study-group preparation, will prepare students for the written assignments, which are designed to allow students to interpret these plays and their theatrical/filmic afterlives, with a particular focus on the social and political implications of staging and screening these plays in today's diverse British society. Each week, students will be expected to have read the set text (a play by either Shakespeare or his contemporaries) and, in one of three 'study groups,' to have engaged with a critical or interpretative response to that text based on assigned reading or viewing (usually a scholarly reading, or a film or theatrical adaptation).
Terms: Sum | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

OSPOXFRD 72: Oxford Fantasists

The lives and selected fantasy literature of famous Oxford alumni William Morris (Exeter College), Lewis Carroll (Christ Church), Oscar Wilde (Magdalen), C.S. Lewis (University and Magdalen), and J.R.R. Tolkien (Exeter, Pembroke, and Merton), looking at each writer's unique take on the fantasy genre. To place readings in context, this course will also explore and compare selected source materials used by these writers, including examples of classic "high" and "low" fairy tales, selections from Norse and Welsh mythology, and Arthurian romance.
Last offered: Autumn 2021 | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

OSPOXFRD 75: Creative Non-Fiction: Self expression as a means and an end.

The value of writing as a form of self expression and self analysis has been highlighted in recent months. In this course students will embark on an exploration of the practical uses of writing (journalism, therapy, communicating policies) while also cultivating their own writing skills. In this small seminar students will be able to grow their own writing skills with a variety of assignments tailored to their interests, meet other writers and learn how recent global events have changed the employment landscape for a burgeoning wordsmith.
Terms: Sum | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

OSPOXFRD 93: Collecting the World

The art, science, and culture of the creation, transmission and collection of valuable, useful and informative objects and texts before the twentieth century, and the associated theories, purposes, and methods for collecting `worldly' goods and other valuables. Means by which local academic practices engaged with global developments in the arts and sciences through examination of primarily early modern material and intellectual culture in and around Oxfordshire. Assessments of quality, meaning, usage, cultural significance and the reception of material ¿treasures¿ in the storage rooms, vaults, and on display in museums, galleries, and libraries.
Last offered: Autumn 2020 | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

OSPOXFRD 97: Museum Anthropology and Digital Technologies

Engage with material cultural theory debates of the late 20th century and examine the impact of the digital revolution on the way we exhibit culture two decades into the third millennium. Reflect upon the transformation of the politics and poetics of museum display analysing readings and exhibitions from the 1990s to the present day. Digital interfaces in our daily lives have altered the way we seek information and the way we communicate with each other. What have we learned about representing cultures in museum spaces and what have we put into practice? Examine contemporary issues and contentions relating to cultural display in relation to exhibits in Western art and anthropology museums.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Kahn, A. (PI)

OSPOXFRD 99: Unsettling Museum Spaces: Decolonisation, Diversity, and Discourse.

The past year has presented serious challenges to those who work in cultural heritage, not only has tourism and site attendance been disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic, but social justice movements have raised critical awareness of these sites. What is the purpose of the museum? This course explores the ways the British museum sector has adapted and responded to criticism, and analyses the underlying purpose of cultural sites. This course invites students to learn about british history while also learning about objections to its typical portrayal in the public spaces of britain.
Terms: Sum | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

OSPPARIS 10: Art and migration in France: picturing displacement and the displaced

Since the turn of the 20th century, Paris has attracted both artists and migrants in large numbers, thanks to France's reputation as a haven for those seeking refuge from persecution and conflict, and its capital's longtime status as a global artistic center. This course will focus on the confluence of these two communities by exploring the art of migration from the 20th century to today¿including painting, sculpture, drawing, street art, photography and video--with a focus on works representing France, or produced in France or by French artists.Beyond aesthetic considerations, many of the artists who formed part of the successive generations of the legendary 20th century "School of Paris", and continue to enrich the Parisian art scene today, have also come fleeing various forms of persecution or turmoil in their home countries, from war to anti-Semitism to fascism to colonialism to terrorism. The ways that these "cultural migrants" have represented their journey and negotiated their multi-layered identities in their work, both then and now, will be explored. Current day migration in a post-colonial context will also be studied, as a means to discover the various strategies used by contemporary artists to humanize and give visibility to the struggle of the displaced, while addressing societal concerns fueling displacement today, including racial, social, religious and gender inequality, conflict, and climate change.Instructional format will include in-class lectures, discussions with contemporary artists, and above all, site visits to Parisian museums, neighborhoods and relevant socio-cultural institutions. Students will be evaluated through in-class participation and attendance, an in-class presentation on an assigned artwork, and a research paper on a topic relevant to the course scope.
| Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

OSPPARIS 27: Art and Politics in Modern France

This course proposes to explore art and politics in France from the revolution to the present. Through a multimedia approach - including sculptures, paintings, prints, commemorative monuments, architecture, street art and photographs - we will retrace the changing forms that some of the most salient political messages have taken in modern French art. The course will follow a chronological progression, from Revolution to Empire, followed by the rise and fall of the IInd Empire, and the resulting thirst for revenge. We will then broach the 20th century, including the politics of the avant-garde, the art of colonialism, the varied aesthetic responses to the rise of totalitarianism, on display at the 1937 World's Fair in Paris, and evident in the art of collaboration and resistance produced in Occupied and Vichy France during the Second World War. The art of 1960s countercultural contestation - anti-capitalist, anti-colonial, feminist, etc.--will then be studied, before examining recent initiatives in the realm of commemorative art and cultural display that approach issues facing contemporary French society today, including terrorism and constructively confronting its colonial legacy.
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

OSPPARIS 30: The Avant Garde in France through Literature, Art, and Theater

Multiple artistic trends and esthetic theories from Baudelaire to the Nouveau Roman, from the Surrealists to Oulipo, from the theater of cruelty to the theater of the absurd, from the Impressionists to Yves Klein. Interdisciplinary approach to reflect on the meaning of avant garde and modernity in general, and on the question of why revolutionary artists in France remained in search of institutional recognition, nonetheless.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

OSPPARIS 37: Paris, Maghrebi Capital City

This course explores the ways in which Paris can be seen as a cultural capital city of the Maghreb in the 20th and 21st centuries. It will center on the understanding of the place of the French capital city in the production of writers (including food writers), filmmakers, visual artists, architects, public intellectuals from Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia, and from the French citizens of the so-called 'second and third generations' of migrant parents from the Maghreb. We will examine foundational works while considering their engagement with the historical and political contexts in which they were produced, conveying the changing aspects of Parisian social landscape in the broader Francophone cultures of Paris (e.g. examining the dialogue with Francophone artists from Sub-Saharan Africa). The diverse topics discussed will include migration, colonialism and decolonization, political and social dissent, national and cultural identity, the politics of language, race and class, gender and sexuality, orality and textuality, and transmediterranean dynamics. We will analyse recent initiatives in the realm of commemorative events of the colonial past and its legacy, specifically of diverse controversies facing contemporary French and North African societies today. We will also have the opportunity to interact with some of the authors as special guests: Benjamin Stora, Leïla Slimani, Sophia Aouine, Tarik Oualalou. Class-visits to the Institut du Monde Arabe, Great Mosque of Paris, Palais de la Porte Dorée, Jewish North African quarters (Le Marais, Belleville), cooking class and couscous lunch in the Latin Quarter
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

OSPPARIS 50: The Writing on the Walls: Street Art in Paris, yesterday and today

Once condemned as vandalism, street art is today appreciated the world over by an increasingly diverse audience. This course will explore street or urban art's evolution from a criminal act by anonymous, marginalized figures to an esteemed, lucrative and increasingly officially-sponsored cultural practice. The focus will be street art in Paris. Long considered an international artistic capital, Paris is seen today as one of the most dynamic centers of contemporary street art, since its emergence in the 1960s. The course will address the multiple forms, techniques and labels used in relation to urban or street art, while exploring prevalent themes broached, including racial and gender inequality, anti-capitalism and climate activism. The motivations, goals, and inspirations of both renowned and emerging practitioners in Paris and beyond will be studied to place street art in a wider art historical and activist context. Throughout the course, the paradoxical notions surrounding contemporary street art will be considered: revolt versus appropriation, urban degradation versus beautification and even speculation, delinquency versus activism, anonymity versus stardom, street versus screen. Forms of instruction will include in-class discussions and debates, student presentations, guest lectures by street artists and other cultural actors, site visits to community and cultural institutions and city walks to explore the writing on the walls in diverse Parisian neighborhoods.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

OSPPARIS 54: The Artist's World: The Workshop, Patronage and Public in 19th and 20th Century France

Synergy between artists, their workshops, patrons, models and the public in 19th and 20th century France. Weekly sessions in museums, artists' studios, and special venues within and around Paris, attempting to understand the world of the artist, and how, in many cases, this world became not only a place of refuge, but a metaphor of the artistic creation itself.
Last offered: Winter 2021 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

OSPPARIS 72: The Ceilings of Paris

Seventeenth century transformation of the ceilings of Paris, private and public. Itinerary of this transformation from artists' initial drawings to their finished work. Under the guidance of the curator of 17th century French Drawings in the Louvre Museum, study the original drawings as well as the venues in and around Paris. Sites vary from the most illustrious (Versailles) to the lesser known (Hotel Lauzun). Reflection on the changing social and political aspirations as represented in these new artistic forms. Language of instruction: French.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

OSPPARIS 77: Literature and Philosophy of Place

Themes of place and displacement in literature and philosophy of the larger French-speaking world, focusing on diasporic writers. Paris as a magnet for artists and thinkers seeking freedom from restrictive environments. Contrast the experiences of characters who are at "home" and those who are "away," the anxieties of exile and of colonialism, how one person's claim on home can be another's experience of being invaded,. Philosophers' analyses of the interdependence of place and identity, place and belonging, the sometimes contradictory nature of 'home,' as they pertain to the literary (fiction, essay, poetry) texts we will read.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

OSPPARIS 90P: Exploring Paris Museums: History, Artistry, and Cultural Impact

In Paris, an array of over 120 museums assumes a pivotal role in the city's historical narrative, cultural identity, and economic landscape. This course centers its focus on these cultural institutions, employing them both as subjects of study and interactive learning environments. From the world-renowned Louvre, with its origins dating back to the pre-French Revolution era, symbolizing the nation's heritage, to the privately inaugurated Pinault Foundation Museum in 2021, we embark on a journey to explore the multifaceted histories and architectural nuances that define these institutions. Our aim is to uncover the essence of their diverse collections, understand the organizational structure of their permanent galleries, and analyze the intricate dynamics between enduring exhibits and temporary showcases. Additionally, we delve into the methods employed to present artworks within these museum spaces and gain insights into the myriad of activities and experiences provided to museumgoers. In essence, this course extends an invitation to interpret museums not as static historical artifacts, but as dynamic reflections of evolving political and cultural preferences. Language of Instruction: French
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

OSPPARIS 92: Building Paris: Its History, Architecture, and Urban Design

The development of Parisian building and architecture from the 17th century to the present. Interaction of tradition and innovation in its transformation and its historical, political, and cultural underpinnings. Visits and case studies throughout Paris illustrate the formation of the city landscape and its culture.
Last offered: Spring 2021 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-A-II

OSPPARIS 93: Paris: Capital of Enlightenment and Revolution

By the 1720's, Paris was widely viewed as the center of European culture and politics. "How can anyone be Persian?" asked a fictional Parisian in Montesquieu's Persian Letters (the implication was that anything other than being Parisian was slightly ludicrous). Eighteenth-century writers, scientists, and aristocrats sought to burnish Paris's reputation as the capital of modern thought and worldly sophistication, from which Enlightenment radiated. Visitors eagerly sought admittance to the famous salons, attended the theater, and watched public scientific displays. But by the end of the century, the novelty promised by the French philosophes took on a revolutionary dimension. Now the streets of Paris provided the stage for some of the most momentous historical events in Europe, from the storming of the Bastille to the execution of Louis XVI. And the ramifications of this revolution echoed throughout the nineteenth century, both in Paris and beyond.In this course, you will study the cultural and political history of Paris using the city itself as a classroom. Whenever possible, you will explore the role of salons, scientific academies, museums, and coffee shops by both studying and visiting them in person. You will examine the sites of revolutionary events and consider how they are commemorated (or not). And you will discover how some of the most striking features of Paris -- its grands boulevards, with their elegant apartment blocks -- reflect lasting fears of a revolutionary people.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

OSPPARIS 94: Paris noir and the spaces of otherness

Paris and the African-American diaspora have been historically intertwined through political activism, literature, architecture, cinema, music, and beyond. In this course we will map the spatial presence of the avant-garde of African-American artists in Paris and how their being in the City of Light has inherently shaped the French Capital and its understanding of alterity throughout the twentieth and the twenty-first century. We will not only focus on the Parisian connections and the long-lasting imprint they left on Paris by othering the urban landscape, offering alternative conceptions of the parisian territories for generations of Black and non-Black artists to come, but also on their own journeys of self-discovering and intellectual awakening in the streets of Paris: how Paris transforms them and how they transform Paris. From Richard Wright to Beyonc¿, from James Baldwin to Ta-Nehisi Coates, from Josephine Baker to Thomas Chatterton Williams, from Beverly Loraine Greene to Angela Davis & Black Lives Matter in Paris : exploring how the pioneers of the Afro-American parisian diaspora paved the way for the future generations of Paris noir. From Caf¿ Tournon to the Louvre museum, from Montparnasse to La Sorbonne, from the Unesco headquarters co-designed by Beverly Loraine Greene the First African-American woman to be a registered architect in the USA, we will explore the ways those parisian territories, symbols of power, knowledge and French (non) art de vivre came to define the socio-political Paris of Afro-American artists and public intellectuals, and to refine their intimate vision of America from a distance.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

OSPPARIS 95: Women in Contemporary French Cinema

Women as objects and subjects of the voyeuristic gaze inherent to cinema. The evolution of female characters, roles, actresses, directors in the French film industry from the sexual liberation to #metoo. Women as archetypes, icones, images, or as agents and subjects. Emphasis on filmic analysis: framing, point of view, narrative, camera work as ways to convey meaning. Themes include: sexualization and desire; diversity and intersectionality in films; new theories of the female gaze; gender, ethnicity and class. Filmmakers include Roger Vadim, Agnès Varda, Luis Buñuel, Claude Chabrol, Colline Serreau, Elena Rossi, Tonie Marshall, Houda Benyamina, Eléonore Pourriat, Céline Sciamma, Mati Diop. VISIT BY FILM DIRECTORS Elena Rossi and Sciamma (pending). Films in French with subtitles; discussion in English.
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

OSPPARIS 96: Migration Matters in Cinema and Literature: Francophone Authors Inside Out

The 20th Century has seen numerous prodigious cultural productions of French artists with living roots in the former French colonies (North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Indochina), and the 21st century has already seen even greater ones. Navigating critical challenges faced by our human condition such as making sense of the world around us, self-expression and representation, migration and mobility, identity negotiations and sense of multi-belonging, the contemporary French artists (writers, filmmakers, architects, rappers) have found themselves at the center of French and Francophone cultural life for quite a while. This course will explore luvres from Leila Slimani's Chanson douce to Rachid Bouchareb's Indigènes, taking side trips into the topsy-turvy world of Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, the ingeniosity of Alain Mabanckou's Verre cassé, the poetic spleen of Stromae's Racine carrée, the unapologetic French vision of Fatou Diome's Marianne porte plainte!, the fierce narrative of Kim Lefèvre's Métisse blanche, and the inventive questioning of urban life in Djamel Klouche's architecture. We will consider the play of words, the strategies behind first-person narrative and compare it with the alternate third person and the "we" one in different art mediums. Why are so many authors and protagonists still obsessed with the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962), 60 years after the end of the war? How does the move from an early almost exclusively male-dominated cultural scene to a more gender balanced one translate into their artistic productions ?
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

OSPPARIS 99: Framing Violence in Popular Tales

Short stories have been an important literary and cultural tradition in France since 1690. Classical authors, folktale writers, translators of "oriental" fictions, aristocrats, and femmes du monde have produced a large corpus of short stories. These stories are far from being mere fairy tales; they unveil the violence of the Early Modern period while revealing the horrors of social and domestic violence. This course has two goals: the first one is to present the nature, extent and causes of domestic, social, and everyday violence in absolute regimes of the early modern times. The second one is to "read" violence and the emotions linked to it in popular tale narratives. Our repertoire will include popular French tales, such as Les Contes de Perrault, and the philosophical and political tales of Rousseau, Diderot, and Voltaire. Our approach will be comparative, psychoanalytic, feminist, cross-cultural, sociological, and anthropological. Format: seminar. Taught in French. Minimum requirement to join the French section is to be placed in FRENLANG22P
Terms: Aut | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

