RL&L115F Italian Cinema, Italian Society (FYS)

This First Year Seminar on Italian cinema (taught in English) investigates major silent and sound films and contextualizes them, their production, and the subjects they treat within a historical, cultural, and political framework. We will trace the intersection among politics, ideology, and Italian cinema, from its Golden Age of silents through fascism and neorealism (as well as its contested legacy), from a consideration of the "exquisite" examples of auteur directors like Fellini and Sorrentino to the ways these and other directors enter into dialogue with popular genre cinema (the giallo, spaghetti westerns, melodrama, etc.), and beyond. Featured filmmakers will be drawn from this list: Pastrone, Ophuls, Rossellini, De Sica, Fellini, Bertolucci, Antonioni, Wertmuller, Cavani, Pasolini, the Taviani Brothers, Leone, Sorrentino, Rohrwacher, Nicchiarelli, Crialese, and others.

Major Screenings will be organized for students. Students are not responsible for purchasing the films.
Offering: Host
Grading: Cr/U
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

RL&L120F Tales of Resistance: Modernity and the Latin American Short Story (FYS)

Latin American writers from the early 20th century forward have regarded the short story as a vehicle through which to make their mark and engage the great cultural issues of the day. Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar, two of Latin America's most well-known literary figures, dedicated their careers almost exclusively to the genre. In this course, as we consider the privileged status of the short story in Latin American letters, we will examine the ways in which writers have used the genre to comment on important aspects of modernization both within and outside their respective countries. Some of those aspects will concern the Mexican Revolution, bourgeois and mass culture, nationalism, globalization, as well as immigration to Europe and the United States.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

RL&L121 Tales of Resistance: Modernity and the Latin American Short Story (In English)

Latin American writers from the early 20th century forward have regarded the short story as a vehicle through which to make their mark and engage the great cultural issues of the day. Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar, two of Latin America's most well-known literary figures, dedicated their careers almost exclusively to the genre. In this course, as we consider the privileged status of the short story in Latin American letters, we will examine the ways in which writers have used the genre to comment on important aspects of modernization both within and outside their respective countries. Some of those aspects will concern the Mexican Revolution, bourgeois and mass culture, nationalism, globalization, as well as immigration to Europe and the United States.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: LAST121
Prereq: None

RL&L123 Love, Sex, and Marriage in Renaissance Europe

This writing-intensive seminar will compare literary and artistic depictions of love, sex, and marriage during the Renaissance by authors and artists from England, Spain, France, Flanders, Germany, and Italy. We will read both male and female writers in genres ranging from poetry, the short story, and theater to the essay, the travel narrative, and the sermon. We will also examine other arts such as painting, sculpture, and the decorative arts (e.g., wedding chests). Questions we will explore include, but are not limited to, How were love and marriage related during the Renaissance? What role did sex, gender, and violence play in relationships between couples and within society? How do gender and genre affect the ways in which love, sex, and marriage are depicted? How did cultural differences influence writers' and artists' interpretations of love, sex, and marriage? And what about same-sex unions? Other topics will include virginity and celibacy, erotic literature, family and class structures, and divorce.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: COL123, FGSS123, MDST125
Prereq: None

RL&L123F Love, Sex, and Marriage in Renaissance Europe (FYS)

This seminar compares literary depictions of love, sex, and marriage from the 14th to the 17th centuries by writers from England, France, Germany, Italy, the Low Countries, Spain, and Sweden. (Students will be able to study writings from other parts of Europe over the course of the semester should they so choose.) We will read texts composed by women and men in genres including poetry, theater, the short story, the essay, the maxim, the travel narrative, and the sermon. Though the seminar is focused on literature, we will also consider painting, engravings, sculpture, and the decorative arts (e.g., wedding chests). We will explore questions such as: How were love and marriage related during the Renaissance? What roles did sex, gender, race, class, and violence play in relationships between couples and within society, and how were they represented in literature and art? How do gender and genre affect the ways in which love, sex, and marriage are depicted? How did cultural differences influence writers' and artists' interpretations of love, sex, and marriage? And what about homosexual love, same-sex unions, and depictions of dissident sexualities and genders? Finally, how do contemporary (21st-century) writers reimagine Renaissance representations of love, sex, and marriage, and why do Renaissance texts and images matter today? Other topics will include virginity and celibacy, friendship, erotic literature and pornography, religion, family and class structures, and divorce. This seminar engages students with university-level research by navigating search engines and databases (beyond a Google search!), honing their analytical skills, and polishing their academic prose. Students will also have the opportunity to write creatively should they so choose.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: COL123F, FGSS123F, MDST125F, WLIT249F
Prereq: None

RL&L123Z Love, Sex, and Marriage in Renaissance Europe

This seminar compares literary depictions of love, sex, and marriage from the 14th to the 17th centuries by writers from England, France, Germany, Italy, the Low Countries, Spain, and Sweden. (N.B. Students will be able to study writings from other parts of Europe over the course of the semester should they so choose.) We will read texts composed by women and men in genres including poetry, theater, the short story, the essay, the maxim, the travel narrative, and the sermon. Though the seminar is focused on literature, we will also consider painting, engravings, sculpture, and the decorative arts (e.g., wedding chests). We will explore questions such as: How were love and marriage related during the Renaissance? What roles did sex, gender, race, class, and violence play in relationships between couples and within society, and how were they represented in literature and art? How do gender and genre affect the ways in which love, sex, and marriage are depicted? How did cultural differences influence writers' and artists' interpretations of love, sex, and marriage? And what about "homosexual" love, same-sex unions, and depictions of dissident sexualities and genders? Finally, how do contemporary (21st-century) writers reimagine Renaissance representations of love, sex, and marriage, and why do Renaissance texts and images matter today? Other topics will include virginity and celibacy, friendship, erotic literature and pornography, religion, family and class structures, and divorce. This seminar engages students with university-level research by navigating search engines and databases (beyond a Google search!), honing their analytical skills, and polishing their academic prose. Students will also have the opportunity to write creatively should they so choose.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: COL123Z, ENGL123Z, FGSS123Z, MDST125Z, WLIT249Z
Prereq: None

RL&L125 Jungle and Desert Adventures

This course analyzes the constellation of images and sensations conjured up by the terms "jungle" and "desert" that are opposite but equally extreme. We will explore European adventure tales and travelogues, contemporary non-Western novels, children's books, and films in a quest to understand the imaginative power of these landscapes. Through our readings of such a wide range of texts, we will ask questions such as, What do these landscapes signify? How do descriptions of landscape convey a sense of individual and collective identity? What psychological terrain is explored when writing about extreme landscapes? And finally, how do we each see ourselves in relation to landscape? What is our own version of an "extreme" landscape?
Offering: Host
Grading: Cr/U
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

RL&L126 El Greco to Picasso: Modern Art's Passion for Golden Age Spain

This course examines the life and afterlife of the Spanish artists of the Golden Age, whose achievements reached unprecedented heights in the 17th century. Centuries later, their works took on new roles as artists of other times and cultures found their own inspiration in works of the past: Manet copied Velázquez, Picasso copied El Greco, and (famously on "Project Runway") Christian Soriano copied Murillo. What allowed these complex works to resonate so strongly in another era? Is such influence automatically a sign of success? And why have the works of Francisco Goya inspired more filmmakers than any other artist? Students will be introduced to the reading of visual art for stylistic, historical, and political content and develop a critical understanding of art and society in Golden Age Spain, as well as insights into the role of art as a cultural currency.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

RL&L127 Catholicism and Ideology in the Hispanic World

Catholicism has played a number of roles in the cultural politics of the Hispanic world, appearing as a place of national being, resistance, and conservatism. In this course, we will read a number of texts from different periods and national contexts with a view to understanding how writers and intellectuals from Spain, Latin America, and the U.S. engage with Catholicism and the historical conditions under which they do so.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-LAST
Prereq: None

RL&L129 Writing the French Revolution

"Liberty, equality, and fraternity" was the slogan of the French Revolution and features three concepts of enduring interest. In this seminar we will explore the French Revolution and its antecedents--and what these can mean for us today. In the process we will delve into a number of ways of thinking and modes of representation: historical thinking, of course, but we will also get a sense of the origins of sociology and political science, the power of scientific thinking, and differences between literary and visual representation (especially films). This course will also serve as a writing workshop emphasizing the nuts and bolts of good writing and experimenting with such rhetorical modes as argument, personal narrative, persuasion, and fiction-writing.
Offering: Host
Grading: Cr/U
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: COL129
Prereq: None

