Urgent Topics

ENGLISH 124SG: Sex, Gender, and Shakespeare
Alan Niles

This class is an introduction to Shakespeare’s writings and their representations of sex, gender, romance, love, and queerness. We will study poems about erotic and queer desire, plays that stage ideas about gender and gender fluidity, and film adaptations that bring modern perspectives to race and sexuality. Readings will include such plays as Romeo and Juliet, As You Like It, Titus Andronicus, Macbeth, and Measure for Measure; Shakespeare’s Sonnets; and films by Derek Jarman, Vishal Bhardwaj, and Julie Taymor. Prior experience reading Shakespeare may be helpful but is not expected. Throughout our course, we will ask: how are the forms of gender identity and sexual expression we encounter in Shakespeare’s works familiar, or different? How might they challenge, inspire, or disturb us today?

RELIGION 1256: Gender and Judaism in Modern America
Ann Braude

Contemporary Jews are as likely to view their tradition as a source of oppressive gender roles as they are to see it as an inspiration to activism for feminism or as a resource for queer identities. This course follows the construction of Jewish gender beyond the stereotypes, sometimes in collision with modern gender norms, sometimes in accommodation, and sometimes in open rebellion. It considers challenges to both demographic and cultural reproduction that place pressure on personal decisions, group dynamics, identity, and intergroup relations for members of minority religions.  By juxtaposing modern scholarship with religious texts addressing gender in Judaism, the course incorporates historical accounts of the anxieties and opportunities that accompanied the construction of modern Jewish gender identities as well as textual traditions opening alternative possibilities. 

GREEK 150: Rhetoric and Scandal in the Athenian Lawcourts
Emily Greenwood

This course will examine the intersection of norms of gender, sexuality, and civic identity in Athenian lawcourt oratory from the 4th century BCE, as well as the disruption of these norms. Surviving legal speeches from ancient Athens typically depict citizenship in crisis and traffic in gossip and scandal; in the process, they offer us a rich and complex source for studying normative identities and how litigants use biographical smear tactics in an attempt to undermine their opponent’s social status and, at the extremes, to cast them out of citizenship and life itself.We will read and analyze selected speeches by Lysias, Demosthenes, Aeschines (extracts), and Apollodorus in Greek, with particular attention to the ways in which these speeches represent and negotiate categories of identity. Our primary focus will be the translation and interpretation of Athenian lawcourt speeches, informed by scholarship on Athenian rhetoric and law, citizenship in Ancient Athens, gender and sexuality in ancient Greece, and pertinent modern works of gender theory and queer theory. This course is designed to build up competence and confidence in reading and interpreting ancient Greek prose literature. You will also gain familiarity with the processes of Athenian law and relevant Athenian cultural, social, and political history. 

RELIGION 44: The Bible and Human Sexuality
Benjamin Dunning

This is a course about reading, religion and sex – more specifically, the dynamic interplay between how Christians have read and interpreted their Bibles on the one hand, and how they have understood sex and human sexuality on the other. (We will deal briefly with the Bible and sexuality in the Jewish tradition, but the majority of the course focuses on Christianity.) Thus, the questions that will drive our inquiry are fundamentally questions about interpretation. What does it mean to make the claim that a particular perspective on human sexual experience is ‘biblical’?  How are we to understand the sheer variety of ways that a fixed set of canonical scriptural texts have been used as an authoritative resource for discussing and regulating sexual ethics, identity and practice?  How do changing notions of what ‘sexuality’ is (and why sexuality matters) impact the way that biblical texts have been interpreted?  We will explore these questions through the study of key texts in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament and an examination of how these texts have been interpreted from antiquity to the present.  Topics to be covered include marriage, gender identity, desire, same-sex relationships, and sexual renunciation.   No previous study in religion or biblical studies is assumed, and there are no prerequisites for enrolling in the course. This course is for undergraduates only.

NEC 101: Historical Background to the Contemporary Middle East: Religion, Literature and Politics
Christina Maranci

What defines the Middle East? What long-term historical and cultural developments can we trace in the region? How do these affect contemporary global order and policy? This team-taught course in the NELCdepartment will address these three fundamental questions of great present relevance by introducing students to the ancient and modern peoples, languages, cultures, and societies of Western Asia and North Africa. The study of this diverse region is uniquely aided by a deep-time perspective afforded by thousands of years of vibrant art, writing and cultural artefacts. Relying on the classic expertise integral to area studies, the course brings together faculty from a variety of disciplines – from history and archaeology to literature and philology, and from sociology and economy to the political sciences – in a common endeavour to explore the rich cultural complex of the region through four key topics: history, religion, literature and politics.

