2012-2013 Courses:

Fall 2012

HUM 101-6/ HUM 210-0
FRESHMAN HUMANITIES SEMINAR/HUMANITIES IN THE WORLD I

GLOBAL ORIENTS

Instructors: Hannah Feldman, Rebecca Johnson, and Jessica Winegar

NOTE: this course is only open to students in the Kaplan Humanities Scholars Program

 

HUM 205-0-20

THE WORLD OF HOMER

Instructor: Ann Gunter

Day: TTH

Time: 11:00-12:20

What do we know of the world inhabited by the heroes of Homer’s epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey? Do the poems describe a largely imaginary realm created by their author, or do they reflect a particular period of ancient Greek history—and if so, which one? This course explores the society, economy, and culture of “Dark Age,” Geometric and Archaic Greece, emphasizing what scholars have learned through archaeological discoveries along with study of the poems themselves. Topics include the excavations at Troy, Athens, and other sites; contacts with Egypt and the Near East and colonization in the Mediterranean world; trade, exchange, and the technology of travel; literacy and oral tradition; political communities and warfare; religion, burial practices, and the art of ritual and commemoration.

HUM 301-0-20

TOPICS IN THE HUMANITIES

ARISTOTLE: SCIENTIST AND PHILOSOPHER

Instructor: David Ebrey

Day: TTH

Time: 3:30-4:50

In addition to being one of the world’s greatest philosophers, Aristotle was one of its greatest scientists. He did detailed scientific investigations, especially of animals, that were completely unlike anything that had come before him. And he provided systematic, explanatory accounts that were completely new. He was guided, in his investigations, by a new scientific methodology that he had developed, and by the new foundations of natural science that he had laid. More than 700 pages of his scientific works survive.

In this course, we will work through a number of treatises to see how the different parts of his science, methodology, and foundations fit together into an organic whole. In doing this, we will examine fundamental concepts that Aristotle played a key role in developing, such as matter, function, and axiomatic explanations.

HUM 302-0-20

New Perspectives in the Humanities

LAW AS LITERATURE: WHAT IT MEANS TO INTERPRET (JEWISH) LAW

Instructor: Barry Wimpfheimer

Day: TTH

Time: 1:00 2:20

Most of the world’s legal cultures constitute their laws not only through an original foundational set of ideas, but through a continual process through which such ideas are augmented or altered, often through interpretation. This course will focus on the law as a matrix of texts and their interpretation. Drawing on readings in hermeneutics, literary theory and legal theory, this course will consider the law as a genre of literature and attempt to understand the variety of ways in which this literature produces meaning. Examples to illustrate these features of legal literature will be drawn from the corpus of Jewish law—a law that has functioned as a non-statist site of cultural meaning for most of its two millennia of operation.

Winter 2013

 

HUM 102-6/ HUM 211-0
FRESHMAN HUMANITIES SEMINAR/HUMANITIES IN THE WORLD II

LANGUAGE AND THE HUMAN IMAGINATION

Instructors: Franziska Lys, Sanford Goldberg, Stefan Kaufman

NOTE: this course is only open to students in the Kaplan Humanities Scholars Program

HUM 260-0-20

HUMANITIES EXPLORATIONS

ALTERNATIVES: MODELING CHOICE ACROSS THE DISCIPLINES

Instructors: Morton Schapiro and Gary Saul Morson

Day: TTH

Time: 12:20-1:50

HUM 301-0-20

TOPICS IN THE HUMANITIES

KYOTO: THE EMPEROR’S CITY IN HISTORY, LITERATURE, AND FILM

Instructor: Amy Stanley

Day: TTH

Time: 2:00-3:20

HUM 302-0-20

NEW PERSPECTIVES IN THE HUMANITIES

SHANGHAI: MODERNITY AND MODERNISM IN 20TH CENTURY CHINA

Instructor: Peter Carroll

Day: W

Time: 3:00-5:50

Spring 2013

 