RL&L130F If This Is an Author: Primo Levi and the Politics of Authorship (FYS)

In this First Year Seminar, we look at what makes an author to help you become a better writer. Through the case study of Primo Levi, we address questions of authorship, reception, and appropriation. From his seminal Holocaust text, "If This Is a Man" (first published in 1947, also known in the States as "Survival in Auschwitz"), to the philosophical essays of "The Drowned and the Saved" (1986), Levi was a writer of many genres (memoir, poetry, short fiction, novel, non-fiction) who confronted some of the most crucial themes of the 20th century: genocide, moral choices, the uses of science and technology, the relationship between historical truth and memory, and the power of language. In this course, we reflect on what an author is in theory (Barthes, Foucault, Sedgwick, Spivak, etc.) and in practice, engaging with and reacting to Levi's writing through such questions as: what makes a literary work authentic and why should we trust the words of an author? How do authors affirm their authority in their own country and abroad, and what is the role of publishers, translators, and critics in their reception? What happens when an author becomes a character for another author, and, more generally, what are the aesthetic and ethical implications of appropriating an author's body (of work)? As we critically read a significant portion of Levi's "Complete Works", you will hone your interpretative and writing skills through class discussion, short writing assignments, in-class presentations, and ample feedback, understanding how questions of authorship do not pertain solely to a literary author like Primo Levi, but can also help you become a more confident writer.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

RL&L140F Van Gogh and the Myth of Genius (FYS)

This seminar will investigate in depth the career of this immensely popular and influential artist. Van Gogh has been the subject of much myth-making--both in his time and today--in which he appears as the quintessential mad genius whose passionate and tormented emotions become the stuff of art. We will both investigate the formation of this myth and view it critically, balancing it against the artist's own account of his career in his paintings and prodigious correspondence. Van Gogh's extensive, insightful, and fascinating writing begs the question of how one should treat an artist's statements when interpreting his works. We will also examine the role of biography in art. Finally, rather than viewing the artist as an isolated creator, we will situate his work within the artistic landscape of late 19th-century Europe, and especially France, where he spent his most productive years as an artist, 1886--1890.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: ARHA140F
Prereq: None

RL&L141 Van Gogh: Modernity, Utopia, and Nineteenth-Century Art

This course will investigate in-depth the career of this immensely popular and influential artist. Van Gogh has been the subject of much myth making--both in his time and today--in which he appears as the quintessential mad genius whose passionate and tormented emotions become the stuff of art. This class goes beyond the media image of the artist and looks hard at his paintings, drawings, and letters, placing them in their respective artistic, literary, and historical contexts. Van Gogh engaged with social issues, above all the plight of peasants, artisans, the poor, and the marginalized--the most vulnerable members of society. He sought to give form to their experience in ways that were mediated by Dutch and French landscape painting and French naturalist literature. Upon moving to Paris, van Gogh absorbed the lessons of Impressionist, Neo-impressionist, and Symbolist painters before moving to the south of France, where he created his most memorable works of sun-drenched fields, bar and café interiors, and common workers. Toward the end of his life, he increasingly conceived of art as a site for utopian projections and emotional solace. We shall study the work of this immensely productive artist and along the way develop art historical skills, including visual and textual analysis, historical and contextual interpretation, how to evaluate an artist's personal correspondence in relationship to his painted oeuvre, and independent research.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: ARHA141
Prereq: None

RL&L148F Responding to Political Turmoil (FYS)

"What just happened? What's going to happen? What do we do now?" Political turmoil, while disconcerting to say the least, is nothing new. This course will look at case studies from various times and regions--including the creation of the U.S.; Fascist Spain; the 1960s in the U.S., France, and elsewhere; Brazil's military dictatorship; Italy in the 1990s; the Arab Spring; contemporary Mali and D. R. Congo--to see how others have responded to periods of political oppression and upheaval. After an initial period of discussion based on readings, we will hold conversations with members of our campus community who have experienced various forms of authoritarianism. The course is both academic and project-based: as we gain perspective through academic readings and assignments on the issue of political turmoil, we will turn what we learn into well-informed, measured, concrete action. In particular, we will workshop several writing exercises related to the topic and intended to make an impact (e.g., letter to the editor, letter to an elected official, public service announcement for the radio). All students (including those whose first language is not English) are welcome in the course and will receive individualized attention to their writing.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

RL&L150F Undoing Gender in Medieval France (FYS)

In this course, we will go way back--before Stonewall and even Simone de Beauvoir--to depictions of gender diversity in multiple medieval literary genres including romances, songbooks, lais, and chantefable. We will dive deep into medieval French texts with an ability to hold ambiguous and complex representations of gender and sexuality. We will discuss canonical French literary works in translation and also in medieval manuscript, alongside contemporary works on gender, queer, and trans theory, in order to illuminate what medieval literature can teach us about gender identities and desire processes that trouble or even escape the gender binary, as it is commonly understood today. As will become clear from our explorations of medieval French texts and manuscripts, many identity categories that we take to be stable, eternal, or "natural," are contingent and simply "naturalized." Medieval genders are not ours, and our genders will not be those of future generations.



This is a writing-intensive course, and you will produce upwards of 20 pages of academic writing by the semester's end. In this class, we will consider writing a collaborative and ongoing process. In the first few weeks, you will be exposed to ideas about gender and sexuality that surprise you. Your first written assignment will be to describe something "weird" that intrigues you and that you would like to investigate more. Sparks of confusion and intrigue are often seeds that grow into ideas and ultimately arguments! As you investigate this topic, you will be encouraged to begin writing about it, and sharing your writing with your peers. In addition to reviewing drafts of your peers essays, you will produce abstracts, outlines, and short conference papers to practice different means of focusing your thought in writing and communicating your thoughts to an audience. Our course will culminate in a collaborative miniconference, where we will work collaboratively to trouble and undo commonsense notions of gender.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

RL&L176 Days and Knights of the Round Table

This course will study the evolution of the Arthurian legend from its origins in sixth-century Britain to its fullest development in the 13th-century French Lancelot-Grail cycle. The course will look at the way the various developments of the legend were rooted in specific historical circumstances and yet contributed to the elaboration of a rich and complex narrative that has been appropriated in different ways by each succeeding period of Western European culture.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: MDST235
Prereq: None

RL&L176F Days and Knights of the Round Table (FYS)

This course will study the evolution of the Arthurian legend from its origins in sixth-century Britain to its fullest development in the 13th-century French Lancelot-Grail cycle. The course will look at the way the various developments of the legend were rooted in specific historical circumstances and yet contributed to the elaboration of a rich and complex narrative that has been appropriated in different ways by each succeeding period of Western European culture.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: WLIT262F
Prereq: None

RL&L203 Modern Europe

This course surveys the history of Europe since 1815 and is intended primarily as an introduction to decisive events and interpretation of central themes. Attention will be devoted to major political, social, economic, and cultural developments, beginning with the many dimensions of the political and industrial revolutions of the 19th century; continuing with the emergence of nation-states and nationalism, working-class movements, the consequences of imperialism and the World War I, and communism and fascism; and concluding with study of the World War II, the reassertion of Europe, the collapse of the Soviet system, and contemporary issues.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-HIST
Identical With: HIST203
Prereq: None

RL&L210 Romanesque and Gothic Art and Architecture

This course introduces the art and architecture of Romanesque and Gothic Europe, that is, later medieval Europe ca. 1100-1400, focusing especially on Germany, France, Italy, England, and Spain, as well as the wider Mediterranean. Architecture, painting, sculpture, and the luxury arts (e.g., metalwork, ivory, and textiles) will be our focus, supplemented by primary-source texts and secondary literature. Key themes will include sacred spaces, such as cathedrals and monasteries; sacred images and devotion; gender; pilgrimage and the relic; geography; the Other; the monstrous and the miraculous; courtly love and chivalry; the relationship between Christianity, Judaism, and Islam; and premodern definitions of art, the artist, the donor, craftsmanship, and value.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: ARHA210, MDST210
Prereq: None