OSPPARIS 186F: Contemporary African Literature in French

Focus is on African writers and those of the diaspora, bound together by a common history of slave trade, bondage, colonization, and racism. Their works belong to the past, seeking to save an oral heritage of proverbs, story tales, and epics, but they are also contemporary.
Last offered: Spring 2021 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

OSPSANTG 14: Female Literary Voices in Latin America

Key figures in poetry, narrative fiction, theater, and testimonio, such as Mistral, Garro, Lispector, Poniatowska, Valenzuela, Eltit and Mench¿. Close reading technique. Issues raised in literary texts that reflect the evolution of the condition of women in Latin America during the period. Topics include gender differences and relationships, tradition versus transgression, relationship between changes in the status of women and other egalitarian transformations, and women writers and the configuration of literary canons.
Terms: Aut | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-Gender, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

OSPSANTG 30: Short Latin American Fiction of the 20th Century

Introduction to short narrative fiction produced in Latin America during the 20th Century. Key features of the short story genre, as defined by Chekhov in the 19th Century and redefined by Kafka and Borges in the 20th Century. Main literary movements of the period in Latin America, including Regionalism, Social Realism, the Avant-Garde, the Boom of the 1960s and Magical Realism, the Post-Boom, etc. Close reading course with strong emphasis on analysis and discussion of the required texts. Readings placed in the context of the main developments in Latin American history and culture in the period.
Last offered: Autumn 2021 | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

OSPSANTG 44: Introduction to Borderlands Literature of the Americas

Comparative dialogue regarding a variety of perspectives from Chicano/a and LatinAmerican literary studies. Examine autobiographies, fiction, and cultural productions from writers such as Roberto Bolaño (2666), Yuri Herrera (Señales que precederán al fin del mundo), Gloria Anzaldúa (Borderlands/La Frontera), Sara Uribe (Antígona González), Américo Paredes (The Hammon and the Beans), Sandra Cisneros (La casa en Mango), and Helena Viramontes ("The Cariboo Café"). Also focus on the Chilean dictatorship novel Nocturna de Chile by Roberto Bolaño and the Dominican dictatorship novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

OSPSANTG 54: Revisiting the Chilean Coup in Literature and Art: 1973-2023

The course, taught in Spanish and welcoming of speakers intermediate and above, will be an exploration into the phenomenology of the 1973 Chilean coup and its aftermath. How has this event been experienced, constructed, and passed on? We will examine literary, artistic, and media representations to understand its layered, diffracted, haunting presence in Chilean politics and daily life across distinct periods: 1973-1989 (return to democracy); 1989-2006 (death of Pinochet); 2006-2019 (widespread protests); 2019-present (constitutional reform movement and fiftieth anniversary). Authors include Diamela Eltit, Willy Thays, Alejandro Zambra, Michael Lazzara, Pedro Lemebel, Patricio Guzmán, and Nona Fernández. With local guests and extracurricular activities available. Primary language: Spanish
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

OSPSANTG 67: Patagonia in Literature and Film: Indigenous peoples and clash of cultures at the end of the world

The course will explore the cultures and histories of Patagonia through literature and film, including historical documents, travel literature, poetry, historical and contemporary short stories and novels, narrative and documentary films to help students become acquainted with the unique geography, heritage and contemporary life of the region. The familiarization with ¿and open discussions around¿ these materials will complement instruction in situ during an extensive visit to Patagonia.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Missana, S. (PI)

PHIL 1: Introduction to Philosophy

Is there one truth or many? Does science tell us everything there is to know? Can our minds be purely physical? Do we have free will? Is faith rational? Should we always be rational? What is the meaning of life? Are there moral truths? What are truth, reality, rationality, and knowledge? How can such questions be answered? Intensive introduction to theories and techniques in philosophy from various contemporary traditions. Once a week discussions will occur during scheduled meeting time (~50 minutes)
Terms: Win | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

PHIL 2: Introduction to Moral Philosophy (ETHICSOC 20)

What should I do with my life? What kind of person should I be? How should we treat others? What makes actions right or wrong? What is good and what is bad? What should we value? How should we organize society? Is there any reason to be moral? Is morality relative or subjective? How, if at all, can such questions be answered? Intensive introduction to theories and techniques in contemporary moral philosophy.
Terms: Aut | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-EthicReas, WAY-A-II, WAY-ER

PHIL 8N: Free Will and Responsibility

In what sense are we, or might we be free agents? Is our freedom compatible with our being fully a part of the same natural, causal order that includes other physical and biological systems? What assumptions about freedom do we make when we hold people accountable morally and/or legally? When we hold people accountable, and so responsible, can we also see them as part of the natural, causal order? Or is there a deep incompatibility between these two ways of understanding ourselves? What assumptions about our freedom do we make when we deliberate about what to do? Are these assumptions in conflict with seeing ourselves as part of the natural, causal order?We will explore these and related questions primarily by way of careful study of recent and contemporary philosophical research on these matters.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-ER

PHIL 13: Humanities Core: Great Books, Big Ideas -- Europe, Modern (FRENCH 13, HISTORY 239C, HUMCORE 13)

What is a good life? How should society be organized? Who belongs? How should honor, love, sin, and similar abstractions govern our actions? What duty do we owe to the past and future? This course examines tcourse examines these questions in the modern period, from the rise of revolutionary ideas to the experiences of totalitarianism and decolonization in the twentieth century. Authors include Locke, Mary Shelley, Marx, Nietzsche, Primo Levi, and Frantz Fanon. This course is part of the Humanities Core, a collaborative set of global humanities seminars that brings all of its students and faculty into conversation. On Mondays you meet in your own course, and on Wednesdays all the HumCore seminars (in session that quarter) meet together: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-ER

PHIL 22Q: Being Reasonable

In everyday life, we ask each other to be reasonable, and we fault unreasonable behavior in ourselves and others. Moreover, the Anglo-American legal system makes extensive use of the "reasonable person standard" in everything from negligence to administrative law. What is it to be a reasonable person? What do we mean by "reasonable"? This course will look at applications of the concept and at attempts by philosophers and legal theorists to understand what reasonableness is. First preference to Sophomores; second preference to Freshman. No prior Philosophy courses needed.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Lawlor, K. (PI)

PHIL 26Q: How to Build a World (in a Video Game)

Sophomore Seminar. First preference to Sophomores; second preference to Freshman. What makes a video game world feel like a real place? What is our relationship to the real world? Can we learn anything from video games about our relationship to the real world, and can we learn anything from philosophy that can help us create compelling video game worlds? In this course we will examine elements of video game design and development in the context of related philosophical topics including the nature of worlds, the nature of the mind, and the nature of action. For example, while some games are open-world, some consist of a set of sandboxes, and could the distinction between what philosophers call 'possible worlds' and 'situations' help us understand the difference? (Or vice versa?) Video game worlds are often sprinkled with 'pick-ups' -- do philosophical accounts of how agents perceive the real world help to explain why this is such an intuitive game mechanic? In this course we will play and tinker with video games while also reading philosophical texts, and see if each domain can stimulate our thinking about the other. There are no prerequisites for this course, but all students should come prepared to read challenging literature, to play some games, and to make some games!
Terms: Aut | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Turman, J. (PI)

PHIL 60: Introduction to Philosophy of Science (HPS 60)

This course introduces students to tools for the philosophical analysis of science. We will cover issues in observation, experiment, and reasoning, questions about the aims of science, scientific change, and the relations between science and values.
Terms: Aut | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

PHIL 71H: Introduction to Aesthetics

Aesthetics encompasses a seemingly special and particularly rewarding way of perceiving the world. Appreciating the beauty of a sunset, feeling moved by a piece of music, becoming absorbed in the composition of an artwork: these are all aesthetic matters, and they are all matters that lie at the heart of this course. We will begin by exploring core debates on aesthetic experience, aesthetic properties, and aesthetic value. But we will also venture into considerations of aesthetics in our everyday lives, aesthetic taste and our personalities, aesthetics and grief, aesthetics and gender, and aesthetics and race. By the end of the quarter, you will have a strong foundation in understanding this rich aspect of life we call aesthetics.
Last offered: Winter 2021 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

PHIL 80: Mind, Matter, and Meaning

Intensive study of central topics in metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language and mind in preparation for advanced courses in philosophy. Emphasis on development of analytical writing skills. This iteration of Philosophy 80 will focus on three important philosophical issues: personal identity; the metaphysics of mind; and the nature of belief and related attitudes. Readings will be drawn both from philosophy and from cognitive science more broadly. Prerequisite: at least one other philosophy course, not including SYMSYS 1 / PHIL 99.
Terms: Aut, Spr | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

PHIL 81: Philosophy and Literature (CLASSICS 42, COMPLIT 181, ENGLISH 81, FRENCH 181, GERMAN 181, ILAC 181, ITALIAN 181, SLAVIC 181)

Can novels make us better people? Can movies challenge our assumptions? Can poems help us become who we are? We'll think about these and other questions with the help of writers like Toni Morrison, Marcel Proust, Jordan Peele, Charlie Kaufman, Rachel Cusk, William Shakespeare, and Samuel Beckett, plus thinkers like Nehamas, Nietzsche, Nussbaum, Plato, and Sartre. We'll also ask whether a disenchanted world can be re-enchanted; when, if ever, the truth stops being the most important thing; why we sometimes choose to read sad stories; whether we ever love someone for who they are; who could possibly want to live their same life over and over again; what it takes to make ourselves fully moral; whether it's ever good to be conflicted; how we can pull ourselves together; and how we can take ourselves apart. (This is the required gateway course for the Philosophy and Literature major tracks. Majors should register in their home department.)
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

PHIL 100: The History of Ancient Greek Philosophy (CLASSICS 40)

We shall cover the major developments in Greek philosophical thought, focusing on Plato, Aristotle, and the Hellenistic schools (the Epicureans, the Stoics, and the Skeptics). Topics include epistemology, metaphysics, psychology, ethics and political theory. No prereqs, not repeatable.
Terms: Aut | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

PHIL 102: Modern Philosophy, Descartes to Kant

Major figures in early modern philosophy in epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of mind. Writings by Descartes, Leibniz, Hume, and Kant.
Terms: Win | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

PHIL 108: Aristotle's Metaphysics Book Alpha (PHIL 208)

An introduction both to Aristotle's own metaphysics and to his treatment of his predecessors on causality, included the early Ionian cosmologists, atomism, Pythagoreans, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Anaxagoras and Plato. Prerequisite: one course in ancient Greek philosophy.
Terms: Win | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Code, A. (PI)

PHIL 125: Kant's First Critique (PHIL 225)

(Graduate students register for 225.) The founding work of Kant's critical philosophy emphasizing his contributions to metaphysics and epistemology. His attempts to limit metaphysics to the objects of experience. Prerequisite: course dealing with systematic issues in metaphysics or epistemology, or with the history of modern philosophy.
Terms: Win | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; De Pierris, G. (PI)

PHIL 137: Wittgenstein (PHIL 237)

(Graduate students register for 237.) An exploration of Wittgenstein's changing views about meaning, mind, knowledge, and the nature of philosophical perplexity and philosophical insight, focusing on the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Philosophical Investigations.
Terms: Aut | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Hills, D. (PI)

PHIL 165: Philosophy of Physics: Philosophical Issues in Quantum Mechanics (PHIL 265)

Graduate students register for 265.PREREQUISITES: previous course in philosophy of science or natural science or CS or engineering. Topic for 2023-2024: Philosophical Issues in Quantum Mechanics.
Terms: Win | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-SMA | Repeatable for credit

PHIL 167D: Philosophy of Neuroscience (PHIL 267D, SYMSYS 167D)

How can we explain the mind? With approaches ranging from computational models to cellular-level characterizations of neural responses to the characterization of behavior, neuroscience aims to explain how we see, think, decide, and even feel. While these approaches have been highly successful in answering some kinds of questions, they have resulted in surprisingly little progress in others. We'll look at the relationships between the neuroscientific enterprise, philosophical investigations of the nature of the mind, and our everyday experiences as creatures with minds. Prerequisite: PHIL 80. (Not open to freshmen.) By application; send instructor a paragraph about why you want to be in the class and your background to rosacao@stanford.edu including course number in email.
Terms: Win | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Cao, R. (PI); Pereira, A. (TA)

PHIL 170: Ethical Theory (ETHICSOC 170, PHIL 270)

(Taylor's version) In this iteration of the course we will discuss ethical dimensions of personal identity, integrity, friendship, sex, love, commitment, trust, care, childhood, death, and the afterlife. Substantial background in moral philosophy will be assumed (students should have completed Philosophy 2 or its equivalent; if you have questions, please contact the instructor).
Terms: Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-EthicReas, WAY-A-II, WAY-ER
Instructors: ; Madigan, T. (PI)

PHIL 170B: Metaphor (PHIL 270B)

In metaphor we think and talk about two things at once: two different subject matters are mingled to rich and unpredictable effect. A close critical study of the main modern accounts of metaphor's nature and interest, drawing on the work of writers, linguists, philosophers, and literary critics. Attention to how understanding, appreciation, and pleasure connect with one another in the experience of metaphor. Consideration of the possibility that metaphor or something very like it occurs in nonverbal media: gesture, dance, painting, music.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

PHIL 172: History of Modern Moral Philosophy (ETHICSOC 172, PHIL 272)

A critical exploration of some main forms of systematic moral theorizing in Western philosophy from Hobbes onward and their roots in ancient, medieval, and earlier modern ethical thought. Prerequistes are some prior familiarity with utilitarianism and Kantian ethics and a demonstrated interest in philosophy. Grads enroll in 272.
Terms: Win | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-ER
Instructors: ; Hills, D. (PI)

PHIL 175: Philosophy of Law (ETHICSOC 175B, PHIL 275)

This course will explore foundational issues about the nature of law and its relation to morality, and about legal responsibility and criminal punishment. Toward the end we will turn to issues about the criminal culpability of children. Prerequisite: Philosophy 80
Terms: Win | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-ER

PHIL 176: Political Philosophy: The Social Contract Tradition (ETHICSOC 176, PHIL 276, POLISCI 137A, POLISCI 337A)

(Graduate students register for 276.) What makes political institutions legitimate? What makes them just? When do citizens have a right to revolt against those who rule over them? Which of our fellow citizens must we tolerate?Surprisingly, the answers given by some of the most prominent modern philosophers turn on the idea of a social contract. We will focus on the work of Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Rawls.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-ER
Instructors: ; Hills, D. (PI)

PHIL 176A: Classical Seminar: Origins of Political Thought (CLASSICS 181, CLASSICS 381, ETHICSOC 130A, PHIL 276A, POLISCI 230A, POLISCI 330A)

Political philosophy in classical antiquity, centered on reading canonical works of Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle against other texts and against the political and historical background. Topics include: interdependence, legitimacy, justice; political obligation, citizenship, and leadership; origins and development of democracy; law, civic strife, and constitutional change.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-ER

PHIL 180: Metaphysics (PHIL 280)

Intensive introduction to core topics in contemporary metaphysics. What is the fundamental structure of reality? Is it objective? What's the difference between concrete and abstract entities? How can there be truths about what is possible or necessary, if only the actual exists? What is it for an event to be determined by its causes? Is the world purely physical? Does science answer all of these questions? If not, is there some other way to answer them? Prerequisites: PHIL 80, PHIL 150, and one course in contemporary theoretical philosophy (PHIL 181 to PHIL 189).
Terms: Aut | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Hussain, N. (PI)

PHIL 181B: Topics in Philosophy of Language (PHIL 281B)

This course builds on the material of 181/281, focusing on debates and developments in the pragmatics of conversation, the semantics/pragmatics distinction, the contextuality of meaning, the nature of truth and its connection to meaning, and the workings of particular linguistic constructions of special philosophical relevance. Students who have not taken 181/281 should seek the instructor's advice as to whether they have sufficient background.
Last offered: Spring 2020 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II | Repeatable 3 times (up to 12 units total)

PHIL 182H: Truth (PHIL 282H)

Philosophical debates about the place in human lives and the value to human beings of truth and its pursuit. The nature and significance of truth-involving virtues such as accuracy, sincerity, and candor. Prerequisite Phil 80 or permission of the instructor.
Last offered: Winter 2020 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-ER

PHIL 184: Epistemology (PHIL 284)

This is an advanced introduction to core topics in epistemology -- the philosophical study of knowledge. Questions covered will include: What is knowledge? Must all knowledge rest on secure foundations? What are the connections between knowledge and rationality? Can we answer skepticism and relativism? Should epistemology be primarily investigated from a naturalistic, normative, or social perspective? Prerequisite (for undergraduates): PHIL 80 and PHIL 150 or equivalent.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

PHIL 186: Philosophy of Mind (PHIL 286)

(Graduate students register for 286.) This is an advanced introduction to core topics in the philosophy of mind. Prerequisite: PHIL 80
Terms: Win | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

PHIL 193C: Film & Philosophy (ENGLISH 154F, FRENCH 154, ITALIAN 154)

What makes you the individual you are? Should you plan your life, or make it up as you go along? Is it always good to remember your past? Is it always good to know the truth? When does a machine become a person? What do we owe to other people? Is there always a right way to act? How can we live in a highly imperfect world? And what can film do that other media can't? We'll think about all of these great questions with the help of films that are philosophically stimulating, stylistically intriguing, and, for the most part, gripping to watch: Do The Right Thing (Lee), The Dark Knight (Nolan), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Kaufman), Arrival (Villeneuve), My Dinner with Andr¿ (Malle), Blade Runner (Scott), La Jet¿e (Marker), Fight Club (Fincher), No Country for Old Men (Coen), The Seventh Seal (Bergman), and Memento (Nolan). Attendance at weekly screenings is mandatory; and fun. We will not be using the waitlist on Axess - if you would like to enroll and the course is full/closed please email us to get on the waitlist!
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

PHIL 194H: Capstone Seminar: What is Explanation?

