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 this course we will consider a variety of written and cinematic texts, all of which foreground the movement of individuals or communities across national borders. Over the course of the semester, we will discuss a number of interrelated questions: how do contemporary writers attempt to come to terms with the profound historical ruptures and geographic displacements brought about by the experience of transnational movement?

Novels can tell us stories in which the sexuality of various characters is a prominent feature, or even the central problem of the novel. Novels can be built in many different ways. They can tell their stories in many different ways. By doing so, they can help us think about what kind of a phenomenon sexuality is. In other words, novels can help us think about issues like sexuality by the way they tell their stories, by the way they give them form. We know people experience sexuality differently. We know people experience different sexualities.

Joy, grief, anxiety, shame, desire, jealousy, fear, hope: emotions are a familiar part of ordinary life. We tend to think of feelings as private and individual, but emotions are also public, social, and political, at the same time that publics and politics are very much emotional.