Hugo's epic masterpiece, written in exile, has everything: ceaseless adventures, crimes and punishments, love, hate, obsession, heroes, villains, the battle of Waterloo, and civil war. The sympathetic everyman, Jean Valjean, condemned to hard labor for stealing bread and relentlessly pursued by the pitiless policeman Javert, encounters unforgettable characters. We will examine how Hugo situates Valjean's escapes within a framework of social injustice and good triumphing over evil, balancing his political and romantic ideas. Reading, discussion, film screenings.

Viewing multimedia material of the digital age, we will approach vintage Moliere's plays, and watch him go after the vices of his time: tyranny of fathers, hypocrisy of church people, absurdity of social and literary snobs. We will focus on women and servants, prime victims of absolutism. Context will be provided through films such as Moliere, Le Roi Danse, Vatel, La Princesse de Cleves,The Rise to Power of Louis XIV. We will study Tartuffe, Don Juan, L'Ecole des Femmes, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Les Femmes Savantes.

In this course, we will study novels (and a few films) that chronicle and analyze the coming-of-age process of a principal character. In each case, we will travel with the character as she/he moves from ignorance to knowledge, from naïvet to sophistication, from inexperience to experience, from adolescence to adulthood.

With the rest of the world, in 1995 filmmakers from the whole African continent met in Ouagadougou, to celebrate the Century of world cinema. This also gave African filmmakers an opportunity to reflect on their 30 years of film practice. Today, only a year after most former French colonies in Africa have celebrated the 50th anniversary of their independence, African cinema is also entering its fifties. This course will introduce students to a half a century of African cinema with a special attention to its history and its search for survival and self identity within world cinema.

This course surveys the major geographic regions of the world in terms of environmental features and resource distributions, economic mainstays, population characteristics, cultural processes, social relationships, and patterns of urbanization and industrial growth. In addition to these topical foci, we use various sub-fields of geography to animate different regions. This approach provides a sense of depth while we also pursue a breadth of knowledge about the world.

Cities are dynamic landscapes informed by myriad economic, political, social, environmental, and cultural processes. This course delves into the forces of urbanization and examines how cities have been investigated, built, experienced, and lived in throughout history and around the globe. By accenting a geographic perspective and drawing upon an array of theoretical ideas and empirical examples, this class grapples with the fascinating complexities of the urban context.

Provides a comprehensive introduction to maps, including their design, compilation, and computer production. Introduces students to the principles of abstracting the Earth's surface into spatial databases using GIS, remote sensing, and Global Positioning Satellites.

Systematically studies political phenomena and their geographic expression, at a variety of spatial scales - national, regional, and international. Major themes include nation-state formation, boundary, territory, and ethnic issues, regional blocs and spheres of influence, and conflicts over access to and use of resources.

In this course, the Middle East and North Africa are studied in terms of their physical, cultural, economic, and political geography. Emphasis is placed on the environmental conditions and ecological evolution, population and demographic characteristics, the resource base and major problems in the social, political, and economic transformation of the region.

The growing racial diversity of the United States is evident at all spatial scales, from the individual body, to the household, neighborhood, city, and state. This course examines this topic by first exploring the instability and power of racial categories and the spatiality of racial identities and privilege. We then focus our attention on historical and contemporary patterns of racial mixing, mixed-race partnerships, and multiraciality and think through the challenges that race poses.