191 - 200 of 246 results for: Literary history

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.

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 Dakar. 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 Primary materials for this course will consist of literary, visual, sociological, and historical documents (in translation). No prerequisites.

Writing about various topics in Italian Studies. Topics based on student interests: current politics, economics, European affairs, or cultural and literary history, medieval to modern, in Italy. Intensive focus on writing. Students may write on their experience at Stanford in Florence. Fulfills the WIM requirement for Italian majors.

Women have been historically marginalized ? when not systematically excluded ? from participation in both the social sphere and the process of cultural production since the origin of the Italian literary tradition. And yet, well-educated, creative, literary Italian women throughout history have been able to reformulate the canonical language, style, and themes of the male-centered tradition in a continuous attempt to give voice to their unique identity and redeem their historically weak social agency. Starting with the study of classical, late-antique, and medieval misogynistic works that established authoritative misconceptions on women'fres moral and biological identities (the legacy of which is still evident in modern-day society), this course intends to revise the Italian literary canon to fully include women as pivotal agents in the historical formation of the national cultural identity. As the work of these writers often emerged through a constant, fruitful dialogue with their contemporary male counterparts, our investigations will apply an integral definition of gender, which simultaneously defends the equal dignity and acknowledges the differences of the sexes. Course materials will include a wide range of cross-medial genres and works by or about Italian women (poetry, novels, short stories, drama, non-fictional narrative, visual arts and films) dealing with issues of identity, emotional life, politics, and social justice. All the readings will be in English translation; there are no prerequisites or language requirements. Students will be occasionally allowed to select their own primary readings and are expected to produce a research essay on an elective topic, as well as several informal writing assignments.

What do you think of when you think of language in Japan? Perhaps you have heard the Japanese language described as "difficult" or "complex," "polite" or "indirect," or even "ancient" or "poetic." Perhaps a gendered aspect or an abundance of scripts garner attention. Given the many representations of language in Japan in social media, popular discourse, or even your own language classes, this course asks, what are the stories that are told about language in Japan, and how do we evaluate those stories? The course draws on readings from diverse fields, including linguistic anthropology, linguistics, cultural history, and literary history. The course is divided into three parts. The first part introduces theories on the relationship between language, ideology, and power. This part helps us identify discourses about what a given language is and what it should be, while exploring the consequences of those discourses. The second part focuses on language ideology and policy in Japanese history, with particular attention to script reform, dialect management, and state language pedagogy. The third part connects the history of language ideologies to present-day language topics, including gendered language, formality, the status of minority languages, and second language acquisition. Throughout, we ask what discourses persist, and why? What theoretical and epistemological tools might we employ to critique those discourses? Although the course centers on language in Japan as a case study, the theories and methods we explore will be applicable to language ideologies in multiple national, transnational, and local contexts. Japanese language abilities are not required - readings will be in English - but you are welcome to leverage any and all knowledge at your disposal.

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.

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.

This course examines Jewish culture and the food practices and traditions that have shaped and continue to shape it. Students learn to prepare a variety of meals while studying about the historical and literary traditions associated with them, such as the dietary 'laws' and the long history of their interpretation, as well as the cultivation of eating as devotional practice in Jewish mystical traditions. We will explore how regional foods the world over contribute to the formation of distinct Jewish ethnic identities, and how these traditions shape contemporary Jewish food ethics. The course includes guest visits by professional chefs and food writers, and field trips to a local winery.

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 Csaire, Albert Memmi, Ousmane Sembne, Lela Sebbar, Mariama B, Maryse Cond, Dany Laferrire, Mati Diop, and special guest '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.