Capstone seminar for the major. Prerequisites: Junior or Senior, PHIL 80, PHIL 150, and one course in contemporary theoretical philosophy numbered between PHIL 180 and PHIL 189.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

PHIL 194W: Capstone Seminar: Imagination in Fiction and Philosophy

This course spans the disciplinary divide between philosophy and literature by examining a mental faculty they both use: the imagination. The importance of the imagination in philosophy is contested: can it really help us understand what is possible and what's not, and if so, how? The role of the imagination in literature is undeniable, but often surprising in its details: why do we have real emotions in response to fictional stories? why do we seek out the negative emotions associated with tragedy and horror stories? Through guided discussion, live debate, close reading (of both philosophy and literature), and extensive writing, we will gain some insight into the fundamental faculty of thought that is the imagination. This is a capstone seminar for undergraduate majors in philosophy. Prerequisites: three courses in philosophy, including Philosophy 80.
Last offered: Winter 2022 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-ER

POLISCI 31N: Political Freedom: Rights, Justice, and Democracy in the Western Tradition

Freedom is one of our core values. Most people can agree that freedom is a good thing. Yet there is far less agreement about how to understand the concept itself and what kinds of political arrangements are best suited to protect and enhance freedom. Is freedom about being left alone? Undertaking action with others? Participating in governance? Does freedom require a limited state? An active and interventionist government? A robustly participatory political system? How is freedom connected to other political values, like justice and equality? This seminar will consider and evaluate some of the most controversial and challenging answers that have been given to these questions by canonical thinkers like John Locke, John Stuart Mill, and Karl Marx, as well as by more contemporary political and legal thinkers like Jeremy Waldron and Cass Sunstein. We will also examine how questions about the nature of freedom play out on college campuses and in the courts.
Last offered: Winter 2017 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

POLISCI 124A: The American West (AMSTUD 124A, ARTHIST 152, ENGLISH 124, HISTORY 151)

The American West is characterized by frontier mythology, vast distances, marked aridity, and unique political and economic characteristics. This course integrates several disciplinary perspectives into a comprehensive examination of Western North America: its history, physical geography, climate, literature, art, film, institutions, politics, demography, economy, and continuing policy challenges. Students examine themes fundamental to understanding the region: time, space, water, peoples, and boom and bust cycles.
Terms: Win | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

POLISCI 131L: Modern Political Thought: Machiavelli to Marx and Mill (ETHICSOC 131S)

This course is an introduction to the history of Western political thought from the late fifteenth century through the nineteenth century. We will consider the secularization of politics, the changing relationship between the individual and society, the rise of consent-based forms of political authority, and the development and critiques of liberal conceptions of property. We will cover the following thinkers: Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Wollstonecraft, Mill, and Marx.
Terms: Spr | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:EC-EthicReas, WAY-A-II, WAY-ER

POLISCI 137A: Political Philosophy: The Social Contract Tradition (ETHICSOC 176, PHIL 176, PHIL 276, POLISCI 337A)

(Graduate students register for 276.) What makes political institutions legitimate? What makes them just? When do citizens have a right to revolt against those who rule over them? Which of our fellow citizens must we tolerate?Surprisingly, the answers given by some of the most prominent modern philosophers turn on the idea of a social contract. We will focus on the work of Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Rawls.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-ER
Instructors: ; Hills, D. (PI)

POLISCI 230A: Classical Seminar: Origins of Political Thought (CLASSICS 181, CLASSICS 381, ETHICSOC 130A, PHIL 176A, PHIL 276A, POLISCI 330A)

Political philosophy in classical antiquity, centered on reading canonical works of Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle against other texts and against the political and historical background. Topics include: interdependence, legitimacy, justice; political obligation, citizenship, and leadership; origins and development of democracy; law, civic strife, and constitutional change.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-ER

PSYC 82: The Literature of Psychosis (ANTHRO 82P, HUMBIO 162L, PSYC 282)

One of the great gifts of literature is its ability to give us insight into the internal worlds of others. This is particularly true of that state clinicians call "psychosis." But psychosis is a complex concept. It can be terrifying and devastating for patients and families, and yet shares characteristics with other, less pathological states, such as mysticism and creativity. How then can we begin to make sense of it? In this course, we will examine the first-hand experience of psychosis. We will approach it from multiple perspectives, including clinical descriptions, works of art, and texts by writers ranging from Shakespeare, to the science fiction writer Philip K. Dick, to patients attempting to describe their experience. This class is not only for students thinking of careers in medicine, psychology or anthropology, but also readers and writers interested exploring extraordinary texts. There are no prerequisites necessary; all that is needed is a love of language and a curiosity about the secrets of other minds.
Last offered: Spring 2021 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP | Repeatable 2 times (up to 10 units total)

PSYC 126: Literature and the Brain (COMPLIT 138, COMPLIT 238, ENGLISH 118, ENGLISH 218, FRENCH 118, FRENCH 218, PSYCH 118F)

How does fiction make us better at reading minds? Why do some TV shows get us to believe two contradictory things at once? And can cognitive biases be a writer's best friend? We'll think about these and other questions in the light of contemporary neuroscience and experimental psychology, with the help of Song of Solomon (Toni Morrison), Madame Bovary (Gustave Flaubert), season 1 of Westworld (Lisa Joy / Jonathan Nolan), and short readings from writers like Louise Glück, Jorge Luis Borges, Virginia Woolf, and Marcel Proust. We'll also ask what we see when we read; whether the language we speak affects the way we think; and why different people react differently to the same book. Plus: is free will a fiction, or were you just forced to say that?
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

PSYCH 118F: Literature and the Brain (COMPLIT 138, COMPLIT 238, ENGLISH 118, ENGLISH 218, FRENCH 118, FRENCH 218, PSYC 126)

How does fiction make us better at reading minds? Why do some TV shows get us to believe two contradictory things at once? And can cognitive biases be a writer's best friend? We'll think about these and other questions in the light of contemporary neuroscience and experimental psychology, with the help of Song of Solomon (Toni Morrison), Madame Bovary (Gustave Flaubert), season 1 of Westworld (Lisa Joy / Jonathan Nolan), and short readings from writers like Louise Glück, Jorge Luis Borges, Virginia Woolf, and Marcel Proust. We'll also ask what we see when we read; whether the language we speak affects the way we think; and why different people react differently to the same book. Plus: is free will a fiction, or were you just forced to say that?
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

PWR 91CW: Intermediate Writing: Seeing is Believing: The Power of Persuasive Data Stories

In this course, students will study and practice principles of data visualization informed by fields like rhetorical theory, statistics, and cognitive science, using these principles to critically read, redesign, and create charts, maps, and other datastories more effectively. For full course description and video visit https://pwrcourses.stanford.edu/pwr91cw
Terms: Aut | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
Instructors: ; Wright, C. (PI)

PWR 91LF: The Art of Access: Disability, Creativity, Communication

How do assistive technologies like captions and speech recognition shape the way creators and audiences produce and consume digital media? In this course, we will investigate what constitutes "creative access" in the arts and in media. Students will collaborate with nationally-recognized disabled media artists who are reimagining what art can be when access is integrated into its aesthetics from an accessible digital video game character creator for non-visual gamers, to a digital media instrument for individuals who are bed-bound. Guest talks, artist-led workshops, and case studies will guide students through a self-designed project, such as a work of accessible media art or a curatorial proposal for an exhibition. This class provides a rare inside look into professional artist-designer practices and research, equipping students to critically engage in disability justice-centered communication, storytelling, and collaboration. No previous artistic experience or expertise is required. Course does not fulfill WR1 or WR2 requirement.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Felt, L. (PI)

PWR 194AJB: Race, Ethnicity, and Language: Black Digital Cultures from BlackPlanet to AI (AFRICAAM 389C, CSRE 385, EDUC 389C)

This seminar explores the intersections of language and race/racism/racialization in the public schooling experiences of students of color. We will briefly trace the historical emergence of the related fields of sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, explore how each of these scholarly traditions approaches the study of language, and identify key points of overlap and tension between the two fields before considering recent examples of inter-disciplinary scholarship on language and race in urban schools. Issues to be addressed include language variation and change, language and identity, bilingualism and multilingualism, language ideologies, and classroom discourse. We will pay particular attention to the implications of relevant literature for teaching and learning in urban classrooms.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Banks, A. (PI)

PWR 194AV: Topics in Writing & Rhetoric: Drawn from Life: The Power of True Stories in Autobio Comics

The most impactful, fantastical stories often come not from fiction but from our own richly diverse lives. In this course you will explore autobiographical comics as a form of personal narrative ideally suited for communicating purposeful messages about culture, identity, and experience. We will embark on an immersive journey through comics in which authors tell their own true stories with rhetorical purpose, such as revealing the nuances of cultural identity, illuminating the experiences of marginalized communities or perspectives, and/or promoting advocacy or change. You will engage in deep analysis of how these comics reveal and help create the rhetorical practices of particular cultural communities. No drawing experience or expertise is required. For more information see https://undergrad.stanford.edu/programs/pwr/courses/additional-elective-courses-writing-and-rhetoric
Last offered: Winter 2022 | Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

PWR 194BR: Topics in Writing & Rhetoric: The Rhetoric of Health and Medicine

This course will aim to give students a foundation in the rhetoric of health and medicine across major stakeholders researchers, government, institutions, doctors, patients, journalists, and a general public obsessed with health and wellness. For example, we will analyze key theories about the relation of institutions, doctors, and patients, from Foucault's Birth of the Clinic to Rita Charon's Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness. We will also investigate how patients make sense of their illnesses through art and memoirs, how doctors are trained in an empathetic bedside manner, and the rhetoric of medical breakthroughs. From this foundation, students will choose an issue to tackle in their own research projects, from the politicization of Planned Parenthood and women's healthcare, to the experience of trans patients seeking care, to the rhetoric of access vs. coverage in current debates about health insurance. Prerequisite: completion of WR-1 & WR-2 req or permission of instructor. For full description, see https://undergrad.stanford.edu/programs/pwr/courses/additional-elective-courses/rhetoric-health-and-medicine
Last offered: Autumn 2017 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-ER

PWR 194CW: Brave New Worlds: An Introduction to (De)colonial Rhetorics

Since the time of Columbus, colonial agendas and policies have engendered their own rhetorics of justification and explanation. After all, European modernism began with the encounter of the New World, and Europe¿s own identity was forged in the process of ¿Latinization¿ of the Western Hemisphere. In response, decoloniality arose as a rich intellectual critique in the late 1990s in South America and the Caribbean. Decolonial rhetorical traditions stand in a unique position vis-à-vis the development of modernity, colonialism, racialized identities, the crisis of European reason, and the dawn of globalization. In an era of Trumpism, in which European modernity once again justifies restricting the mobility and freedom of Latinx immigrants, among other ethnic groups, perhaps no other form of intellectual critique seems quite so urgent. This course introduces students to primary decolonial rhetorical texts and asks students to apply these insights to pressing contemporary challenges by practicing deep reading of primary and secondary texts, preparing group presentations, and exploring creative acts of composition with an eye toward imagining brave new worlds and the decolonial rhetorical practices valued therein.
Last offered: Winter 2019 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

PWR 194NCR: Topics in Writing & Rhetoric: Introduction to Cultural Rhetorics (CSRE 194NCR)

All cultures have their own ways of communicating and making meaning through a range of situated rhetorical practices. In this gateway course to the Notation in Cultural Rhetorics, you'll explore the diverse contexts in which these practices are made and continue to be made;learn methodologies for examining their rhetorical production across media and modality; and study situated cultural practices and their historical and current developments.
Terms: Win | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Jernigan, H. (PI)

PWR 194SB: Topics in Writing and Rhetoric: Rhetoric of Science

Understanding rhetoric as readers and interpreters of texts and to develop skills as writers and speakers. Prerequisite: first two levels of the writing requirement or equivalent transfer credit. For topics, see https://undergrad.stanford.edu/programs/pwr/courses/advanced-pwr-courses.
Last offered: Autumn 2015 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

RELIGST 3: The Religious Life of Things

Temples, prayer beads, icons, robes, books, relics, candles and incense, scarves and hats, sacred food and holy water; objects of all sorts play a prominent role in all religions, evoking a wide range of emotional responses, from reverence, solace and even ecstasy, to fear, hostility and violence. What is it about these things that makes them so powerful? Is it beliefs and doctrines that inspire particular attitudes towards certain objects, or is it the other way around? Many see a tension or even contradiction between religion and material pursuits and argue that the true religious life is a life without things. But is such a life even possible? This course adopts a comparative approach, drawing on a variety of traditions to examine the place of images, food, clothing, ritual objects, architecture and relics in religious thought and practice. Materials for the course include scholarship, scripture, images and at least one museum visit.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

RELIGST 4: What Didn't Make the Bible (CLASSICS 9N, HISTORY 112C, JEWISHST 4)

Over two billion people alive today consider the Bible to be sacred scripture. But how did the books that made it into the bible get there in the first place? Who decided what was to be part of the bible and what wasn't? How would history look differently if a given book didn't make the final cut and another one did? Hundreds of ancient Jewish and Christian texts are not included in the Bible. "What Didn't Make It in the Bible" focuses on these excluded writings. We will explore the Dead Sea Scrolls, Gnostic gospels, hear of a five-year-old Jesus throwing temper tantrums while killing (and later resurrecting) his classmates, peruse ancient romance novels, explore the adventures of fallen angels who sired giants (and taught humans about cosmetics), tour heaven and hell, encounter the garden of Eden story told from the perspective of the snake, and learn how the world will end. The course assumes no prior knowledge of Judaism, Christianity, the bible, or ancient history. It is designed for students who are part of faith traditions that consider the bible to be sacred, as well as those who are not. The only prerequisite is an interest in exploring books, groups, and ideas that eventually lost the battles of history and to keep asking the question "why." In critically examining these ancient narratives and the communities that wrote them, you will investigate how religions canonize a scriptural tradition, better appreciate the diversity of early Judaism and Christianity, understand the historical context of these religions, and explore the politics behind what did and did not make it into the bible.
Terms: Aut | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Penn, M. (PI); Persad, S. (GP)

RELIGST 6N: Religion in Anime and Manga

Religious themes and topoi are ubiquitous in Japanese anime and manga. In this course, we will examine how religions are represented in these new media and study the role of religions in contemporary Japan. By doing this, students will also learn fundamental concepts of Buddhism and Shinto.WIN '24: This class will be meeting in room 338 in the East Asia Library.
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Mross, M. (PI)