RL&L210Z Romanesque and Gothic Art and Architecture

This course introduces the art and architecture of Romanesque and Gothic Europe, that is, later medieval Europe ca. 1100-1400, focusing especially on Germany, France, Italy, England, and Spain, as well as the wider Mediterranean. Architecture, painting, sculpture, and the luxury arts (e.g., metalwork, ivory, and textiles) will be our focus, supplemented by primary-source texts and secondary literature. Key themes will include sacred spaces, such as cathedrals and monasteries; sacred images and devotion; gender; pilgrimage and the relic; geography; the Other; the monstrous and the miraculous; courtly love and chivalry; the relationship between Christianity, Judaism, and Islam; and premodern definitions of art, the artist, the donor, craftsmanship, and value.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: ARHA210Z, MDST210Z
Prereq: None

RL&L211 Depicting Death in Literature

This course analyzes the theme of death primarily within French and francophone writing (in English translation), tracing the evolution of death imagery over time in literary texts. The curriculum will investigate various contexts related to the environment and language usage, offering a nuanced understanding of how the portrayal of death has changed in literature.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CGST
Identical With: CGST141, CHUM141
Prereq: None

RL&L212 Early Renaissance Art and Architecture in Italy

This course surveys key monuments of Italian art and architecture produced between ca. 1300 and 1500. Focusing on major centers such as Florence, Milan, Rome, and Venice, as well as smaller courts such as Urbino and Mantua, it considers the works and careers of the most important artists and architects of the period, among them Giotto, Brunelleschi, Donatello, Giovanni Bellini, Botticelli, and Leonardo da Vinci. Monuments are studied in their broader intellectual, political, and religious context, with particular attention paid to issues of patronage, devotion, gender, and spectatorship. Class discussions will be based on close readings of primary sources and scholarly texts on a wide range of topics.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: ARHA221, MDST222
Prereq: None

RL&L213 Introduction to Existentialism

This course covers the wide variety of thinkers who may be considered a part of the existentialist tradition. The political and cultural phenomenon of existentialism asks questions concerning the essence of freedom in modern society, the role of emotions and passions in subjectivity, how meaning is brought to life, and the tensions between individuality and society. We will address these questions through the writings of thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Emilio Uranga, Leopoldo Zea, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Frantz Fanon. Throughout we will investigate what lessons for political life and belonging we can draw from these thinkers in our contemporary world.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-PHIL
Identical With: PHIL213
Prereq: None

RL&L217 Venice and the Renaissance

Venice -- a city built almost impossibly on a forest of stilts sunk into the mud of the lagoon and buttressed by powerful myths of divine origins, permanence, and prosperity - produced some of the most spectacular works of Renaissance art and architecture. This introductory-level course on the art and culture of Venice's "golden age" considers the works of artists such as Carpaccio, Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, Veronese, and Tintoretto, and architects such as Codussi, Sansovino, and Palladio in the context of the city's unique setting, social and governmental structure, cultural and political milieu, and larger geopolitical significance. It also positions Venice's artistic production within the broader framework of early modern Europe, exploring its connections with Byzantium and the Islamic world. The course also introduces students to key issues and methods of art history.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: ARHA127
Prereq: None

RL&L220 Authority and Resistance: France Since 1870

Historians suggest it may be normal for France to be always on the verge of crisis owing to the persistence of irreconcilable conflicts and a celebration and practice of resistance. They conclude that France may be ungovernable, noting that five presidents since 1981, frustrated and resisted, have accomplished very little. This course studies France under three republics and a dictatorship, beginning with defeat in war and revolutionary upheaval in 1870-1871 and concluding with current, sustained challenges to state authority and liberal democracy. We will survey this 150-year history, emphasizing political forms, ideologies and movements, social change, the economy, and cultural developments. Particular consideration will be given to revolutionary ideas and activities, working-class organizations, socialism and communism, conservative thought and action, extreme rightist movements, the degradation of rural life, the experiences of three wars against Germany, imperialism and decolonization, key personalities, and styles of authority and resistance. Times of emergency and crisis will command attention, specifically the Paris Commune of 1871; the Dreyfus Affair of the 1890s; the Great War of 1914-1918; the Popular Front of the 1930s; the military defeat of 1940; the drama of collaboration or resistance, 1940-1944; the early years of the Fifth Republic, 1958-1969; the extraordinary career of General de Gaulle; and the "yellow vests" in 2018-2019.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-HIST
Identical With: HIST220
Prereq: None

RL&L221 The Pedagogy of Second Language Teaching and Learning

This course offers a foundation for second language (L2) acquisition in the classroom and teaching approaches. Specifically:

- characteristics of L2 learning

- an understanding of the most commonly used L2 methodologies and strategies

- basic know-how for analyzing and creating materials for language learning/teaching

- L2 teaching as a profession

Classes and readings will be in English, given that the tutorial combines students of French and Spanish. However, the development of students' target language (TL) is also considered a priority in the course, supported by looking at authentic and pedagogical materials, creating pedagogical materials of their own, and by using the language in class during volunteering hours.

This course is intended for students who, being FREN, HISP, or RMST majors or advanced learners in French or Spanish, may be considering a career in education, and who commit to volunteering at the Middletown public schools while taking this course (at the very least). There is a volunteering commitment of 2 hours/week minimum during the semester. Students must take this course concurrently with a FREN or SPAN course numbered 215 or above.
Offering: Host
Grading: Cr/U
Credits: 0.50
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

RL&L223 Second Language Acquisition and Teaching

This course introduces students to the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and addresses the following questions: How do humans learn additional languages after they have acquired their first? Why is there such variability observed in the rates and outcomes of second language learning? Is it possible to attain native(-like) linguistic competence in another language?



We begin with the theories and applications of SLA, and then examine major pedagogical movements in Second Language Teaching in the U.S. Students will develop the ability to critically assess current methods, materials, and techniques for teaching various language skills and will produce their own pedagogical activities to be used in a classroom setting. Students of French and Spanish may also wish to enroll in RL&L 223L, a 0.5 credit service learning course in which students volunteer in the Middletown Public Schools.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: EDST223
Prereq: None

RL&L223L Second Language Acquisition & Pedagogy - Teaching Romance Languages

How do humans learn additional languages after they have acquired their first? Why is there such variability observed in the rates and outcomes of second language learning? Is it possible to attain native(-like) linguistic competence in another language? This course is intended for students who may be considering a career in education. We begin with the theories and applications of SLA, and then examine major pedagogical movements in Second Language Teaching in the U.S. Students will develop the ability to critically assess current methods, materials, and techniques for teaching various language skills and will produce their own pedagogical activities to be used in a classroom setting.



In this service-learning course, students are required to volunteer a minimum of two hours per week in the Middletown Public Schools, assisting French, Italian, and Spanish teachers in their world language classes. Students will write weekly journal entries reflecting on their classroom experience, and will learn to evaluate, adapt, and create pedagogical materials. By the end of the semester, they will have created a portfolio of activities that can be used in a foreign language classroom.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: EDST223L
Prereq: None

RL&L224 The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Rethinking the Italian Renaissance

In this course we explore the intellectual achievements of the Italian Renaissance. We study the development of new secular values and the quest for the fulfillment of body and soul, glory, and exuberant pleasures. We question notions of beauty, symmetry, proportion, and order. We also unveil often-neglected aspects of Renaissance counter-cultures, such as the aesthetics of ugliness and obscenity and practices of marginalization (e.g., misogyny, homophobia). We inquire into the rediscovery of classical civilizations. We consider how the study of antiquity fundamentally changed the politics, literatures, arts, and philosophies of Italy at the dawn of the modern era. Through a close reading of texts by authors such as Francesco Petrarca, Niccolo Machiavelli, and Michelangelo, we investigate continuities and ruptures between their quest for human identity and ours. This course is conducted in English, and all primary and secondary sources are in English.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: COL224, ITAL224, MDST223
Prereq: None

RL&L225F Writing Biography: Denis Diderot, a Case Study (FYS)

How does one re-create someone else's life, in words? How does one conjure up the historical context that surrounds a far away existence? How does one bring together different forms of evidence--from the archive, primary sources, secondary sources, and written shreds of a life--to create the illusion of knowing the dead? In this course, we will ask these questions about the most fascinating figure of the French Enlightenment, Denis Diderot (1713--1784). In addition to editing the greatest encyclopedia of the 18th century, this would-be priest turned atheist also dreamt of natural selection before Darwin, the Oedipus complex before Freud, and a form of genetic manipulation centuries before Dolly the Sheep was born, all the while making significant contributions to art criticism, dramaturgy, natural history, and political philosophy. His private life, which includes affairs and prison, is also worthy of scrutiny and examination. While reading about his existence and studying a selection of his works, students in this class will undertake a series of biography-related written exercises that seek to resurrect various aspects of this intriguing thinker or members of his cohort. This course and readings are in English.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: WRCT225F
Prereq: None

