FREN101 Elementary French I

This course is designed for first-time French learners who wish to acquire and develop listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills by learning basic vocabulary, useful expressions, and fundamental grammatical structures. Students will also gain cultural insights into the French-speaking world, from Senegal to New Caledonia, from Quebec to Louisiana, from Belgium to Guadeloupe, and beyond. In class, students will participate in activities that promote communicative proficiency and cultural competence through vocabulary and grammar exercises, games, skits, conversation, authentic readings, and the use of various audio-visual materials. Classes are conducted in French. FREN 101 is the first semester of the elementary French language sequence.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN102 Elementary French II

This second-semester elementary French course is designed for students who have taken FREN101 or have had one or two years of French in high school and placed into FREN102 through the language placement test. The main goal of this course is to enable students to achieve intermediate communicative proficiency in French by developing their listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills. Students will thus increase their vocabulary, learn more advanced grammatical structures, and gain further cultural insights into the French-speaking world. In class, students will participate in activities that promote communication and cultural competence through vocabulary and grammar exercises, games, skits, conversation, authentic readings, and the use of various audio-visual materials. Classes are conducted entirely in French.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN110 Accelerated Intermediate French I & II

This course combines two semesters of intermediate French into one to allow for a faster track in French. The course develops students' abilities in the four basic skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing through oral and written practice. It focuses on grammatical structures and vocabulary at the intermediate level and introduces students to contemporary French-language cultures from around the world through discussion of cultural and literary texts and use of audiovisual material.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN111 Intermediate French I

Students will develop their abilities in the four basic skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing through oral and written practice. The course focuses on grammatical structures and vocabulary at the intermediate level and introduces students to contemporary French-language cultures from around the world through discussion of cultural and literary texts and use of audiovisual material.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN112 Intermediate French II

This is a course for students who have taken FREN 111 or arrive at Wesleyan with a good command of French and are ready to develop their reading, writing, and speaking skills through exposure to a variety of challenging cultural and literary materials in various media. It includes a review of basic grammar but emphasizes more complex linguistic structures.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN215 Advanced Intermediate French

This course prepares students for upper-level French courses and for study abroad. It offers students the opportunity to review and strengthen their speaking, writing, and reading abilities in French. Class time is devoted to grammar review and to discussions of short reading assignments (literary and non-literary) from the French-speaking world (France, Africa, and the Caribbean). The semester ends with students reading an entire novel in French. Daily class discussions, oral presentations, weekly discussions with French teaching assistants, outside-of-class grammar review, and compositions are to be expected.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN216 Introduction to French Literature and Culture: From Notre Dame to The Terror

This class will introduce students to the ideas, culture, art, and literature of pre-Revolutionary France. We will read a "romance" by Chrétien de Troyes, bawdy tales by Rabelais, poems by Louise Labé and Ronsard, Montaigne's mediation on cannibals, a play by Molière, and a short "science fiction" tale by Voltaire. This class is designed to help students improve their writing and speaking skills and prepare for a term abroad in a francophone country.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN217 Exoticism: Imaginary Geographies in the 19th-century French Short Story

In this seminar we will consider the fascination with the exotic--with foreign landscapes, customs, and culture--in 19th-century French fiction, particularly in the genre of the short story. Discussions will focus on the representation of foreignness, the construction of the exotic woman, and the status of the European gaze. Major authors may include Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Chateaubriand, Balzac, Merimee, Loti, Flaubert, Hugo, Baudelaire, and Théophile Gautier. Although a 20th-century text, we will also read Duras's L'Amant.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN219 "Enfances": Literature and Childhood

At the heart of our discussions in this class will be the question of how adults construct the child's point of view. How can we define childhood? How can we evoke it through narrative? How ought we make art for children? We'll explore a variety of literary and cinematic sources from the French speaking world including Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, the Comtesse de Ségur's Les Malheurs de Sophie, François Truffaut's L'Argent de Poche, and assorted French-language picture books. Along the way we will work on developing analytic and creative writing skills in French. (This course is conducted in French.)
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN220 Lancelot, Guinevere, Grail: Enigma in the Romances of Chretien de Troyes

Chretien de Troyes, the greatest writer of medieval France, was the first to tell the stories of Lancelot and Guinevere's fatal passion and of the quest for the Holy Grail. Written at the height of the Renaissance of the 12th century, his Arthurian tales became the basis for all future retellings of the legend. We will read these tales in depth, paying particular attention to their enigmatic quality.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: MDST230
Prereq: None

FREN221 French Mythologies

Starting from "Mythologies" by Roland Barthes (1957) and "Nouvelles Mythologies" edited by Jerome Garcin (2007), this course examines how contemporary social values are turned into modern myths and some of the domains that seem to define France in the 21st century. How do the representations of food, fashion, le chic, la laïcité, strikes, colonialism and post-colonialism, etc., in contemporary novels and films still define France today?
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN222 Love and Loss in Medieval and Early Modern French Literature and Culture

The interconnected themes of love and loss encompass others such as desire, passion, friendship, death, separation, and grief. This course introduces students to the uses of these themes in French literature of the medieval and early modern periods by reading a range of texts, from the courtly romance and lyric poetry, to the essay, the novella, and theater. We will examine how men and women treat these themes, and we will be especially sensitive to the ways in which women write in genres traditionally dominated by men. Topics of study will include the body, virtues and vices, marriage, sexuality, seduction, chastity, and violence. We will also place emphasis on improving French pronunciation and on developing oral presentation and written skills. Readings, papers, and discussions will be in French.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: COL217, MDST220
Prereq: None

FREN223 French Way(s)

What are "French" ways? What is important to the French, and how do they view themselves? What do they think about issues facing their country, Europe, and the world at large? What relationship does France have with the francophone world? What does it even mean to be "French?" Students in this course will explore these questions by examining a variety of materials including the press, comic strips, films, music, vlogs, television and radio broadcasts, and other selected readings. This course is designed for highly motivated students with a firm foundation in French who wish to refine their skills in listening, speaking, reading, and writing while gaining more insight into French life and culture.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN224 Cultural Mo(uve)ments from the 19th to 21st Centuries

The purpose of this course is to familiarize students with movements such as romanticism, realism, surrealism, and the Nouveau Roman, to name a few. Some of these movements stem directly from the political context, while others seem to have grown almost organically. Though the course will primarily rely on literary texts, it will also examine the "passerelles" between literature, music, and painting.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN225 20th-Century Franco-Caribbean Literature and the Search for Identity

This course investigates how 20th-century Francophone literature from the Caribbean defines Caribbean identity. Through a study of literary texts, films, and paintings from Guadeloupe, Martinique, Haiti, Guyana, and Louisiana, we will explore the evolution of Caribbean self-definition, focusing on the major concepts of Negritude, Antillanite, Creolite, and Louisianitude.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN226 From the Diary to the Graphic Novel, Women Writers from the 17th to the 21st Centuries

While women in France were for a long time not welcomed in the literary sphere, they have nonetheless participated in the various movements that have affected literature from the 17th century on. The purpose of this course is to discuss women's space within the literary field. Through the study of various texts, this course will examine women's compliance and defiance towards literary trends. Far from only writing diaries and fairy tales, French women writers have considerably expanded their presence in genres that seemed resolutely closed to them.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN227 Trailblazing French Women in Science, Food, and the Arts

One could argue that all fields are mined for women, but certain domains are more closed than others. Such is the case for "haute" cuisine, haute couture, cinema, and the political sphere among others. This course seeks to examine the destiny of a group of women who established themselves in spaces traditionally reserved for men. Besides retracing and discussing their work, we will examine the discrimination they suffered and their strategies to overcome the norms. Finally, we will study the representations which were or are made of them through texts, articles, and films. These women include known figures such as Simone de Beauvoir and Marie Curie, but also others like the artist Annette Messager, the cook Hélène Darroze, the designer Coco Chanel, and more.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: FGSS229
Prereq: None

FREN228 Fight like the French: Debates, Quarrels and Polemics in French Culture

In the age of "fake news" and polarization, knowing how to debate is essential. The French are notoriously practiced in debate; the importance of public opinion and the figure of the public intellectual have made French society as a whole particularly prone to the agonistic discussion of ideas. This course will survey foundational aesthetic and political debates in French culture from the 15th century to this day, focusing on those that were led by writers, philosophers, and intellectuals and that have entered French literary and cultural history. The course will show how controversies mark and make paradigmatic changes in the cultural landscape, advancing the arts and sciences and voicing political dissent. Throughout the course we will read literary works, treatises, letters, and newspapers.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: MDST229
Prereq: None

FREN229 What Can the Middle Ages Teach Us About Nature?