RELIGST 8N: Gardens and Sacred Space in Japan

This seminar will explore gardens and sacred spaces in Japan. We will study the development of Japanese garden design from the earliest records to contemporary Japan. We will especially focus on the religious, aesthetic, and social dimensions of gardens and sacred spaces. This seminar features a field trip to a Japanese garden in the area, in order to study how Japanese garden design was adapted in North America.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Mross, M. (PI)

RELIGST 10N: The Good Death

We often discuss what makes a 'good life' - that is a life worth living, a life exemplary of one's values and ideals, a life full of meaning. But what makes a 'good death'? Far from being a topic to avoid, ideas of death - what it means, its variations, how it relates to the preceding life, how it should unfold - are rich topics in religion. For religious people, the question of how life is lived in preparation, anticipation, or ignorance of death is often quite central. So, how do religious people imagine what death is and what lies beyond? What guidance exists for the time of death and its aftermath? How is the body understood in relation to death and beyond - and how is it managed? How do the living coexist with the dead in various forms? How do changing ecological and technological concerns shape death practices in the USA and elsewhere? In this class we will explore conceptions of the good death through a variety of religious traditions and perspectives, looking at issues such as the after/next life, death rituals, burial practices, corpses, the holy dead, martyrs, ghosts and spirit guides, and others.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Bigelow, A. (PI)

RELIGST 26S: Contemporary Islam & Muslims in America

In this course, we will explore contemporary Islam and Muslims in a post-9/11 and Trump-era America. Following some brief grounding history in Week 1, we will use ethnographic studies and digital media content to understand the American Muslim experience in the 21st century. Each week, we will also address how the lived experience of American Muslims interacts with theoretical and normative conceptions of Islam, and whether these interactions eventually create a distinctive American Islam. Topics covered include: racial & gender dynamics, ideological debates, institutions, social media wars, politics, and specific communities as case studies. Together we will develop a critical perspective on the American Muslim experience, particularly as a case of how one diverse religious community negotiates religion in a complex sociopolitical setting.
Last offered: Summer 2020 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

RELIGST 51: Exploring Buddhism in Tibet and the Himalayas

From elaborate sand mandalas, masked dances, and entrancing ritual music to meditating yogis, robed monks, and the Dalai Lama himself, Tibetan forms of Buddhist traditions have for decades been an integral part of our modern globalized world. This course introduces the history, institutions, doctrines, and practices of Buddhism in Tibet and the broader Himalayan region.
Last offered: Winter 2020 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

RELIGST 53: Exploring Jewish Spirituality (JEWISHST 53)

It was once accepted as fact that Judaism is, at its core, a rational religion devoid of any authentic mystical tradition. But the past century of scholarship has reversed this claim, demonstrating that the spiritual life has been integral to Judaism's vital heart since ancient times. This yearning for a direct immediate experience of God's Presence, a longing to grasp the mysteries of the human soul and know the inner dynamics of the Divine realm, has taken on many different forms across the centuries. <br>This course will introduce students to the major texts--from theological treatises to poems and incantations--and core ideas of Jewish mysticism and spirituality, tracking their development from the Hebrew Bible to the dawn of modernity. Close attention will be paid to the historical context of these sources, and we will also engage with broader methodological approaches--from phenomenology to philology--regarding the academic study of religion and the comparative consideration of mysticism in particular. <br>This course assumes no prior background of Judaism or any other religious traditions. All readings will be made available in English. Students are, however, invited to challenge themselves with the "optional/advanced" readings of sources both primary and secondary. Pending interest, students with facility in the original languages (Hebrew or Aramaic) will be given the opportunity to do so.
Last offered: Autumn 2020 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

RELIGST 55: Exploring Zen Buddhism

This course is an introduction to Chan/Zen Buddhism. We will study the historical and doctrinal development of this tradition in China and Japan and examine various facets of Zen, such as the philosophy, practices, rituals, culture, and institution. For this aim, we will read and discuss classical Zen texts in translation and important secondary literature. This class will further feature a visit of a Zen teacher, who will give an introduction to sitting meditation.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

RELIGST 56: Exploring Chinese Religions

An overview of major themes and historical developments in 5000 years of Chinese religion. In this course, we will try as much as possible to appreciate Chinese religion from the Chinese perspective, paying particular attention to original texts in translation, artifacts and videos, all in an attempt to discern the logic of Chinese religion and the role it has played in the course of Chinese history. To a greater extent perhaps than any other civilization, Chinese have left behind a continuous body of written documents and other artifacts relating to religion stretching over thousands of years, providing a wealth of material for studying the place of religion in history and society.
Terms: Aut | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

RELIGST 61: Exploring Islam

Explorations, like those of the so-called New World, have historically aimed at capturing the object of their discoveries, which may explain why the word appears to have been originally used within the context of the hunt. It is in this sense that we will attempt to uncover how Islam continues to be "explored" by observers in the West. Yet in doing so; that is, by collapsing the dam of secular discourse which would attempt to contain Islam in order to regulate its movement, we will also be able to "explore" Islam so as to cause it to flow once again, as the other etymology of the term would suggest (pluere). This (de)constructive task?of analyzing Islam as both a discursive object and a way of life?will be achieved through a collective historical-philosophical study of Islamic texts, performances, practices, sounds, events, communities, and images.
Terms: Win | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

RELIGST 62: Exploring Islamic Mysticism

What is Sufi Islam? For many Sufis it concerns the search for a personal, experiential knowledge of and encounter with God. To that end, Sufis may be scrupulously observant of behavioral, ethical, ritual, and legal guidelines in their quest. For others, such practices are merely external formalities that obscure the essence of the divine behind a veil of prescriptive norms. For these Sufis, immediate knowledge of God is best sought outside of the structures of religious orthodoxy. But Sufis are not only otherworldly oriented mystics. On the contrary, Sufis are and have been rulers, politicians, warriors, and business leaders as well as poets, pilgrims, recluses, and social critics. Sufis and their collectives exist and have existed in every part of the world where there are Muslims, in bodies marked as male, female, and neither, and in every social strata. This course will explore many key elements of Sufi Islam, including history, teachings, practice, places, and people. While it is impossible to encompass the diversity of Sufism in a single course, each unit of the course will have a central theme situated in a geographic and temporal location in order to introduce students to as wide a range of Sufi times, places, and communities as possible.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

RELIGST 86: Exploring the New Testament (CLASSICS 43, HISTORY 111B, JEWISHST 86)

To explore the historical context of the earliest Christians, students will read most of the New Testament as well as many documents that didn't make the final cut. Non-Christian texts, Roman art, and surviving archeological remains will better situate Christianity within the ancient world. Students will read from the Dead Sea Scrolls, explore Gnostic gospels, hear of a five-year-old Jesus throwing divine temper tantrums while killing (and later resurrecting) his classmates, peruse an ancient marriage guide, and engage with recent scholarship in archeology, literary criticism, and history.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

RELIGST 147: Building Heaven and Hell (CEE 147, CLASSICS 147R)

How did early Greeks, Romans, Jews, and Christians imagine space? How did they construct heaven and hell and the afterlife through their written texts? Can we take written images of the earthly and heavenly Jerusalem and her temple, such as those found in Ezekiel, the Book of Revelation and the Apocalypse of Paul and transform them into three-dimensional space? Can we visualize Homer's Hades or Dante's Inferno? We are going to try! We will meet in the architecture studio and build out of foam board and hot glue. A number of themes will emerge through the course: the interpretive move in rendering a once real space as a literary icon, the relationship between text and imagined space, the connection between space and ritual, and how to construct an image of a society from whom it imagines in hell. Learn more about the course here: https://youtu.be/J9q8CCQ9NkA
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

RELIGST 149: Finding Utopia: New Religious Movements in the 19th and 20th Centuries

What is the connection between new religious movements and secularization? As the religious concept of freedom was expanded in the 19th century, so was secular culture: there was a vast array of possible routes a person might take to pursue transcendent wisdom, and this was increasingly a matter of personal choice. Whether in the form of new religious movements such as the Oneida community, reactions against institutionalization of religion such as the rise of atheism, the creation of syncretic religions such as theosophy, or the combination of religious expression and scientific discourse in practices such as scientology, the last two hundred years have been an era of profound religious experimentation. But challenges to traditional religious expression not only consisted of new beliefs, they also led to innovative forms of community.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Willburn, S. (PI)

RELIGST 150: Texts that Changed the World from the Ancient Middle East (COMPLIT 31, HUMCORE 111, JEWISHST 150)

This course traces the story of the cradle of human civilization. We will begin with the earliest human stories, the Gilgamesh Epic and biblical literature, and follow the path of the development of law, religion, philosophy and literature in the ancient Mediterranean or Middle Eastern world, to the emergence of Jewish and Christian thinking. We will pose questions about how this past continues to inform our present: What stories, myths, and ideas remain foundational to us? How did the stories and myths shape civilizations and form larger communities? How did the earliest stories conceive of human life and the divine? What are the ideas about the order of nature, and the place of human life within that order? How is the relationship between the individual and society constituted? This course is part of the Humanities Core: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-ER

RELIGST 158: Spiritualism and the Occult

This course will examine the popular mystical practices of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when millions of people in Europe and America described themselves as spiritualists and shared a recognizable set of practices. These served as a platform for spiritual immediacy guided by the central questions: What is the relationship between seen and unseen? How can the living communicate with the dead? What technologies apply to our inner lives? This course considers the historical emergence of spiritualism, spiritualism and art, spiritualism and technology, and mysticism and women to explore how the invisible became a central metaphor for the ambition to expand and remake the real.
Terms: Aut | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Willburn, S. (PI)

RELIGST 168: Philosophy of Religion: An Historical Introduction

Most attitudes toward religion found on college campuses today trace their origins back to the European Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Calls for social justice, a political order free of ecclesiastical domination, and the recognition of legitimate religious pluralism; the rejection of the authoritarianism, obscurantism, and fanaticism associated with the monotheistic faiths; skepticism about the rationality of belief in God, miracles, and otherworldly salvation-these and other familiar themes were fiercely debated by philosophers in early modern Europe, often at great personal risk. What's more, central branches of philosophy such as epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and political theory were transformed in the modern period amidst debates over the credibility of religious belief - primarily Christian theism - in a world come of age. After a brief look at some "natural theology" in the Middle Ages, we will study and discuss what Descartes and Pascal; Spinoza and Rousseau; Hume and Kant; and Schleiermacher and Kierkegaard had to say about matters religious.
Terms: Aut | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Sockness, B. (PI)

RELIGST 174: Religious Existentialism

Existentialism is often thought to be a secular or anti-religious philosophy of life, a replacement for Christian belief and ethics in a post-theistic "world come of age." And yet, this twentieth-century philosophical movement owes many of its concerns and much of its vocabulary to the hyper-Protestant Danish thinker Soren Kierkegaard. Conversely, most of the best Christian and Jewish thought in the 20th century embraced existentialism as the "right philosophy" for (re)articulating the deepest insights of these ancient traditions. After a careful study of some of Kierkegaard's most important ideas, we will explore a series of modern religious classics associated with the existentialist movement. Works by Soren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Buber, Karl Barth, Simone Weil, Jean-Paul Sartre, Gabriel Marcel, and Paul Tillich.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Sockness, B. (PI)

RELIGST 204: The Buddhist Body: Exorcism, Self-Immolation, and Tattoo Art (RELIGST 340)

In Buddhist practices, devotees have long used their bodies to express religious devotion. This can be seen through asceticism, exorcism, hallucination, mummification, immolation, and even tattoo art. This course examines such themes through textual readings, material culture, and visual imagery. In regards to asceticism, ascetic practices can be used to alter one's physical form, through starvation, fire, practices in the mountains, or other such means. Examples of this include the mountain practitioners who mummified in Japan, immolation practices in China and Tibet, and the "marathon monks" of Mount Hiei. Subthemes of this course include gender and the body, and the body and violence. Undergraduates register for 200-level for 5 units. Graduate students register for 300-level for 3-5 units.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Cross, J. (PI)

RELIGST 210: Translating Religion (RELIGST 310)

What happens to Buddhism when the Buddha speaks Chinese? Is the Qur'an still the Qur'an in English? What did Martin Luther do for the German language? We try to answer these and other such questions in this course, which explores the translation of sacred scripture and other religious texts from the earliest times to the present day. Taking a global perspective, and looking at Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism, the course is designed to introduce students to the theory and practice of translation and get them thinking about its broader cultural, aesthetic and political significance. Undergraduates register for 200-level for 5 units. Graduate students register for 300-level for 3-5 units.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

RELIGST 217: The Lotus Sutra in Japanese Buddhism (JAPAN 217A, JAPAN 317A, RELIGST 317)

This seminar explores the influence of the Lotus Sutra, one of the most important Mahayana scriptures, in Japan. We will study how different Japanese Buddhist schools have interpreted this sutra and analyze a wide range of religious practices, art works, and literature associated with this text. All readings will be in English. Prerequisites: Solid foundation in either Buddhist studies or East Asian Studies. You must have taken at least one other course in Buddhist Studies. NOTE: Undergraduates must enroll for 5 units; graduate students can enroll for 3-5 units.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Mross, M. (PI)

RELIGST 218X: The Holy Dead: Saints and Spiritual Power in Medieval Europe (HISTORY 218, HISTORY 318, RELIGST 318X)

Examines the cult of saints in medieval religious thought and life. Topics include martyrs, shrines, pilgrimage, healing, relics, and saints' legends.
Last offered: Winter 2022 | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

RELIGST 228: The Earliest Christians (RELIGST 328)

This seminar focuses on the emergence of second- and third-century Christianity. Together we'll explore a wide range of primary sources in English translation as well as recent scholarship in the field. For graduate students, regardless of their specialty, the focus will be on achieving a good knowledge and teaching competence of early Christianity. Undergraduates must already have strong background in the academic study of late antiquity and must obtain permission from the instructor.
Last offered: Autumn 2021 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

RELIGST 230X: Religion, Radicalization and Media in Africa since 1945 (AFRICAST 248, AFRICAST 348, HISTORY 248, HISTORY 348, RELIGST 330X)

What are the paths to religious radicalization, and what role have media- new and old- played in these conversion journeys? We examine how Pentecostal Christians and Reformist Muslims in countries such as South Africa, Nigeria, Sudan, and Ethiopia have used multiple media forms- newspapers, cell phones, TV, radio, and the internet- to gain new converts, contest the authority of colonial and post-colonial states, construct transnational communities, and position themselves as key political players.
Last offered: Spring 2021 | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

RELIGST 232: Buddhist Meditation: Ancient and Modern (RELIGST 332)

An exploration of the theory and practice of Buddhist meditation from the time of the Buddha to the modern mindfulness boom, with attention to the wide range of techniques developed and their diverse interpretation. Undergraduates register for 200-level for 5 units. Graduate students register for 300-level for 3-5 units.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Harrison, P. (PI)

RELIGST 233: Comparative Mysticism (JEWISHST 333, RELIGST 333)

This seminar will explore the mystical writings of the major religious traditions represented in our department: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism. It will address major issues in the study of mysticism, exposing students to a wide variety of religious thinkers and literary traditions, while simultaneously interrogating the usefulness of the concept of "mysticism" as a framework in the study of religion. We will consider various paradigms of method (comparative, constructivist, essentialist), and examine the texts with an eye to historical and social context together with the intellectual traditions that they represent. Preserving the distinctiveness of each religious tradition, the class will be structured as a series of five units around these traditions, but our eyes will be continuously trained upon shared topics or themes, including: language; gender; notions of sainthood; scripture and exegesis; autobiography and writing; mysticism and philosophy; poetry and translation; mysticism and social formation; the interface of law, devotion, and spirit; science and mysticism; perceptions of inter-religious influence; mysticism and the modern/ post-modern world. Advanced reading knowledge of at least one language of primary-source scholarship in one of the above traditions is required. Undergraduates register for 200-level for 5 units. Graduate students register for 300-level for 3-5 unit.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

RELIGST 252: Hearts and Diamonds: The Lives of Buddhist Sacred Texts

An exploration of two key Mahayana Buddhist scriptures (the Heart & Diamond Sutras) and their histories, looking at what they say and how they have been used, from the first millennium to the present day.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

