An introduction to the archaeology, myth, history, art, literature, and religion of ancient Ireland: 4000 BCE to 1200 CE, from the earliest megalithic monuments to the Norman conquest. The emphasis throughout will be on the study of primary material, whether artifacts or documents. Readings will include: selections from the Mythological, Ulster, and Finn Cycles; The Voyage of St. Brendan; The History and Topography of Ireland by Giraldus Cambrensis; the writings of Patrick; and selections from early Irish hagiography.

Contemporary critical theorists such as Gayatri Spivak turn trajectories for ethical and political life, as do recent writers on participatory art. What are the powers and pitfalls of this approach? What shifts do philosophical understandings of art undergo in the emerging views of material existence or culture? What new configurations of reading, form, critique, relationality, singularity, and experience are arising?

While Tolstoy and Dostoevsky in the 19th century and Socialist Realists in the 20th century defined form and content of the Russian and Soviet literatures, two writers whom we will read closely for this course observed, commented on and derided construction of the canon while sitting--as Cheshire cat once did--on the imaginary clouds of the self-imposed marginality. Both created their most famous works in the exile, both played with limits of language, traditional morale and gender, both were eccentric, provocative, unique and highly influential.

This course is designed to introduce students to several religious traditions of the world through a selective study of their chief canonical texts. In part our concern will be with fundamental thematic issues: what do these records seek to reveal about the nature of life and death, sin and suffering, the transcendent and the mundane, morality and liberation? In addition, we will address wider questions of meaning, authority, and context. Why do human communities privilege particular expressions as "sacred" or "classic"?

Philosophy today is generally conceived and practiced as a purely theoretical discipline dedicated to answering conceptual questions and solving intellectual problems. Yet philosophy began as a practical discipline dedicated to helping human beings live their lives in the fullest and best way possible. In this course, we will read and discuss the work of various philosophers-ancient, modern, and postmodern-for whom philosophy is a practical tool for living.

This course is designed for any student curious about design in motion. It will introduce theories and processes of movement composition and choreographic analysis. We'll work with movement prompts and structured improvisations to discover ways to generate movement, and to compose it into set forms. We'll question expectations about what dance, or a "good" dance is, and push to broaden movement preferences. In the process students will hone skills in perceiving, describing and interpreting compositional strategies in choreography.

This course will focus on the writings of Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811) and Franz Kafka (1883-1924) as representatives of a new critical idiom that emerged in German literature at the turn of each of their centuries. We will pay close attention to the style of the authors' prose including generic conventions, figurative language, delineation of character and narrative ambiguity. Additionally, short texts by Georg B chner, E.T.A Hoffmann and Thomas Mann will enhance our analysis of Kleist and Kafka.

This course connects the reading and writing processes so that they are reciprocal and reinforcing. Every week we will alternate between reading a mosaic of U.S. American short fiction and analyzing the ways in which these narratives make their point, and practical writing exercises in order to build linguistic, literary and cultural skills. During the final month, you will workshop your own narratives, fiction or non-fiction, allowing you to give and receive feedback on the process and products of your practice.

In this course, we will read novels with protagonists who die young. How does early death shape plot? Why do abbreviated lives make the most fascinating stories? Is there a literary history of dying young? Though we often think literature contains the meaning of life, we don't ask whether it might give us the meaning of death. But what could be more meaningless than the death of someone cut off in the prime of life? Through a survey of European and American literature, this course will explore the pathos and desire that turn so many plots into death sentences for young men and women.

This fundamental painting course will use the ideas of will gain experience in the fundamentals of painting and critique, including composition, color, material choices and technical considerations such as preparing surfaces and mixing paint. We will explore a diverse and 'unconventional' range of painting surfaces, sizes, and materials in this mixed-media painting class. For the first 10 weeks, there will be different weekly homework prompts, exposing students to a variety of materials, methods, and discourses in contemporary painting.