Today nature is at the center of our preoccupations. This course will go back to a time before human beings thought they were the masters of nature, when nature was at the same time teaching and allegory, metaphor and science. We will explore the different functions of nature in bestiaries, poems, romances, and herbaria from the Middle Ages to the beginning of the Early-Modern period (in modern French translation). We will be able to see a real herbarium in the Special Collections & Archives. Students will also visit the Davison Center for the Arts and the Joe Webb Peoples Museum to explore visual representations of nature as well as scientific displays. During the semester, students will put together a herbarium that will be displayed in an exhibition at the end of the semester.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: MDST227, ENVS229
Prereq: None

FREN230 Knights, Fools, and Lovers: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance French Culture

The study of history and past literature provides intellectual, psychological and emotional resources that make one more resilient in adapting to new circumstances, enable one to see new possibilities of being-in-the-world, and provide new capacities for self-understanding. A knowledge of the European past, moreover, can be an advantage for people seeking to study, live, or work in Europe. This course will help students develop those resources and knowledge through a study of various forms of short fiction and poetry from the French Middle Ages and the Renaissance (12th-16th centuries). We will focus on the representations of human relations, above all romantic relations and their inherent conflicts of power, in these works. We will also view a couple of historical films in order to develop our visual imagination.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: MDST257
Prereq: None

FREN231 By Sword, By Cross, and By Pen: An Introduction to Early Modern French Literature and Culture

This course introduces French literature and culture from the 15th to the 17th centuries, when the French territory expanded to its present borders with the rise of the French monarchy. Historical developments include religious upheaval and civil war, overseas exploration and conquest, and the greater dissemination of written works with the invention of the printing press. In this evolving context we will read a variety of literary works of prose and poetry. We will follow the emergence of genres such as the essay and the novel, and observe how different literary forms served to express ideas ranging from personal experiences to sociopolitical aspects of contemporary society. Several film representations of this period will also help us consider how we envision the past.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN232 French Society in Music From the Roaring Twenties to Today

Music has kept the beat of French history through its ordinary and extraordinary chapters. How has music supported France's cultural power and interacted with its external influences? How do songs guard dominant narratives or rally people under revolutionary banners of protest? Over the course of the semester, we will explore music (and its multimodal nature) as a site of cultural expression and a means of understanding social and political movements of modern French society over the last 100 years.



In the first part of this course, we will situate the music of artists such as Josephine Baker, Edith Piaf, Boris Vian, and Serge Gainsbourg in relation to major 20th-century events, from post-World War I Annés folles to May '68. We will consider how songs engage political events and discover the ways in which music shapes and is being shaped by its society. The second part of the course focuses on contemporary music of French expression (Indochine, Orelsan, Yseult, Angèle, Stromae) as related to questions of gender and sexuality, the legacy of decolonization, immigration, technology, and consumerism. Listening to the voices of France and its "others," we will examine expressions of belonging and alienation within a society that constantly reinvents itself while endeavoring to preserve its "inherent" characteristics. Close readings of lyrics paired with historical contextualization will be supplemented with theoretical and literary texts, excerpts from films and documentaries, posters, and photography.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN233 French and Francophone Gastronomy

This course explores the variety of French and Francophone gastronomy through texts, recipes, and other media such as films and cooking shows. Through these materials, students will reflect on the relationship between food and culture and the shape it takes in French and Francophone cultures. They will develop a deeper knowledge and appreciation for various foods and dishes.



The course will include a hands-on component through which students will cook and taste foods from various areas in the Francophone world. The course will culminate in a final public event during which students will introduce and share foods from the Francophone world, which attendees will have the opportunity to taste.



This course is a CLAC course conducted entirely in French. In addition to weekly meetings, there will be a few cooking workshops. Grade will be based on class participation, weekly reflection journals, a final presentation, and a final paper.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 0.50
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: CGST226
Prereq: None

FREN234 Francophone Belgian Culture

The Kingdom of Belgium gained its independence from the United Kingdom of the Netherlands after the Belgian revolution of 1830 and has since then developed as one of the central powers of the European Union, of which it was a founding member and whose principal institutions are located in the Belgian capitol, Brussels. The kingdom contains four linguistic regions: Dutch-speaking Flanders, French-speaking Wallonia, German-speaking Eupen-Malmedy, and bilingual (French-Dutch) Brussels. This course will study the development of Francophone Belgian culture since the mid-20th century. We will focus on authors like Georges Simenon, Marguerite Yourcenar, Jean Bofane, Joseph Ndwaniye, Amélie Nothomb, Nicolas Ancion, and Bernard Quiriny; musicians like Toots Thielemans, Jacques Brel, Cecile Kayirebwa, Princesse Mansia M'Bila, Dieudonné Kabongo, Zap Mama, Hooverphonic, Stromae, Damso, Romeo Elvis, and Angèle; and cineastes like Chantal Akerman, Jaco Van Dormael, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Lucas Belvaux and Bouli Lanners. The course will also include a unit on the well-known bandes dessinées (comic books) created by Belgian authors and artists, like Herge (Tintin), Morris et Goscinny (Lucky Luke), Jean Van Hamme (Thorgal, XIII, Largo Winch), Hermann (Jeremiah), and Spenale (Wonder Pony).
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN236 Going South: "Le Sud" and Its Representations in French Literature and Culture

The course explores representations of "le Sud" across media, from myths and legends to songs, literature, film, and television. We will learn the origins of Provençal identity and how its portrayal has evolved over time. We will gain a greater knowledge of the many artists and thinkers who have been drawn to the South. Eventually, we will work out a new definition of "le Sud," from Provence to one that includes other Souths such as the global South represented by immigrants from former French colonies.



Although a geographical denomination, a cardinal point, "le Sud" is a contradictory and moving space. The French anthem was first sung on one of Marseille's streets (rue Thubaneau), and the city remains a cosmopolitan port, open to migrations. The 2005 riots did not affect Marseille, yet the first elected mayors from the far-right Front National were in Orange, Toulon, and Vitrolles. The South remains a place of light and sun that attracted numerous painters and a place of dark and shady business run by local and international mafias. How have these contradictions shaped "le Sud" as territory, community, and idea, and how do they function within definitions of French identity?
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN237 Francophone North America: French-Canadian, Cajun, Creole, and Haitian Cultures in North America

This course introduces students to key cultural and political mo(ve)ments that made the Francophone (French-speaking) communities in Canada, Maine, and Louisiana. From the tragic Grand Dérangement of Acadians (1755-1763), and the Creole Saint-Domingue refugees in Louisiana (1792-1809), to the more recent arrival of French-speakers from Haiti, Africa, and Asia, Francophone cultures in North America continue to evolve as their diversity grows with each new migration. Special attention will be paid to Canadian and U.S. linguistic policies, migration policies, and the role of art (literature, cinema, etc.) and activism in shaping Francophone identities in an Anglophone context.



Writers studied may include Réjean Ducharme (Québec), Dany Laferrière (Québec-Haïti), Kim Thùy (Québec-Vietnam), Victor Séjour (Louisiana), Zachary Richard (Louisiana), as well as a few writers in English such as Kate Chopin (Louisiana), Edwidge Danticat (US-Haïti), Louise Penny (Québec), and singer-songwriter Josée Vachon (Québec-Maine) who straddle the Francophone-Anglophone divide.



The course will be conducted entirely in French except for a few readings in English.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN238 Representing the Self, Representing Yourself

In our digital age, with the pervasiveness of Facebook, Instagram, and other forms of social media, what can testimony do? What stories are told? How are they told? What do they mean? How do writers, artists, musicians, intellectuals, and politicians represent themselves? As students, how can you give your memories material substance? How do others' narratives influence the way you interpret your own being? In this course, we will begin to answer these questions by reading, watching, and examining a vast selection of French and Francophone texts, films, and images that recount the self from the Middle Ages to today. There will be a particular focus on queer people, women, and people of color, and how they negotiate difference and alterity in their work. Throughout the course, you will also journal your own experiences and imitate other writers' modes of expression (e.g., memoires, autobiographies, autofiction, the graphic novel, film, documentary, theater, poetry, music, photography). The course will culminate in the creation of your own story, which will in turn prepare you to think critically about the world around you and how to tell your story in interesting, creative, and provocative ways. We will also place emphasis on improving French pronunciation and on developing oral presentation and written skills. Readings, papers, and discussions will be in French.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN239 A Virtual Semester in Paris

This course will introduce students to different aspects of life in Paris. It will include virtual visits to museums, monuments, and neighborhoods; lectures by faculty from the Vassar-Wesleyan Program in Paris; and online meetings with different people in Paris. Students will undertake a research project on an aspect of Paris that is of particular interest to them.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN240 Cinema and the French Theatrical Tradition

This course examines the connections between French theater and film by looking at manifestations of the theatrical tradition in 20th- and 21st-century cinema. We will read four plays and view a selection of films, along with commentary by directors, playwrights, and actors on their craft. Coursework will focus on the development of literary and visual analysis, the acquisition of terminology related to theater and film, and the appreciation of these two art forms in their past and current contexts.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN241 Seeing Is Believing?: The Search for Cinematic Truth

The French director Jean-Luc Godard once remarked that, "Cinema is the truth 24 times per second." Godard refers here to an interplay between truth, time, and the mechanics of film. But does cinema really show us the truth? What kind of reality is it able to capture and how does "truth" relate to its means of representation? This course examines how Francophone film treats the relationship of cinema to truth, covering aspects of film history, theory, and its technical construction. The course is organized around four main areas of inquiry: we first consider the role fantasy and spectacle in the early films from Georges Méliès and the Lumière Brothers, before exploring how cinema re-orients its relationship to the "real" via social realism and the experimental documentary style of the French New Wave. We then discover how cinematic "truth" is reclaimed by filmmakers outside of France, before finally turning to the highly-aestheticized, non-narrative films of "Cinéma du look."



