In this course we will analytically and self-reflexively explore the genre of the academic or campus novel in its historical development and contemporary permutations. How have campus novels evolved and what can they tell us about our own anxieties and desires for academic experience? Although most of the texts we read will deal with the university campus, we will also look at some other settings, including the nursery school, boarding school and independent study.

In this course we will examine the development of “the West” as a historical and literary concept. We will investigate its role in the creation of American identities and as a space in which those identities may be contested and refigured. We will begin with Frederick Jackson Turner’s famous “frontier thesis.” The emptiness of the western frontier, argued Turner, was responsible for fostering the sense of individual responsibility that is at the core of American democracy.

Who are America’s heroes? Are they caped crusaders and cowboys, or are they of a more ordinary sort – oddball schoolmasters like Ichabod Crane and country lawyers like Atticus Finch? In this class, we’ll explore the question of American (both Northern and Southern) heroism by asking whether, how, and why America looked (or perhaps needed?) to create heroes that were different from the chivalric knights and epic warriors – including the Vikings that reached America – of the Old World(s).

“I’ve seen justice for all genders and classes and sexualities, and it was as alien to me as the extra-terrestrial creatures who practiced it. This image of justice sprang from my own imagination, taking place on another planet, in another time, for a species of people very unlike humans. It took science fiction for me to see a clear picture of what justice could be. And at the end of the day, that’s all it was – fiction.” — Maisha Johnson

This course will trace the legacy of an American genre, the horror story, from the nineteenth century to the present.

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.