RL&L226 The Cosmos of Dante's "Comedy"

In 1321, Dante Alighieri completes the final cantos of the "Comedy" and breathes his last. After 700 years, the "Comedy" has not finished saying what it has to say. This course provides an in-depth introduction to Dante's masterwork as a point of entry to the history of Western literature, philosophy, and science. The core of the course consists of an intensive study of Dante's encyclopedic poem in relation to the culture and history of Medieval Europe. We examine the poem as both a product and an interpretation of the world it describes. We also observe how the "Comedy" casts its long shadow on modern culture: in Primo Levi's description of the horror of Nazi concentration camps, or in Amiri Baraka's fragmentary representation of America's infernal racist system. We investigate the challenges that Dante's text elicits when it migrates to visual and cinematic arts (from medieval illuminations to Robert Rauschenberg to David Fincher), continuously camouflaging and adapting to different media. Major topics of this course include: representations of the otherworld; the soul's relation to the divine; Dante's concepts of governance and universal peace; mythology and theology in Dante's Christian poetics; the role of the classics in the Middle Ages; intertextuality and imitation; genres and genders in medieval literature; notions of authorship and authority during the 13th and 14th centuries; the culture and materiality of manuscripts in the Middle Ages; and the reception of Dante's work from the 14th century to the present. The course combines a close analysis of Dante's inventiveness and literary strategies with exercises in analytical writing and in multimedia translation and adaptation, aimed at prompting critical reflection on the ways in which present cultural practices are built upon the practices of the past. This course is conducted in English; no previous knowledge of Italian is required.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: ITAL226, COL234, RELI218, MDST226, WLIT250
Prereq: None

RL&L227 Desire, Deception, Disenchantment: Five French Novels in Translation and on Screen

This course aims to study five French novels from the 17th to the 20th centuries in translation, alongside and against their respective cinematic adaptations. We will begin with Lafayette's The Princess of Cleves (1678), one of the Western world's first psychological novels, and then move on to Choderlos de Laclos' epistolary novel Dangerous Liaisons (1782). We will then read Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary (1856), Albert Camus' The Stranger (1942), and Marguerite Duras's The Lover (1984). Films will include: Jean Delannoy's 1961 adaptation of Lafayette's novel, Christophe Honoré's The Beautiful Person (2008), a modern-day adaptation of the story, and Rémy Sauder's 2011 documentary on how the novel is being used in a French school in Marseille; three adaptations of Laclos's novel: Roger Vadim's cutting-edge Les Liaisons dangereuses 1960, Miloš Forman's 1989 Valmont, and Stephen Frears's 1998 acclaimed Dangerous Liaisons; three adaptations of Madame Bovary: Vincent Minnelli's film (1949), Claude Chabrol's adaptation from 1991 starring Isabelle Huppert, and Sophie Barthes's version (2014); Luchino Visconti's adaptation of Camus' The Stranger (Lo straniero, 1967); and Jean-Jacques Annaud's The Lover (1992). These novels and their adaptations will allow us to think about notions of canon formation; genre and narrative; the uses of history in fiction; censorship, controversy, and crime; gender, class, race, and (post)colonialism; translation; and how these texts have been and continue to be read, used, adapted, and transformed from their time of publication up to the present day.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

RL&L229 Political Turmoil

"What just happened? What's going to happen? What do we do now?" Political turmoil, while disconcerting to say the least, is nothing new. This course will look at case studies from various times and regions--the creation of the US; Fascist Spain; the 1960s in the U.S., France, and elsewhere; Brazil's military dictatorship; Italy in the 1990s; the Arab Spring; contemporary Mali and D. R. Congo, among others--to see how others have responded to periods of political oppression and upheaval. After an initial period of discussion based on readings, we will hold conversations with members of our campus community who have experienced various forms of authoritarianism. The goal of the course is ultimately project-based: as we gain perspective on the issue of political turmoil, we will turn what we learn into well-informed, measured, concrete action. In particular, we will workshop several writing exercises related to the topic and destined to make an impact (e.g., letter to the editor, letter to an elected official, public service announcement for the radio). All students (including those whose first language is not English) are welcome in the course and will receive individualized attention to their writing.
Offering: Host
Grading: Cr/U
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

RL&L230 Between Marx and Coca-Cola: European Cinema of the 1960s and 1970s

In the 1960s and early 1970s, a growing sense of alienation and social unrest spread across Europe, making their marks in both society and cinema. Borrowing the words of New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard, these years led to the emergence of "the children of Marx and Coca-Cola." This course, taught in English, will introduce students to a multi-faceted portrait of Europe in the 1960s and 70s through avant-garde and popular cinema from France, Italy, Spain, Germany, and Eastern Europe. We will focus on films that depict global capitalism, gender relations, and government control. Some of the themes we will discuss include the critique of consumerism and materialism, the changing role of women in society, life under socialism and dictatorship, and youth counterculture. Last but not least, students will learn how New Wave directors challenged traditional approaches to narrative cinema.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: Cr/U
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CGST
Identical With: CGST230
Prereq: None

RL&L231 Mystics and Militants: Medieval Women Writers

In this class we will read a wide range of works written by European women between ca. 1100--1400, including courtly, devotional, and polemical texts. The course will explore ideologies of gender in the Middle Ages and examine the ways in which our authors confronted the antifeminist discourses of their eras with learning and imagination. We will consider such topics as constructions of sexuality and the body, "courtly love," mystical religious experience, heresies, humanism, and utopian realms. In short, we will read works by women who created their own forms of authority and in doing so, both influenced and defied the authorities of their time.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ENGL
Identical With: ENGL232, MDST238, FGSS224
Prereq: None

RL&L232 Obscure Enigma of Desire

This course is an introduction to the study of the ways we create meanings when we read texts. It will focus on several deliberately obscure literary texts from twelfth-century France and will examine them in the light of the classical and medieval concepts of enigma, the marvelous (wonderful), fabula, and allegory as well as some modern theoretical works about how we understand narratives. We will seek to understand why deliberate obscurity is an important part of literature and how medieval authors created narratives that seem particularly meaningful precisely because they are obscure. We will consider why we feel these texts have meaning and the ways in which we make them meaningful to us. This course will be co-taught in parallel with a course (in English) on the same subject offered at the Charles University in Prague by Professor Lucie Dolezalova. About half of the classes will be conducted together with the class in Prague through teleconferencing and Professor Dolezalova will teach one week of the course at Wesleyan and meet with students while she is here.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: MDST232
Prereq: None

RL&L233 Modern Italy on the Silver Screen: 1960--2015

This course is an introduction to modern Italian culture through the lens of Italian cinema. Beginning in the postwar era, we will look at the radical transformations that have shaped contemporary Italy by examining the aesthetic and narrative trends of the silver screen. Italian cinema holds an important place in global film culture, giving rise to new artistic forms (from neorealism to spaghetti westerns and arthouse slashers) that have dramatically impacted foreign and domestic sensibilities. Among the films screened are Fellini's La dolce vita, Pasolini's Mamma Roma, De Sica's Matrimonio all'italiana, Leone's Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo, Argento's Suspiria, Moretti's Caro diario, Ozpetek's Saturno contro, and Giordana's Quando sei nato non puoi più nasconderti. Each film screening is accompanied by a brief presentation of the socio-historical context in which it was produced, allowing students to situate the artistic projects within broader Italian social and political histories. By the end of the term students will have an understanding of the last half-century of Italian national history and will be familiar with key terms in film theory and analysis. This course is taught in English; films will be screened in Italian with English subtitles.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: ITAL233
Prereq: None

RL&L234 Cuneiform to Kindle: Fragments of a Material History of Literature

This course provides a theoretical and historical investigation of diverse media of literary expressions from clay tablets to digital texts. We will inquire into the history of writing through different technologies and modes of composition, circulation, and reception from antiquity to the present day. By engaging in such topics as the transition from scroll to codex, from manuscript to print, and from book to Kindle, we will consider the history of literacy in relation to other forms of expression (oral, visual, networked) and analyze different practices of organizing textual materials (punctuation, paragraphing, annotation). We will scrutinize paratextual elements (title, front matter, opening information, foreword) and various forms of verbal accretions (glosses, commentaries, editorial interventions). We will examine shifting notions of authorship and originality and explore different systems of storage (libraries, archives, museums). And by questioning the multifaceted, nondeterministic interplay between literary artifacts and the media by which they are formalized and materially formed, we will provide a critical and historical reflection on the nature of textuality, writing, and media.



