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 strong grammatical and linguistic foundation in Greek as it is spoken today.

(No Prerequisite)

In this course, we will approach the work of comparison by examining a number of texts by authors from Africa and the Caribbean, all written in self-conscious relationship to earlier works from the European canon. In what ways—and to what ends—do authors rework, reimagine, and rewrite canonical literature? How are similar stories, characters, and narrative structures transformed by authors writing from different historical, cultural, and geographic locations? What dynamics of power are revealed when postcolonial perspectives are brought to bear upon European texts?

One of the enduring appeals of novels is their ability to offer us access to other mind. Thus fictional characters can feel like close friends, and reading books can often be a practice in empathetic imagination, giving us the chance (at least for a few hundred pages) to walk in another’s shoes.

What can twenty-first century readers get out of reading works that were written in Greek and Latin thousands of years ago?  Is the primary goal historical understanding? the pleasure of an engaging story? a meditation on human emotions that transcend vast shifts in culture and time?

People today do not have enough poetry in their heads, and everyone should be able to recite one or two of their favorite poems. In addition to its purely personal benefits, knowing some poetry by heart has practical applications: in a tough job interview, you can impress the prospective boss by reciting just the right line, say, from Dylan Thomas: “do not go gentle into that good night/rage rage against the dying of the light.” Or at a party some time, you’ll be able to show off with a bit of T.S.

‘Modernism’ refers to a range of literary texts, music, and other media that have changed and revolutionized the intellectual and cultural landscape at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. In all areas, traditional forms were replaced by new, innovative, and  experimental forms of cultural production. This happened in response to processes of industrialization, urbanization, and social challenges. Often, this progressive reinvention of the arts has been closely linked to the experience of the First World War and to revolutionary movements.

“Who will write the history of tears?” – Roland Barthes

From cowboys to captains of industry, from old-money gentlemen to new-world adventurers, from uniformed soldiers to mold-breaking mavericks, Americans have long looked up to masculine heroes. Meanwhile, those who fail to conform to conventional standards of masculinity – effete intellectuals and stay-at-home dads, cuckolded husbands and 40-year-old virgins – earn society’s mockery and scorn.

Fiction is full of characters who exert a pull on their readers: those in whom we see versions of ourselves, those we hate to love or love to hate, and those who remain forever inscrutable no matter how hard we try to get inside their thoughts and feelings.

[Note: Students enrolling in this senior seminar will be assumed to have had experience with the close reading and the analysis of poetic form, content, and context, and to be at least somewhat familiar with the main lines or moments in American poetry’s 19th-20th C. development, from Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, through the modernism of  Pound, H.D., Eliot, Stevens, Moore, Hughes, Brooks, et al.]