RELIGST 253: Recent Research on Japanese Buddhism (RELIGST 353)

Readings in recent English-language scholarship on Japanese Buddhism. nUndergraduates must enroll for 5 units; graduate students can enroll for 3-5 units. Prerequisite: Solid foundation in either Buddhist studies or East Asian Studies (5 units for 253, 3-5 units for 353) May be repeat for credit.
Last offered: Spring 2019 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II | Repeatable 4 times (up to 15 units total)

RELIGST 257: Women in Japanese Buddhism (RELIGST 357)

This seminar explores the role of women in Japanese Buddhism, starting from the earliest records until today. All readings will be in English. Prerequisites: Solid foundation in either Buddhist studies or East Asian Studies. You must have taken at least one other course in Buddhist Studies. NOTE: Undergraduates must enroll for 5 units; graduate students can enroll for 3-5 units.
Last offered: Winter 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

RELIGST 258: Readings in Japanese Buddhist Texts (RELIGST 358)

In this course, we will read premodern Japanese Buddhist texts. Prerequisite: Chinese and/or Japanese.
Last offered: Winter 2020 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II | Repeatable for credit

RELIGST 262: Sex and the Early Church (CLASSICS 262, FEMGEN 262, FEMGEN 362R, RELIGST 362)

Sex and the Early Church examines the ways first- through sixth-century Christians addressed questions regarding human sexuality. We will pay particular attention to the relationship between sexuality and issues of gender, culture, power, and resistance. We will read a Roman gynecological manual, an ancient dating guide, the world's first harlequin romance novels, ancient pornography, early Christian martyrdom accounts, stories of female and male saints, instructions for how to best battle demons, visionary accounts, and monastic rules. These will be supplemented by modern scholarship in classics, early Christian studies, gender studies, queer studies, and the history of sexuality. The purpose of our exploration is not simply to better understand ancient views of gender and sexuality. Rather, this investigation of a society whose sexual system often seems so surprising aims to denaturalize many of our own assumptions concerning gender and sexuality. In the process, we will also examine the ways these first centuries of what eventually became the world's largest religious tradition has profoundly affected the sexual norms of our own time. The seminar assumes no prior knowledge of Judaism, Christianity, the bible, or ancient history. Undergraduates register for 200-level for 5 units. Graduate students register for 300-level for 3-5 units.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Penn, M. (PI); Amin, A. (TA)

RELIGST 264: Hindu Tantra (RELIGST 364)

What is Tantra? Tantric forms of ritual and philosophy have been integral to the practice of Hinduism for most of its history. Tantra has provided initiates with a spiritual technology for embodying the divine and transcending the cycle of rebirth; on a social and political level, Tantra has mediated the institutions of Hindu kingship and appealed to a diverse population of initiates. This course covers a number of influential and well-documented Hindu tantric traditions, exploring several prominent features of Tantric religion as they develop historically, including: tantric ritual practice (core technologies of the subtle body, mantras, ma, alas, etc., along with the more notorious elements of sex and transgression), theology and philosophical speculation, as well as Tantra's relationship to the outside world and state power.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Fisher, E. (PI)

RELIGST 290: Majors' Seminar: Theories of Religion

Required of all majors and combined majors. The study of religion reflects upon itself. Representative modern and contemporary attempts to "theorize," and thereby understand, the phenomena of religion in anthropology, psychology, sociology, cultural studies, and philosophy. WIM.
Terms: Win | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

SINY 30: Sculpting with Sounds, Images and Words

Throughout history and across the world, cultures abound in multimedia forms. Whether in a Billie Eilish Music Video or Janet Cardiff's AR works, grammarly adds or Broadway musicals, Japanese anime or Indonesian shadow puppetry, the three modes of expression- sounds, images, and words - are interwoven in meaningful but distinctive ways. What are their individual and combined powers? What is unique about the poetry of intermodal metaphor? We will face these questions in creative projects as well as through in-class viewing of multimedia examples, analysis and debates, readings, and student presentations. The creative projects will be viewable on the Web and produced using free downloadable audio and video tools. Prior experience in music, literature, art practice or computer programming is welcome but not required. WAY-CE
Terms: Aut, Win | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
Instructors: ; Kapuscinski, J. (PI)

SINY 105: Art Meets Life: Social Justice in Urban America

New York is the cultural nexus of the performing and visual arts in the United States - or at least, it was, prior to COVID19. We will explore the rebirth of the City as we emerge from the pandemic, meeting with and experiencing the art of musicians, actors, and directors, and visiting museums and galleries. We will explore the short- and long-term effects of 2020-2021 on the creative lives and livelihoods of gig artists and institutions both large and small. How has art changed? How will art change? What has been lost and what may be gained?
Last offered: Winter 2022 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

SINY 107: Making Noise in New York: Experimental Sound Art in History and Practice

This course will take a hands-on, interdisciplinary approach to experimental sound art, considering intersections between music, dance, video and other media, and experimenting with technological and artistic paradigms through creative exercises and class projects. We will visit studios, galleries and venues, in addition to inviting practicing sound artists to lead creative workshops, listening sessions and discussions.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

SINY 109: Walking and Writing New York City

Navigating the streets and sidewalks of New York City is both an intensely personal and a complex collective experience. During your time in New York, you will do it nearly every day, and you will almost certainly find yourself describing it to others. This course will give you concepts to understand this activity in a broader context, and skills to undertake it more intentionally and effectively. How do people - sociologists, photographers, poets, urban planners, and ordinary New Yorkers - observe the streets, and how do they depict that experience? What do these observations tell us about ourselves, and about the possibilities and inequities of urban life? We will attempt to answer these questions through reading, watching, and listening to the works of New York walkers past and present, and through a close analysis of our own experiences of moving through the city.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Zipperstein, S. (PI)

SINY 112: Outside In: Arts Organizations and the Changing Cultural Audience

Study the major disruptions in how audiences define, seek out, participate in, and share cultural experiences. Research¿based theory with practice, case studies and hands¿on assignments. Analyze newly emerging cultural consumers.
Last offered: Autumn 2020 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

SINY 116: Off the iPhone and Into the City: Creating a Photography Project

Learn components of photography projects and image making including content selection, intention, context, and audience. Talks by professional photographers; field trips to in the city. Two response papers about an exhibition, publication, or long-form web project during their time in New York.
Last offered: Winter 2021 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

SINY 122: The Agile City

Examine the economic, cultural and environmental forces transforming the urban experience globally and understand how cities become agile to adapt to rapidly evolving urban challenges. This course would draw from case studies in New York and elsewhere, using guest experts and site visits or walking tours.
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

SINY 136: Opera at the Met: Global Art in the World's Great Metropolis

This course allows students to discover the power and beauty of live opera through masterful performances at the Metropolitan Opera House.Often viewed as an elitist art, opera has strong roots in popular culture and politics. These issues will emerge over the course of the quarter, as we experience opera at the world's premiere opera house.
Last offered: Autumn 2017 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

SINY 140: Mapping, time, space, and culture

New York, the financial and cultural capitol of the nation, provides an extraordinary laboratory for exploring the art and science of information representation. The proposed course aims to engage students in a broad swath of art and culture, contextualized by studying the sociopolitical urban landscape.
Last offered: Winter 2018 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

SINY 146: Imaging Change: Art & Politics

This course will examine some of the people, collectives, and organizations working globally that use the realm of the visual to address and advocate for human rights and social justice. Students will learn about practitioners in socially engaged art, concerned photography, cultural organizing, public art, interactive film, and more. The class will include regular visits to (or guests from) artists¿ and photographers¿ studios, and the esteemed foundations and organizations supporting this work. A final paper will be required.
Terms: Aut, Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

SINY 152: Film: The City as Muse

Has a film ever challenged your beliefs, transformed your understanding of an issue, left an emotional aftershock, or motivated you to act? Was that the intention of the filmmaker or an unanticipated consequence? Since the inception of the motion picture, the urban landscape and its inhabitants have served as a rich and diverse palette for filmmakers. This course will provide an overview of documentary, experimental, and hybrid films that proffer an unexpected and sometimes disturbing perspective on cities, both here and abroad. We will examine films that privilege artistic expression and expand the conventions of the film form, analyzing how filmmakers distill an issue, situation, or environment through a particular formal style and point-of-view.nnThrough a consideration of iconic historic films, the student will gain a rich understanding of how cities have inspired filmmakers who work outside the traditional fiction genre. In addition to written assignments, students will distill their own experience of the city through photo essays that explore the eclectic geographic, social, and cultural life of New York. Local ¿field trips¿ will include attendance at the annual Margaret Mead Film Festival in October and DocNYC in November. Course readings and discussion will provide an incisive inquiry into the artistic ¿voice¿ of the filmmaker in an analysis of both form and content.
Last offered: Autumn 2018 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

SINY 154: Improvised Music in New York City: 1959-2019

This course will introduce you to the sounds and practices of improvised music and to some of today's key improvising musicians who live and work in New York City.
Last offered: Winter 2019 | Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

SINY 160: Performing New York

This course is designed to give undergraduate students a foundational understanding of New York City as an object of history and as a site that has fostered the remarkable development of American theater and performance. In this class, we won¿t approach the concepts of New York City or performance monolithically, but instead develop a broad historical understanding of what these expansive terms look and feel like in and outside of the space of the theaters, performance venues, and on the streets of various neighborhoods across the five boroughs.
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

SINY 166: Just Art? Equity, Immigration and Art in the Global City

This course focuses on relations between art, immigration and equity. Through several case studies, we will learn to think critically about how aesthetics and politics work together. In addition to studying particular works of art, we will travel to several foundations and institutions to learn about their strategies for fostering equity and the arts. How do art, activism and racial justice connect in performances aimed at changing ideas? How do major arts institutions address questions of equity and difference? We will discuss how art can function as a form of aesthetic knowledge in the service of justice. In doing so, we will grapple with the role of the creative arts in mitigating social change and study artists who have sought to intervene in the restrictive covenants of racial, gender and other segregationist or national orders. Our case studies will shift across media, subjects, objects and temporalities. From artists in New York responding to the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to the radical work of Yayoi Kusama¿s 1960s performances, to a plays about immigration such as Lynn Nottage¿s Intimate Apparel and Lin Manuel Miranda¿s Hamilton¿the latter a show that exemplifies how art, activism and racial justice come together--the cross-cast musical gave paid opportunities and leading parts to a full cast of performers of color while also recasting the history of immigration in the United States and produced a new form of hip hop. We will read work by James Baldwin and more! We will visit the Tenement Museum as well as the Schomburg museum and archive and meet with current curators and arts professionals from across the city.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

SIW 245: Art, Business & the Law (ARTHIST 245)

This course examines art at the intersection of business and the law from a number of different angles, focusing on how the issues raised by particular case studies, whether legal, ethical and/or financial, impact our understanding of how works of art circulate, are received, evaluated and acquire different meanings in given social contexts. Topics include the design, construction and contested signification of selected war memorials; the rights involved in the display and desecration of the American flag; censorship of sexually charged images; how the value of art is appraised; institutional critique and the art museum, among others.
Last offered: Summer 2021 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

SLAVIC 61N: Literature at War

Why have verbal artists since Homer been fascinated with armed conflict and destruction? In the early 1990s, two self-consciously multinational and multicultural socialist states, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, broke apart. Soon, people who had lived in countries that proclaimed slogans like "friendship of the peoples" and "brotherhood and unity" were fighting wars with one another, incited by militant nationalism and dreams of conquest. Writers played an important role in these conflicts, usually not as frontline combatants (though it was a former poet who led the genocide in Bosnia) but rather because literature was called upon to explain the failures of the past and disasters of the present, to build up national identities that were newly autonomous yet under attack, or even to recreate a sense of multinational solidarity. In this class we will read literature connected to two wars in which smaller states have faced the violent designs of their more powerful neighbors: the invasion of Bosnia by Serbia (and Croatia) in the mid-1990s, and the ongoing invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Readings will include works by Miljenko Jergovi, Dubravka Ugrei, Saa Stanii, Serhiy Zhadan, and Andrey Kurkov, in English translation.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

SLAVIC 70N: Socialism vs. Capitalism: Russian and American Writers' Responses

The turn of the 20th century was marked with turbulent political events and heated discussions about the future of Russian and American societies. Many writers and intellectuals responded to the burning issues of social justice, inequality, egalitarianism, and exploitation associated with capitalism and socialism. Through close reading, critical thinking, and analytical writing, we will engage in the critical discussions of class struggle, individual interest versus collective values, race, and social equality, and identify points of convergence and divergence between the two systems. To what extent was the opposition between capitalism and socialism fueled by the artistic vision of the great Russian and American writers? What was these thinkers' ideal of society and what impact did it have on shaping emerging socialism? Readings for the class include the fundamental works of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Jack London, W.E.B. Du Bois and Sholem Aleichem. The course will culminate in a digital mapping project visualizing intellectual connections between ideas and writers.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

SLAVIC 77Q: Russia's Weird Classic: Nikolai Gogol

This seminar investigates the work and life of Nikolai Gogol, the most eccentric of Russian authors, the founder of what was dubbed Fantastic (or Magic) Realism. Our investigation will be based on close reading of the works written in various stages of Gogol's literary career. This study provides a perspective on the relationship between Romanticism and Realism in Russian literature, and between the popular Ukrainian culture and "high" Russian and West European traditions in Gogol's oeuvre. In the course, we will discuss such important theoretical concepts as the relation of narrator and author in a work, the methods of depicting characters, the differences between humor and satire, the notions of 'reality' and fantastic' in Gogol's world. The seminar also traces Gogol's influences on subsequent Russian literature (Dostoevsky in particular) and explores the impact of his work on XX century modernist literature, theatre, music, and painting (literature of the absurd, Dmitry Shostakovich, Vladimir Nabokov, Marc Chagall and Kazimir Malevich). The course is intended for the students interested in literature and literary theory.
Last offered: Autumn 2021 | Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

SLAVIC 118N: Other People's Words: Folklore and Literature

What happens when you collect and use other people's words? This class considers folklore and literature based on it, focusing on the theme of objects that come to life and threaten their makers or owners. We read Russian fairy tales and Nikolai Gogol's stories, the Golem legend and Ovid's and Shaw's Pygmalion, and Svetlana Aleksievich's Voices from Chernobyl, a collection of the words of survivors who reflect on life after a human invention has destroyed many of its keepers. We read essays by Jacob Grimm, Roman Jakobson, Vladimir Propp, Lenore Keeshig-Tobias, and others, to understand what folklore can mean and how the oral and the recorded word can interact. Students collect living folklore from a group of their choosing and analyze it using the theories we study in class (or other theories, if you want); wherever you are, you will tailor your research to the communities to which you have access. This course fulfills the second-level Writing and Rhetoric Requirement (WRITE 2) and emphasizes oral and multimedia presentation. You will develop skills to produce shorter and longer prerecorded presentations.
Last offered: Spring 2021 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, Writing 2

SLAVIC 121: Ukraine at a Crossroads (REES 221, SLAVIC 221)

Literally meaning "borderland," Ukraine has embodied in-betweenness in all possible ways. What is the mission of Ukraine in Europe and in Eurasia? How can Ukraine become an agent of democracy, stability, and unity? What does Ukraine's case of multiple identities and loyalties offer to our understanding of the global crisis of national identity? In this course, we will consider the historical permeability of Ukraine's territorial, cultural, and ethnic borders as an opportunity to explore the multiple dimensions of its relations with its neighbors. In addition to studying historical, literary, and cinematic texts, we discuss nationalism, global capitalism, memory politics, and propaganda in order to understand post-Euromaidan society. All required texts are in English. No knowledge of Ukrainian is required. NOTE: To satisfy a WAYS requirement, this course must be taken for at least 3 units.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

SLAVIC 123: Getting the Picture: Photojournalism in Russia and the U.S. (AMSTUD 123, COMM 123, REES 223, SLAVIC 323)

The vast majority of photographs printed and consumed around the world appeared on the pages of magazines and newspapers. These pictures were almost always heavily edited, presented in carefully devised sequences, and printed alongside text. Through firsthand visual analysis of the picture presses of yesteryear, this course considers the ongoing meaning, circulation, and power of images as they shape a worldview in Russia as well as the US. In looking at points of contact between two world powers, we will cover the works of a wide array of authors, photographers, photojournalists and photographed celebrities (Lev Tolstoy, Margaret Bourke-White, Russian satirists Ilf and Petrov, John Steinbeck and Richard Capa, and many others). We will explore the relationship between photojournalistic practice of the past with that of our present, from the printed page to digital media, as well as the ethical quandaries posed by the cameras intervention into/shaping of modern history. No knowledge of Russian is required.
Last offered: Autumn 2021 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

