This course decolonizes French literary study by focusing on the history of Francophone publishing against the dominance of Paris as cultural capital. Reading authors such as Césaire, Chauvet, Tadjo, and Laferrière, our analyses will include the material conditions that shape stories. From the innovative publisher Présence Africaine to Littérature Monde, and from small presses like LEGS Éditions to transnational co-productions, we'll consider the aesthetic and political cultures determining literary distribution and reception.

This course is an interdisciplinary investigation of the nature of emotions and their influences on our thoughts and actions. While we will draw from a variety of disciplines, the nature and motivations of the inquiry are philosophical. We will consider: what are emotions? Are they bodily responses? Thoughts? Feelings? What roles do cultures play in shaping our emotions? What functions do emotions serve?

This course explores the use of revolutionary terror by the state. More specifically, it examines policies of terror pursued by Communist dictatorships in Hungary and Czechoslovakia during the early years of the Cold War. Who did what to whom, and why? What insights do secret police work and public propaganda, knitted together in macabre show trials, allow us into Stalinist rule, European politics, and maybe ourselves? How did memories of terror shape politics after Stalin's death?

This multicultural course introduces students to the visual arts of Asia from the earliest times to the present. In a writing- and speaking-intensive environment, students will develop skills in visual analysis and art historical interpretation. Illustrated class lectures, group discussions, museum visits, and a variety of writing exercises will allow students to explore architecture, sculpture, painting, and other artifacts in relation to the history and culture of such diverse countries as India, China, Cambodia, Korea, and Japan.

This course explores recent histories, contexts, debates, and representations of feminist thought and movement across national, political, and cultural domains. Through engagement with narrative, ethnographic, and artistic sources, we consider how coalitions and solidarities have been built, in resistance to gendered and racialized oppressions, that not only challenge dominant feminist discourses but also reimagine possibilities for antiracist and anticolonial worldmaking.

Many aspects of COVID-19 have their roots in the 1980s AIDS epidemic -- politically, scientifically, culturally. A careful reexamination of the mainstream narrative of the HIV/AIDS phenomenon and the history from which it emerged is therefore urgent. The course will focus on the unprecedented scientific narratives around HIV and AIDS, as well as their continuation into present-day Africa, on the backdrop of advances in immunology, virology, and genetics.

What does it mean to belong? Who gets to decide who belongs? This course will explore ideas on belonging in the German-speaking context from the perspectives of marginalized communities. Through close-readings and analyses of visual images, narratives, and films produced by or about the experiences of migrants, refugees and people of color in Germany from the 18th century to the present, this seminar re-imagines the German literary canon to include those voices that are typically marginalized in cultural discourse.