Readings will set essays in the history of the book and media studies alongside key literary case studies from various periods and geographical areas. Projects will engage with textual materiality (including through the creation of book-objects of our own). The course will be conducted in English.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: COL232, MDST231, WLIT261
Prereq: None

RL&L235B Curatorial Workshop: Art and the Ecological Imagination, 1840-1870

This course examines the emergence of an "ecological consciousness" in art during the mid-19th century through readings, discussion, and firsthand study of works in the Davison Art Center print collection. Although the term "ecology" was first coined in 1866, 19th-century thinkers had long been concerned with the interrelationship of organisms, including humans' place and impact on nature. This class examines how visual artists before Impressionism contributed to the 19th century's "ecological imagination" through their representations of landscapes. Known as the "Barbizon School," this group of artists left the metropolis of Paris to immerse themselves in the wild and rugged terrain of the Fontainebleau Forest while also embarking on journeys to remote regions of France. These members of the first artists' colony seceded from the French Academy of Fine Arts and pursued strategies of independence that were allied at the time with radical politics. In their works they experimented with new materials and approaches to composition that included but no longer prioritized humans, in order to foreground processes of transformation internal to nature itself. The consciousness that artists forged through painting and printmaking led them to become among the world's first conservationists; they successfully petitioned the French government to protect parts of the Forest of Fontainebleau some 20 years before the creation of the first National Park in the United States.



The first half of the course will be devoted to reading and discussion; the second half will center on the study of works in the Davison Art Collection, which includes a superb collection of original and experimental prints by Barbizon School artists. The final project will be the curation of a temporary exhibition of works from the collection, including a selection and arrangement of works, explanatory texts, and a public gallery talk.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: ARHA263B, ENVS263B
Prereq: None

RL&L236 Don Quixote: How to Read the Ultimate Novel

No novel is more celebrated than "Don Quixote," albeit in often contrary ways: touchstone at once of the modern and the post-modern; of prosaic and magical realism; of Romantic idealism and skepticism, relativism, or materialism; of a truth-telling folly; and of the competing claims of books and "life" or history and fiction. Sample superlatives: the one text that can challenge Shakespeare in the Western canon (Harold Bloom), all prose fiction is a variation on its theme (Lionel Trilling), one of the four great myths of modern individualism (Ian Watt). Each generation recognizes itself differently in it and every major literary tradition has made it its own. One secret of its lasting appeal is that, brilliantly improvisatory and encyclopedic, it resists being pinned down. Nothing quite prepares us for the hallucinatory thing itself. There is something for every taste: self-invention; the biology of personality; humor, pathos, and tragicomedy; high and low culture; prose, poetry, and theatrics; episodic variety in a long narrative arc; probing examination of the ambiguities of heroism with a parade of spirited and resourceful heroines who rival and often upstage the heroes; and the disruptive transformations of a new world order (the print, educational, and military revolutions; early modern globalization; incipient capitalism; the explosive growth of profit-driven entertainments). A celebration of the transformative power of imagination even as it casts a gimlet eye on how fantasies can go awry, what passes for "the real world" is often as nutty as the hero himself. We will read, discuss, and write about "Don Quixote" in English, together with key examples of the critical, philosophical, literary, and artistic responses it has inspired. The course assumes no familiarity with literature, history, or Spanish; it does call for an interest in grappling with this wonderful text closely, imaginatively, and historically.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: COL236, MDST236, WLIT247
Prereq: None

RL&L237 Making New Worlds: Encounters on Turtle Island

From before the arrival of the earliest fishing ships off the coast of Newfoundland to the fall of New France at the close of the Seven Years' War, Turtle Island (North America) was the site of entangled encounters. Overlapping imperial claims and the construction of new societies took place on Indigenous homelands with deep histories. This course will examine North America as a contested and negotiated territory in which imperial plans were subjected to local contexts and contingencies. Using primary and secondary sources, we will examine major events (explorations, encounters, and wars), the rise and fall of imperial powers (French, British, Dutch, and Spanish), and the daily realities that shaped experiences in North America (trade, religion, sex, forced migrations, and disease). Throughout, we will focus on the persistence and resistance of Indigenous nations who protected (and still protect) their homelands and lifeways.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-HIST
Identical With: HIST237, AMST284
Prereq: None

RL&L238 Unfinished Revolutions: Uprisings in North America, 1760-1815

While the American Revolution dominates the historical landscape of early American history, the "Age of Revolutions" was full of uprisings in North America. This course will explore resistance movements that began in the latter part of the 18th century, most of which remain unfinished. Students will learn about pan-Indigenous uprisings against settlers, labour revolts against capital, enslaved men and women fighting for freedom, and other resistance movements that shaped (and were shaped by) the American Revolution and the fracturing of the British Empire.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-HIST
Identical With: HIST238
Prereq: None

RL&L239 Van Gogh: Modernity, Utopia, and Nineteenth-Century Art

This course will investigate in-depth the career of this immensely popular and influential artist. Van Gogh has been the subject of much myth making--both in his time and today--in which he appears as the quintessential mad genius whose passionate and tormented emotions become the stuff of art. This class goes beyond the media image of the artist and looks hard at his paintings, drawings, and letters, placing them in their respective artistic, literary, and historical contexts. Van Gogh engaged with social issues, above all the plight of peasants, artisans, the poor, and the marginalized--the most vulnerable members of society. He sought to give form to their experience in ways that were mediated by Dutch and French landscape painting and French naturalist literature. Upon moving to Paris, van Gogh absorbed the lessons of impressionist, neo-impressionist, and symbolist painters before moving to the South of France, where he created his most memorable works of sun-drenched fields, bar and café interiors, and common workers. Toward the end of his life, he increasingly conceived of art as a site for utopian projections and emotional solace. We shall study the work of this immensely productive artist and along the way develop art historical skills, including visual and textual analysis, historical and contextual interpretation, how to evaluate an artist's personal correspondence in relationship to his painted oeuvre, and independent research.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: ARHA239
Prereq: None

RL&L240 Revolutionary France and the Birth of Modern Art, 1789-1900

This course examines the birth of modern art in the wake of the French Revolution and traces the evolution of modern art throughout what would prove to be an extraordinary century of social transformation and formal experimentation, ending in the Dreyfus Affair and Post-Impressionism. Themes this class explores include the advent of a public sphere for art-making and the relationship between artistic advance and appeals to an ever-widening public; painting and revolution in France and its colonies; the redefinition of history painting in light of the abolition of slavery and the Declaration of the Rights of Man; the expansion of France's colonial empire and the representation of racial difference; the rise of feminism and attempts on the part of women artists to find their own voice in a masculine practice; the destabilization of classicism in light of scientific discoveries and ideas of "primitivism"; and the conflict between the unabashed pursuit of artistic individualism and the need to define collective values and experience. Although these developments took place two centuries ago, they continue to define the field of modern art today.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: ARHA240
Prereq: None

RL&L241 Introduction to European Avant-Garde, 1880-1940

This course will introduce students to the major avant-garde art movements from the first half of the 20th century as they took root in France, Germany, Italy, Holland, and Russia. Our focus will be on painting, but we will also look at attempts to go beyond painting in an attempt to gain greater immediacy or social relevance for art. Topics that will receive special emphasis include the relationship between abstraction and figuration, the impact of primitivism and contact with non-Western arts, modernism's relationship to mass culture, war and revolution, gender and representation, art and dictatorship, and the utopian impulse to have the arts redesign society as a whole.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: ARHA241, GRST241
Prereq: None

RL&L242 Italian and Italian American Cinema: Not Just Mafia Movies

The entanglements of Italian and Italian American cinema date to the medium's silent era. If the Taviani Brother's 1987 film Good Morning, Babylon is to be believed, while filming Intolerance (1916) D.W. Griffith lauded and lamented the genius of Giovanni Pastrone's colossus Cabiria (1912), doubting that his own epic film would be able to match the virtuosity of the earlier Italian example. Flash forward to 1931-32 and the trio Little Caesar (1931), Public Enemy (1931), and Scarface (1932) sear into the American imaginary the cinematic representation of the Italian mobster. Beyond Italian artistry and aesthetics of the sort Griffith ostensibly applauded, and the numerous examples of the violent, lawless gangster of Italian descent, what are some other (stereo) typical intersections between Italian and Italian American cinema?



