From the Himalayas in South Asia to Mexico's Chiapas and from North Carolina's Grandfather Mountain to the Uluru in Australia's Northern Territory, mountains represent more than just a geographical feature. They have been long viewed as transcendental spaces, served as a canvas for epic struggles between humans and nature, shaped cultural attitudes and been at the heart of political struggles. This course traces the history of various political and cultural meanings attached to mountains.

This course explores the last seventy years of Chinese history since the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949. It focuses on the course of socialist campaigns from the 1950s to the 1970s, and the evolution and consequences of economic reform since the early 1980s. Class meetings comprise lectures, discussion, and presentations. We will draw upon historical writing, memoirs, news reports, films, and fiction, as well as translations of original documents.

This seminar focuses students on researching and writing the history of their own families, going back at least two generations. Along with digging into the specifics of family history, students will explore the key historical contexts for the decisions and choices made in the past, e.g. immigration (both voluntary and forced), war, economic conditions, political movements, professional and entrepreneurial opportunities. Kitchen Table History asks that we interrogate critically the stories and lessons learned from family members, using the widest array of historical sources.

The screenplay is a unique and ephemeral form that exists as a blueprint for something else: a finished film. How do you convey on the page a story that will take shape within an audio-visual medium? The screenwriter must have an understanding of both the language of narrative film as well as the general shape and mechanics of film stories. This advanced course will cover dialogue, characterization, plot, story arc, genre, and cinematic structure. We will analyze scenes from fictional narrative films -- both short and feature length -- and read the scripts that accompany these films.

The screenplay is a unique and ephemeral form that exists as a blueprint for something else: a finished film. How do you convey on the page a story that will take shape within an audio-visual medium? The screenwriter must have an understanding of both the language of narrative film as well as the general shape and mechanics of film stories. This advanced course will cover dialogue, characterization, plot, story arc, genre, and cinematic structure. We will analyze scenes from fictional narrative films -- both short and feature length -- and read the scripts that accompany these films.

The screenplay is a unique and ephemeral form that exists as a blueprint for something else: a finished film. How do you convey on the page a story that will take shape within an audio-visual medium? The screenwriter must have an understanding of both the language of narrative film as well as the general shape and mechanics of film stories. This advanced course will cover dialogue, characterization, plot, story arc, genre, and cinematic structure. We will analyze scenes from fictional narrative films -- both short and feature length -- and read the scripts that accompany these films.

Alfred Nobel intended for the Nobel Prize in Literature to be awarded to "the most outstanding work in an ideal direction." In this course, we will use the Nobel Prize in Literature as a way of thinking about the fields of World Literature and Global Anglophone Literature. We will read works by Nobel Prize winners such as Kazuo Ishiguro, Doris Lessing, Alice Munro, Kenzaburo Oe, and Toni Morrison and analyze cultural and critical theory by Arjun Appadurai and Rebecca Walkowitz.

Through an examination of poetry, drama, prose, and a selection of the visual arts, this class will analyze representations of bodies in the Renaissance. We will ask: how are bodies and desires portrayed in early modern texts? How is deviance either censured or celebrated? How did literary traditions like the blazon, the epic, and transvestism on the stage contribute to the construction of gender in the period? Assignments will center on original research about bodies that include, but are not limited to, sexuality, race, gender, social class, or disability.

This course will focus on the echo of early American narratives on nature and landscape (1800s and early 1900s), both visual and literary, in more modern or contemporary works. In the context of a history tainted with destruction, and in the face of environmental concerns today, we will explore the struggle to sustain an authentic connection with the natural world. Through a study of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, film, and art, students will consider the interplay of past and present.

With the onslaught of American, French, Haitian, and South American revolts and revolutions, the Atlantic world, much of Europe, and its colonial/industrial empire were thrown into a period of refiguring the concept of the raced, national, and gendered subject. This course considers what new forms of gender, sex, sexuality, and being were created, practiced, or thought, however momentarily, in this tumultuous age. Specific attention is given to conceptions of nonbinary being (of all varieties). Authors may include E. Darwin, Equiano, Wollstonecraft, Lister, M. Shelley, Byron, Jacobs.