This course explores the history and social implications of our digitized culture(s). Considering information technology in terms of its relationship to the self and society, we will discuss a wide-ranging set of issues related to digital cultures, such as online communities and social networking, internet addiction, and machine learning. We will also investigate the implications of digital cultures in terms of social categories including class, race, and gender.

Fantasies provide escape into strange realms where time and space are not our own. Class reading focuses on fantastic voyages to explore human desires, dreams, and fears, as well as the realities they grow out of. Texts range from early tales from Arthurian literature and A Thousand and One Nights to contemporary stories and films. International and interdisciplinary perspectives on fantasy and the forms it takes. Honors credit available. (Gen.Ed. AL)

Comedy is ambivalent: it can serve as a tool to challenge the status quo (for instance, in the form of satire) but it can also reinforce existing power structures (for example, by making fun of marginalized groups). In this course, we will reflect precisely on comedy?s socio-political significance, by focusing on categories such as class, gender, and race, as well as on non-Anglophone literary traditions. Course materials may include a wide range of genres and media (plays, short stories, films, and videos). (Gen. Ed. AL)

Not available at this time

This is an introduction to film studies and to the analysis of film. The course explores the complex nature and cultural function of cinema by focusing on time travel as both a central theme of a wide range of films and as a way of understanding how cinema works as a time-based medium. By studying films from various points in the global history of cinema - including films from nine countries and five continents - this course performs a transcultural introduction to the formal and stylistic aspects of cinematic storytelling. (Gen. Ed. AT)

This is an introduction to film studies and to the analysis of film. The course explores the complex nature and cultural function of cinema by focusing on time travel as both a central theme of a wide range of films and as a way of understanding how cinema works as a time-based medium. By studying films from various points in the global history of cinema - including films from nine countries and five continents - this course performs a transcultural introduction to the formal and stylistic aspects of cinematic storytelling. (Gen. Ed. AT)

This is an introduction to film studies and to the analysis of film. The course explores the complex nature and cultural function of cinema by focusing on time travel as both a central theme of a wide range of films and as a way of understanding how cinema works as a time-based medium. By studying films from various points in the global history of cinema - including films from nine countries and five continents - this course performs a transcultural introduction to the formal and stylistic aspects of cinematic storytelling. (Gen. Ed. AT)

This is an introduction to film studies and to the analysis of film. The course explores the complex nature and cultural function of cinema by focusing on time travel as both a central theme of a wide range of films and as a way of understanding how cinema works as a time-based medium. By studying films from various points in the global history of cinema - including films from nine countries and five continents - this course performs a transcultural introduction to the formal and stylistic aspects of cinematic storytelling. (Gen. Ed. AT)

The imaginative representation of good and evil in Western and Eastern classics, folktales, children's stories, and 20th-century literature. Cross-cultural comparison of ethical approaches to moral problems such as the suffering of the innocent, the existence of evil, the development of a moral consciousness and social responsibility, and the role of faith in a broken world. Contemporary issues of nuclear war, holocaust, AIDS, abortion, marginal persons, anawim, unwanted children. (Gen.Ed. AL, DG)

Are people born knowing right and wrong, good and evil? What does ?evil? look like, and do you know it when you see it? This course will investigate how humans have represented ?good,? ?evil,? and related concepts across a variety of cultural contexts throughout time. Concerns guiding our readings may include the suffering of the innocent, the existence of evil, and the development of a moral consciousness and responsibility. We may also consider how discourses of good and evil shape and are in turn shaped by race, gender, and class.