This course will familiarize students with the basics of film analysis and critique, while also providing a foundation in the technical aspects of cinema and how it has evolved as both an art and a science. Each film will be accompanied by readings, and the theoretical framework of the course will derive from André Bazin's Qu'est-ce que le cinéma? and excerpts from Gilles Deleuze's Cinéma II: L'Image-temps. For their final project, students may submit either a traditional research paper or an original film project that engages with cinematic theories and techniques discussed over the course of the semester.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN242 Francophone Graphic Novels: Text, Image and the Spaces In-Between

This course introduces students to Francophone graphic novels (bandes dessinées) from regions such as Côte d'Ivoire, Rwanda, Belgium, Quebec, the French Caribbean, and France, showcasing their cultural and artistic diversity. After an introduction to key concepts in comics studies, students will engage with acclaimed works like Persepolis (Satrapi, 2000), Aya de Yopougon 1 (Abouet & Oubrerie, 2005), and Péyi an nou (Oublié, 2017). These texts serve as a lens to examine pressing debates on identity, migration, memory, race, gender, and religion. Coursework includes critical readings, visual and textual analysis, and creative writing/drawing. By discussing the content of these graphic novels, students will become familiar with a broad range of human experiences as well as major global events. By also focusing on their multimodal form, they will develop a toolbox for analyzing this unique textual/visual medium on its own terms and in relation to other media, especially visual art, cinema, and literature. The class is taught in French.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN247 What (Not) to Wear: Fashion in French Literature and Art

In this course we will consider the political, social, historical, and artistic importance of French fashion through a series of case studies. We will explore a number of sources such as ancien régime costume design, realist novels, memoirs, impressionist paintings, 20th century advertising, and archival fashion magazines. Attention will be paid not only to what was being worn, but also to those who helped make fashion materially possible, for instance textile workers both in France and in colonized areas.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN248 Colonial/Decolonial

Colonial/Decolonial is taught in French and open to anyone who has completed FREN 215. It offers an exploration of the often-contentious debates surrounding colonization and its aftermath in shaping French and Francophone cultures and societies. The course examines the historical processes, theoretical frameworks, and artistic expressions that define colonial and postcolonial dynamics. In the first half, we trace the intellectual and cultural justifications and critiques of colonial expansion through readings from Bougainville, Diderot, and Prévost, alongside representations of the "other" in the Encyclopédie and the Description de l'Égypte. The second half explores postcolonial and decolonial thought as both historical phases and interconnected schools of theory. Topics include the specifics of decolonization from France, portrayals of the French colonizer, and connections between the Francophone world and other formerly colonized regions. Guiding these discussions are works by Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, Edward Said, Maryse Condé, Assia Djebar, Albert Memmi, and Henri Laurens. The course also includes screenings of Pépé le Moko (1939, dir. Julien Duvivier), The Battle of Algiers (1966, dir. Gillo Pontecorvo), Adieu Bonaparte (Egypt, 1985, dir. Youssef Chahine), and Atlantique (2019, dir. Mati Diop). Additional insights are drawn from several podcasts and interviews on Radio France, linking colonial, postcolonial, and decolonial discourses to contemporary theoretical, political, and artistic debates.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN249 The Art of the Essay: A Creative Non-Fiction Class

This is both a creative writing and literature seminar, a hybrid experience where students will read some of the most momentous and important examples of the essay genre while simultaneously producing their own interpretative compositions. We will begin by reading a few essays by Montaigne (the writer who effectively defined the genre) before moving on to other authors from the French and Francophone world (e.g., Baudelaire, Voltaire, Césaire, and Beauvoir) who gravitated to this open and highly personal way of writing. We will also speak to several essayists during the semester.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN253F French Literary Masterpieces on Screen (CLAC 0.5)

This CLAC course is linked to the FYS RL&L 252F: French Literary Masterpieces in Translation and on Screen. In this CLAC course, conducted entirely in French, students will have the opportunity to read the texts in their original language, and to hone their French speaking, listening, and writing skills. Assignments will include written commentaries (i.e., close readings) and short presentations on the material. As for the films, students in the CLAC course will be expected to watch and discuss French-language adaptations. This CLAC course is intended for students who have at minimum an advanced intermediate level of French. Learners of French as well as native and heritage speakers of French are welcome. Credit: 0.5. Regardless of students' previous exposure to the French language, including AP and IB courses, students interested in the CLAC course must take Wesleyan's French placement test and score into at least FREN 215 (Advanced Intermediate French). Should they place into FREN 215, they must enroll in this class in order to be eligible for the CLAC course. Students who place into FREN 112 or below will not generally be eligible due to the degree of difficulty, though students may submit a petition. Moreover, all students must meet with the instructor before enrolling in the CLAC course for an oral comprehension and expression evaluation. This CLAC course, in combination with the FYS in English, will count toward the French Studies Major or Minor, as well as the Romance Studies Major.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 0.50
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: CGST223
Prereq: None

FREN254 Paris to Saigon: French Representations of Asia

The course explores the ways in which French explorers, writers, and artists traveled to Asian countries, such as Japan, China, and Vietnam, in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries and represented "Extrême-Orient," a Eurocentric designation. Attentive analysis of their works will allow us to question the colonial construction of the Far East as "other"; examine Asian influences on cultural, aesthetic, and literary expressions; and discuss Asian presence in postcolonial France. Issues such as orientalization, eroticization, and hybridization of genres and identities will be the subjects of our study.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN273 The Business of Letters: The French Epistolary Novel

Before the 18th century, the first-person narrative was often perceived as self-indulgent, not to mention distasteful. Eighteenth-century readers, however, became fascinated with the intimacy, immediacy, realism, and confessional aspect of highly charged first-person perspectives. It comes as no surprise, then, that this was the golden age of the Roman Epistolaire, the novel composed entirely of letters. In this class we will read a number of epistolary novels that allowed for the development of highly subjective, and often challenging, points of view. Sample works include Madame de Graffigny's critique of European society (Lettres D'une Peruvienne), Mme de Charriere's praise of female independence (Lettres de Mistriss Henley), Montesquieu's political satire of French life through the eyes of Persian travelers (Lettres Persanes), and Laclos's tale of seduction and aristocratic libertinage (Les Liaisons Dangereuses). We will also read one example of the epistolary novel's stylistic counterpart, the Roman-Memoire.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN275 Histories of Race: Science and Slavery in an Age of Enlightenment

The concept of race was first "invented" during the 18th century by anatomists, natural historians, and, ultimately, the century's classifiers. This class will come to grips with the birth of this concept in two ways. First, we will read excerpts from travelogues to Africa and the Caribbean (as well as short excerpts from natural history) in order to chart the slow and halting creation of the concept of race as it crystallized in European thought during the 18th century. Having studied this "proto-raciology," the class will then examine 16 unpublished manuscripts that were submitted to a contest on the source of "blackness" organized by the Bordeaux Royal Academy of Sciences in 1739. These include essays submitted by priests, anatomists, and partisans of climate theory. Students in this class will actively engage with these materials by producing glossary definitions that will be published along with the entire collection of essays. The ultimate goal of this course is to provide students with an understanding of the concept of race that will inform their reactions to this question as both a historical concept . . . and an ongoing problem that affects all of us in the present.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-RLAN
Identical With: COL281
Prereq: None

FREN281 French and Francophone Theater in Performance

This course introduces students to the richness of the French and Francophone dramatic repertories, on the one hand, and, on the other, invites them to discover acting techniques (such as movement, physicalization, memorization, mise en scène, and so forth). Students will thus put their language skills into motion, and the course will culminate in a public performance at the end of the semester. (Special accommodations will be made for students who do not wish to perform publicly). Taught exclusively in French, the course will place particular emphasis on the improvement of students' oral skills through pronunciation and diction exercises, all the while polishing their written expression and enhancing their aural comprehension.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.25
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: THEA291
Prereq: None