Mapping the Transatlantic transmissions of representations, stereotypes, and aesthetic values reveals how these two cinematic traditions co-articulate and condition each other, with "Hollywood on the Tiber" offering a chief example of the ways Italian and American industrial contexts invoke and implicate each other. How do Hollywood's glamorized gangsters inform Italian representations of organized crime? How do American cinematic "Latin lovers" draw on Italian models? How have representations of masculinity, men, and fathers; femininity, women, and mothers; (large) families, food, religion, class mobility, questions of race and racism, and immigration unfolded in their respective contexts and what do intersections among them reveal?



Two non-fiction films from Scorsese help draw our parameters for our discussion: Italianamerican (1977), for socio-cultural codes; for cinematic contexts, My Voyage to Italy (1999), in which the director reviews his Italian influences and which also serves as an introduction to Italian cinema. We subsequently investigate the indicated themes and topics as they range across a corpus of texts which includes, on the Italian American side: Scarface (Hawks, 1932), Not Wanted (Lupino, 1949), The Godfather (Coppola, 1972), Mean Streets (Scorsese, 1973), Rocky (Avildson, 1977), Raging Bull (Scorsese, 1980), Moonstruck (Jewison, 1987), Married to the Mob (Demme, 1988), True Love (Savoca, 1989), Do the Right Thing (Lee, 1989), The Freshman (Bergman, 1990), Goodfellas (Scorsese, 1990), My Cousin Vinny (Lynn, 1992), Household Saints (Savoca, 1993), The Sopranos (Chase, 1999), The Departed (Scorsese, 2006), Wendy and Lucy (Reicherdt, 2008), The Miracle at St. Anna (Lee, 2008). Alongside these, we examine Italian films drawn from this list: Cabiria (Pastrone, 1912), Umberto D. (De Sica, 1952), I Vitelloni (Fellini, 1953), Rocco and His Brothers (Visconti, 1960), Eclipse (Antonioni, 1962), Amarcord (Fellini, 1974), Kaos (Taviani Brothers, 1984), Mediterraneo (Salvatores, 1990), Johnny Stecchino (Benigni, 1991), Lamerica (Amelio, 1994), Gomorra (film Garrone 2008, series 2014), The Young Pope (Sorrentino, 2016), and The Confessions (Andò, 2016). The films for group presentations will also be drawn from these lists.



This course has no prerequisites. We will work on students' capacity for formal film analysis as we go along and, at the beginning of the course, some students may have greater proficiency in this area. At the same time, other students may initially have a broader knowledge base of Italy and Italian society. Everyone has something to learn. Conducted in English.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: AMST230
Prereq: None

RL&L243 Art and Culture of the Italian Baroque

This introduction to the arts and architecture of 17th-century Italy addresses one of the core paradoxes of the period: that startling innovation and creativity were not inconsistent with serving the purposes of patrons and ideologies that at first appear rigid and authoritarian. Supported by popes, cardinals, new religious orders, and private collectors, artists and architects such as Caravaggio, Artemisia Gentileschi, Pietro da Cortona, Gianlorenzo Bernini, and Francesco Borromini depicted saintly bodies in moments of divine rapture, opened up painted ceilings to elaborate illusionistic visions, and subjected the classical language of architecture to unprecedented levels of movement. Through lectures and discussions of key primary and secondary sources, we will explore the emotive and ideological power of Baroque art, considering the multitude of ways in which it shaped the visual, political, and religious worlds of its day.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: ARHA233
Prereq: None

RL&L244 European Architecture and Urbanism, 1750-1910

This course considers the history and theory of architecture and urbanism in Western Europe from the mid-18th to the early 20th century. A central theme is the relationship between historicism and modernity through the period. Topics include neoclassicism, the picturesque landscape, the Gothic Revival, the Arts and Crafts Movement, the École des Beaux-Arts, the German Rundbogenstil, international expositions, and Art Nouveau. We will focus on specific sites in major cities, including Paris, London, Berlin, Munich, Vienna, Milan, Rome, Brussels, and Barcelona, among others. New or transformed building types include museums, railway stations, apartment blocks, department stores, and theaters. Urban forms include residential squares, boulevards, arcades, and public parks. Architectural culture will be discussed as a response to changing political, economic, technical, and ideological conditions in newly modernizing societies. Urbanism includes the transformation of early modern cities due to industrialization, housing for different social classes, new towns, suburbs, utopian communities, the Garden City, and colonial centers such as Bombay (Mumbai), Algiers, and Hanoi.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: ARHA244
Prereq: None

RL&L245 Not Just Neorealism: Italian Cinema, Its History and Politics

This introductory course on Italian cinema, taught in English, investigates major silent and sound films and contextualizes them, their production, and the subjects they treat within a historical, cultural, and political framework. We will trace the intersection among politics, ideology, and Italian cinema, from its Golden Age of silents through fascism and neorealism (as well as its contested legacy), from a consideration of the "exquisite" examples of the auteur directors like Fellini and Sorrentino to the ways these and other directors enter into dialogue with genre cinema (the giallo, spaghetti westerns, melodrama, etc.), and beyond. Featured filmmakers will be drawn from this list: Pastrone, Rossellini, De Sica, Fellini, Bertolucci, Antonioni, Wertmuller, Cavani, Pasolini, the Taviani Brothers, Leone, Sorrentino, Rohrwacher, Nicchiarelli, Crialese, and others. Additional material includes readings in film theory and criticism, Italian history, literary sources, screenplays, and interviews. For interested students with advanced competency in Italian, there will be a .50 credit (CLAC) discussion section, ITAL245/CGST245, at a time to be determined but very likely after our second class of the week. Italian and Romance Studies Majors, please see additional comments below.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: FILM302, WLIT248
Prereq: None

RL&L250 Integrative Learning Project 1: Crafting Your Digital Identity

Wondering about how you will explain your Wesleyan experience to someone who doesn't get what it is like to attend an eclectic liberal arts institution? Worried about how your experiences at Wesleyan will translate to your post-graduate life? Want to practice talking about yourself so you are ready to enter the job market or apply for graduate school? This course is for you! Throughout the semester, you will practice writing about yourself and will ultimately place what you write in WordPress, the world's most popular platform for website design. Along the way, you will learn about user experience (UX) design principles and research methodologies, so that the website you create draws in your audience and makes them want to learn more about you. Throughout the semester, we will meet once a week to do all of these things in a relaxed, collaborative environment. Join us and bring along some friends!
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: Cr/U
Credits: 0.50
Gen Ed Area: None
Identical With: WRCT200, AFAM250, CSPL200, IDEA200
Prereq: None

RL&L251 Italian Art and Architecture of the 16th Century

In addition to key monuments of 16th-century Italian art and architecture, this course seeks to introduce students to some of the most important figures of the period: artists and architects--such as Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, Bronzino, Titian, and Palladio; their princely and ecclesiastical patrons--such as Cosimo I de' Medici and Pope Julius II; and their critics and biographers--such as Giorgio Vasari and Ludovico Dolce. Our aim will be to understand the complex artistic and architectural landscape of the period against the backdrop of shifting intellectual and religious trends, including the Counter-Reformation. Class discussions will be based on close readings of primary sources and scholarly texts on a wide range of topics.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: ARHA224
Prereq: None

RL&L254 Breaking the Waves: The Japanese and French New Wave Cinemas and Their Legacy

While the French and Japanese New Wave(s) existed as largely contemporaneous cinematic movements, rarely are they discussed together, instilling the impression of two parallel streams, never to converge or intersect. This course hopes to serve as an intervention into this perceived divide through close readings of these groundbreaking cinematic works and an examination of their revolutionary content in the interest of articulating shared philosophical concerns. In many cases, New Wave filmmakers worked as writers and critics before producing films themselves, a fact that speaks to the intensely theoretical nature of their cinema. This course will therefore examine critical writings published in the space of Cahiers du Cinema, Film Art, and other journals as a means of better understanding the thought process that underlies these films. How do these films figure as a response to that of the previous generation and how did they hope to revolutionize cinematic praxis? What was their relationship to political activism and the events of 1968? Finally, we will consider the legacy of these cinemas: What is the prevailing influence of the New Wave on Hollywood and global cinema? What aspects of the movement have been retained and what has been lost along the way?
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Identical With: CEAS254
Prereq: None

