LARTS 257 — The Romantic Movement
This interdisciplinary course will focus on Romantic writers. To contextualize and enrich our literary explorations, we will simultaneously study romanticist innovations in music, the visual arts, and intellectual thought. (2 credits) Gatlin
LARTS 346 — Wilderness to Wasteland: American Landscape and Identity
Focusing on literature, painting, and photography, this course explores how narratives and images of American landscapes have shaped ideas about national identity. We will examine prominent metaphors for the American landscape—the “virgin land,” the “wilderness,” the “frontier,” the “sublime,” the “pastoral,” the “wasteland”—and investigate their limitations. Looking at race, ethnicity, gender, global economies, and diverse American experiences, we will ask: What is “Americanness”? How are place, nation, and identity related? Which landscapes are seen as “quintessentially American” and which are overlooked? (2 credits) Gatlin
LARTS 363 — Film Studies I
Following some of the principal developments in narrative films, we will give particular attention to examining how the visual elements work together to convey meaning and create their overall effect. How do lighting, camera angle, and frame composition work together? How does the rhythm of a scene shape our experience and expectations? This course explores ways of seeing and forms of representation in film, examines the viewer’s engagement in the visual image and narrative, and establishes critical perspectives for viewing films. (2 credits) Breese
LARTS 364 — Film Studies II
This course focuses on European art films from the ‘20s to the present. We will examine surrealist and expressionist films, the work of Eisenstein, the French "New Wave," German "New Cinema," and selected Italian films. Prerequisite: LARTS 363 (2 credits) Breese
LARTS 374 — Modern Myth
Modern Myth looks at the stories we tell ourselves – the myths of our own time. Students will analyze and discuss such compelling and modern characters as the femme fatale, the detective, and the pure-hearted ‘fallen woman.’ We will also explore the role of genre in shaping our understanding of these characters and their meaning, using short stories, novels, film, music and the visual arts to trace out the patterns of compelling characters, stories, and styles in modern society. Sources will range from Dumas’s Camille: The Lady of the Camillias to Garry Marshall’s Pretty Woman; from The Castle of Otranto to Sunset Boulevard; and from Keats’ La Belle Sans Merci to Berg’s Lulu. (2 credits) Klein
LARTS 456 — Food for Thought: Representations of Food in Literature & Culture
This course examines the artistic, cultural, personal, and political significance of food on local and global scales. Through literature, critical essays, films, and personal observations, students will explore a menu of topics including: food as artistic inspiration; as entertainment, nourishment, and tradition; as object of desire and abhorrence; as tool of seduction and resistance; and as focal point in debates about health, disease, hunger, consumer culture, gender, race, class, nationality, colonization, social justice, genetic modification, and environmental degradation. (2 credits) Gatlin
LARTS 461 — Modernism
“Make it new!” demanded modernist poet Ezra Pound. This interdisciplinary course will focus on the “new” literary styles and statements of modernist writers who sought to represent a world characterized by rapid social and technological changes. Students will study not only “high modernism” but also the Harlem Renaissance and the Proletarian movement. To contextualize and enrich our literary explorations, we will simultaneously study modernist innovations in music, the visual arts, and intellectual thought. (2 credits) Gatlin
LARTS 462 — Postmodernism
This interdisciplinary course will focus on the literary styles and statements of postmodernist writers, whose work has been variously characterized as “the sheer pleasure of . . . invention” and as “modernism with the optimism taken out.” To contextualize and enrich our literary explorations, we will simultaneously study postmodernist innovations in music, the visual arts, and intellectual thought. (2 credits) Gatlin
LARTS 466 — Ecology: The Study of our Environment
This course examines the discipline of Environmental Studies, including the history, economics, sociology, politics, and philosophy of the “green movement” over the last hundred years. The class focuses on and develops four crucial issues in environmental studies: the continuing debate between “wise use” and “preservation”; the larger international debate between “development” and “nature”; the economic debate between capitalism and its rival value systems; and, finally, the philosophical debate about whether ecology is rooted in human philanthropy or “the rights of living beings.” (2 credits) Klein
LARTS 472 — Copyright and Creativity: Who Owns Music?
Musicians find themselves faced with dilemmas regarding what music they can and cannot use in new arrangements, compositions, or performances. The dilemmas arise not only as artists seek to understand and comply with copyright standards, but also when seeking to use non-western musics where indigenous custodians seek rights over its use and disposition. Propriety over appropriation is up for debate in industry settings, in courtrooms, on agendas at the U.N., and in national and regional arenas as well. Using several landmark legal cases as a backdrop, we will study notions of ownership and fair use in the U.S., and then explore a number of the main issues of music use across cultures. (2 credits) Sandler
LARTS 481 — Cultural History of India
This course is a study of the history of Indian culture beginning with the advent of Hinduism (c. 1500 BC), through the growth of Buddhism (c. 563–200 BC), the “classical era” (c. 320–647 AD), the period of Islamic influence (1200–1750 AD), and the modern era, drawing on such forms of cultural expression as philosophy, literature, science, architecture, and the visual and performing arts. Examples include the Bhagavad Gita and Ramayana, the invention of algebra, Hindu and Islamic architecture (e.g. Taj Mahal), Bharata Natyam (classical dance), and miniature paintings. (2 credits) Row
LARTS 490 — Advanced Seminar
A seminar designed for third and fourth year students that focuses on a single topic in depth. Topics will change depending on the faculty member leading the seminar. (2 credits) Faculty
Fall 2009: Film and Politics
This course looks at contemporary political issues through the lens of mainstream American movies. Students will examine and discuss the artistic efforts to portray such issues as the changing roles of women and the place of gender, racial injustice, and civil rights, war and American international policies, terrorism, immigration, work, and class, along with the still larger questions of political freedom and government power. We will consider film as historical narrative, as satire, and as allegory, focusing on questions of how presentation, genre, and action shape our thinking about critical issues confronting the American people. (2 credits) Klein
THELONIOUS MONK