(Offered as ASLC 234 [J] and FAMS 320.)  Is the concept of national cinema useful in the age of globalization?  Given the international nature of cinema at its inception, was it ever a valid concept?  In this course, we will consider how the nation is represented on screen as we survey the history of film culture in Japan, from the very first film footage shot in the country in 1897, through the golden age of studio cinema in the 1950s, to important independent filmmakers working today.

(Offered as ENGL 281, FAMS 220, and ARHA 272.)  “Foundations and Integrations” will be an annual team-taught course between a Critical Studies scholar and moving-image artist.  A requirement of the Film and Media Studies major, it will build on critical analysis of moving images and introductory production work to develop an integrated critical and creative practice.  Focused in particular around themes and concepts, students will develop ideas in both written and visual form.  The theme for spring 2016 will be “The Essay.”

(Offered as ENGL 180 and FAMS 110.)  A first course in reading films and writing about them.  A varied selection of films for study and criticism, partly to illustrate the main elements of film language and partly to pose challenging texts for reading and writing.  Frequent short papers.  Two class meetings and one screening per week.

Limited to 25 students.  Fall semester:  Professor Hastie.  Spring semester:  Visiting Professor Guilford.

Fall and spring semesters.

Fall and spring semesters.

(Offered as GERM 364, ARCH 364, and EUST 364.) This course will address a number of developments and transformations in contemporary urban architecture and performance from an international perspective.

(Offered as SPAN 374 and EUST 344) In this blended-learning course, 25 students will study four literary classics (Cervantes's Don Quixote, Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, and Kafka's The Metamorphosis), exploring their history of literary translation across time as well as across languages. Students will think about how translations contribute to the comprehension, interpretation, circulation, survival, and new possibilities of literary texts, especially regarding the classics.

(Offered as HIST 439 [EU] and EUST 339) The course will explore a most intense and fascinating period in Russian history: the years 1890-1910. This period witnessed rapid urbanization and industrialization; the rise of professional and mass politics; first instances of modern terrorism and an intensification of nationalist struggles; imperialist ventures in Central Asia, Manchuria, and Korea; several revolutions and wars; and, above all, an unprecedented efflorescence of modernist culture in the late Russian Empire which was readily exported to and consumed in Europe.

(Offered as HIST 339 [EU/p] and EUST 329.)  This seminar reviews the various socio-cultural configurations of economic relations from the high medieval to the early modern era. Drawing on works from a range of disciplines, we focus on the intersection of market and culture, on how people have struggled to arrange and institutionalize market exchange, and how they have sought to make sense of those changing relations. The course is built around a basic question that is also a current debate: What can we and what can we not buy and sell? And why?

(Offered as EUST 259 and SPAN 365.) Taught at the Hampshire County Jail, the course is devoted to close readings and staging of parts of Shakespeare’s plays while exploring in depth his historical context, dramatic and stylistic style, and world view. The topics of bondage, revenge, injustice, and forgiveness will serve as leitmotifs. On this iteration, four plays will be the focus: As You Like It, Macbeth, Hamlet, and The Tempest. Conducted in English.

Spring semester. Professor Stavans.