FREN282 French Cinema: An Introduction

This course introduces students to the history of French cinema (the evolution of its aesthetics as well as of its main themes), from the films of the Lumière brothers in 1895 until now with French filmmakers of Maghrebi origins. One leading question of the course will be, What makes French cinema "French"?
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN301 The Race Makers: How the Enlightenment Invented the Most Dangerous Idea in History

The concept of race was first "invented" during the 18th century by anatomists, natural historians, and, ultimately, the century's classifiers. While this seminar is constructed as something of an intellectual history seminar, it will also delve into the lives and (often messy) psychologies of several of the people who helped develop the idea of race during the eighteenth century. We will become familiar with a French king and the signatory of the Code Noir (Louis XIV), the Swedish inventor of the term Homo sapiens (Linnaeus), the theorist of human degeneration from a white prototype (Buffon), the most famous philosopher of the eighteenth century (Voltaire), the theorist of human stage theory (Robertson), a skull-measuring naturalist (Blumenbach), and an American president, in Thomas Jefferson. The class will also examine 16 manuscripts that were submitted to a contest on the source of "blackness" organized by the Bordeaux Royal Academy of Sciences in 1739. The goal of this course is to provide students with an understanding of the origins of race that will inform their reactions to this question as both a historical concept, and an ongoing problem that affects all of us in the present.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-RLAN
Identical With: STS303
Prereq: None

FREN302 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: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: RL&L302
Prereq: None

FREN304 The Art of the Essay: Creative Nonfiction in French

The "Art of the Essay" is both a creative nonfiction writing class and a literature seminar, a hybrid experience where students will read some of the most momentous and important examples of the essay genre while simultaneously producing their own interpretative compositions. Writing experiences may include opinion pieces, historical fiction, writing on art or music, and biographical sketches. To improve our own writing, we will read essays by Montaigne (the writer who effectively defined the genre) before moving onto later authors from the French and Francophone world (e.g., Voltaire, Baudelaire, Césaire, Beauvoir) who gravitated to this open and highly personal way of writing to further their own artistic or ideological positions. As a supplement to the class we will also be inviting journalists and essay writers from both France and the United States to speak to us.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN305 Negotiating French Identity: Migration and Identity in Contemporary France

With the largest minority in France being of Maghrebi origin, Islam has become the second largest religion in France today. What are the repercussions of this phenomenon for French identity? How did French society understand its identity and regard foreigners in the past? What do members of the growing Franco-Maghrebi community add to the ongoing dialogue surrounding France's republican and secular identity? This course will analyze the recent attempts at redefining French identity through a study of literary texts, films, and media coverage of important societal debates (e.g., the Scarf Affair, French immigration laws, the Algerian war). Readings, discussions, and papers will be in French.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: COL307
Prereq: None

FREN306 Spectacles of Violence in Early Modern French Tragedy

The French Kingdom endured decades of socio-political unrest and religious wars during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The tragedies that emerged from these bloody conflicts--many of which staged physical violence--not only reflected but also actively participated in the debates surrounding the 'troubles civils.' In this advanced seminar, we will study such tragedies in order to examine the uses, functions, and ethics of spectacular violence, in plays that adapt mythological stories (e.g., Medea), religious narratives (e.g. David and Goliath, Saint Cecilia), and current events (e.g., executions, assassinations, and regicides) for the stage. We will read the plays alongside and against the competing theoretical frameworks of violence found in various poetic treatises of the time period, yet we will also keep in mind the practical constraints and conditions of performance in early modern France. Finally, we will reflect on why we should read these plays today and how they inform our contemporary moment. Readings, written assignments, and discussion will be in French.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: COL306, THEA292
Prereq: None

FREN307 Exoticism: Imaginary Geographies in the 19th-century French Short Story

This course will consider the fascination with the exotic--with foreign landscapes, customs, and culture--in 19th-century French fiction, particularly in the genre of the short story. Discussions will focus on the representation of foreignness, the construction of the exotic woman, and the status of the European gaze. Major authors may include Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Chateaubriand, Balzac, Merimee, Loti, Flaubert, Hugo, Baudelaire, Myriam Harry, and Théophile Gautier.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN308 Southern France Today: Villages, Territories, and Metropolises

This course offers an interdisciplinary exploration of Southern France, with a focus on Marseille, through historical, literary, sociological, and comparative approaches. It is designed to encourage students to question prevalent stereotypes and controversial contemporary issues related to the region.



Throughout the course, students will examine various topics such as migration, ethnic and social segregation, economic growth, safety, the environment, housing, transportation, urban planning, metropolization, education, and culture. By using Marseille as a case study, students will reflect on the notion of scale in the context of French and European governance.



Students will engage with a range of materials, including novels, short stories, graphic novels, journalistic investigations, films, archival footage, and testimonials from residents, association representatives, experts, and researchers. Additionally, the course will include a comparative analysis with Paris, other French cities, and Mediterranean regions.



By the end of the course, students will gain a deeper understanding of the region's place in French politics, society, and culture, while also developing critical thinking, research, and analytical skills.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN309 Writing Childhood in Contemporary French Literature

In the 20th century, children's literature and writings about childhood expanded alongside commercial book publishing, greater literacy, and theories on childhood. This course will follow the development of formal and creative expressions of childhood by turning first toward children's literature, including picture and comic books and classic works such as "Le Petit Prince." Literary depictions of childhood, as memory, testimony, and social commentary, will compose the second half of the course. Visual imagery (book illustrations, films) will be studied as well to consider the connections between childhood and its representations--for example, how children's literature reflects modernity and how childhood is a means to make sense of adulthood.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN310 French Crowds, Mobs, and Mobilities

Under the date of 14th July 1789, Louis XVI entered in his diary but one word: "Rien." That day, a crowd of sans-culottes flooded the streets of Paris, overwhelmed the guards, and captured the Bastille. What the king could not foresee is the political power of a mob, a "foule," deriving its etymology and strength from the pressure of thousands of feet pounding the pavement. From this founding event on, the building of the French nation could be read as a history of mobile crowds kept alive today in yearly student and union demonstrations. How does "rien" become the emblematic event of French national identity? What moves a crowd, and what does a crowd move? What do such gatherings accomplish, and how do they form in France and why? Can governments bring crowds to a stop? What does immobility mean for the French?

Drawing on French sociology and literature, this course will explore the influence that crowds have exerted on French politics, society, and aesthetics. We will discuss the power of numbers by focusing on major events in French history from the 18th century to contemporary France: the French Revolution, the Paris Commune, May 1968, the 1983 March for Equality and Against Racism, the Yellow Vests, and the COVID-19 lockdowns. Students will be encouraged to relate the course to their own experience of mobile crowds, in concerts or sports events, on more quotidian moves such as commuting, and to draw comparisons across time and space.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN312 Clandestins, Sans-Papiers, Migrant/e/s: 100 Years of Illegalization in the Francophone Mediterranean

Who is illegal, and why? When did "migrating illegally" across the Mediterranean start, and how? How did we come to think about certain ways of moving across borders as a criminal act? Using sources and literature on and about empire, borders, citizenship, seafaring, smuggling, and human rights, the course will attempt to answer these questions in the specific context of the Francophone Mediterranean, intended here as a space of migration much broader than the sea itself. We will read about Algerian workers hidden in the hulls of steamships at the turn of the century, watch Tunisian border policemen helplessly patrol an endless stretch of desert in a sandstorm, and read from "illegal" Africans seeking refuge inside the church of St. Bernard, in Northern Paris, in the hot summer of 1986, before police broke in. Through this heterogenous set of encounters, students will be able to explore, engage critically, and respond to some of the discursive, legal, and logistical devices that made and still make people on the move "illegal" in contemporary France and in the long wake of its colonial empire.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN314 From the Diary to the Graphic novel, Women Writers from the 17th to the 21st Centuries

While women in France were for a long time not welcomed in the literary sphere, they have nonetheless participated in the various movements that have affected literature from the 17th century on. The purpose of this course is to discuss women's space within the literary field. Through the study of various texts, this course will examine women's compliance and defiance towards literary trends. Far from only writing diaries and fairy tales, French women writers have considerably expanded their presence in genres that seemed resolutely closed to them.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN315 The Politics of the French Language and the Birth of the French State

Today, the advantages of national borders and monolinguistic language policies are being trumpeted all across the world. And yet, the study of premodern languages and literatures reveals that the history of national languages has always been a multicultural affair. In this course, we will look at the case of the French language, particularly the establishment of French as a literary language through strategies of legitimization. Starting with an examination of the first text written in the language that would later become French, from the 9th century, we will then go on to study (in modern French) a series of medieval and early-modern poems, plays, treatises and essays that borrow from other languages and literatures, even as they establish French as a literary and a national language. The final portion of this class will include a meditation on the status of French language in contemporary Francophone countries based on Derrida's essay "Le monolinguisme de l'autre."
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: MDST315
Prereq: None

FREN316 Women Writing in the Renaissance

Women writing in 16th-century France--the French Renaissance period--had the recent advantage of print publication to circulate their works despite great social limitations on women's roles and education. This course explores their writing--including fiction, poetry, epistolary, and polemic--and choices of subject matter with a focus on references to writing as/by women. We will situate these writers in their historical, cultural, and literary environments and read critical scholarship on this field of study. We will also take a comparative approach by looking at 15th- and 17th-century authorship to see how circumstances evolved and at several contemporary perspectives to consider the currency and perhaps continuity of early modern women's literary production and creations.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN317 The New World Bites Back: Cannibalism and the Colonial Encounter

What is the cannibal? Perhaps it makes us think of Hannibal Lecter or zombies from Dawn of the Dead. How do we understand the horror and fascination the cannibal, whose monstrosity depends in some sense on its humanity? An emblematic figure of the tension between alterity and resemblance, this course examines the diverse political, cultural, literary and economic representations of cannibalism that underly the relationship between Europe and the "New World."



Major Readings: Montaigne's "Des Cannibales," Voltaire's Candide, Dutertre's Histoire des Antilles, Marx, Capital (excerpts) Aimé Césaire's Une Tempête, Suzanne Césaire's Le Grand camouflage. 40-50 pages of reading per week.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN318 French Renaissance Theater Lab

In this seminar students will explore a variety of dramatic texts written and performed during the French Renaissance (c. 1500-1610). The first two-thirds of the semester will provide an overview of the poetics, rhetoric, and performance of early French theater, followed by discussions about gender, religion, politics, violence, and other topics as they arise within each play. Authors will include Marguerite de Navarre, Jean de La Péruse, Étienne Jodelle, François d'Amboise, Louise Labé, Robert Garnier, and Catherine Des Roches. During the last third of the semester, students will participate in a collaborative digital (online) critical edition of one of the plays studied. Emerging technologies in the field of digital humanities will be integrated into this lab portion of the seminar, as well as more conventional methods of establishing critical editions. Readings, written assignments, and class discussions will be in French.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN322 The French New Wave: From National to World Cinema

This course introduces students to one of the most creative and influential moments in cinema history: the French New Wave (Nouvelle Vague). Flourishing in the post-World War II period between the 1950s and 1960s, this new generation of film critics and filmmakers sought to redefine what François Truffaut calls a certain qualité française through cinematic experimentation, while using their works to comment on global geopolitical conflicts. The course situates the Nouvelle Vague within its local production context while also studying its contribution to cinema as a global artform. The filmmakers studied include core members of the Cahiers du Cinéma, such as François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, and Jean-Luc Godard, as well as extended members of the Left Bank Group, including Alain Resnais, Chris Marker, and Agnès Varda. The final week will focus on the international legacy of the French New Wave, with East Asian New Wave movements as key examples. This course will be conducted entirely in French except for a few readings in English.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN324 Interpreting the "New World": France and the Early Modern Americas

The impact and long-lasting effects of the "discovery" of the "New World" on Europeans cannot be overestimated. This advanced seminar will compare and contrast styles of expedition and conquest among the European nations, though the course will focus on the French context and the various events and encounters that occurred in the early modern Americas, particularly between 1492 and 1610, a period that laid the groundwork for the subsequent colonial project. Throughout the course, we will pay special attention to the Amerindians' points of view. In turn, students will examine the insights and blind spots in 16th-century French navigators', cosmographers', cartographers', and intellectuals' interpretations, representations, and negotiations of difference by critically engaging with concepts such as nature, culture, alterity, gender, sexuality, marriage, religion, exchange, possession, conquest, and war. Reading, writing, and class discussions will be in French.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: FGSS324, COL324
Prereq: None

FREN325 Museums, Objects, and Empire: Exhibiting the Self, Exhibiting the Other

This course will analyze the relationship between colonization and material culture. Using literary and historical documents, we will ask how objects helped to construct identities by studying the way objects were collected, used, and displayed during the colonial period. The course will also analyze how spectacles, exhibits, and museums have shaped a discourse about the other. The course will lead to an exhibition based on student work. Reading, writing, and class discussion will be in French.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN326 Topics and Genres in French Popular Culture

Spanning the mid-19th century to the present, this course will present and examine the expansion of such genres as newspapers' feuilletons (serialized novels), romans de gare (easy literature), detective novels, and bandes dessinées (graphic novels). Though at times poor in their execution, such productions are a revealing window into French society, and their popularity has only increased. The course will particularly focus on the participation of renowned writers in so-called low-cultures genres, as well as on women writers' growing presence in the field.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN330 Lancelot, Guinevere, Grail: Enigma in the Romances of Chretien de Troyes

Chretien de Troyes, the greatest writer of medieval France, was the first to tell the stories of Lancelot and Guinevere's fatal passion and of the quest for the Holy Grail. Written at the height of the Renaissance of the 12th century, his Arthurian tales became the basis for all future retellings of the legend. We will read these tales in depth, paying particular attention to their enigmatic quality.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: MDST330
Prereq: None

FREN333 Asia and the Making of France

Enlightenment philosophers, impressionist painters of the 19th century, and French Maoist intellectuals in the 1960s were all influenced by Asia. Although these influences from Asia were at times the fruit of solid knowledge, they were also often the result of imagination. In addition to attracting French intellectuals and artists, Asia also contributed very concretely to the economic development of modern France and its geopolitical position in the world. This relationship relied on voluntary exchanges but also on violence and French exploitation of Asian territories and people. Through the study of historical documents, films, and literary texts, this course aims to understand the various ways Asia shaped France. We will consider the various representations of Asia conveyed in 19th- and 20th-century France and the historical context of their production by focusing on key moments such as the Opium Wars in China, French colonialism in Indochina, and the two world wars. Reading, writing, and discussion will be in French.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN334 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 development in the 12th-century romances of Chrétien de Troyes. 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: MDST234
Prereq: None

FREN345 Weird Literature: Tales of the Supernatural, Inexplicable, and Bizarre

In this course we'll look at fantastic literature (broadly defined) from 19th century France: tales of the supernatural, the inexplicable, and the bizarre. This genre flourished in post-enlightenment, post-revolutionary France. Part of our task will be to consider what made stories of the strange so appealing to French authors at this point in time, and how writers used the genre to grapple with societal changes and scientific advances. We will examine some formal definitions of the fantastic and the uncanny, and work towards our own characterizations, as we consider issues such as madness and sanity, provincial superstition, the clash of science and the inexplicable, and the place of gender within such narratives. We will also consider the reception of these texts: how they were illustrated and/or adapted and where (if at all) we can find echoes of them in modern culture. Authors to be studied include Maupassant, Merimée, and Villiers de L'Isle-Adam.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN348 Artistic Creation in Fin-de-siècle France

The end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century--the so-called fin de siècle--was a period of remarkable creative energy, production, and upheaval in France. Many of the most-recognized names in the art world were active there during that time: Debussy, Monet, Picasso, Stravinsky, Matisse, Baudelaire, Van Gogh...and many of them collaborated across media. In this course, we'll dig deep into the music, visual arts, and literature of the period, relying on contemporaneous primary sources (literature, of course, but also newspapers and popular periodicals, artists' letters and manifestos, performance reviews and notes, etc) as well as relevant secondary analyses, to get a sense of the competing energies of liberation and decadence that nourished so many remarkable and influential works of art.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN356 From the Diary to the Stage: Women Writers and Literary Genres from the 17th to the 21st Centuries

While women in France were not welcomed in the literary sphere, they have nonetheless participated in the various movements that have radically affected literature from the 17th century on. The purpose of this course is to discuss women's space within the literary field. Through the study of various texts, this course will examine women's compliance and defiance toward literary trends. It will also investigate the roles of literary categories (letters, plays, fairy tales, poems, novels, and essays) in women's production.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN357 Autobiography and Photography; Text and Image

Over the last decades, the question of autobiography as a genre has been thoroughly analyzed. The issue is further complicated by the use of photography within autobiographical texts, whether they are included in the text or merely described. In this course, we will examine the various roles of photography in autobiography. Is photography a way to trigger memory? Is it more referential than the word? How is the reader to read the coexistence of word and image? Such are some of the questions that will be discussed.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN363 (Un)Popular Performances/Performances (Im)Populaires

In 1607, a young Scotsman named William Drummond was studying law in Bourges, France, a popular "study-abroad destination" for Scottish students as well as an important stopover city on the routes of itinerant professional and amateur actors. While in Bourges, these actors performed a variety of different kinds of plays, including tragedies, comedies, tragicomedies, pastorals, and farces. Although these performances were often met with hostility from the city's religious authorities, Drummond attended several plays during his stay and, lucky for us, took rather detailed notes about them. His observations from the 1607 "season" are preserved in his personal papers in the National Library of Scotland. This course will use Drummond's notes as a guide to discover and examine other forms of evidence--both traditional and nontraditional--that help us understand what was at stake in theater, performance, and (un)popular culture in late 16th- and early 17th-century France. We will study the ways the past has been organized and cataloged, how traditional sources and research have shaped our view of the past, and how unconventional methodologies can help us locate new sites of knowledge and culture. Written assignments, class discussions, and (most) readings will be in French.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CHUM
Identical With: COL363, MDST363, THEA363
Prereq: None

FREN372 Exoticism: Imaginary Geographies in 18th- and 19th-Century French Literature

This course will consider the fascination with the exotic--with foreign landscapes, customs, and culture--in 18th- and 19th-century French fiction and, to a lesser extent, poetry. Discussions will focus on the representation of foreignness and the construction of the exotic woman, as well as on the status of the European gaze. Major authors may include Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Chateaubriand, Balzac, Mérimée, Loti, Flaubert, Hugo, Baudelaire, and Gautier.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: COL272
Prereq: None

FREN382 Jungle and Desert in Francophone African Literature

This course analyzes the constellation of images and sensations conjured up by the terms "jungle" and "desert," which 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: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN390 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: Crosslisting
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: RL&L390, COL393, GRST291, MDST390
Prereq: None

FREN391 Diderot: An Encyclopedic Mind

In this class we will come to know the most progressive and often radical thinker of the French Enlightenment, Denis Diderot (1713-1784). We will begin this seminar with an examination of how this country abbot grew into the most well known atheist of his generation. We will then move onto his famous 74,000 article Encyclopédie, a book that not only dragged sacrilege and freethinking out into the open, but triggered a decades-long scandal that involved the Sorbonne, the Paris Parliament, the King, and the Pope. (During this portion of the class, students will undertake translations of select entries [from French to English] of the "dictionnaire" for possible publication.) In the second half of the semester, we will also study the writer's freewheeling art criticism. Finally, we will read two groundbreaking novels. The first of these, "La Religieuse", is a gripping pseudo-memoir of a nun who suffers unspeakably cruel abuse after she announces that she wants to leave her convent. The second, "Jacques le Fataliste", is a freewheeling anti-novel where Diderot used fiction to take up the problem of free will. In the final portion of the class, we will also read selections from his anticolonial and antislavery writings.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: COL391
Prereq: None

FREN397 Forbidden Love: From the Middle Ages to the French Revolution

This seminar examines the notion of "forbidden love" in prose fiction, memoirs, poetry, and theater written in French from the Middle Ages to the French Revolution. Students will gain a theoretical and historical understanding of concepts such as love and desire, and how they inform ideas of race, gender, and sexuality in the early francophone world. Students will also watch 20th- and 21st-century film and theatrical adaptations of selected works. By the end of the course, students will have acquired an appreciation for a central but often neglected dimension of francophone literature and culture, become familiar with a method combining a historical approach with the use of essential theoretical concepts, explored how attention to noncanonical and/or "nonliterary" material can extend their knowledge of the period, and provided evidence of competence in critical reading and in the presentation of independent research.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN399 French Histories: National Identity and Narratives since the Third Republic

At the end of the nineteenth century, schooling became free and mandatory in France. Since then, politicians have often considered the teaching of history as key to the construction of French national identity. Even today, some argue that the role of school is to equip children with a national narrative. French historians have questioned and resisted this instrumentalization, denouncing oversimplifications and ideological distortions. They also acknowledge that some biases have pervaded French history.



Through readings of historical novels, biographies, essays, and graphic novels as well as selected film and documentary viewings, this course will explore some of these national narratives and the way French historians, philosophers, and artists have participated in the construction of a French national identity.



The course will focus on France and its colonies since the 1870's and the Third Republic. Preliminary knowledge of the period is not required for this class. The final project will be a re-telling of a French historical event through students' preferred medium (video, graphic novel, essay, or podcast). The assignments during the semester will help students accumulate material and hone their skills toward this goal.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

FREN401 Individual Tutorial, Undergraduate

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

FREN402 Individual Tutorial, Undergraduate

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

FREN403 Department/Program Project or Essay

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

FREN404 Department/Program Project or Essay

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

FREN407 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

FREN408 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

FREN409 Senior Thesis Tutorial

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

FREN410 Senior Thesis Tutorial

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

FREN411 Group Tutorial, Undergraduate

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

FREN412 Group Tutorial, Undergraduate

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

FREN420 Student Forum

Student-run group tutorial, sponsored by a faculty member and approved by the chair of a department or program.
Offering: Host
Grading: Cr/U

FREN465 Education in the Field, Undergraduate

Students must consult with the department and class dean in advance of undertaking education in the field for approval of the nature of the responsibilities and method of evaluation.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

FREN466 Education in the Field

Students must consult with the department and class dean in advance of undertaking education in the field for approval of the nature of the responsibilities and method of evaluation.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F

FREN491 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

FREN492 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

ITAL101 Elementary Italian I

Italian 101 is the first half of a two-semester elementary sequence. Our emphasis is on the development of basic oral and written competence, and reading and aural comprehension skills. In this course, you will master the linguistic skills necessary to function in day-to-day circumstances in Italian as you develop the ability to speak and understand Italian in a communicative and meaningful context. The course also challenges you to recognize, explore, and understand cultural differences and similarities between your native culture and Italian culture.



Grammar undergirds everything we do and say in this course; whether or not we are engaged in an explicit grammar exercise, you are always learning grammar that enables you to communicate effectively. Specifically, you will learn to talk about things in your own immediate environment, such as family, friends, daily routine, likes and dislikes, and you will learn how to handle basic social interactions such as meeting people, planning events, eating out, inquiring about other people's lives, and relating information in simple terms. We will explore roughly five units of the textbook; additionally, your linguistic experience will be broadened by reading authentic texts and by viewing, listening to, and discussing cultural artifacts such as films, songs, and commercials. Class is conducted entirely in Italian. Because you will work collaboratively with your classmates and your instructor, your attendance, participation, and preparation are of the utmost importance.



Students are strongly encouraged to enroll in the continuation of the Italian Elementary sequence in Spring (Italian 102): language learning is cumulative and requires time and consistent effort. Italian 101 and Italian 102, taken together, will provide a strong linguistic foundation--which is necessary to access Intermediate and Advanced courses at Wesleyan and to succeed in study abroad experiences in Italy.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

ITAL102 Elementary Italian II

This course is the second half of a two-semester elementary sequence. Our emphasis is on the continuing development and strengthening of oral and written competence, and reading and comprehension skills. Specifically, you will master the linguistic skills necessary to describe and narrate simple events in the past and in the future, make comparisons, express possibility, express your point of view, and agree and disagree with the opinions of others. You will also reach a better understanding of culture, society, and everyday life in Italy as you develop the ability to speak and understand Italian in a communicative and meaningful context. The course also challenges you to recognize, explore, and understand cultural differences and similarities between your native culture and Italian culture. By the end of this course, you can expect to be able to function quite ably and with assurance in day-to-day circumstances in Italian. We will explore roughly five units of the textbook; additionally, your linguistic and cultural experience will be broadened by reading authentic texts and by viewing, listening to, and discussing cultural artifacts such as films, songs, and commercials. Grammar undergirds everything we do and say in this course; whether or not we are engaged in an explicit grammar exercise, you are always learning grammar that enables you to communicate effectively. Class is conducted entirely in Italian. Because you will work collaboratively with your classmates and your instructor, your attendance, participation, and preparation are of the utmost importance. Students are strongly encouraged to enroll in this course after taking Italian 101 to continue their Italian Elementary sequence: language learning is cumulative and requires time and consistent effort. Italian 101 and Italian 102, taken together, will provide a strong linguistic foundation--which is necessary to access Intermediate and Advanced courses at Wesleyan and to succeed in study abroad experiences in Italy.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: ITAL101

ITAL103 Intensive Italian

Intensive Italian is a course designed for highly motivated students who wish to learn the basics of Italian language in one semester. The course emphasizes the development of basic oral and written competence, and reading and aural comprehension skills. In this course, you will master the linguistic skills necessary to function in day-to-day circumstances in Italian as you develop the ability to speak and understand Italian in a communicative and meaningful context. The course also challenges you to recognize, explore, and understand cultural differences and similarities between your native culture and Italian culture.



Grammar undergirds everything we do and say in this course; whether or not we are engaged in an explicit grammar exercise, you are always learning grammar that enables you to communicate effectively. We will use the textbook both in class and at home; additionally, your linguistic experience will be broadened by reading authentic texts and by viewing, listening to, and discussing cultural artifacts such as films, songs, and commercials. Class is conducted entirely in Italian. Because you will work collaboratively with your classmates and your instructor, your attendance, participation, and preparation are of the utmost importance.