HUM 261-0-20

HUMANITIES EXPLORATIONS

EINSTEIN AND HIS TIMES

Instructors: Peter Fenves and Heidi Schellman

Day: MWF

Time: TBA

 

HUM 302-0-20

NEW PERSPECTIVES IN THE HUMANITIES

VISUALIZING RADICALISM: IDEOLOGICAL PARADIGMS OF THE 20S

Instructor: Nina Gourianova

Day: TTH

Time: 2:00-3:20

 

HUM 302-0-21

NEW PERSPECTIVES IN THE HUMANITIES

NATIONALISM AND EMPIRE

Instructor: Ipek Yosmaoğlu

Day: MW

Time: 3:00-4:20

Past Courses:

Spring 2012

HUM 301-0-20
TOPICS IN THE HUMANITIES
EUROPEAN AND AMERICAN IMAGES OF JAPAN FROM IMPRESSIONISM TO CONTEMPORARY CULTURE
Instructor: Christopher Bush (2010-11 AKIH Fellow)
Day: M
Time: 2 - 4:50

The presence of Japan in contemporary American popular culture is readily apparent in prevalence of manga, J-pop, “zen” interior design, and so on. Beyond these consumerist trends, however, Japan has played a vital role in the development of modern Western culture, from Van Gogh’s self-portraits to New Wave cinema. This course offers an interdisciplinary overview of this influence in a variety of media and genres, including travel narratives, paintings, haiku, New Wave film, literary theory, and graphic novels. We will encounter works by such diverse figures as Manet, Puccini, Wilde, Pound, Yeats, Woolf, Duras, Barthes, and Boilet and we learn about not just the history of Japanese/Western cultural crossings, but also the popular and scholarly debates that have emerged around them.

HUM 395-0-30
HUMANITIES SEMINAR
LITERATURE AND POLITICS IN THE ARAB WORLD
Instructor: Rebecca Johnson
Day: TTH
Time: 9:30 - 10:50

With Tunisian protesters chanting lines of poetry in anti-government rallies, and Egyptian poets being interviewed on Al-Jazeera, recent events have opened a window onto the important relationship that exists between literature and politics in the Arab world. But is it a new one?

This course examines the history of this relationship in the modern period, from the late nineteenth century to the present day, to understand how authors from or living in the Arab Middle East have engaged with political events, ideologies and movements. Rather than reading literature through the lens of politics, however, we will investigate literature as a site where the boundaries of the political are produced and tested, and where the relationship between politics and aesthetics is negotiated. We will look at works of political fiction, prison literature, and protest poetry as they take up issues such as anti-colonialism, nationalism, social justice, government repression, and foreign invasions and occupation. In doing so, we will look at the author as both an agent of dissent and an object of co-optation by the state — as a political prisoner and potential propagandist. The last unit of the course will look at the cultural production of the Arab Spring, including the emergence of new images and forms and the reformulation of long-established ones, to understand their place in the rich and evolving archive of politically engaged literature in Arabic.

HUM 397-0-20
EXHIBITING ANTIQUITY: THE CULTURE AND POLITICS OF DISPLAY
Instructor: Ann Gunter
Day: TTH
Time: 11 - 12:20

How do institutions such as museums, along with other created contexts such as websites and archaeological sites developed as tourist destinations, shape and construct our notions of the past? How are these institutions enmeshed with broader cultural and political agendas regarding cultural identity and otherness, the formation of artistic canons, and even the concept of ancient art?

This course explores modern strategies of collecting, classification, and display of material culture from ancient Egypt, the Middle East, Greece, and Rome, both in Europe and the United States and in their present-day homelands. Topics examined include the development of modern displays devoted to ancient civilizations in public and private museums, notions of authenticity and identity, issues of cultural heritage and patrimony, temporary and “blockbuster” shows, virtual exhibitions and museums, and the archaeological site as a locus of display.