SLAVIC 125: Dissent and Protest in Post-Soviet Culture (REES 303, SLAVIC 303)

Considering power and resistance in contemporary Russia and post-Soviet republics across disciplines will allow us to engage with larger, theoretical questions about state-citizen interactions beyond the margins of the liberal project: How do political activists speak to the state? In turn, how does the state encourage, respond to, and censor activist speech? Drawing on examples from Putin's Russia and post-Soviet Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan will develop methodologies for studying how state power is undermined "from below" by ordinary citizens seeking to shape politics and policy. We will take protests seriously as events; consider interactions between protest participants and the social spaces in which protests take place; and situate events with respect to ordinary moments of cultural and political life. The course is structured around active student discussion with a few supplementary lectures and zoom interviews with political activists and artists in exile. Advanced knowledge of Russian is required.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

SLAVIC 131: Russia in Color (ARTHIST 247, ARTHIST 447, SLAVIC 331)

This course explores the application, evolution, and perception of color in art, art history, literature, and popular culture - in (Soviet) Russia and emigration. Working closely with the Cantor Arts Center collection at Stanford, this course pairs artifacts art with theoretical and cultural readings (media theory, philosophy, literature, science). With a particular focus on Russian and East European objects (including those by Russian icons, Soviet posters, and prints by Wassily Kandinsky and Marc Chagall), the course will include a basic introduction to color terminology, guest lectures on the technologies color printing, the science of color perception, and a hands-on practicum in color mixing/pigmentation. In addition to direct encounters with material and artifact, our course will also seek to better understand the digital experience of art objects in general, and color in particular. No knowledge of Russian is required.
Last offered: Winter 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

SLAVIC 145: Survey of Russian Literature: The Age of Experiment (SLAVIC 345E)

This course discusses the transition from predominately poetic to predominately prosaic creativity in the Russian literature of the first half of the 19th century Russian literature and the birth of the great Russian novel. It is focused on the peculiarities of poetics and narrative style in the literary works of three towering figures of the period in question - Alexander Pushkin, Mikhail Lermontov, and Nikolai Gogol -- and examines the changes in the Russian literary scene affected by them. An emphasis is placed on close reading of literary texts and analysis of literary techniques employed in them. We will discuss the various approaches and possibilities in presenting authorial positions and characterization in literature; ways of experimenting with narrative and playing with the reader; the creation of the historical and psychological novel and the use of different narrative devices for diverse artistic purposes. Taught in English.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

SLAVIC 146: The Great Russian Novel: Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and more (SLAVIC 346)

Why are people obsessed with big Russian books? What can literature do with life, death, and transgression? This course explores the psychological and philosophical intensity of novels like Crime and Punishment in tandem with the aesthetic development of 19th century Russian realism. We will investigate both violence and voice, both gender and genre, both morality and medium, through close reading and discussion of novelistic masterpieces by authors including Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Ivan Turgenev. Readings and discussion will be in English, with an optional Russian section for Russian speakers.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Lawton, D. (PI); Page, S. (TA)

SLAVIC 147: Modern Russian Literature and Culture: The Age of War and Revolution (SLAVIC 347)

What makes Russian modernism special? Or is there anything special about Russian modernism? And how did modernist poets, prose writers, and filmmakers respond to the turbulent events of the first half of the 20th century, when Russia was shaken by revolution and war? This course aims to answer these questions through close readings of works by authors like Vladimir Mayakovsky, Isaac Babel, Osip Mandelstam, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Andrei Platonov, Yuri Olesha, and Mikhail Bulgakov, as well as early Soviet film. Aesthetic issues such as hero, plot, language, and poetic and narrative devices will be addressed with the aid of contemporaneous literary theory (e.g., Shklovsky, Tynianov, Eikhenbaum, Bakhtin). Novels and theory will be read in English. NOTE: This course must be taken for a minimum of 3 units and a letter grade to be eligible for Ways credit.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-A-II

SLAVIC 148: Slavic Literature and Culture since the Death of Stalin (REES 348, SLAVIC 348)

The course offers a survey of Soviet and post-Soviet literary texts and films created by Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian artists and marginalized or repressed by the Soviet regime. The first part of the course will focus on the topics of opposition and dissent, generational conflict, modernization, Soviet everyday life, gender, citizenship and national identity, state-published and samizdat literature, "village" and "cosmopolitan" culture, etc. The second part of it will be devoted to the postmodernist aesthetics and ideology in the dismantlement of totalitarian society, as well in the process of shaping post-Soviet identities. The reading materials range from the fictional, poetic, and publicistic works written by Noble-prize (Solzhenitsyn, Brodsky, Alexievich) and other major writers of the period to the drama, film, and popular culture.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Ilchuk, Y. (PI); Page, S. (TA)

SLAVIC 149: Tails from the Russian Empire: Animals in Russian and Yiddish Literatures (JEWISHST 149)

Unless you subscribe to certain extreme life philosophies, animals probably constitute some of your existence and environment - whether living with pets, hearing birds around campus, or confronting our human selves every morning, most of us would struggle to completely avoid animals in daily life. In this course, we explore different types of media and texts - though predominantly Russian and Yiddish literatures from 19th-century Russia in English translation - ventriloquizing, problematizing, and otherwise instrumentalizing non-human animals. Through our animal readings on narration and theory, we reconsider concepts of relation, humanism, sustainability, responsibility. Students can apply their refined understandings to create art pieces of digital humanities projects using the Textile Makerspace.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Kim, E. (PI)

SLAVIC 160: Cultural Hybridity in Central-Eastern Europe (COMPLIT 231B, SLAVIC 360)

Historically shaped by shifting borders and mixing of various cultures and languages, identities in-between have been in abundance in Central-Eastern Europe. This course offers a comprehensive study of the oeuvre of several major Central-European authors of modernity: the Ukrainian-Russian Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852), the Czech-German-Jewish Franz Kafka (1883-1924), the Austrian-Galician-Jewish Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (1836-1895), the Ukrainian-Galician Olha Kobylyans¿ka (1863-1942), the Russian-German Lou Andreas-Salomé (1861-1937), the Jewish-Polish-Galician Bruno Schulz (1892-1942), and the Polish-Argentinean Witold Gombrowicz (1904-1969). Performing their selves in two or more cultures, these writers were engaged in identity games and produced hybrid texts with which they intervened into the major culture as others. In the course, we will apply post-structuralist and post-colonial concepts such as minor language, heterotopia, in-betweenness, mimicry, indeterminacy, exile, displacement, and transnationalism to the study of the writers oeuvres. We will also master the sociolinguistic analysis of such multi-lingual phenomena as self-translation, code-switching, and calquing and examine various versions of the same text to uncover the palimpsest of hybrid identities.
Last offered: Winter 2021 | Units: 2-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

SLAVIC 171: Chernobyl: from Soviet Utopia to Post-Soviet Apocalypse (REES 322, SLAVIC 371)

The course will introduce students to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster through the history of the late Soviet utopian project of the "atomic cities" to the intellectual, aesthetic, and artistic responses that the Chernobyl catastrophe generated in the post-Soviet Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Russian societies. During the course, we will study environmental, social, and ecological consequences of the Chernobyl disaster and analyze its many representations across a range of media and cultures. In the end of the course, we will create a portrait of Chernobyl in the collaborative multimedia project "The Control Room #4" which will assemble the representation of Chernobyl in fictional, cinematographic, oral histories, map projects, VR, photography, and other media in order to show how the disaster resonates across space and time. We will consider such issues as urban and technological utopias of the late Soviet Union, representations of the disaster; ethics; health and disease; the body and its deconstruction; ecology and climate; the appropriation of disaster narratives and disaster tourism; the media and cover-ups; and faith and religion.
Last offered: Autumn 2021 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

SLAVIC 179: Literature from Medieval Rus' and Early Modern Russia (SLAVIC 379)

This course traces the history of Russian literature before the eighteenth century. It is divided into two sections. The first section examines literature from Kyivan Rus' (up to the thirteenth century), the medieval conglomerate to which Belarus, Russia and Ukraine all trace their cultural heritage. The second section examines old Russian literature specifically, from the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries. We pay close attention to the development of literary genres, moral/religious and aesthetic features and their relationship, and the beginnings of Russian belles lettres. Our approach to the texts will be two-fold. On the one hand, we will spend some time situating the sources within their historical contexts. On the other hand, we will explore the interpretive possibilities of premodern literature using formal analysis and critical theory. Knowledge of an East Slavic language is required.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

SLAVIC 181: Philosophy and Literature (CLASSICS 42, COMPLIT 181, ENGLISH 81, FRENCH 181, GERMAN 181, ILAC 181, ITALIAN 181, PHIL 81)

Can novels make us better people? Can movies challenge our assumptions? Can poems help us become who we are? We'll think about these and other questions with the help of writers like Toni Morrison, Marcel Proust, Jordan Peele, Charlie Kaufman, Rachel Cusk, William Shakespeare, and Samuel Beckett, plus thinkers like Nehamas, Nietzsche, Nussbaum, Plato, and Sartre. We'll also ask whether a disenchanted world can be re-enchanted; when, if ever, the truth stops being the most important thing; why we sometimes choose to read sad stories; whether we ever love someone for who they are; who could possibly want to live their same life over and over again; what it takes to make ourselves fully moral; whether it's ever good to be conflicted; how we can pull ourselves together; and how we can take ourselves apart. (This is the required gateway course for the Philosophy and Literature major tracks. Majors should register in their home department.)
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

SLAVIC 198: Writing Between Languages: The Case of Eastern European Jewish Literature (JEWISHST 148, JEWISHST 348, SLAVIC 398)

Eastern European Jews spoke and read Hebrew, Yiddish, and their co-territorial languages (Russian, Polish, etc.). In the modern period they developed secular literatures in all of them, and their writing reflected their own multilinguality and evolving language ideologies. We focus on major literary and sociolinguistic texts. Reading and discussion in English; students should have some reading knowledge of at least one relevant language as well. This course must be taken for a minimum of 3 units and a letter grade to be eligible for WAYS credit. In 2020-21, a 'letter' or 'CR' grade will satisfy the WAYS requirement.
Last offered: Spring 2021 | Units: 1-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

SLAVIC 223: Russian & East European Literary Theory: Formalism, Bakhtin, & Beyond

This course explores the role of Russian and East European thinkers in creating modern literary theory, a discipline which arguably began in this region. Can we speak of "Russian theory" or "East European theory," analogous to labels such as "French theory"? While emphasizing the Formalists (Shklovsky, Tynianov, Eikhenbaum, Jakobson) and the Bakhtin circle (Bakhtin, Voloshinov), we will also read their predecessors (Potebnia, Humboldt, Veselovsky) and later thinkers inspired by them (Lydia Ginzburg, Yuri Lotman) as well as their contemporary interlocutors who shaped structuralist and Marxist schools of theory (Jan Mukaovsky, Georg Lukács). Key issues will include the concept of literary or poetic language, the definition of "form" and its relationship with "content," the extent of literature's autonomy with respect to historical developments and social forces, the importance of genre, and the nature of literary scholarship. Theoretical texts will be closely read. Knowledge of Russian or another Slavic language is helpful but not required: readings will be offered in English translation.
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

SLAVIC 228: Russian Nationalism: Literature and Ideas (REES 328, SLAVIC 328)

Russia is huge and linguistically and religiously diverse. Yet the ideology of nationalism --the idea that culturally unified groups should rule their own territories-- took root in Russia in the early 19th century and is powerful today. What made this happen? Political thinkers, writers, and other artists have argued for the superiority of the Russian nation. Meanwhile, the tsarist, Soviet, and post-Soviet governments have worked to reconcile the ideology of nationalism with the realities of the administration of a diverse state. This course examines the roots of nationalism itself and the paradox of Russian nationalism, looking at literary and political writers including Dostoevsky, Stalin, and Solzhenitsyn.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

SLAVIC 231: Tarkovsky

The relatively slim body of work produced by the great Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky helped redefine the possibilities of the art of cinema. Older and younger generations of directors continue to be inspired by his trademark long shot, unconventional narrative techniques, everence for landscape and nature, and by general spatio-temporal discontinuity. The course provides a systematic examination of the director's complete oeuvre (seven feature films and his works for radio and opera) along with his main theoretical treatise Sculpting in Time.
Last offered: Autumn 2019 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

SLE 91: Structured Liberal Education

Focusing on great works of philosophy, religion, literature, painting, and film drawn largely from the Western tradition, the SLE curriculum places particular emphasis on artists and intellectuals who brought new ways of thinking and new ways of creating into the world, often overthrowing prior traditions in the process. These are the works that redefined beauty, challenged the authority of conventional wisdom, raised questions of continuing importance to us today, and - for good or ill - created the world we still live in. Texts may include: Homer, Sappho, Greek tragedy, Plato, Aristotle, Zhuangzi, Confucius, the Heart Sutra, Hebrew Bible, New Testament, and the Aeneid.
Terms: Aut | Units: 8 | UG Reqs: College, GER:DB-Hum, GER:IHUM-1, THINK, WAY-A-II, Writing SLE

SLE 92: Structured Liberal Education

Focusing on great works of philosophy, religion, literature, painting, and film drawn largely from the Western tradition, the SLE curriculum places particular emphasis on artists and intellectuals who brought new ways of thinking and new ways of creating into the world, often overthrowing prior traditions in the process. These are the works that redefined beauty, challenged the authority of conventional wisdom, raised questions of continuing importance to us today, and - for good or ill - created the world we still live in. Texts may include: Augustine, the Qur'an, Dante, Rumi, Machiavelli, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Las Casas, Descartes, Locke, Mill, Schleiermacher, and Flaubert.
Terms: Win | Units: 8 | UG Reqs: College, GER:DB-Hum, GER:IHUM-2, THINK, WAY-A-II, WAY-ER, Writing SLE

SOC 4: The Sociology of Music (AMSTUD 4, CSRE 4)

This course examines music - its production, its consumption, and it contested role in society - from a distinctly sociological lens. Why do we prefer certain songs, artists, and musical genres over others? How do we 'use' music to signal group membership and create social categories like class, race, ethnicity, and gender? How does music perpetuate, but also challenge, broader inequalities? Why do some songs become hits? What effects are technology and digital media having on the ways we experience and think about music? Course readings and lectures will explore the various answers to these questions by introducing students to key sociological concepts and ideas. Class time will be spent moving between core theories, listening sessions, discussion of current musical events, and an interrogation of students - own musical experiences. Students will undertake a number of short research and writing assignments that call on them to make sociological sense of music in their own lives, in the lives of others, and in society at large.
Last offered: Winter 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

SOC 154A: American Disaster (AMSTUD 154D, ENGLISH 154D)

How do we make sense of catastrophe? Who gets to write or make art about floods, fires, or environmental collapse? How do disaster and its depiction make visible or exacerbate existing social and economic inequalities? Beginning with the Jamestown colony and continuing to the present, this course explores the long history of disaster on the North American continent, and how it has been described by witnesses, writers, and artists. From the 1793 Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic to Hurricane Katrina, the Dust Bowl to contemporary explorations of climate change, this seminar will put in conversation a wide range of primary and secondary materials. Possible texts include writings by Mike Davis, Katherine Anne Porter, Rebecca Solnit, Jesmyn Ward, and Richard Wright; films Wildlife (2018), First Reformed (2017), When the Levees Broke (2006), and Free Willy II (1995); and art by Dorothea Lange, Winslow Homer, and Richard Misrach. For the final paper, students will write a critical essay on a disaster novel, film, or other work or object of their choice, or develop their own creative piece or oral history.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

SPANLANG 102: Composition and Writing Workshop

Individual development of the ability to write in Spanish. Emphasis is on style and diction, and on preparing and writing essays on literary topics. Non-Spanish majors or minors may choose topics more closely related to their studies for projects. . Prerequisite: two years of college Spanish or equivalent.
Terms: Aut, Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Won, H. (PI)

