Film critics Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott contend that "movies may be male dominated, but images of men are surprisingly narrow." This course both explores various constructs of postmodern American masculinity as they are portrayed and disseminated through contemporary film, and seeks to understand some of what is at stake (culturally, ideologically, economically) in perpetuating certain cinematic archetypes. Of particular relevance to our investigation are the ways in which film yokes masculinity to race, gender, and class.

This seminar explores the diverse experiences of Central American nations in the twentieth century. From a common basis in an export-oriented agriculture, social and political alternatives ranging from social democracy to recurrent military rule, neofascist regimes, and revolutionary socialism have emerged in the isthmus. The course uses materials ranging from autobiography and literature to historical and anthropological studies to understand how this came to be.

A course, organized topically rather than geographically or nationally, that offers a comparative analysis of African American slavery as a dominant social system in Brazil, the Caribbean, and the U.S. South. Topics include: why slavery?; sugar and slavery; historical demography; culture and the law; kinship and family; long-run economic development; patterns of race relations; master class and racist ideologies; resistance to slavery; and abolition and its aftermath. Readings include historical and anthropological studies, as well as a major documentary collection on slavery in Brazil.

Examines the confrontation, assimilation, and transformation of Amerindian, African, and European cultures in Latin America from the sixteenth century to the present. Focuses on the processes in which distinctive self-images emerged in the region and how these images have been challenged and changed over time. Uses films, literature, and folk traditions to complement scholarly analysis of the emergence of a New World mentality.

"Nothing that is human can be alien to me." This is the motto of cosmopolitanism, a philosophy first formed by the Greeks, which emphasizes our common status as citizens of the world and urges us to value the universal as highly as the local. Today, this view can seem naïve: is it advisable, even possible, to privilege absent strangers and lofty ideals above the needs of those nearby?

This course examines contemporary Asian American film and visual culture through the lens of cultural recovery, self-invention, and experimentation. Focusing primarily on film and photography, we will explore issues of race and visuality, Hollywood orientalism, memory and postmemory, and racial impersonation and parody. Students will engage with a variety of theoretical and critical approaches. Artists may include Nikki S. Lee, Margaret Cho, Tseng Kwong Chi, Jin-me Yoon, Justin Lin, Binh Dahn, Richard Fung, Mira Nair, Deepa Mehta, and Alice Wu.

This course will chart the development of Modernism in poetry and prose by examining the careers of two of the most important writers in the first half of the twentieth-century: the novelist, Virginia Woolf and the poet, W. H. Auden. We will focus on the way both writers initially seek to wrestle into representation new content within the frame of pre-existing forms and, by so doing, discover that these forms are inadequate or buckle under the strain and need to be revised, renewed, and transformed.

A seminar on three major early modern dramatists--Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, and Thomas Middleton--focusing on the range of genres, characters, conflicts, and aspirations explored in their plays. These playwrights, along with their contemporary Shakespeare, shaped the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century theatre into a site for performing authority and conquest, national and individual identity, trickery and carnival, desire and sexuality, and complex unfoldings of revenge.

This course is designed for students already at work on a longer project (a novel or novella, a short story collection, a collection of poems, longform creative nonfiction, a graphic novel, or a hybrid form). Students will build on the skills and insights gained in previous creative writing courses to draft, workshop, and revise a full-length creative manuscript. Workshop and revision will comprise much of our time, along with readings on craft by authors such as Lynda Barry, Italo Calvino, and Samuel R. Delany. Students will also have an opportunity to meet literary publishing professionals.