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Course Criteria
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1.00 Credits
In this course we will read selections from Greek prose, as by Lysias and Theophrastus. At the beginning of the term we will review grammar and syntax, and then we will move on to analysis of composition and style and discussion of social roles and cultural issues of Greek life. The aim is to develop familiarity with the language and facility in reading as well as to consider the values of Greek society.
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1.00 Credits
In the course we will read selections from Longus' Daphnis and Chloe and Chariton's Chaereas and Callirhoe. The former is a story of young love in a pastoral setting on the island of Lesbos; the latter, an incident-packed narrative in which a young husband and wife are separated, but after many vicissitudes, reunited. Subjects covered will include genre and setting; narrative and descriptive techniques; cultural context and likely readership.
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1.00 Credits
This course is an introduction to German and leads to communicative competency in German by building on the four primary skills--speaking, listening, reading, and writing--while developing participants' awareness of life and culture of German-speaking countries. Learning German and its structure will also enhance students' awareness of commonalities between the English and the German languages. The GRST101-102-211 course sequence will help students appreciate that contemporary Germany is economically and politically the leading country in the European Union and has a dynamic multicultural society. The German language opens vistas into a world of ideas that is as complex as it is elemental. It provides access to many fields, from philosophy to the natural sciences and many disciplines between them: history, musicology, art history, and environmental studies. These three courses prepare students to study abroad in Regensburg, Germany, on the Wesleyan-Vanderbilt-Wheaton Program or for GRST214 here at Wesleyan.
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1.00 Credits
This course typically follows GRST101 and 102 and increases students' proficiency in the German language while they learn about different cities and regions in the German-speaking world. Working interactively, students engage in cultural activities with authentic readings and contextualized grammar in a unifying context. Through exposure to a variety of texts and text types, students develop oral and written proficiency in description and narration as well as discourse strategies for culturally authentic interaction with native speakers. Classes focus on an active use of the language. Film, music, and other audio clips are regularly integrated into the course to increase students' listening comprehension. Through regular essay assignments, students expand their vocabulary and apply increasingly diverse writing techniques. Among our goals are improved communication and reading skills, an expanded vocabulary, more accurate and diverse written expression, and greater insight into historical and cultural features of the German-speaking world.
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1.00 Credits
Readings, class discussion, and written work will be based on current and recent events and developments in Germany. Topics will include the new Europe and the world, Germany as a multicultural society, German pop culture, and German contemporary culture. The course will provide extensive practice in speaking, reading, listening, and writing in German, using literary and nonliterary texts, and audio and visual materials. Structured conversation, debates, and analysis of different types of texts as well as writing assignments in different genres will strengthen proficiency of German and prepare students for 300-level courses.
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1.00 Credits
This course offers a critical introduction to German silent and sound films from 1919 to 1932. It will test the thesis of Siegfried Kracauer's classic study that expressionist films in particular prepared the way for Hitler's rise to power. The focus will be on canonical films of the era including The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Nosferatu, and The Last Man (Murnau), Metropolis and M (Fritz Lang), and The Joyless Street and Pandora's Box (Pabst). Some attention will also be given to films made at the ideological extremes of Weimar culture: Kuhle Wampe (with a screenplay by Brecht), Leni Riefenstahl's The Blue Light, and Pabst's Threepenny Opera. Readings will include screenplays, essays, and reviews from the period as well as selected literary works such as Brecht's Threepenny Opera.
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1.00 Credits
In the humanities and social sciences, the term "critical theory" remains closely associated with its origins in the Institute of Social Research, better known as the Frankfurt School. Beginning in 1930, scholars affiliated with the Frankfurt School (e.g., Adorno, Benjamin, Horkheimer, Marcuse) sought to replace "traditional" with what they called "critical" theory. By this they meant a theory that would uncover the hidden cultural and psychological mechanisms of capitalist society, a theory that would negate society in its existent form, thus opening up possibilities for imagining a different social order. This course provides a survey of critical theory, beginning with its roots in the 19th century (e.g., Kant, Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche), and will then focus on some of the Frankfurt School's major works that address a diverse array of intellectual and political concerns, from the critique of state capitalism, industrial society, and instrumental reason to commentaries on mass culture, high art, fascism, and psychoanalysis. A truly interdisciplinary institution, the Frankfurt School studied economics, sociology, philosophy, literature, art, psychology, politics, and history. This introduction to the programmatic statements and eclectic reflections of various scholars will highlight the diverse historical influences, collaborative efforts, and internecine debates that shaped the intellectual tradition across continents and generations.
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1.00 Credits
The focus in this course will be initially on the foundational texts of psychoanalysis: STUDIES ON HYSTERIA, THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS, and "A Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria (Dora)." We will then investigate the response and resistance, both creative and polemical, to Freud and psychoanalytic theory in the literature and art of the period. We will read major works by Freud's "double," the novelist and playwright Arthur Schnitzler, and by the satirist Karl Kraus, the author of the famous aphorism "Psychoanalysis is that mental illness for which it purports to be the therapy." The implicit response to Freud's theory of dreams and of the unconscious in the portraits and other paintings of Klimt, Kokoschka, and Schiele will also be given close consideration. In general, the course will explore how psychoanalysis influenced and participated in the sexual discourses of the period.
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1.00 Credits
Beginning in 1795, Romanticism has been the name for a proto-modernist urban artistic and intellectual movement centered in Jena, Berlin, and Heidelberg, and inspired by Goethe's novels, Fichte's philosophy, and the French Revolution, that sought to re-enchant the world through the self-effacing powers of communal poetry and philosophy ("sympoetry" and "symphilosophy"). Because of their innovative and sometimes scandalous celebration of deviant forms of living and their fascination with the dark side of civilization, the Romantics were dismissed by authorities like Hegel and Goethe; the latter drew the line between his work and theirs by declaring: "The 'classical' I call healthy, and the 'romantic' I call sick." This course will offer a carefully selected introduction to the Romantic movement in the areas of literature and the visual arts, taking into account also the movement's underlying aesthetic ideas and the special role of musical expression. Topics covered include the poetic-philosophical fragments of Novalis and Friedrich Schlegel; the artistic exchange between poetry and music (e.g., poems by Eichendorff and Brentano, LIEDER by Schumann and Schubert); the literary salon and the beginnings of female authorship (e.g., in letters by Rahel Varnhagen, Dorothea Schlegel, Caroline Schlegel-Schelling); the reception of folk traditions and the collection and production of fairy-tales (the Brothers Grimm); the creation of the fantastic out of a confrontation with modern science and technology (E. T. A. Hoffmann); Romantic inwardness, melancholy, madness, and its artistic articulation (e.g., in paintings by Friedrich and Carus, stories by Tieck and Hoffmann, compositions by Beethoven and Schubert); and Romanticism's decline and its critique (Heine). All readings, papers, and class discussions will be in German.
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1.00 Credits
This first part of a two-semester course is designed to develop the basic language skills: reading, writing, speaking, and listening comprehension, and basic Hebrew grammar. Emphasis is on modern Israeli Hebrew. No previous knowledge of Hebrew is required. Multimedia and authentic resources will be incorporated into class work. Independent lab work, as well as participation in cultural and literary enrichment activities by Israeli scholars, is required.
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