RL&L261 Framed: Re/presenting Italian Women Filmmakers

This course trains on Italian films written and directed by women with women protagonists and their stories. Our explorations circulate around activities intended to anchor the course in the real and active and invite students to reflect on the ways these activities and stories resonate in their own lives. Some activities whose filmic representations and reimaginings we will investigate include working, loving, sexing, framing, growing, thinking, collaborating, acting, and making. Our focus on filmmakers will comprise contributions by screenwriters, actors, directors, and editors and consequently we will explore the ways in which women have been "framed" by and for the camera and how women filmmakers have helped "reframe" those representations. Seen historically, our examination will reach from Elvira Notari's films (1911 to 1929) to significant post-WWII collaborations of women actors and directors (e.g., Anna Magnani [with both Luchino Visconti and Roberto Rossellini], Monica Vitti [and Michelangelo Antonioni], Sofia Loren [and Vittorio De Sica], Claudia Cardinale [Sergio Leone and Federico Fellini]). The 1970s and especially the cinema of Liliana Cavani and Lina Wertmuller, set the stage for many of Italy's contemporary women filmmakers, including Francesca Archibugi, Francesca Bertini, Laura Bispuri, Francesca Comencini, Wilma Labate, Alina Marazzi, Susanna Nicchiarelli, Costanza Quatriglio, Alice Rohrwacher, Marina Spada, and Angela Torre. Feminist film criticism and theory will also help us "frame" and "reframe" these contributions.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

RL&L275F Religions Resisting Modernity (FYS)

Why did some Native Americans turn to dance while resisting federal troops? Why do creationists reject evolution? Why do some French Muslims wear a veil when their mothers didn't? Why did Gandhi insist that Indian nationalists spin their own thread? Throughout the last century, resistance has risen to modernity, and religion has played an increasingly important role in challenging the globalization of modern Western values. This seminar will explore how Europe transformed itself into a modern society with worldwide influence. Then it will investigate how the Lakota Sioux, Christian creationists, and Mohandas Gandhi each have used religion in an attempt to resist some aspect of modernity, either outside the Western world or within it. No background in the study of religions is necessary. Ultimately, the course will challenge our very understandings and expectations of what it means to be modern.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-RELI
Identical With: RELI275F
Prereq: None

RL&L280 Exploring Personhood in the 20th and 21st Centuries (CLAC 1.0)

The goal of this course is to provide a thorough examination of the concept of personhood in the 20th century by studying how it has been portrayed and understood in diverse cultural contexts across Arabic, English, and Francophone cultures. Through the use of comparative analysis and an interdisciplinary approach to cultural artifacts--such as works of literature, art, and religious texts as well as current debates around AI and personhood--students will explore how different cultures have approached the question of what it means to be a person and how this has evolved over time. By the end of the course, students will have a deeper comprehension of the various ways in which personhood has been created and perceived throughout different cultural and historical contexts.



The impact of historical occurrences and cultural movements on the construction of personhood, the influence of religion and politics or the fictional writing on conceptions of personhood, the representation of personhood in literature and art, and the emergence of AI as a new frontier in the investigation of personhood are some of the major topics covered in the course. This will open up new discussion topics about posthuman beings and persona status, particularly in science fiction.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CHUM
Identical With: CHUM380, CGST334
Prereq: None

RL&L284 Comparative Politics of Western Europe

The leading nations of Western Europe--Great Britain, France, Germany, and Italy--have developed vibrant economies and stable democracies that differ in important ways from those of the U.S. and from each other. This course explores the ability of European economies to withstand pressures of globalization and the capacity of European democracies to integrate political newcomers such as women and immigrants. We address questions such as, Does New Labour provide a model for parties of the Left across the West, or is its success predicated on the foundations laid by Thatcherism? With the limited ability of the French people to influence politics, should we still consider that country a democracy? Has Germany definitively overcome its Nazi past, or does the strength of German democracy rely on a strong Germany economy? How can we make sense of the Italian "second republic"?
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-GOVT
Identical With: GOVT284
Prereq: None

RL&L290 Reading Theories

In this survey of theories that have shaped the reading of literature and the analysis of culture, emphasis is on key concepts--language, identity, subjectivity, gender, power, and knowledge--and on key figures and schools such as Marx, Freud, Nietzsche, Saussure, Barthes, Gramsci, Benjamin, Althusser, Foucault, Lacan, Deleuze, Jameson, Berlant, Moten, postmodernism, and U.S. feminism.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ENGL
Identical With: COL339, CLST393, CEAS340, GRST231, RUSS340, RULE340, REES340, ENGL295
Prereq: None

RL&L300 The Arthurian Legend on Film

This course will serve both as an introduction to the Arthurian legend and to its cinematographic representation since the 1940s. Medieval texts will be paired with films that are "based" -- more or less closely -- on them. We will consider the ways in which these stories are told in literature and in film and the differences between them. We will also consider the ways in which the legend was used to address both medieval and modern preoccupations.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: MDST302
Prereq: None

RL&L301 History of Spanish Cinema

This course explores the development of Spanish cinema from the early 20th century to the present. We will evaluate how social, political, and economic circumstances condition Spanish cinematography at key junctures of Spanish cultural history in terms of the production and distribution of films, cinematographic style, and thematics. The course will also highlight key facets of the Spanish star system as well as the auteurism of those directors who have achieved international acclaim by reworking a national film idiom within international frames of reference.



For a detailed description of the objectives, materials, viewing requirements and modes of assessments, please visit the course web site at: https://span301.site.wesleyan.edu/
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: FILM301, COL334
Prereq: None

RL&L302 West African Literatures and Cultures in French

This course explores major texts in modern and contemporary Francophone African literature by delving into four major themes that traverse the recent cultural, literary, and political history of Francophone West Africa.



The course starts by investigating the relationships between orality and literature through the lens of often-intersecting debates around tradition and modernity; the focus will then shift to articulations of nation, liberation, and the promises of independence, war, and memory, and finally the ruptures and continuities of the post-colonial, neoliberal present.



By spending significant time with primary sources that span over a century of literary and cultural production from and about Francophone Africa, students will have a deep understanding of the urgencies animating writers wrestling with the weight of the colonial past, the violence of decolonization, the brightness of independence, and the uncertainty of the present. A thorough engagement with some of the most important authors of the last 60 years (e.g. C. H. Kane, B. Diop, Y. Ouloguem, M. Condé, among others) will allow us to deep-dive into the possibilities of literary expression, as well as questions of belonging, nation, and evolving ideas of "Africa."
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: FREN302
Prereq: None

RL&L311 Translation Workshop in Early Modern Spain: Topographies of Love, Arcadia, and History

This course takes a practical approach to the translation of early modern Spanish literature. We will begin by consulting various comments on the art and craft of translation made by 16th-century Spanish translators in their own works before we encounter the curious case of the "pastoral prosimetrum," a type of narrative fiction that reimagined the author and their contemporaries under literary pseudonyms in an updated version of an idyllic Arcadian landscape. From Spanish to English, from experience to poiesis, we'll recontextualize these topographies of love in their own literary and historical moment in order to translate those imaginaries into contemporary English. Readings will be in English and Spanish. Discussions and translations will be in English. There are no prerequisites, but reading knowledge of Spanish is required. Please consult the instructor if you have questions about your language ability.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: Cr/U
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-COL
Identical With: COL311
Prereq: None

RL&L321 Dialogues of Love: A Close Reading

Towards the end of the fifteenth century amidst the burgeoning cultures of the Italian Renaissance in Naples, Genova, and Venice, the exiled Ibero-Sephardic philosopher and physician Judah Abravanel (Leone Ebreo) composed a philosophical work on erotic ethics as a dialogue between love (Philone) and wisdom (Sophia). "The Dialogues of Love" (1535) presented early modern readers with an erotic cosmology which drew upon Ancient and Medieval texts including Plato, Neo-Platonism, Neo-Aristotelianism, Kabbalah, and scriptural commentary. Widely translated, read, and reprinted throughout the sixteenth century, this text animated literary and cultural life throughout sixteenth-century Europe, finding its way into the work of poets and fiction writers such as Miguel de Cervantes. This course engages this unique and breathtaking work of early modern philosophy through a close reading of a Renaissance cosmos staged as a lovers' courtship.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-COL
Identical With: COL321, MDST321, CJST321
Prereq: None