COMPLIT 166: Jews, Humor, and the Politics of Laughter
Saul Zaritt

By mistake some thieves found their way into Hershele’s house late at night while he was sleeping. They searched and searched but found nothing. Meanwhile, Hershele heard their rummaging and slowly crept up behind one of the thieves. He grabbed him by the arm and the thief, naturally, tried to run away. Hershele held him close, whispering, “Be still. Maybe together we’ll actually find something.” Beginning with jokes like this one, this course will examine the question of Jewish humor, exploring the concept of therapeutic joking, the politics of self-deprecation, and strategies of masking social critique behind a well-timed joke. Rather than reach some essential definition, we will instead investigate literature, stand-up comedy, film, and television of the twentieth and twenty-first century in order to 1) think together about the theory, mechanics, and techniques of comedy and humor and 2) ask how and when a text or performance gets labeled Jewish, by whom and for what purposes. Texts, films, and performers include: Freud, Kafka, Sholem Aleichem, the Marx Brothers, Belle Barth, Mel Brooks, Joan Rivers, Larry David, Sarah Silverman, Broad City, and Rachel Bloom.

PHIL 279: Topics in Political Philosophy
Lucas Stanczyk

This course will consider selected topics in political philosophy with a focus on problems of structural injustice and individual responsibility.

SLAVIC 147: Russian Fiction in the Soviet Era
Justin Weir

In this course we will read several of the most acclaimed works of Russian fiction in the Soviet era, including Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, Boris Pasternak’s, Doctor Zhivago, Vladimir Nabokov’s Invitation to a Beheading, as well as other stories and novels by Osip Mandelshtam, Yuri Olesha, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and Evgeny Zamyatin. The main themes of the course will be the role of the author in a totalitarian society, politics, and the form of the novel in the twentieth century. No prerequisites. Conference course. 

EMR 160: Environmental Practices and Indigenous Knowledge Systems
Americo Mendoza-Mori

Throughout centuries, Indigenous communities have developed knowledge systems and practices that allow them to foster meaningful connections with natural environments and the earth. By conveying tradition with innovation, Indigenous societies from across the world engage with pressing topics such as social and environmental justice, climate change, decolonization, human rights, education, etc. For instance, while Indigenous peoples make up only 6% of the world's total population, they protect 80% of the planet’s biodiversity. This is a powerful statement of their resistance, resilience, and community-building capacity. This seminar will include fundamental principles, introductory frameworks on Indigenous knowledge systems (IKS), a series of practices and wisdoms developed within Indigenous societies from across the world. It will also explore case studies and examples of how Indigenous communities navigate and contribute to the issues of climate change, food security, social disparities, healthcare and spirituality, public policy, and human rights. Community testimonies, guest speakers, multimedia content, interdisciplinary readings, and class debates will be part of the dynamics of this course. This is a speaking seminar, open to all students, that will promote oral communication and critical thinking skills through discussions, projects, and prepared presentations.

SPANSH 234: Rhetorics of travel, mobility and displacement in Latin American culture (1845-2019)
Mariano Siskind

Colonial expansion, scientific and military explorations, exile, tourism, desires for global wandering, journalistic demands, the need to escape political and economic hardship, persecution, and climate disasters: travel literature and writings of displacement are crucial entry points to reflect on processes of cultural modernization in Latin America. When seen through the production and circulation of rhetorical formations of travel and displacement, Latin American culture becomes an unstable and uncertain site of global relations. In this course, we will study travelogues, novels, and crónicas that recount, think through, and witness the experience of being a stranger away from home or of having lost a place of origin in order to interrogate questions of genre and gender, cultural modernity and modernization, the gaze and desire of the (displaced) other, homeliness and homecoming, normative and fictional tropes, and the ethical witnessing of migration and displacement. We will read texts by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, Rubén Darío, Amado Nervo, Manuel Ugarte, Enrique Gómez Carrillo, Victoria Ocampo, Sylvia Molloy, José Carlos Mariátegui, Beatriz Sarlo, Roberto Bolaño, Martín Caparrós, Lina Meruane and Valeria Luiselli, among others.

ITAL 75: Safeguarding Intangible Heritages : from Petrarch to Unesco
Ambrogio Camozzi Pistoja

With 59 sites, Italy holds the record for the highest number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites, serving as a living laboratory for understanding the politics of  cultural preservation. This course introduces students to the concept of heritage in its varied forms - tangible and intangible, ancient and contemporary, natural and man-made, permanent and ephemeral, visible and invisible. 

Students will focus on eight case studies during the semester, engaging with different theories, methodologies and challenges that have historically and currently shaped efforts to preserve and interpret culture. The case studies adopted by the students as course work will help explore management issues raised by climate change, multiple ownership, collective memories, conflicting values and the relationship of immoveable cultural heritage to surrounding communities and society as a whole. Guest lecturers will play an important role in the course, presenting the challenges faced by professionals in the field and offering personalized feedback on student’s submissions. One external visit to a local heritage place, including contact with the organizations and communities involved in their management, will allow a first-hand understanding of how they work behind the scenes.