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Course Criteria
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4.00 Credits
In Doctor Faustus and The Master and Margarita, Thomas Mann and Mikhail Bulgakov use the legend of Faust and the figure of the devil to investigate the social, political, and cultural origins of Nazism and Stalinism. This course takes up their explorations by revisiting the founding texts of the Faust legend and pairing the novels of Mann and Bulgakov with the best historical scholarship on the two regimes.
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4.00 Credits
How and why is poetry relevant today? This seminar provides a gateway to the diversity of contemporary poetic production and an opportunity for in-depth study of today's foremost poets. Focusing on issues of great concern to today's writers and readers of poetry - linguistic innovation, historical witnessing, political activism, new media poetry, and translation - the seminar explores poetry in experimental collections, literary journals, slam and performance poetry, audio recordings, and the Internet.
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4.00 Credits
Through study of literary texts and films, this course explores Paris as the inspiration and setting for the unfurling of one of life's most complex emotions and experiences: love. Evoking the historical and cultural context surrounding these narratives, the course will explore why and how Paris came to be associated with affairs of the heart. There are no prerequisites for the course. All readings are in English.
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4.00 Credits
Socrates initiated Western philosophy, despite claiming to know nothing at all. In this course, we read Platonic dialogues and more recent interpretations of Socrates' story in philosophy (Nietzsche, Arendt, Foucault), politics (I.F. Stone), theater (Voltaire and Brecht), music (Satie), and film (Rosselini). And we use tools of classical rhetoric to craft public speeches like Socrates'. We ask: what is Socratic method? Socratic irony? Was Socrates a hero, a genius, a scam artist, or a fool?
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4.00 Credits
Considers largely fictional, mythic, or epic literature involving travel, quest, pilgrimage, sojourning, and enduring themes and questions this literature raises: parting/return, separation/reintegration, homelessness/homecoming, loneliness/companionship, orientation/disorientation, internal/external, place/space, apprenticeship, trial, growth, aesthetic vision, courage, and death. Includes works such as Gilgamesh, Tolkien's Hobbit, Homer's Odyssey, Basho's Narrow Road to Oku, Endo's Deep River, Hesse's Siddhartha, Calvino's Invisible Cities, Hersey's A Single Pebble, Frazier's Cold Mountain, Johnson's Middle Passage, `Attar's Conference of the Birds, McCarthy's The Road.
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4.00 Credits
In this course we will examine the medieval obsession with love in all its diverse forms, reading (in translation) from the Latin, French, and English medieval literatures. Some of the broad themes we will examine are the interplay between the secular and sacred idea of love, medieval sexualities, the rise of lovesickness as a both a literary theme and medical malady, and the growing connection of love and marriage.
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4.00 Credits
This seminar explores memoirs that highlight memories and occasionally "forgettings." Our approach considers twentieth-century and contemporary memoirs at the intersection of literature and history, exploring everyday life and the relations between self, memory, story, and history. We also examine the fictive nature of memoirs, relations between senses and memories, and whether contemporary media are forms of memoirs. Authors include Vladimir Nabokov, Toni Morrison, Oliver Sacks, M.F.K. Fisher, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, and Marjane Satrapi.
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4.00 Credits
This seminar offers a hands-on introduction to the world of ancient coins using the collections of the Harvard Art Museums. Ancient coins are important objects of material culture as well as original works of art in miniature. They give clues about the history, geography and religion of the ancient world: by looking at them in detail we can learn about Greek and Roman portraiture, political propaganda, and the myths and legends of that time.
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4.00 Credits
Investigates contemporary experiences of being Muslim in different societies as reflected in literature. Explores range of issues facing Muslim communities in various parts of the world through short stories, novels, and poems. Examines impact of colonialism, nationalism, and globalization; politicization of Islam; status of women and gender relations; attitudes towards the West and Western culture; interaction between religion, race, and ethnicity; search for an "authentic" modern Islamic identity. Readings of Muslim authors from five continents.
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4.00 Credits
Based on literary and medical texts. Addresses: Can language express physical pain? Can the body-in its fragile or injured form-enter literature? Are all our senses (hearing, touch, taste, smell) as vividly present in language as vision is? How does the empathic representation of illness or pain in literature differ from the physician's professional attempt to cure or alleviate suffering or (when that is impossible) to solace the suffering patient?
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