RL&L325 Eloquent Forms: Topics in Italian Renaissance and Baroque Sculpture

Early modern Italy was a site of vibrant and wide-ranging innovations in the field of plastic arts. Fueled by fierce competition, financed by extravagant expenditures, and created for a range of religious, commemorative, and decorative functions in both public and private realms, the sculptural medium reached a pinnacle of creative expression, material experimentation, and theoretical engagement in this period. From monumental urban commissions such as fountains to small-scale precious objects sought out by the wealthy collectors, sculptural works profoundly shaped the visual worlds of early modern Italy. This seminar on the making and meaning of sculpture in the Renaissance and Baroque periods will engage students with the works and careers of several key artists of the era, including Lorenzo Ghiberti, Donatello, Andrea del Verrocchio, Niccolò dell'Arca, Francesco Laurana, Properzia de'Rossi, Michelangelo, Benvenuto Cellini, Giambologna, Leone Leoni, Gianlorenzo Bernini, and Alessandro Algardi, among others. Seminar readings and discussions will be structured around broad themes such as: making and viewing of early modern sculpture; rhetoric of sculptural materials; verisimilitude and sculptural animation; sculpture and the senses; fragmentation and the "non-finito"; touch, desire, and the nude; representations of force and violence; antiquarianism and sculpture collecting; tombs and sculptural commemoration; and monsters and monstrosity in garden sculpture.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: ARHA325
Prereq: None

RL&L327 Criticism and Psychoanalysis

This course introduces some classical psychoanalytic methods of reading and interpretation, with accent on the four concepts Jacques Lacan identified as foundational: the unconscious, repetition, the transference, and the drive. We will approach psychoanalysis as a style of close reading whose influence on forms of interpretation--especially literary interpretation--has been immeasurable. One central concern will be the capacity of psychoanalysis to enable us to read ourselves reading, to make the interpretive situation itself the object of our analysis. Students with an interest in literary-critical methods will benefit from the course, as will students with an interest in the internal logic of an important body of thought.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ENGL
Identical With: ENGL327, GRST227
Prereq: None

RL&L333 Appeasement and the Origins of the Second World War

In this study of Europe's crisis, 1933-1939, from Hitler's appointment as chancellor of Germany to the outbreak of the Second World War, attention will focus upon the reassertion of German power and its effects upon the diplomacy and politics of Great Britain and France. Specific topics will include Hitler's aims and actions; critical events concerning the Rhineland, Spain, Czechoslovakia, and Poland; pacifism and the French Left; Neville Chamberlain and British conservatism; and the debate over the immediate origins of the war in 1939. Readings will include memoirs and contemporary diplomatic documents, newspapers, and journals.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-HIST
Identical With: HIST333
Prereq: None

RL&L339 Modernism and the Total Work of Art

The term "total work of art" refers to the German concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk, which took on new urgency in the 19th century amid social upheaval and revolution. Understood as the intention to reunite the arts into one integrated work, the total work of art was tied from the beginning to the desire to recover and renew the public function of art. While there exist many approaches to totality in the modern era, this course focuses on modernist theories and practices that simultaneously critiqued existing society and posited a utopian alternative. We will begin by studying formulations of totality in response to a cultural crisis initiated by the 1789 French Revolution. From there, we turn to German idealism and to an analysis of composer Richard Wagner's ideas and compositions that made the idea of the synthesis of the arts a central focus for European modernism. Yet if Wagner's works and writings provided the dominant reference for subsequent developments from the 1880s onward, these most often consisted of a search for alternatives to his own theory and practice, particularly in the visual arts. We will examine attempts to envision totality after Wagner in Impressionist painting and German Expressionism. Ideas of totality and utopia continued to carry positive associations for modern artists until the 1930s, when they became co-opted by totalitarian governments. The course concludes by examining the perversion of modernist dreams in Nazi festivals and art exhibitions.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: ARHA339, GRST239, GELT239
Prereq: None

RL&L350 Integrative Learning Project 2: Website Incubator

Have you developed knowledge or expertise about a topic through an internship, engagement in a student organization, time studying abroad, or through some other experience that you would now like to share with the world? This is the class for you! Throughout out the semester, you will work to translate your experience into a website. I will help you do this by asking you to think about the content you would like to share, the audience with whom you would like to share it, and the goal you have for that audience. Ultimately, you will share your experience through WordPress, the world's most popular platform for website design. Along the way, you will learn about user experience (UX) design principles and research methodologies, so that the website you create draws in your audience and makes them want to learn more about your chosen topic. Throughout the semester, we will meet once a week to do all of these things in a relaxed, collaborative environment. Join us and bring along some friends!
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: Cr/U
Credits: 0.50
Gen Ed Area: None
Identical With: WRCT300, AFAM320, CSPL300, IDEA300
Prereq: None

RL&L351 Deconstruction and Politics

Following the later work of Jacques Derrida, we will investigate the significance of the concepts of sovereignty and democracy in some important texts of 20th-century continental philosophy. We shall attempt to understand why these notions are taken at face value and yet still pose many problems for that tradition. Why did democracy and sovereignty give rise to many complications and paradoxes while, at the same time, they continue to hold a vital conceptual import within the political as such. We will thus ask why are political philosophies so invested in sovereignty and democracy? Ultimately, we will consider the possibility of a close affinity between the political and the rhetorical, and will try to understand why democracy and sovereignty tend to exceed conceptual grasp. Because our approach will be primarily deconstructive, we shall also attempt to compare it to other modern and contemporary approaches.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-PHIL
Identical With: PHIL351
Prereq: None

RL&L377 Comparative French Revolutions

This course makes a systematic, comparative analysis of the causes, patterns, and consequences of revolutionary activities in France, examining the revolutions of 1789, 1830, 1848, and 1870. The course will emphasize revolutionary movement organizations, political and social goals, ideology, and industrialization.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-HIST
Identical With: HIST377
Prereq: None

RL&L382 Politics, Revolutions and Visual Culture in the Post-Revolutionary Arab Societies

The course "Politics, Revolutions, and Visual Culture in Post-Revolutionary Arab Societies" critically investigates the interaction of politics, social revolutions, and visual culture in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. This course examines the dynamic interaction between political transformation, revolutionary movements, and the various forms of artistic expression in Arab countries.



Students will delve into the complex interplay between politics and visual culture through a combination of theoretical discussions, case studies, and visual analysis, gaining a nuanced understanding of how images, art, photography, film, and other visual media have shaped and reflected sociopolitical changes in post-revolutionary Arab contexts.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CHUM
Identical With: CHUM382, CGST335
Prereq: None

RL&L383 French Existentialism and Marxism

This course is a study of French thinkers of the 20th century who challenged and reevaluated the principles upon which Western society was based, with an emphasis on the problems and theories concerning the standards of moral action, the nature of political knowledge, political engagement, ethical relativity, free will, and determination.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-HIST
Identical With: HIST383
Prereq: None

RL&L390 Directed Research in European Studies

This course is intended for students who wish to undertake a significant research project or get a head start on a senior essay or thesis devoted to any aspect of European civilization from 500 to 2021. The course will begin with three weeks of regular meetings devoted to the purpose of academic research in the humanities and social sciences, developing and refining a research topic, organizing one's research, bibliographies and sources, the construction of an argument, and the organization of a research paper. Students will work on their research projects individually during the rest of the semester, although the class will meet as a group from time to time so students can present and discuss the state of their work. Students will also have weekly tutorials with the instructor to discuss their progress and plan their next steps. Students who are able to do so are encouraged to engage with research materials in languages other than English.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: COL393, GRST291, MDST390, FREN390
Prereq: None

RL&L401 Individual Tutorial, Undergraduate

Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

RL&L402 Individual Tutorial, Undergraduate

Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

RL&L407 Senior Tutorial (downgraded thesis)

Downgraded Senior Thesis Tutorial - Project to be arranged in consultation with the tutor. Only enrolled in through the Honors Coordinator.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F

RL&L408 Senior Tutorial (downgraded thesis)

Downgraded Senior Thesis Tutorial - Project to be arranged in consultation with the tutor. Only enrolled in through the Honors Coordinator.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F

RL&L409 Senior Thesis Tutorial

Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F

RL&L410 Senior Thesis Tutorial

Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F

RL&L411 Group Tutorial, Undergraduate

Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

RL&L491 Teaching Apprentice Tutorial

The teaching apprentice program offers undergraduate students the opportunity to assist in teaching a faculty member's course for academic credit.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT