Humanities (HUMN-SHU)

This course provides an introduction to literary theories and methodologies. We will analyze such different approaches to literary expressions as classical, modern, structuralist, post-structuralist approaches; Marxist, colonial and post-colonial approaches, including feminist and post-human methodologies for different literatures. The course will emphasize the shifts and turns in these approaches. The aim is to acquire knowledge of a variety of literary approaches at work when reading literature and of the relationships between text, author, writing and audience. Pre-requisites: None Fulfillment: Humanities Foundations/Introductory course(18-19: Critical Concepts/Survey).

This course is an introduction to Science and Technology Studies (STS), an interdisciplinary field treating science and technology as socially embedded enterprises. We will examine how social, political, cultural, and material conditions shape scientific and technological activity and how science and technology, in turn, shape society. You will become familiar with the basic concepts and methods developed by STS scholars in history, sociology, and anthropology and explore how the scope of the field has expanded to include a variety of empirical case studies, theoretical arguments, and scholarly debates. The kinds of questions we will explore include: What counts as scientific knowledge? How is it produced? How do scientists establish credibility? Can there be a scientific study of scientific inquiry? To what extent are science and technology shaped by historical context? Prerequisite: None. Fulfillment: CORE STS; Humanities Foundations/Introductory course.

Human Geography is a field of study that takes into account the ways that social, cultural, economic, political and environmental dynamics shape our understandings of space, place, territory, borders and landscapes, as well as how geography influences social, cultural, economic, political and environmental dynamics in human societies. It conceives of geography not merely in geomorphic terms, but analyzes instead how geographies are always embedded within lived human experience and how humans engage, interact, and transform their geographies. This course will offer an introduction to the methods and theories that have shaped the field of Human Geography, both classics and cutting-edge scholarship. It will also provide students with background in basic research tools and techniques used by geographers. Prerequisite: None. Fulfillment: Humanities Foundational course, Social Sciences Core

This course takes as its subject the Belle Époque, that period in the life of France’s pre-World War I Third Republic (1871-1914) associated with extraordinary artistic achievement, as well as the Second Empire (1851-1871) that preceded it. In this course, we will attempt to gain a deeper understanding of the literary works of this era by placing them in the context of the society within which they were produced, France’s Second Empire and Third Republic. Like the United States today, the Third Republic was a polity in which issues of the rights of minorities, freedom of expression, the place of religion in the public sphere, and the proper relationship between democracy and imperialism were subjects of constant debate. Furthermore, like the U.S. but unlike contemporary France, the Third Republic relied much more on the market and less on state subsidies to support artistic endeavors. Among other questions, we will examine to what extent the cultural flowering of this period occurred as a result of, or in spite of, this reliance on market forces. Near the end of the course we will take on the challenge of Proust’s Swann’s Way, which we will read together in its entirety. Prerequisite: None. Fulfillment: Humanities Major Other Introductory Courses (18-19 Survey Courses).

Modernism is a 20th-century literary, artistic, intellectual, and theoretical movement. It started in the West from 1890 as a reaction to major socio-cultural, political, intellectual, economic, scientific, and technological developments that left many feeling unsettled, lost, and disillusioned. Modernism and modernist literature also took off in other locations in the world but not necessarily during the same period of 1890 to the 1940s. Furthermore, modernism in the West has arguably witnessed a comeback. This 200-level course covers the rise of modernism as a global phenomenon of thematic, generic, and stylistic experimentation and will draw attention to canonical writers from across the globe such as William Faulkner, Langston Hughes, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, Frantz Kafka, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Lu Xun, and Tayeb Salih. We will also situate literary modernism in relation to nineteenth-century literary realism, the subsequent postmodernism, and, where relevant, postcolonialism. Students will be exposed to different genres: these may include short stories, poems, visual arts, film, plays, novels, and theory; and as needed we will examine how visual culture, architecture, and popular culture interacted with, influenced, and were shaped by, modernist aesthetics. The course will unpack major thematic, generic, and stylistic elements found in modernist literature and artistic and visual forms. Prerequisite: None. Fulfillment: Humanities Introductory Course; Humanities Minor.

When Latin American writers burst onto the world stage in the 1960s, they dazzled readers with works that merged formal experimentation with local traditions. Soon the “magic realism” that made Rulfo, García Márquez, and Allende famous became synonymous with Latin America. But what began as a new literary sensibility quickly became a marketing label—and, for some, a straitjacket. Was magic realism just a way to sell a colorful cliché to readers in Europe and North America? In this introduction to Latin American fiction, we will study the rise and legacy of magic realism, along with some of the many alternatives that preceded and responded to it. We will study major figures from the 1930s to today to explore how they understood literature’s political stakes and the writer’s responsibility to history. Prerequisite: None. Fulfillment: Humanities Introductory Elective.

How can different words say the "same" thing? This course explores the linguistic, aesthetic, cultural, and political implications of moving between languages. We will study key statements of translation theory, compare several versions of a single text, and read fiction that intentionally crosses linguistic boundaries. We'll even try our own hands at this fascinating, frustrating art. Knowledge of a language other than English is not required. Our goal is to learn how thinking about translation can make us more careful readers and writers. Prerequisite: None. Fulfillment: Humanities Major introductory course

Phone in hand, questions loom in our head: is digital technology destroying memory, communication, and interpersonal relationships? Will our kids read and write cursive? Is print media disappearing? The notion of writing as a technology seems far removed from our fast-paced, digital world; but it was not so long ago that writing constituted a technological advance that permeated Western societies. This course examines key moments in writing’s history in order to understand its role in shaping the literary subject. We trace the shift from oral to written traditions in romance and courtly literature, then turn to the printing press, copyright and intellectual property, and conclude by examining how our relationship to writing in the past can inform our relationship to digital media in the present. Throughout the semester, students engage in an experiential learning project where they create a hero/ine whose story evolves from oral tradition, to written romance, to social media subject. Pre-requisite: None Fulfillment: Humanities Introductory course.

Considers the trajectory of changes in the production, circulation, and reception of Korean popular music from the turn of the twentieth century to the latest K-pop hits across successive political, social, and economic junctures, with regard for major themes such as nationalism, race, gender, technology, and globalization; and investigates music culture in relation to hybridity, authenticity, transculturation, cyber-culture, and fandom, among other subjects Prereq: None Fulfillment: Humanities Introductory Course (18-19 Topic Courses).

This course examines how ideas of gender and sexuality have shaped the production and consumption of visual culture from the late nineteenth century. We will examine a variety of visual and material texts that shape, criticize, and/or negotiate with contemporaneous gender and sexual norms. Focusing on these expressions’ cultural and historical specificities, the students will assess gender and sexuality—and as an extension, the notions of normality, healthfulness, and self—as ideas that continuously evolve in response to social discourses. The course proceeds roughly chronologically. It starts with the nineteenth-century Euro-American context, in which modern ideas of gender and sexuality began to circulate authoritatively in medical and legal terms. It then moves onto more globalized contemporary perspectives that critique and/or expand the pronouncedly “Western” conceptions of identity and identity categories. Prerequisite: None. Fulfillment: Humanities Introductory course.

The last decades of the 20th century witnessed great changes in East Asian media culture. To understand these changes and the impact that they have made on global media culture, this course introduces students to cross-border popular media currents and exchanges that have occurred throughout East Asia as well as the technological transitions that have facilitated them. This course will examine key regional trends and trans-Asian engagements in media production and distribution systems with a particular focus on the analysis of film, TV dramas, amine, webtoons, digital games, advertisements, and popular music. Prerequisite: Writing as Inquiry or Sophomore standing Fulfillment: Humanities Introductory course; IMB major IMA/B elective; Social Science Focus Enviornmental Studies 200 level.

Climate change is a global environmental challenge, but what does “global environment” mean and how has history shaped our understanding of this term? This introduction to global environmental history explores how the material environment shapes and has been shaped by human actions. It investigates the circulation of people, commodities, and ideas through (neo)imperial networks and considers the political, economic, and social forces that have shaped our contemporary shared understanding of the non-human world. This course also challenges students to recognize who is excluded from this process of making a global environment and what is lost from such exclusions. Throughout the course, students will read and analyze primary and secondary sources and present a group project that explores connections between humans and the environment at a global scale. Prerequisite: None. Fulfillment: Humanities introductory course.

Today, more than half of the planet's population resides in towns and cities of different sizes. This is expected to rise to sixty-six percent by 2050, also known as “planetary urbanism.” In this course we will consider different understandings of what cities are, how they come into being and why. We will collectively develop an understanding of what it means to be urban and what the urban should look like. We will explore Global cities vs world class cities, urban development and poverty, urban social movements, urban governance, urban margins in the North and the South, urban environmental justice, and urban violence. This course introduces the methods and theories that have shaped the field of Urban Geography - providing students with research tools and techniques used by geographers. Prerequisite: None. Fulfillment: Humanities Introductory course, Humanities minor requirement; Social Science focus Urban studies 200 level.