STS 1: Introduction to Science, Technology & Society

The course introduces students to critical perspectives on the history, social context, epistemology, and ethics of science, technology, and medicine. The goal of the course is to learn about major concepts and methods from science & technology studies, introduced in the context of real-world issues. STS 1 is the required gateway course for the major in Science, Technology & Society, but is open to students from all departments and disciplines. A final paper will be required. There will be no final exam.
Terms: Win | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

SUSTAIN 51N: Ecologies of Communication (DLCL 21N, ENGLISH 21N)

What remnants of our culture will future generations discover and decipher and how will they interpret these? How will they access the technologies we have created? How will they understand the environmental changes that current humans have caused? And how will their encounters with the past inform their own future? This IntroSem explores a humanistic perspective on sustainability, viewing the human record itself as a resource and exploring how it might be sustained in an ethical and meaningful way. Broadly, we ask what is the science behind sustaining the ecology of historic heritage?
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

SUSTAIN 140: Environmental Humanities: Finding Our Place on a Changing Planet (BIO 184, ENGLISH 140D)

The rapid degradation of our planet threatens the health and survival of communities and ecosystems around the world. How did we get here? What cultural, philosophical, and ethical challenges underlie the separation of humanity from nature and precipitate unprecedented ecological destruction? How can we make sense of this, and how can we reimagine a more connected future? Through engaging the work of environmental philosophers, cultural ecologists, artists, humanities scholars, Indigenous leaders, and others with land-based knowledge, this course will prompt you to think deeply about humanity's place in the world and explore strategies to change our course. Together, we will explore contrasting cultural paradigms around human-nature relationships and apply learnings to action - including through final projects that involve external audiences in meaningful environmental contemplation or impact.
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-ER

SYMSYS 168A: Black Mirror: A.I.Activism (AMSTUD 106B, ARTHIST 168A, CSRE 106A, ENGLISH 106A)

Lecture/small group course exploring intersections of STEM, arts and humanities scholarship and practice that engages with, and generated by, exponential technologies. Our course explores the social ethical and artistic implications of artificial intelligence systems with an emphasis on aesthetics, civic society and racial justice, including scholarship on decolonial AI, indigenous AI, disability activism AI, feminist AI and the future of work for creative industries.
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Elam, M. (PI)

TAPS 1: Introduction to Theater and Performance Studies

TAPS 1 provides you with a solid foundation in Theater Studies and traces the development of the burgeoning field of Performance Studies. We will consider a range of canonical plays and emerging performance forms, and explore how performance can also function as an interpretive framework for analyzing a broad range of social behaviors, sites, and institutions. Through a series of close readings, discussions, written and practical exercises, and viewings of live performance, this course will help you achieve a richer understanding of the performances you see and the performances you may wish to make. This quarter, TAPS 1 will serve as the platform for the Theater & Performance Studies professionalization series. We will host several guest speakers (directors, actors, playwrights, and dance practitioners), who will give you some real connections in the theater world and will provide you with information and skills to help you build a career in the arts.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

TAPS 11: Introduction to Dance Studies (CSRE 11, DANCE 11, FEMGEN 11)

This class is an introduction to dance studies and the complex meanings bodily performances carry both onstage and off. Using critical frames drawn from dance criticism, history and ethnography and performance studies, and readings from cultural studies, dance, theater and critical theory, the class explores how performing bodies make meanings. We will read theoretical and historical texts and recorded dance as a means of developing tools for viewing and analyzing dance and understanding its place in larger social, cultural, and political structures. Special attention will be given to new turns in queer and feminist dance studies. This course blends theory and embodied practice. This means as we read, research, and analyze, we will also dance. Students enrolled should expect to move throughout the quarter and complete a two-part choreographic research project. TAPS 11 has been certified to fulfill the Writing in the Major (WIM) requirement.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
Instructors: ; Jones, T. (PI)

TAPS 11N: Dramatic Tensions: Theater and the Marketplace

Preference to freshmen. The current state of the American theater and its artists. Conventional wisdom says that theater is a dying art, and a lost cause, especially in an age of multi-media entertainment. But there are more young playwrights, actors, and directors entering the field today than at any other time in American history. Focus is on the work of today's theater artists, with an emphasis on an emerging generation of playwrights. Students read a cross-section of plays from writers currently working in the US and UK, covering a spectrum of subjects and styles from serious to comic, from the musical to the straight play. Hits and misses from recent seasons of the New York and London stages and some of the differences of artistic taste across the Atlantic. Hands-on exploration of the arts and skills necessary to make a play succeed. Students develop their own areas of interest, in guided projects in design, direction or performance. Conversations with playwrights, designers ,and directors. Labs and master classes to solve problems posed in areas of creative production. Class meets literary managers and producers who are on the frontlines of underwriting new talent. Class trips include two plays at major Bay Area Stages.
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Freed, A. (PI)

TAPS 11Q: Art in the Metropolis (ARTSINST 11Q, ARTSTUDI 11Q, ENGLISH 11Q, FILMEDIA 11Q, MUSIC 11Q)

This seminar is offered in conjunction with the annual "Arts Immersion" trip to New York that takes place over the spring break and is organized by the Stanford Arts Institute (SAI). Enrollment in this course is a requirement for taking part in the spring break trip. The program is designed to provide a group of students with the opportunity to immerse themselves in the cultural life of New York City guided by faculty and SAI staff. Students will experience a broad range and variety of art forms (visual arts, theater, opera, dance, etc.) and will meet with prominent arts administrators and practitioners, some of whom are Stanford alumni. In the seminar, we will prepare for the diverse experiences the trip affords and develop individual projects related to particular works of art, exhibitions, and performances that we'll encounter in person during the stay in New York. Class time will be divided between readings, presentations, and one studio based creative project. The urban setting in which the various forms of art are created, presented, and received will form a special point of focus. A principal aim of the seminar will be to develop aesthetic sensibilities through writing critically about the art that interests and engages us and making art. For further details please visit the Stanford Arts Institute website: https://arts.stanford.edu/for-students/academics/arts-immersion/new-york/
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Berlier, T. (PI)

TAPS 20N: Prisons and Performance

Preference to Freshmen. This seminar starts with the unlikely question of what can the performing arts, particularly dance and theater, illuminate about the situation of mass incarceration in America. Part seminar, part immersive context building, students will read and view a cross-section of dance and theater works where the subject, performers, choreographers or authors, belong to part of the 2.4 million people currently behind bars in US prisons. Class includes conversations with formerly incarcerated youth, prison staff, juvenile justice lawyers and artists working in juvenile and adult prisons as well as those who are part of the 7.3 million people currently on parole or probation. Using performance as our lens we will investigate the unique kinds of understanding the arts make possible as well as the growing use of theater and dance to affect social change and personal transformation among prison inmates. Class trips will include visits to locked facilities and meetings with artists and inmates working behind bars.
Last offered: Autumn 2019 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

TAPS 22N: Culture, Conflict, and the Modern Middle East

In this course, you will encounter the Middle East through places, peoples, and performances, beyond the basic study of identifying the region and learning its history. The main question that we will contend with is: how can one achieve an ideal encounter with a people? Through experience and experimentation, we will attempt to approach the region from different angles, perspectives, and disciplines. You can expect to be surprised again and again as we find ways to see, hear, touch, smell, and taste the Middle East through carefully curated readings, viewings, practices, assignments, and events, each teaching us a different way of thinking, creating, and living. Yet, in all these encounters, the theme of performance will return to remind us that knowledge of ourselves and the other is but a tangible exhibit of performances of everyday life. From virtually visiting architectural wonders such as Petra and the Pyramids, to encountering classic literatures such as the Arabian Nights, to finding the best Shawarma in town, to performing the Middle East, to confronting political realities and investigating historical myths, you can expect to immerse yourself with a region and its people. In our search for an ideal encounter, we will be sure to shed some fantasies, experience some realities, imagine some possibilities, and find a version of ourselves.
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

TAPS 31: Introduction to Lighting and Production

Good visual storytelling begins and ends with good lighting. All visual storytelling forms--from photos to films to stage productions--provide a canvas in which lighting paints the scene. Lighting sets a mood, a tone, and can shape character and stories. This course teaches critical thinking, how to conduct thorough research, practical skills, and a mindfulness for live artforms.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
Instructors: ; Mejia, C. (PI)

TAPS 100C: History of World Cinema III: Queer Cinemas around the World (ARTHIST 164, ARTHIST 364, CSRE 102C, CSRE 302C, FEMGEN 100C, FEMGEN 300C, FILMEDIA 100C, FILMEDIA 300C, GLOBAL 193, GLOBAL 390, TAPS 300C)

Provides an overview of cinema from around the world since 1960, highlighting the cultural, political, and economic forces that have shaped various film movements over the last six decades. Specific topics may vary by term/year/instructor. This term's topic, Queer Cinemas around the World, engages with a range of queer cinematic forms and queer spectatorial practices in different parts of the world, as well as BIPOC media from North America. Through film and video from Kenya, Malaysia, India, The Dominican Republic, China, Brazil, Palestine, Japan, Morocco, the US etc., we will examine varied narratives about trans experience, same-sex desire, LGBTQI2S+ rights, censorship, precarity, and hopefulness. This course will attune us to regional cultural specificities in queer expression and representation, prompting us to move away from hegemonic and homogenizing understandings of queer life and media. Notes: Screenings will be held on Fridays at 1:30PM in Oshman Hall. Screening times will vary slightly from week to week.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II | Repeatable 2 times (up to 10 units total)
Instructors: ; Iyer, U. (PI)

TAPS 101F: Close Cinematic Analysis - Caste, Sexuality, and Religion in Indian Media (ARTHIST 199, ASNAMST 108, FEMGEN 104, FILMEDIA 101, FILMEDIA 301)

India is the world's largest producer of films in over 20 languages, and Bollywood is often its most visible avatar, especially on US university curricula. This course will introduce you to a range of media from the Indian subcontinent across commercial and experimental films, documentaries, streaming media, and online cultures. We will engage in particular with questions of sexuality, gender, caste, religion, and ethnicity in this postcolonial context and across its diasporas, including in the Caribbean. Given this course's emphasis on close cinematic analysis, we will analyze formal aspects of cinematography, editing, mise-en-scene, and performance, and how these generate spectatorial pleasure, star and fan cultures, and particular modes of representation. This course fulfills the WIM requirement for Film and Media Studies majors. Note: Screenings will be held on Thursdays at 5:30 PM. Screening times will vary from week to week and may range from 90 to 180 minutes.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Iyer, U. (PI)

TAPS 133T: Transgender Performance and Performativity (FEMGEN 133)

This course examines theater, performance art, dance, and embodied practice by transgender artists. Students will learn the history and politics of transgender performance while considering the creative processes and formal aesthetics trans artists use to make art. We will analyze creative work in conversation with critical and theoretical texts from the fields of performance studies, art history, and queer studies.
Last offered: Autumn 2019 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

TAPS 150W: Computers & Performance

From elaborately costumed avatars in virtual worlds, to professional live-streamers working 12-hour shifts, to digitally animated celebrities existing only through their social media accounts, the computer has become a creative engine not of literature or film, but of performance -- a genre traditionally thought to depend on the presence of a body. This seminar asks: why performance? We will adopt methods of performance research and direct them at MMORPGs, hacktivists, YouTube lip-synchers, Instagram feeds, Fortnite dances, and even a few plays. Students will discuss the various utopian affordances and dystopian structures of digital life, and study how conversations about computing have changed over history. They will learn how performances highlight the degree to which contemporary digital culture is constituted by, and further entrenches, race and gender. Ultimately, they will develop their own artworks (games, websites, dances, videos, podcasts) that will embody and question the fraught intersection between computers and performance.
Last offered: Spring 2020 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

TAPS 151: Dramaturgy (TAPS 315)

Dramaturgy is one of the most transferable skills in performing arts. With its integration of scholarly research and creative practice, dramaturgy is in a position to augment all other areas of performance. For example, more often than not a good director or a good choreographer is also a good dramaturg: an ability to analyze, adapt, and transform an existing dramatic text or weave devised actions into a narrative is essential for the success of a performance; likewise, acting becomes greatly enriched by performers' ability to grasp internal workings of a dramatic text; finally, any kind of design (stage, costume, light, or digital) benefits from skillful plotting of the story through images and sounds. In this class, students will get acquainted with theoretical and historical sources of dramaturgy and explore procedures and techniques they can use in their work on productions.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

TAPS 151C: Hamlet and the Critics

Focus is on Shakespeare's Hamlet as a site of rich critical controversy from the eighteenth century to the present. Aim is to read, discuss, and evaluate different approaches to the play, from biographical, theatrical, and psychological to formalist, materialist, feminist, new historicist, and, most recently, quantitative. The ambition is to see whether there can be great literature without (a) great (deal of) criticism. The challenge is to understand the theory of literature through the study of its criticism.
Last offered: Autumn 2020 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

TAPS 151P: Transpacific Performance (CSRE 151P, TAPS 351P)

Building on exciting new work in transpacific studies, this course explores how performance reveals the many ways in which cultures and communities intersect across the diverse and dynamic Pacific Ocean world, covering works from the Americas and Asia, Pacific Islands, and Australia. In an era when the Pacific has emerged as the center of global cultural and financial power, what critical and ethical role does performance play in treating the region's entangled histories, its urgent contemporary issues, and possible futures?
Last offered: Spring 2020 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

TAPS 151T: Global Great Books: Dramatic Dialogues (TAPS 351)

The most influential and enduring texts in the dramatic canon from Sophocles to Shakespeare, Chekhov to Soyinka. Their historical and geopolitical contexts. Questions about the power dynamics involved in the formation of canons. This course counts as a Writing in the Major course for TAPS in 2016-17.
Last offered: Spring 2019 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

TAPS 152L: Nietzsche: Life as Performance (GERMAN 125, GERMAN 325, TAPS 325)

Nietzsche famously considered that "there is no 'being' behind the deed, its effect, and what becomes of it; the 'doer' is invented as an afterthought - the doing is everything." How should we understand this idea of a deed without a doer, how might it relate to performance, and what influence has it had on modern culture? In order to answer these questions, we will consider Nietzsche's writings alongside some of the artworks that influenced Nietzsche or were influenced by him.
Last offered: Winter 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

TAPS 153D: Close Listening: Sound, Media, and Performance (FEMGEN 153D, FILMEDIA 153E, MUSIC 153E)

Are there ways to listen? This new course approaches the question by exploring artist works that have challenged the norms of sonic experience. We will discover that in life, as in the arts, there are practices of listening. We will cover a range of texts on sound media, and we will experience a number of works that reinvent practices of listening. There will be particular attention to the work of feminist sound artists. In conversation with art and theory, we will develop wider awareness for the sounds of everyday life. This course meets once a week, and group listening of select works is part of the class.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Adair, D. (PI)

TAPS 153H: History of Directing (TAPS 253H)

There is a lot of great theater out there waiting to be made, and the primary goal of this class is to help students prepare to achieve that goal. In this class, "history" is not only a narrative about the past and its interpretations, but a repository of ideas and techniques that can provide students with useful techniques and sources of inspiration for their own practice. In the graduate component of the class, we will take a historiographic approach to this art form that has often veered towards the biographical and the anecdotal. This is not a history of directors, but a history of directing. That does not mean that we won't look at the work of individual artists: we will do that, while keeping in mind the historical, social, economic as well as aesthetic circumstances under which directing evolved as a distinct profession in the theater.
Terms: Aut | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

TAPS 154G: Black Magic: Ethnicity, Race, and Identity in Performance Cultures (AFRICAAM 154G, AFRICAAM 254G, CSRE 154D, FEMGEN 154G, TAPS 354G)

In 2013, CaShawn Thompson devised a Twitter hashtag, #blackgirlmagic, to celebrate the beauty and intelligence of black women. Twitter users quickly adopted the slogan, using the hashtag to celebrate everyday moments of beauty, accomplishment, and magic. The slogan offered a contemporary iteration of an historical alignment: namely, the concept of "magic" with both Black people as well as "blackness." This course explores the legacy of Black magic--and black magic--through performance texts including plays, poetry, films, and novels. We will investigate the creation of magical worlds, the discursive alignment of magic with blackness, and the contemporary manifestation of a historical phenomenon. We will cover, through lecture and discussion, the history of black magic representation as well as the relationship between magic and religion. Our goal will be to understand the impact and history of discursive alignments: what relationship does "black magic" have to and for "black bodies"? How do we understand a history of performance practice as being caught up in complicated legacies of suspicion, celebration, self-definition? The course will give participants a grounding in black performance texts, plays, and theoretical writings. *This course will also satisfy the TAPS department WIM requirement.*
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Robinson, A. (PI)