This course is particularly recommended for students with a background in other romance languages, such as Spanish, French, or Portuguese.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.50
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

ITAL111 Intermediate Italian I

Italian 111 is the first half of a two-semester intermediate sequence. Authentic artifacts such as literary excerpts, films, newspaper articles, songs, and commercials constitute the starting points of this course. These include topics ranging from stereotypes and perceptions of Italy to significant moments in Italian history and politics, family and student life, employment, immigration/emigration, organized crime, and environmental awareness, all of which shed light on the rich diversity and complexities within Italy and offer a variety of opportunities to improve and refine your ability to speak and understand Italian in a communicative and meaningful context. The course also challenges you to recognize, explore, and understand cultural differences and similarities between your native culture and Italian culture. Grammar undergirds everything we do and say in this course; whether or not we are engaged in an explicit grammar exercise, you are always learning grammar that enables you to communicate effectively. Specifically, you will build on previously learned grammatical structures and acquire more complex ones that will allow you to improve your ability to relate information, narrate stories, make hypotheses, express your opinions, and debate the opinions of others, both in writing and in conversation. Class is conducted entirely in Italian. Because you will work collaboratively with your classmates and your instructor, your attendance, participation, and preparation are of the utmost importance. Students are strongly encouraged to enroll in the continuation of the Intermediate Elementary sequence in Spring (Italian 112): language learning is cumulative and requires time and consistent effort. Italian 111 and Italian 112, taken together, will provide a strong linguistic and cultural foundation--which is necessary to access Advanced courses at Wesleyan and to succeed in study abroad experiences in Italy.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: ITAL102

ITAL112 Intermediate Italian II

Italian 112 is the second half of a two-semester intermediate sequence. Authentic artifacts such as literary excerpts, films, newspaper articles, songs, and commercials constitute the starting points of this course. These include topics ranging from stereotypes and perceptions of Italy to significant moments in Italian history and politics, family and student life, employment, immigration/emigration, organized crime, and environmental awareness, all of which shed light on the rich diversity and complexities within Italy and offer a variety of opportunities to improve and refine your ability to speak and understand Italian in a communicative and meaningful context. The course also challenges you to recognize, explore, and understand cultural differences and similarities between your native culture and Italian culture. Grammar undergirds everything we do and say in this course; whether or not we are engaged in an explicit grammar exercise, you are always learning grammar that enables you to communicate effectively. Specifically, you will build on previously learned grammatical structures and acquire more complex ones that will allow you to improve your ability to relate information, narrate stories, make hypotheses, express your opinions, and debate the opinions of others, both in writing and in conversation. Class is conducted entirely in Italian. Because you will work collaboratively with your classmates and your instructor, your attendance, participation, and preparation are of the utmost importance. Students are strongly encouraged to enroll in this course after taking Italian 111 to continue their Intermediate Elementary sequence: language learning is cumulative and requires time and consistent effort. Italian 111 and Italian 112, taken together, will provide a strong linguistic and cultural foundation--which is necessary to access Advanced courses at Wesleyan and to succeed in study abroad experiences in Italy.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: ITAL111

ITAL216 Words and Sex: Storytelling, Censorship, and Boccaccio's Decameron

We will explore literary genres and representations of sex and gender in Boccaccio's Decameron. Through close readings of selected tales and cultural analyses of their trans-historical and transnational reception, we take the Decameron's words as point of departure for the study of storytelling and the politics of readership. As modern readers of Boccaccio's renowned and classic Medieval collection of short tales, we investigate the text's notions of love, gender, and sexuality by comparing and contrasting the Decameron with various other texts across varying media, from the works of Petrarch and Chaucer to the modern readings of D. H. Lawrence and Pier Paolo Pasolini, and from visual arts to digital humanities. Students are invited to creatively engage with these and other texts of their choice (and with approval of the instructor) in order to produce, by the end of the course, either a) an analytic blog post that may be published on the H-Net of the Transnational Italian Studies working group; or b) an individual or collective project inspired by Boccaccio's Decameron.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: COL293
Prereq: None

ITAL217 Italy in Question(s): Race and Sexuality in Modern Italy

Who can lay claim to being Italian? Drawing upon affect theory, this course offers a survey of Italian history from fascism to the present by addressing issues of race and sexuality that public discourse often presents as "questioni" -- questions or problems. Students will consolidate and refine their knowledge of modern Italian culture by exploring the role of literature, cinema, propaganda, and social media in representing three key "questions:" the Jewish question, the sexual question, and the migrant question. By focusing on the memory and postmemory of the Holocaust (module 1), on feminist and queer activism in the long 1970s (module 2), and on the contemporary experiences of migrants and Black Italians (module 3), we will investigate how the intersection of race and sexuality has constructed patterns of belonging and exclusion in modern Italy and beyond. As we read, analyze and discuss canonic and lesser-known texts, we will reflect on how artistic representations can inform our understanding of historical events, mobilize our emotions, and help us subvert patterns of social inequality and reinforce marginalized voices. For their final projects, students will produce creative or comparative works focusing on a specific affect or emotion and linking some of the course materials to a topic of their choice.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: ITAL112

ITAL220 Italian Gaming Lab: Using Tabletop Games for Language Learning (CLAC.50)

Italian Gaming Lab is designed as a game-based Italian language laboratory that will focus on why and how tabletop games can be effective tools for language learning; examples will include board games, card games, and tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs), an increasingly popular type of game that is based on collaborative storytelling in which participants either impersonate one or more characters or create and organize entire worlds.



In this CLAC course, we will explore how a game-informed pedagogy can work in Italian language and culture classrooms and to highlight analog gaming approaches that have worked inside and outside the language classroom. We will discuss the basics of Game-Based Learning (GBL) applied to L2 acquisition, as well as play a series of games that can illustrate the gameful principles previously studies. Participants will discuss the application of gaming principles to L2 acquisition and create reports and playful presentations on their linguistic journey through play. The course offers students the opportunity to use language creatively and to develop critical knowledge within the rising and innovative field of Game-Based Learning and educational game design.



The course will be conducted in Italian, and games will be played in Italian. Both intermediate/advanced learners of Italian (second-year level or above) and native speakers are welcome. If you are unsure about whether your language background is sufficient for the course, please contact the instructor.
Offering: Host
Grading: Cr/U
Credits: 0.50
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: CGST220
Prereq: ITAL102

ITAL221 Culture, Society, and History in Italy

This course is designed for students who have completed at least two years of college-level Italian or who have achieved equivalent competency through study in Italy. Our primary objective is to enhance students' speaking abilities and Italian cultural literacy through exposure to a variety of Italian texts and contexts. The course will be organized both thematically and chronologically, taking into consideration a group of three themes that could change from one year to the next. Some groups or themes that might organize the course include the following groupings: l'amore, la morte, e l'altro; la città, la campagna, i sogni; il passato, il presente, e il futuro. We examine these themes in literary texts, paying attention to the different genres, and in opera and film. Students are expected to participate actively in this seminar setting. Class is conducted entirely in Italian.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: ITAL112

ITAL222 Ruin and Redemption: Narrating Twentieth-Century Italy

When fugitive far-left terrorist Cesare Battisti was extradited to Italy in January 2019 to serve out a life sentence for crimes committed in the late 1970s, he provided fresh evidence for the way that 20th-century events still cast long shadows into contemporary Italy. The events, their narration and re-narration over time tell the story of unresolved conflicts and overturned verdicts in a context characterized by repression, revisionism, and rehabilitation. In this course we study three historical events of the past century that continue to haunt contemporary Italian society, culture, and politics: fascism; civil war and resistance; and the political violence of terrorism in the 1970s and 80s. We approach these events by examining the ever-changing narratives about them. For each narrative we focus on specific issues (e.g., for fascism: the rise of fascism, racism and anti-Semitism, colonialism, Mussolini's cult of personality, the exaltation of war, fascist intellectuals, the art of the regime, etc.), but we use these as an entry point to articulate contradictions and complexity. We explore these narratives through various media and forms of expression: from films to novels, from landmarks to newspaper articles, from poems to billboards. By exploring how the polarizations of these narratives flow into the 21st century, we unveil the fractures and conflicting agents at the core of contemporary Italy.



