Did you ever wonder how other people get their work done? Or what great ideas look like and where they come from? Are you curious about the best strategies and habits for clear, forceful, and engaging writing? This seminar about writing and publishing is for you. You must have a seminar paper that you wish to revise in the course of the semester. You must also commit to sending your revised essay out for review by a journal at the end of the fall. The vast majority of our time will be spent discussing the written work of the seminar members.

Readings in modern, and above all modern lyric, poetry (much of it from the U.S., but also from Latin America, Europe, Asia, Africa, the Near East) in relation to major Frankfurt-School texts on aesthetics, criticism, and social theory that emphasize the significance of literature (as well as the other arts) and especially poetry. Focused concentration on the writings of Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno, and on their development of Kantian, Hegelian, and Marxian traditions of aesthetics and critical theory.

This senior seminar will offer students an introductory overview of, as well as in-depth engagement with, the work in aesthetics, literary theory, and criticism developed by the Frankfurt School.  “The Frankfurt School” was the term eventually coined to identify a core group of intellectuals working in and around the Institute for Social Research (Institut für Sozialforschung), founded in 1923 and affiliated to this day (except for its exile during and in the immediate aftermath of the National Socialist/Nazi regime) with the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University of Frankfurt.

References to the word “topos”, place, as signifying home and the homeland, whether used in a limited and local, or in a broader, national context, abound in Greek life, literature and culture. From the point of view of anthropology/ethnography, and as the discipline of “refugee studies” has currently expanded its scope, the theoretical perspectives on what constitutes home and homeland seem to fall into three basic ethnographic categories.

The 100th anniversary of the Russian revolution seems an ideal moment to go back and examine the history and literature of revolutionary Russia. This was an era of violent upheaval, material destitution and radical projections of social renewal and human transformation. We will be tracing the arc of the first revolutionary decade, from the revolutionary upsurge of 1917 and the Civil War of 1918-1921, which saw the ultimate consolidation of Soviet power, to the early and often contradictory formulations of Soviet culture arising over the course of the 1920s.

According to the historical legend, Martin Luther posted 95 thesis about the reform of the Church on the doors of the castle church in Wittenberg, Germany, on October 31, 1517. These theses, published 500 years ago, were quickly reprinted, translated, and distributed throughout Germany and Europe. They are often seen as the starting point of the Reformation that not only changed the understanding of Christian teachings but also had a great influence on European culture and thought.

This is a course in beginning Modern Greek, involving speaking, reading and writing.

Modern Greek is unique among languages in that it is the only modern language directly descended from Ancient Greek. In this course, the student studies reading, writing, pronunciation and use of contemporary spoken idiom, all within the historical and cultural context of the language. By the end of the course, the student should have a grammatical and linguistic foundation in Greek as it is spoken today.  In this course, there is also an emphasis and practice of oral language skills.

In the age of Facebook and Instagram, of tweets and vlogs, it can be difficult to remember that not so long ago the practice of narrating the self was often closely tied to intimate, private, and even secret forms of writing. In this course, we will consider a number of literary texts that experiment with such forms of writing, focusing in particular on the genre of the diary novel.