TAPS 155W: The Wretched of the Stage (TAPS 255W)

The subtitle of this class is: Slaves, Women, Children, Servants, More Slaves, the Poor ... in Western Theater. The list could go on: homeless, prostitutes, mentally ill, laborers, disabled. Historically, the center stage of Western theater has been reserved for a certain kind of identity: mostly male, mostly upper class, heterosexual, and white European. At the same time, the wings have been teeming with a great diversity of characters. This class focuses on Western cultures' production of its own marginal identities and the role theater in regulating and reintegrating them into society. In this class, we will focus on primary sources, which is to say, on plays. A few of them are canonical, but many of them are not. This investigation of theater's margins will take us to commercial theater, experimental stages, and to the very limits of what is considered 'Western' drama.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

TAPS 161P: Dance and the Politics of Movement (DANCE 161P, LIFE 161P, TAPS 361P)

This course examines how the dancing body has been viewed, exhibited, analyzed, and interpreted from the late nineteenth century to the present. We will discuss how ideologies about race, gender, and sexual orientation are mapped onto the body, as well as investigate the body's place in discourses on religion, health, war, performance, and consumer culture. We will explore how people create meaning through dance and how dance, in turn, shapes social norms, political institutions, and cultural practices. The course's structure challenges the Western/non-Western binary by comparing dance forms across the globe.
Last offered: Spring 2020 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

TAPS 162P: Intersectionality and the Politics of Ballet (DANCE 162P, FEMGEN 162)

Ballet dancers drag a long and conservative history with them each time they step onstage. Yet recently some of the most radical challenges in dance are coming from ballerinas, featuring prosthetic limbs, non-female identifying dancers en pointe, and Ultra-Orthodox Jewish women performing classical repertoire. This seminar uses dance history to reposition ballet as a daring future-facing art form, one where the politics of nationality, religion, class, gender, race, and disability intersect. These issues are provocatively illuminated by classically trained dancers like South African artist Dada Masilo in her gender-bending Swan Lake and Giselle adaptations, Phil Chan's anti-Orientalist restagings, and activist American dancer Alice Sheppard's showcasing of the art of disability partnered by her wheelchair. What can ballet bring to the pressing social issues of equity, inclusion, and diversity when for centuries it has been considered an exemplar of the static imperialist, Western art form and idealized white body? What has shifted to reveal ballet as a vital medium for registering new global identities and social justice challenges? How can an art form built on obedient bodies be politically dangerous? Exposing limitations of binaries such as masculine/feminine, White/Black, heterosexual/homosexual, and colonial/ colonized histories, we consider how culture is complicated through the ballet repertoire and its techniques for disciplining and gendering bodies. Using live and recorded performances, interviews with practitioners reshaping the field, and close readings of new scholarship, we will see how 21st century politics are being negotiated through ballet in an intersectional frame.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

TAPS 167: Introduction to Greek Tragedy: Gods, Heroes, Fate, and Justice (CLASSICS 112)

Gods and heroes, fate and free choice, gender conflict, the justice or injustice of the universe: these are just some of the fundamental human issues that we will explore in about ten of the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.
Terms: Win | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Kim, H. (PI); McCall, M. (PI)

TAPS 169R: Reality TV and American Society

Class will explore the ways reality tv over the past 25 years has affected the way Americans see and relate to one another, then consider what comes next. Students will analyze and discuss seminal reality tv shows and print criticism thereof, and in groups will conceive and develop reality show ideas to effect social change.
Terms: Win | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

TAPS 170B: Directing Workshop: The Actor-Director Dialogue (TAPS 372)

This course focuses on the actor-director dialogue. We will work with actors and directors developing approaches to collaboration that make the actor-director dialogue in theater. TAPS Ph.D. students are required to enroll in TAPS 372 for 4 units. This course must be taken for a minimum of 3 units and a letter grade to be eligible for Ways-AII credit.
Terms: Spr | Units: 2-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE | Repeatable for credit

TAPS 195D: Queer Caribbean Performance (DANCE 195D, TAPS 395D)

With its' lush and fantastic landscape, fabulous carnivalesque aesthetics, and rich African Diaspora Religious traditions, the Caribbean has long been a setting which New World black artists have staged competing visions of racial and sexual utopia and dystopia. However, these foreigner-authored fantasies have often overshadowed the lived experience and life storytelling of Caribbean subjects. This course explores the intersecting performance cultures, politics, and sensual/sexual practices that have constituted queer life in the Caribbean region and its diaspora. Placing Caribbean queer of color critique alongside key moments in twentieth and twenty-first century performance history at home and abroad, we will ask how have histories of the plantation, discourses of race and nation, migration, and revolution led to the formation of regionally specific queer identifications. What about the idea of the 'tropics' has made it such as fertile ground for queer performance making, and how have artists from the region identified or dis-identified with these aesthetic formations? This class will begin with an exploration of theories of queer diaspora and queer of color critique's roots in black feminisms. We will cover themes of exile, religious rites, and organizing as sights of queer political formation and creative community in the Caribbean.
Last offered: Winter 2022 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

TAPS 196: Dancing Black: Embodying the African Diaspora in the United States and the Caribbean (DANCE 196, TAPS 396)

What does it mean to dance black? How can studying comparative dance practices across the United States and the Caribbean expose continuities and differences in African diaspora experience? How can we draw strategies from black performance to inform our current movements for social change? This class will explore how dance and writing about performance have shaped notions of what it means to identify or be marked as an African diaspora subject. From the ring shouts of captive Africans to the 20th-century concert dance stage, from New York queer ballroom culture to Tiktok fads, this class will expose students to both historical and ethnographic methods for using dance to study the formation of black community in the New World. Looking beyond the surface of skin, we'll explore how race is experienced in muscle and flesh, and how black performers have historically taken advantage of or disavowed racialized ideas of how they can/should move. We will read theories of diaspora, queer of color critique and black feminist theory, and performance theory. We will search for the common questions and conversations about embodiment, the spectator's gaze, and black belonging that run through all three disciplines. Students will be required to do some movement research (through accessible, at-home dance practice), write weekly journals, and complete short essay projects. Students develop will skills for writing, speaking, and making performance to explore the intersections between race, sexuality, and dance.
Last offered: Autumn 2021 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

TAPS 258: Black Feminist Theater and Theory (AFRICAAM 258, CSRE 258, FEMGEN 258X)

From the rave reviews garnered by Angelina Weld Grimke's lynching play, Rachel to recent work by Lynn Nottage on Rwanda, black women playwrights have addressed key issues in modern culture and politics. We will analyze and perform work written by black women in the U.S., Britain and the Caribbean in the 20th and 21st centuries. Topics include: sexuality, surrealism, colonialism, freedom, violence, colorism, love, history, community and more. Playwrights include: Angelina Grimke, Lorriane Hansberry, Winsome Pinnock, Adrienne Kennedy, Suzan- Lori Parks, Ntozake Shange, Pearl Cleage, Sarah Jones, Anna DeVeare Smith, Alice Childress, Lydia Diamond and Zora Neale Hurston.)
Terms: Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

TAPS 264S: Race, Gender, Justice (COMPLIT 264T, CSRE 264S, FEMGEN 264S)

The question of justice animates some of the most influential classics and contemporary plays in the dramatic canon. We will examine the relationship between state laws and kinship obligations in Sophocles's Antigone. We will trace the transnational circulation of this text and its adaptations in Gambaro's Argentinian Antigona Furiosa, and Fugard and Kani's South African The Island. We will read Shakespeare's Othello and consider questions of racism, misogyny, and intimate partner violence, investigate the reverberations of these themes in the OJ Simpson trial, and explore its afterlife in Toni Morrison's Desdemona. We will take up questions of sexual violence via John Patrick Shanley's Doubt and Ariel Dorfman's Chilean classic, Death and the Maiden. We will examine themes of police brutality and racial vulnerability in Anna Deavere Smith's Twilight and Aleshea Harris's What to Send Up When it Goes Down. Through close readings of plays, we will explore the inter-articulation of intimacy and violence, intimidation and transgression, vengeance and forgiveness within the context of larger struggles for gender and racial justice. We will read plays in light of contemporary reckonings with the US criminal justice system: the #MeToo movement and the Black Lives Matter movement. While the former appeals to the criminal justice system to restore victims¿ rights, the latter urges a thorough dismantling of the carceral state. How do we understand these divergent responses to augment or abolish punitive structures? Meets WM requirement for TAPS.
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

THINK 60: American Enemies

It would seem that an enemy should be easy to identify, but this course proposes that this involves deliberation, choice, and an assessment of consequences. We will explore modern American experiences in defining enemies, here defined as mortal threats to the state and the national collective. We will focus on ideas, thinking and assumptions rather than historical chronology. Who are enemies? How are they defined and by whom? How are enemies characterized and perceived? The narrative content of the course would be a historical study of the American engagement with enemies from 1942 to 1990. We will begin with the war or terror, return to consider the experience of the Japanese enemy of World War II, and then come up through the years of the Cold War and beyond.
Last offered: Autumn 2019 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: College, THINK, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

THINK 64: Healing, Illness, Stories

This course focuses on multiple genres of narratives about illness and recovery: memoirs, graphic novels, poetry, fiction, essay, and documentary film. It asks what the power, if any, of narrative is in healing. Drawing upon the fields of literature and the practice of medicine, students will begin to grapple with the power of stories in illuminating the experience of illness and disability and in offering the possibilities for (self) transformation.
Last offered: Spring 2020 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: College, THINK, WAY-A-II

THINK 67: What Makes Music Classical?

This course asks a question that can elicit a variety of responses. Classical music means different things to different people. For some it connotes Western art music of a particular historical era. According to this understanding, classical music follows baroque music and is superseded by romantic music; it develops a style, the classical style, as perfected by Haydn and Mozart. For others classical music has broader significance, referring to a cultural practice that predates the eighteenth century, going as far back as Gregorian chant and extending through the present. There are a variety of factors that define that practice, some more enduring than others: transmission through musical notation, theories of tonal systems, techniques of composition. Formal analysis, though often considered a sub-discipline of music theory and hence purely descriptive and objective, is hardly value free. Aesthetic interests and prejudices come into play, whether implicitly or explicitly.
Last offered: Summer 2021 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: College, THINK, WAY-A-II

THINK 69: Emotion

In this course, we address basic issues about emotions and their place in human life from the perspectives of philosophy and psychology. We ask four fundamental questions: What is emotion? What is the appropriate place for emotions in our lives? How should we manage our emotions? Do emotions threaten the integrity of the agent? For instance, in asking how we manage our emotions, students will consider the Stoic view that emotions must be extirpated alongside psychological perspectives on the theoretical and empirical frameworks on emotion regulation.
Last offered: Spring 2022 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: College, THINK, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

URBANST 27Q: The Detective and the City

This seminar is based on the idea that there are many urban literatures and that Urban Studies, as a broadly interdisciplinary field, needs to look at fiction, music, visual art, cinema, and other forms of expression beyond just the standard social sciences for evidence of the human experience of living in cities. We will analyze the social reality of several historic cities (London in the 1890s, San Francisco and Los Angeles in the 1920s and 30s, and Shanghai in the 1990s) through the prism of popular crime fiction featuring four great literary detectives (Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade, Roman Polanski's Jake Gittes, and Qiu Xiaolong's Chief Inspector Chen). As a student in this course, you will explore why crime fiction is so popular, why the fear of crime - or perhaps just a fascination with crime -- is so much a part of modern urban culture, and why the police detective and the private investigator have become iconic code heroes of popular culture You will participate in classroom discussions, write a final paper, and present your research on a subject of your own choice ¿ maybe one of the literary or cinematic detectives already mentioned, or perhaps another literary/cinematic detective of your own choosing, or even on one of today's related manifestations of the same impulse in popular literature or visual culture featuring superheroes, vampires, and the zombie apocalypse.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Stout, F. (PI)

URBANST 83N: City, Space, Literature (ENGLISH 83N)

This course presents a literary tour of various cities as a way of thinking about space, representation, and the urban. Using literature and film, the course will explore these from a variety of perspectives. The focus will be thematic rather than chronological, but an attempt will also be made to trace the different ways in which cities have been represented from the late nineteenth century to recent times. Ideas of space, cosmopolitanism, and the urban will be explored through films such as The Bourne Identity and The Lunchbox, as well as in the writings of Arthur Conan Doyle, Walter Mosley, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Fiston Mwanza Mujila, Karen Tei Yamashita, and Mohsin Hamid, among others.
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

URBANST 140F: Casablanca - Algiers - Tunis : Cities on the Edge (COMPLIT 236A, CSRE 140S, FRENCH 236, FRENCH 336, HISTORY 245C, JEWISHST 236A)

Casablanca, Algiers and Tunis embody three territories, real and imaginary, which never cease to challenge the preconceptions of travelers setting sight on their shores. In this class, we will explore the myriad ways in which these cities of North Africa, on the edge of Europe and of Africa, have been narrated in literature, cinema, and popular culture. Home to Muslims, Christians, and Jews, they are an ebullient laboratory of social, political, religious, and cultural issues, global and local, between the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries. We will look at mass images of these cities, from films to maps, novels to photographs, sketching a new vision of these magnets as places where power, social rituals, legacies of the Ottoman and French colonial pasts, and the influence of the global economy collude and collide. Special focus on class, gender, and race.
Last offered: Spring 2021 | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

URBANST 142: Megacities (ANTHRO 42)

This class will examine a variety of ways that the city has been represented and understood in anthropology, architecture, literature, film, and journalism in order to better understand how everyday life and experience has been read in conjunction with urban forms. Issues covered will include the co-constitution of space and identities; consumption, spectacle, and economic disparity; transportation and health; colonialism and post-colonialism. Assignments will include writing and drawing projects based on close observation and reading.
Terms: Spr | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

URBANST 148A: Cities and Creativity: Cultural and Architectural Interpretations of Madrid

This class is being offered in collaboration with Stanford in Madrid, Bing Overseas Studies Program. Focused on the artistic and architectural aspects of cities, this course fosters students' creative sensibilities through six basic approaches: experiment, research, analyze, interpret, think and do. These approaches will help students understand the sociocultural dimension of the human being within the urban context, where the inherent vitality of creativity lies. The case of Madrid is used as a framework for analysis and interpretation, since it provides the extraordinary opportunity to carry out activities and online experiences charged with significance in the setting of the city. Understanding the architecture of cities as an artistic result of society in each historic period helps to assess their formative capacity and their sociocultural impact. The aim is to analyze and interpret the cultural and educational mission of the city, using theoretical supports and researching relevant urban and architectural places of Madrid, seeing the city as a whole organism that for centuries has gone through an uninterrupted modernization process, as an outcome of society´s creativity.
Last offered: Spring 2021 | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

URBANST 153: CAPITALS: How Cities Shape Cultures, States, and People (COMPLIT 100, DLCL 100, FRENCH 175, GERMAN 175, HISTORY 206E, ILAC 175, ITALIAN 175)

This course takes students on a trip to major capital cities at different moments in time, including Renaissance Florence, Golden Age Madrid, colonial Mexico City, imperial Beijing, Enlightenment and romantic Paris, existential and revolutionary St. Petersburg, roaring Berlin, modernist Vienna, and transnational Accra. While exploring each place in a particular historical moment, we will also consider the relations between culture, power, and social life. How does the cultural life of a country intersect with the political activity of a capital? How do large cities shape our everyday experience, our aesthetic preferences, and our sense of history? Why do some cities become cultural capitals? Primary materials for this course will consist of literary, visual, sociological, and historical documents (in translation).
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

URBANST 184: Paris: Capital of the Modern World (FRENCH 140, FRENCH 340, HISTORY 230C)

This course explores how Paris, between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, became the political, cultural, and artistic capital of the modern world. It considers how the city has both shaped and been shaped by the tumultuous events of modern history- class conflict, industrialization, imperialism, war, and occupation. It will also explore why Paris became the major world destination for intellectuals, artists and writers. Sources will include films, paintings, architecture, novels, travel journals, and memoirs. Course taught in English with an optional French section.
Last offered: Spring 2020 | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
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