This seminar examines the variety of literary and cultural expression in South Africa since the 1970s, focusing on the relations between art and political struggle. Among the topics to be discussed are the imagination of history in South African literature; the emergence of the Black Consciousness movement (and its legacies); responses to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Among the authors to be studied are Nadine Gordimer, J.M. Coeztee, Njabulo Ndebele, Zoe Wicomb, and Zakes Mda, along with a number of contemporary poets, playwrights, and filmmakers.

This seminar traces intersections between literary art and scientific knowledge at the dawn of modernity, when the difference between "art" and "science" was anything but clear. We will read prominent works of English Renaissance literature (Shakespeare, Donne, Milton) alongside various scientific and philosophical writings (Lucretius, Bacon, Descartes) as well as major milestones of the Scientific Revolution (Vesalius, Copernicus, Galileo). In so doing, we will ponder what connects aesthetic and empirical forms of truth.

Eighteenth-century England witnessed the birth of the novel, a genre that in its formative years was both lauded for its originality and condemned as intellectually and morally dangerous, especially for young women. We will trace the numerous prose genres that influenced early novelists, including conduct manuals, epistolary writing, conversion narratives, travelogues, romance, and the gothic. In doing so, we will concomitantly examine the novel's immense formal experimentation alongside debates about developing notions of gender and class as well as the feeling, thinking individual.

While influenced by Augustine's warning that worldly inquiry could endanger the pilgrimage of the soul, medieval literature contains many instances of curious looking. Exploring the medieval desire to know, this course considers how the period's tendencies toward spiritual and metaphysical thought are balanced against its fascinations with the observable world. We will study the ways allegories, travel narratives, romances, and dream visions intersect with natural philosophy, historiography, cartography, and architecture.

An exploration of the ways writers from a range of time periods and cultures represent--directly or metaphorically--illness and disease, diagnosis and treatment, suffering and healing. The course considers, as do growing numbers of medical educators and health professionals, the relations between interpretative skills and clinical practice, especially in attending to the stories both patients and texts try to tell. Readings will be selected from works by Berger, Edson, Fadiman, Grealy, Kafka, Lahiri, Lessing, Mann, McEwan, O'Neill, Saramago, Sontag, Sophocles, Williams, and Woolf.

The course treats the themes, techniques, and contexts of painting and mosaic in the ancient Mediterranean. From Bronze Age palaces to early Byzantine churches, surfaces were embellished with frescoes, pebbles, glass and jewels. These might be rendered in complex geometric shapes or with mythological scenes. Portable vases displayed elegantly drawn figures. We will examine the unique effects of each medium by working with original objects in the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum.

This course covers the arts in Northern Europe during a time of upheaval. We will look at developments in panel painting, manuscript illumination, printmaking, and sculpture from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries--examining shifting patterns of patronage and production along with shifting styles, techniques, and media. We will consider major artists like Jan van Eyck, Albrecht Durer, and Pieter Bruegel, as well as seismic cultural shifts such as the print revolution, the emergence of the woman artist, the Reformation, and the origins of the art market.

This course teaches the basic concepts, vocabulary, and critical skills involved in interpreting film. Through readings and lectures, students will become more informed and sophisticated observers of the cinema, key examples of which will be screened weekly. While the focus will be on the form and style of narrative film, documentary and avant-garde practices will be introduced. The class will also touch upon some of the major theoretical approaches in the field.

This course investigates the creative economy through a sociological lens. Through case studies of various creative industries, as well as examination of the creative sector as a whole, we will examine how the cultural economy influences, and is influenced by, social phenomena. We will explore issues such as how value is produced in the field of fashion modeling, how music and other creative industries drive urban economies, how local crafts enter global markets, and how norms and values influence the adoption of e-commerce in the market for fine art.

This course provides support and mentoring for geology and geography majors as they pursue internships, summer jobs, independent research, and careers. Experiences will include: resume and communication workshops; self-reflection and sharing opportunities for students returning from internships, work experiences, and semesters abroad; guidance on preparing for, selecting, and applying to graduate school; information about careers in education and teacher licensure; and discussion of new research in geology and geography.