This course explores the link between writing and imagining a world by studying texts authored by women from varied historical, geographic and cultural contexts. Through the works of Bibi Khanum Astarabadi, Mary Wollstonecraft, Halide Edib Adivar, Phillis Wheatley, and other writers from Iran, Britain, the United States, Lebanon, Egypt, Palestine, and Turkey, the course asks students to consider what agency looks like in feminist writings from around the world. Building connections between seemingly disparate Eastern and Western literary, cultural and philosophical traditions, students will learn to revise the vocabularies and practices of feminism by decentering its Eurocentric configurations. Prerequisite: Global Perspectives on Society (GPS) or Sophomore standing. Fulfillment: Humanities Major Advanced Class (new bulletin); Topics Class (old bulletin).

[Topics in Humanities: French Cinema: The Birth of the Seventh Art] In 1895, when Auguste and Louis Lumière held their first private film screening in Paris, they could not have foreseen the pervasive role that cinema would one day play in our homes and our hearts. This introduction to French cinema traces the seventh art from its inception to the present day, focusing on pioneers of French cinema, surrealist film, the influential New Wave movement, and contemporary filmmakers. In addition to the films that you will watch in and out of class, you will explore a variety of theoretical approaches to cinema and develop skills in film analysis through readings and class discussions. Films will be screened in French with English subtitles. Coursework will include several short writing assignments and film analysis projects. [Topics in Humanities: American History Makers You Probably Never Heard of] In this course we will explore the significance of ordinary and underappreciated individuals in major movements, developments, and events in United States and Chinese history. The assigned readings focus upon American, Chinese, and Chinese American individuals, moving back and forth across the Pacific and beyond. At the end of the course you will have completed a 1300-word (minimum) research essay, or an essay that synthesizes and reflects upon several of the assigned readings and explains the strengths and weaknesses of the texts and identifies opportunities for new scholarship. Along the way you will also present an analysis to your classmates of two primary sources that you will use in your essay, and provide constructive criticism on your fellow students’ Draft essays. When we think of people who “make” history, we usually think about the high and the mighty, important political officials or intellectuals, prominent military or diplomatic leaders. But when we look at the past, the great changes that take place are often made possible by men and women who are not rich and famous, who don’t occupy places of power – who in fact come from humble roots, from minority populations, who struggle for influence, and who were vital to helping create the world that elites envisioned, or fought for another vision entirely, or helped reshape the globe by merely pursuing their own self-interest. This course will explore some of these history makers, few of whom you’ve probably ever heard of, from the eighteenth century to the twentieth century. Each day we will focus on one or more history makers. We will read about them, read their texts, and learn about the role they played in history as well as the legacies they may leave for us. The history of the individual in the US, and of Americans in China, and of Chinese in America, will hopefully look different by the end of the semester. In this course you will critically analyze both primary and secondary sources of biographical writing and social history. You will study the genres, purposes of biographies, and how we should understand them. We will explore themes of national identity, race, diplomacy, gender, slavery, and sexuality, and you will explore how these concepts and approaches have been articulated differently by historical actors and historians writing for different purposes and audiences. Prerequisite: None. Fulfillment: French Cinema: Humanities Introductory course. History Makers: Humanities Introductory course.

In 1895, when Auguste and Louis Lumière held their first private film screening in Paris, they could not have foreseen the pervasive role that cinema would one day play in our homes and our hearts. This introduction to French cinema traces the seventh art from its inception to the present day, focusing on pioneers of French cinema, surrealist film, the influential New Wave movement, and contemporary filmmakers. In addition to the films that you will watch in and out of class, you will explore a variety of theoretical approaches to cinema and develop skills in film analysis through readings and class discussions. Films will be screened in French with English subtitles. Coursework will include several short writing assignments and film analysis projects. Prerequisite: None. Fulfillment: Humanities Advanced course (18-19: topic).

In this advanced humanities course students will acquire a geographical foundation of the mundane public policies established by the urban bureaucracies as responsible for giving material and symbolic form to the power of the modern state. There has been an influx of digital platforms, such as ArcGIS in the realm of city management, which are set to alter the vulnerabilities among marginalized populations governed by the state. Through a combination of qualitative and quantitative techniques, we will interrogate the ways in which technologies of government have influenced urban policy making in metropolitan regions of the world. The final projects of this class will require students to build on ethnographic engagement with “fields” of their choosing, and use a visualization technology of their choosing to begin to rethink the neoliberal city. Prerequisite: At least one courses in HUMN-SHU, SOCS-SHU, or HIST-SHU Fulfillment: Humanities Advanced Interdisciplinary course or other Advanced course; Social Science Focus Urban studies/Anthropology 300 level course.

Study of major themes in European intellectual history from the end of the Enlightenment to the last decades of the 19th century, considered in the light of the social and political contexts in which they arose and the cultural backgrounds that helped shape them. Topics include romanticism, liberal and radical social theory, aestheticism, the late 19th-century crisis of values, and the rise of modern social science. Prerequisite: None. Fulfillment: Humanities Advanced course (18-19: topic).

This course engages with literary works that explore the long human and pre-human past, from prehistoric imaginaries to environmental visions in literature, history and culture. How did the public come to terms with unimaginable reaches of time through fossils and dinosaur bones? How did writers, philosophers and artists react to the discoveries of the first prehistoric cave art found in Spain in 1879, the Gilgamesh tablets unearthed in 1880, the “Peking Man” in 1921, the Lascaux caves in 1941 or the Tollund Man in 1950s Denmark? Through poetry, film and visual art, the course will analyze ways in which writers and others theorized modernity and representations of human culture, with an emphasis on environmental and ethical thought. Field trips include the Shanghai Natural History Museum and Guangfulin Archaeological Park. Prerequisite: GPS or Sophomore standing. Fulfillment: Humanities Major Advanced Course.

This course introduces students to the basic concepts and methods in film studies by focusing on a select number of eminent auteurs in Asian cinemas. Our objectives are many: first, we situate within their particular socio-historical contexts the masterworks by master-directors like Akira Kurosawa, Yasujiro Ozu, Zhang Yimou, John Woo, Wong Kar-wai, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Mani Ratnam, and Deepa Mehta. In doing so, we learn the divergent developments between and within Japanese, Chinese, and South Asian film industries. We then analyze how these directors make various stylistic choices to address issues of kinship, nation, gender, historical memory, modernity, and globalization. Against the background of 20th century cross-cultural encounters, we also study the contributions of these auteurs to world cinemas and the cross-fertilization in style between these film masters. Prerequisite: None. Fulfillment: CORE HPC; GCS Chinese Media, Arts, and Literature; Humanities Introductory course.

Contemporary art is often dismissed as either too simplistic or pretentious. While this critique is sometimes valid, much contemporary art is a vital creative response to the cultural, political, and economic forces that shape our world. This course traces movements in North American and European art from 1945 to the present and explores key questions, including: How did postwar American art become a cultural weapon during the Cold War? Is Pop Art’s relationship with consumer culture critical or complicit? Does our experience of reality inform the images we create, or do we build our reality to align with the images we project? Students will explore these questions and more through readings, discussions, hands-on analysis, field trips, and close study of significant artists, artworks, and art movements. By the end of the course, they will develop the skills to analyze, contextualize, and write critically about contemporary art, enabling them to make informed judgments about its relevance and impact on daily life. Prerequisite: None. Fulfillment: Humanities Introductory course; IMA elective; IMB major IMA/IMB elective.

This course is a comparative study of the way a group of Black and Asian artists engaged with white western racism. As an advanced interdisciplinary seminar, this course is on the one hand intellectual, examining the historical subjugation of Black and Asian peoples to white peoples, and on the other hand practical, offering examples and exercises for artistic negotiation, resistance, and rebellion against racial hierarchies. Prereq: None. Fulfillment: Humanities Interdisciplinary/Advanced Courses (18-19 Topic Courses).

This course invites students to think about some of the most carefully controlled but also fervently sought-after questions since the time of Plato: what is the difference between gender and sex? What is the relationship between our gendered bodies, behaviors, and identities? How does sex, something we do, translate to the discourse of sexuality, something we talk about? What is the measurement of normality? If art indeed imitates and even changes life, in what ways do images of gender performance in literary and visual culture also reproduce and perhaps reshape our own experiences as gendered and sexed beings in a society? What can gender and sexuality tell us about the construction of culture, its boundaries, and its “outlaws”? Through the reading of philosophical, literary, historical, medical, and visual texts, and through discussions of case studies in mass media, we learn to see gender and sexuality as an evolving historical phenomenon rather than essentialist notions. We ask how the development of human interest in sexuality coincides with the burgeoning of governing techniques in modern times to police and promote sex simultaneously—as desirable and useful on the one hand, but also forbidden and harmful on the other. Lastly, as humanists, we ask how the boundary of our body (that is, our inside and outside in the most literal sense) is marked less by our blood cells, skin pores, or molecules than by our use of lan­­guage. Prerequisite: None. Fulfillment: Humanities Interdisciplinary/Advanced Courses (18-19 Critical Concepts/Topic Courses).

The European Middle Ages remains a common subject in popular culture, often as a setting for fantasy, romance, Arthuriana, warfare, and adventure. This fascination endures, in large part, because the period in question captures our imaginations with its mythical creatures, legends of chivalry, codes of honor, and damsels in distress. But at the heart of this reimagined world that has become so central to a collective cultural consciousness are the literature and events that inspired it. In medieval literature we find much more than dragons, manticores, King Arthur and his knights: we find the foundations for love, sexual relations, marriage, as well as the seeds of bias, exclusion, and persecution that endure into the twenty-first century. And while the Middle Ages did not invent these concepts, we can clearly trace a direct line back from the present to the shape they took during the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries in the medieval West. This course begins with troubadour poetry as the foundation of ‘courtly love,’ a literary topos that continues to be proliferated in television, film, novels, and popular song. It examines the troubadours’ role in shaping and gendering sexual desire, passion, and fin amor. We then turn to chivalric romance, where the concept of courtly love flourished in the adulterous adventures of knights and ladies–for true love and passion could only exist outside of marriage. In the second half of the course, we turn to another vestige of the medieval past by examining what the scholar Robert I. Moore has called “the formation of a persecuting society.” We will look at how the Third and Fourth Lateran Councils sought to marginalize Jews, Muslims, and lepers, among others. We will read crusade chronicles, memoirs, and poetry that reflect and contribute to the growing culture of categorization and exclusion that emerged. Through class discussions and in-class activities, we will explore the connections between contemporary expressions of love and hate with their medieval origins. Prerequisite: None. Fulfillment: Humanities Introductory course (18-19: Topics)

Prerequisite: None. Fulfillment: Japan's Empire in Asia: Humanities Advanced course, 18-19: Topic. China and Global Feminism: Humanities 18-19 Critical Concepts.

This course examines the historical and poetic dimensions of nineteenth-century British imperialism with a focus on the literature of the romantic period. As we explore the connections and tensions between imperialist politics and romantic aesthetics, we will follow three paths of inquiry: 1) how did empire inform the cultural and literary perspectives of the time, 2) what were the historical models and lineages empire was associated with both in political and literary discourses of the period, 3) what definitions empire and imperialism gained in romantic imagination, and how do they inflect the notions and concepts regarded quintessentially romantic such as the sublime? We will seek answers to these questions by returning to the landscape of the romantic period in a comprehensive and inclusive way, reading the works of marginalized authors alongside their rather widely studied contemporaries. Prerequisite: GPS or Sophomore standing. Fulfillment: Humanities Advanced Course.

An examination of major philosophical ideas and texts in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, from the scientific revolution to the beginning of German Idealism, including works by Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant. Prerequisite: None. Fulfillment: Humanities Introductory course(18-19: topic).

The medieval world has long been a favorite setting for adaptation–from the mediums of literature, television, film, to theater, video games, historical reenactments, and more–the medieval provides seemingly limitless possibilities for representation and reimagination. But what is it about the medieval world that captivates our attention and leaves us always wanting more? How do artists’ recreations of the medieval world distort, but also shed new light on our view of the past, while simultaneously shaping our understanding of the present? In this course, students will explore these questions through in-depth analysis of popular medieval texts and modern film/television adaptations of enduring figures like King Arthur, Lancelot, Robin Hood, William Wallace, Frodo Baggins, Daenarys Targaryan, and more. Prerequisite: Any Humanities course. HIST-SHU, LIT-SHU, PHIL-SHU and HUM-SHU Fulfillment: Humanities Advanced course, Advanced Interdisciplinary course.

Fall Semester - Part I: Students design and conduct an independent research project in their area of focus using the theories and methods with which they have become familiar over the course of completing the major. Prerequisite: Open only to Humanities primary major in the senior year. Fulfillment: Humanities Major Capstone.

Students design and conduct an independent research project in their area of focus using the theories and methods with which they have become familiar over the course of completing the major. Prerequisite: Open only to Humanities primary major in the senior year. Fulfillment: Humanities Major Capstone.

Students are permitted to work on an individual basis under the supervision of a full-time faculty member in the Humanities discipline if they have maintained an overall GPA of 3.0 and have a study proposal that is approved by a Humanities professor. Students are expected to spend about ten to twelve hours a week on their project for 4 credits. Fulfillment: Humanities Major Topic Course (18-19).