Fall 2025

Over the course of the semester, we will study representative films from different eras, cultures, and genres. Through discussions of films and readings as well as written assignments, we will dig into topics including film sound theory, the history of film sound technology, and sociocultural and historical contexts for trends in film sound styles and aesthetics. The course will develop critical thinking and listening skills that are unique to film sound. Given the global ubiquity of film, these skills will benefit students as a form of cultural literacy.

Problems concerning religious knowledge, the existence and nature of God, and human destiny.

Our task will be to witness the Holocaust through the texts we read: what does it mean to think of literature as a kind of witnessing? And just what are the limits of language in representing such an unrepresentable event? For the writer, there is a very real crisis of representation. In The Story of a Life, Aharon Appelfeld, the novelist and Holocaust survivor, describes the feeling of being defeated by his own story: “Every time you talk about those days, you feel that this is incredible. You tell and you don’t believe that this happened to you. This is one of the most humiliating feelings that I’ve experienced.” Our main focus will emphasize the roles of silence, memory, identity, and problems of representation but we will also consider other issues along the way such as the psychology and history of antisemitism as well as the problem of articulating a new ethics for humanity. Drawing from European, American, and Israeli narratives, our readings will introduce some of the significant poets and writers who were witnesses to, survivors, and in some instances victims of, the Holocaust. Later in the semester we will encounter narratives by comics artist Art Spiegelman and others, a later generation whose work is distinguished by a (perhaps irresolvable) tension between the desire to write about the Holocaust and guilt at doing so. This is the ambivalent aesthetic of Holocaust narrative in the our time. What does it mean to be the child of a survivor? What will the collective memory of the Holocaust be in the twenty-first century, after the last survivors have given testimony? The way that Jews and others deal with the Holocaust is not always wise. Sometimes we manipulate it, turning Holocaust-related fears into an outlook and a value system. Time and again, we discover that, whether we want it or not, nearly every one of us is a carrier pigeon of the Holocaust.

This course offers a critical introduction to the influence of technology on contemporary life and the profound impact of social media on self-perception. We will critically examine how digital technologies, particularly social media platforms, have become fundamental in shaping our daily lives. Our exploration will focus on deconstructing the influence of technology in structuring our understanding of gender, sexuality, race, and class, while also investigating the intersections of technology with mental health, disability, digital activism, and the phenomenon of public shaming.

This course offers a critical introduction to the influence of technology on contemporary life and the profound impact of social media on self-perception. We will critically examine how digital technologies, particularly social media platforms, have become fundamental in shaping our daily lives. Our exploration will focus on deconstructing the influence of technology in structuring our understanding of gender, sexuality, race, and class, while also investigating the intersections of technology with mental health, disability, digital activism, and the phenomenon of public shaming.

The course is an elective that examines human behaviors in relation to race and gender from psychological, sociological, and technological perspectives. These perspectives will be viewed in terms of contemporary societies throughout the African diaspora. At the end of the term, students will demonstrate their knowledge by creating a presentation for an adverse audience while taking a supportive position of a social issue relating to race and/or gender.

This course offers an introduction to major works of classical Persian and Arabic literature (pre-19th century), with particular attention to the interplay of diverse cultural influences and the historical contexts that shaped these texts. The syllabus includes a rich array of genres—epic, romance, lyric poetry, mystical narratives, satire, and fairy tales—providing students with a broad literary foundation.

Students will be encouraged to cultivate analytical and critical perspectives on key literary figures, considering their work in relation to the intellectual, social, and political milieus of their time. Each class will begin with a brief lecture on selected poets and writers, followed by seminar-style discussions focused on close textual analysis. Topics of discussion will include imagery, key themes, as well as the broader cultural and historical significance of the texts.

This graduate seminar course provides instruction in advanced techniques of script analysis. A script can be interpreted as a documentation of a past production, and as a springboard for a future production. Script analysis is the analysis of the component parts of a given play. Such analysis allows theatre practitioners to comprehend the dramatic structure and theatrical style of a play so as to understand its working parts. Script analysis also allows theatre artists to uncover how a play was conceived in its initial context so as to explore how it may be reconceived in a new context. Since any given play is a product of its historical moment, a script’s dramaturgy, or its architectural structure, is constructed in response to the dramatic and theatrical conventions of its time. As such, there is no one method of script analysis applicable to all plays. We will therefore explore different approaches to script analysis conducive to different dramatic forms and theatrical styles.

