What are our obligations to future generations of human beings? This question has pressing implications for everything from climate change policy to the accumulation of national debt. Perhaps we owe nothing to future people, since they don’t (yet) exist, or since their future identities depend upon our actions. But if we reject these lines of thought, as most of us do, then how exactly should we weigh the well-being of future people against the lives of those currently living? Should we apply some sort of “discount rate,” and if so, which one?

How can an archive tell the story of a cultural practice that resists the very idea of being archived? If performance, in Peggy Phelan’s formulation, “becomes itself through disappearance,” what might it mean to document this endless disappearance?

This course takes Los Angeles and New York as case studies for tracing different histories related to Native Americans, urbanism, and entertainment. So students can engage a range of interdisciplinary strategies for studying Native American migration in the twentieth century we will draw on materials from the Kim-Wait/Pablo Eisenberg Native American Literature Collection to practice developing researchable questions.

The course focuses on the history of dictionaries as epistemological resources from the Enlightenment to the present. It debates the changing nature of language, the strategies lexicographers employ to compile word banks and the capital bestowed on them, the connections between dictionaries and readers, the evolution of dictionaries from print to digital, and the marketing mechanisms that have been used. We will also examine the multifaceted nature of the genre (historiographic, etymological, bilingual, specialized, etc.), gaming (crosswords, scrabble, and so on), and other derivatives.

The United States, almost alone among constitutional democracies, retains death as a criminal punishment. It does so in the face of growing international pressure for abolition and of evidence that the system for deciding who lives and who dies is fraught with error. This seminar is designed to expose students to America's death penalty as a researchable subject. It will be organized to help students understand how research is framed in this area, analyze theories and approaches of death penalty researchers, and identify open questions and most promising lines of future research.

Independent reading course.

Fall and spring semesters. The Department.

Independent reading course.

Fall and spring semesters. The Department.

A study of Roman civilization from its origins to the Empire, with emphasis on major Roman writers. The material will be interpreted in the light of Roman influence upon later Western civilization. The reading will be almost entirely from Latin literature, but no knowledge of the ancient language is required. Three class hours per week.

Limited to 50 students. Spring semester. Professor Zanker.

A survey of the myths of the gods and heroes of ancient Greece, with a view to their original context in Greek art and literature as well as their place in Greek religion. We will give particular attention to myths that live on in Western art and literature, in order to become familiar with the stories which were part of the repertory of later artists and authors. Three class hours per week.

Limited to 75 students. Spring Semester. Professor R. Sinos. 

Independent Reading Course.

Fall and spring semester. Members of the Department.