This course explores Indigenous worldviews that understand life as an interconnected system where humans are intimately related to all aspects of nature—waters, mountains, forests, animals, and weather. Through Native prayers, stories, and hands-on activities, students will examine how sacred ecological knowledge has been preserved by traditional custodians despite deliberate attempts to sever these ancient wisdom traditions through colonization and modernization. We will study how Native communities, while vulnerable and at the frontlines of displacement and climate change impacts, demonstrate resilience through stories and practices of regeneration. The course investigates local landscapes, traditional ecological practices, ceremonies, and the role of knowledge keepers in maintaining vital cultural archives embedded in the land. Students will engage with critical questions about cultural survival and the relevance of Indigenous knowledge systems in addressing contemporary environmental challenges, learning directly from storytelling traditions and place-based wisdom.

What do images of the wilderness evoke in us? Where and who is “wild” today? How are notions of wildness present in current ideas of culture and civilization?

We live in a state that celebrates its “unbridled spirit,” we may occasionally feel “the call of the wild” or have read the eponymous novel by Jack London or Maurice Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are in our youth. Images and ideas of the wild have been part of our education and they are present in current discussions about the Anthropocene, climate change, even the recent Pulitzer-winning novel Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver set in Appalachia.

Starting from our own understanding of the imagery and meanings of wildness, we will study the impact that the historical experience of colonialism has had on the making of “the wild” in the global humanities. We will consider a range of narratives, oral, musical and written, read and compare theories and epistemologies, and look at images and selected films that translate the idea of “the wild” in different places and at different times. Our discussions will be framed largely in postcolonial and decolonial terms with special attention given to how discussions of wildness have affected the regulation of gender and sexuality.

This course offers an introduction to major works of classical Persian and Arabic literature (pre-19th century), with particular attention to the interplay of diverse cultural influences and the historical contexts that shaped these texts. The syllabus includes a rich array of genres—epic, romance, lyric poetry, mystical narratives, satire, and fairy tales—providing students with a broad literary foundation.

Students will be encouraged to cultivate analytical and critical perspectives on key literary figures, considering their work in relation to the intellectual, social, and political milieus of their time. Each class will begin with a brief lecture on selected poets and writers, followed by seminar-style discussions focused on close textual analysis. Topics of discussion will include imagery, key themes, as well as the broader cultural and historical significance of the texts.

The Nuremberg trials following the end of the second world war were an unprecedented attempt to bring the violation of human rights under the jurisdiction of international law. Over the course of thirteen trials members of the Nazi regime ranging from government ministers to concentration camp guards were tried for the commission of war crimes, the violation of national sovereignty, and most famously, complicity in the murder of approximately seventeen million people: six million Jews, five million Soviet civilians, three million Soviet POWs, two million Poles, three hundred thousand Serbians, two-hundred and fifty thousand of the disabled, two thousand Jehovah’s Witnesses, and hundreds of homosexuals, political opponents, and resistance fighters. It was for these trials that the word ‘genocide’ was coined.

The Nuremberg Trials also produced an unparalleled documentary archive concerning the behavior, legal defense, and psychological state of the defendants. This archive will be the subject of this course. We will be less interested in the specific procedures of the trials than we will be in the myriad rhetorical strategies employed by the accused to justify their actions and exculpate themselves—legally and morally—for their complicity in Hitler’s regime. We will use their words, confessions, and testimony as a case study in the relationship of rhetoric to ethics. We will consider what the various rhetorical strategies employed by the accused reveal about their sense of their past, their view of their crimes, and their reaction when the find themselves held to account.

This course explores Indigenous worldviews that understand life as an interconnected system where humans are intimately related to all aspects of nature—waters, mountains, forests, animals, and weather. Through Native prayers, stories, and hands-on activities, students will examine how sacred ecological knowledge has been preserved by traditional custodians despite deliberate attempts to sever these ancient wisdom traditions through colonization and modernization. We will study how Native communities, while vulnerable and at the frontlines of displacement and climate change impacts, demonstrate resilience through stories and practices of regeneration. The course investigates local landscapes, traditional ecological practices, ceremonies, and the role of knowledge keepers in maintaining vital cultural archives embedded in the land. Students will engage with critical questions about cultural survival and the relevance of Indigenous knowledge systems in addressing contemporary environmental challenges, learning directly from storytelling traditions and place-based wisdom.