The course is conducted in Italian. Authors include: Gianni Amelio, Marco Bellocchio, Italo Calvino, Liliana Cavani, Umberto Eco, Beppe Fenoglio, Dario Fo, Natalia Ginzburg, Helena Janaczek, Primo Levi, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Luisa Passerini, Cesare Pavese, Rossana Rossanda, Roberto Rossellini.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: COL222
Prereq: None

ITAL223 Home Movies: Italian "Families" on Film

What is "the family" in an Italian social and cultural context? How has it changed over time? How has it responded to the transformations of Italian society since the time of the postwar economic miracle until today? Have its contours changed to adapt to new values? Has it fossilized existing values? Are families limited to flesh-and-blood kinship or are they constructed along lines of shared values and loyalty? This course seeks some answers to these questions through a sustained exploration of a variety of types of families as they are presented in Italian cinema from roughly 1950 until today. We will take stock of representations of the "traditional" family and the related social values, seeking to understand how Italian filmmakers, through their focus on the family, enter into the debate concerning tradition and change within Italian society, culture, and history. To that end, we will examine family dynamics along a broad spectrum of relative and intersecting aspects including affiliation, love, and rivalry; elective families (organized around crime syndicates, families constituted according to affinity); "failed" and "challenged" families and what that means; and examples of single-parent and same-sex families that seek to challenge conventional heteronormative paradigms. Along the way, we will recur to some critical readings (in sociology, history, and anthropology) that will help us frame our inquiry. This course is conducted in Italian. ITAL 223 is an appropriate course for anyone seeking an advanced class after ITAL112.



We will screen one primary film each week, which will anchor our discussions and serve as the basis for that week's activities. Students will also make 10-15 minute presentations on a secondary film that will serve as a "companion" to the primary text and will thicken our understanding of that week's themes.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: COL223
Prereq: ITAL221 OR ITAL222

ITAL224 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: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: RL&L224, MDST223
Prereq: None

ITAL225 Italian/Middletown: Podcasting Middletown's Italian Treasures

This class uncovers Italian Treasures in Middletown, both on and off campus. An advanced course in Italian that is as suited for fifth-semester students as it is for those returning from Bologna or who have already taken a course in Italian, we will explore Italian podcasts and podcasting in Italian before turning our attention to podcast production of our own. Our course begins with audio explorations of podcasts in Italian, which will allow us to examine a variety of themes and subjects (e.g., true crime, sports, health, politics, among others), conducting contextualized grammar review as we go. Alongside study of both the medium of podcasting and examples of Italian podcasts, we will learn about the history of Middletown's Italian community and conduct a hunt for Italian treasures to explore and study. How does Middletown's Italian past link to its present? And to Wesleyan? Where can we find Italian "treasures" on campus and off? Throughout the semester, students will produce several short audio assignments, for which they will prepare (and submit) scripts. In service to all audio assignments, students will work on their pronunciation and diction with the Foreign Language Teaching Assistant from the University of Bologna. In addition to the brief audio assignments and scripts, major assignments include one 5-min podcast episode at midterm and one 7-min episode by the end of November. In the last week of class, students will collaborate on editing and producing a 55-min podcast that folds together all their individual chapters and includes music and linking narrative. This final podcast will be broadcast on Wesleyan's WESU.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: ITAL112

ITAL226 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: Crosslisting
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: RL&L226, RELI218, MDST226, WLIT250
Prereq: None

ITAL227 Devotion and Deception: Erotic Discourse from Dante to Petrarca

In this course, we will investigate the ideology, content, and material forms of love literature from Dante Alighieri to Francesco Petrarca. Through a close reading of such texts as Dante's Vita nova (ca. 1295), Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron (ca. 1353), and Petrarca's Rerum vulgarium fragmenta (often referred to as the poetry book par excellence: il canzoniere, ca. 1374), we will unveil the literary and fictitious nature of medieval erotic literature. We will explore the origins of love poetry in medieval France and its subsequent interpretation and rewriting in Italian courts and comuni. We will inquire into the cultural constructions of the medieval notion of the lyrical self and how it still has an impact on our own notion of consciousness. We will study the forms, themes, and characters that populate 'love stories' in the Middle Ages. We will analyze the dynamics of composition, circulation, and reception in manuscript culture. Our close analysis of the texts as they have been preserved in manuscript form will help us gauge the differences between medieval and contemporary ways of writing, reading, and loving. This course is conducted in Italian.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: MDST247
Prereq: None

ITAL229 Roads to Rome: Italian Cinema from Neorealism to Today

Do all roads lead to Rome? In ancient times, people across the Mediterranean referred to Rome as Caput Mundi, "the capital of the [Western] world." In 1906, while living there, James Joyce wrote to his brother Stanislaus: "Rome reminds me of a man who lives by exhibiting to travellers his grandmother's corpse." Four decades later, in 1948, film critic Jean-Georges Auriol remarked: "At present, there is no doubt that Rome is the capital of cinema in Europe, if not the world."



This course offers a virtual journey to the Eternal City by means of a critical survey of Italian cinema from neorealism to the present. By analyzing fundamental films that take Rome as their setting and subject, we will discuss major trends in postwar Italian cinema as we explore the history of Italy from fascism to today. Through the works of Federico Fellini, Cecilia Mangini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Paolo Sorrentino, Lina Wertmüller, and others, including several Academy Awards winners and nominees, we will address topics such as the legacy of World War II and the transition to democracy, traditional and queer notions of love, the relationship between Italy and the United States, Catholic religion and the Vatican, politics and organized crime, and the transnational representation and aestheticization of Italy.



This course is conducted in Italian.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: ITAL112

ITAL231 Italian Colonialism and Its Legacies

This course is an introduction to the history and consequences of Italian colonialism. We will study literary and historical texts describing the social and political forces that led to colonization as well as writings by colonized people and their descendants in order to gain a balanced, comprehensive understanding of this often-overlooked moment in Italian history. Students will read futurist, fascist and postcolonial theoretical work and will examine Italian, African and Albanian cultural artifacts representative of the colonial experience. We will also discuss current debates about immigration in Italy and their relationship to this colonial history. Literary texts will include: Dell'Oro's L'abbandono; Cialente's Cortile a Cleopatra; Ali Farah's Madre piccola; Marinetti's Mafarka futurista; and work by prominent Italian scholars of colonialism such as Del Boca and Isnenghi. This course is conducted in Italian.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

ITAL232 Italy at School: Biography of a Nation

Soon after the unification of Italy (1861), the Coppino Law extended primary school to five years, making it free of charge and mandatory for its first three years (1877). Edmondo De Amicis would subsequently depict these reforms in his best-selling novel Cuore (1886), a text that introduced some enduring features of school narratives but also many stereotypes, thus attracting constant criticism and inspiring several parodies of its moralistic underpinnings. Ever since then school narratives have become a key component of Italian culture, creating a genre that has thrived especially in the last three decades, with a number of both fiction and nonfiction books published by teacher-writers who have reflected on their experience.



In this course we will study Italy from the perspective of these texts about school that often originated within school walls themselves. In so doing, we will reconstruct the history of a relatively young country, Italy, through the institution that, like no other, has been given the responsibility of "making Italians." At the same time we will question the image of Italian society that school narratives have, intentionally or not, contributed to portraying. In addition to reading Lucio Mastronardi's Il maestro di Vigevano (1962), we will focus on a wide range of materials, including novels, memoirs, poems, popular songs, films, and works of art that, even in the absence of a unanimously acclaimed "classic" of the genre, have shaped the Italian collective imaginary. Materials will be organized around five poles that have been quintessential to the debate on school in Italy across politics and culture: characters (teachers and students, obviously, but also colleagues, classmates, and families), labor and working conditions (including themes such as precarious work, class conflict, labor rights), gender and identity (questioning traditional gender roles and discussing integration of migrants at school), places and geographies (addressing topics from school design to teaching in prisons, as well as center-periphery integration and north-south divide), and actions (both those of teachers and of students, such as obtaining a certification vs. passing a test, disciplining students vs. questioning teachers' authority, resigning from job vs. cutting classes). The course will be conducted in Italian.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: EDST232
Prereq: ITAL112

ITAL233 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: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: RL&L233
Prereq: None

ITAL235 The Invention of Fiction: Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron

In this course we read and discuss Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron (ca. 1353), a collection of 100 short stories traded by an "honest brigade" of 10 Florentine men and women. They tell each other these stories while sheltered in a secluded villa as the plague of 1348 rages in Florence. We study the Decameron as both a product and an interpretation of the world Boccaccio inhabited. We examine the Decameron's tales and narrative frame as a point of entry into the cultural and social environment of medieval Italy. We look at its scurrilous, amusing, and provocative innuendos as traces of erotic, religious, ethnic, and cultural questions. We investigate the sexual exuberance of many of Boccaccio's tales and the tension between "high" and "low" culture. We consider the development of mercantilism and literacy in early-modern Europe and its emerging virtues of wit and self-reliance. We review the dynamics of composition and reception in manuscript culture and the book's adaptation into different media, from illuminations to film. And by impersonating the 10 Florentines, we will reenact their pastime of telling stories and appreciate Boccaccio's remarkably modern sensibility and unsurpassed art of writing fiction. This course is conducted in Italian.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: MDST245
Prereq: None

ITAL236 Inferno

In this course we read and discuss Dante's Inferno (ca. 1306-1309) and its afterlife. Inferno is the poetic description of Dante's (imagined or actual) journey through Hell. We study how its poetry and narrative embody the notions of love, sorrow, evil, guilt, redemption, and punishment. We examine the poem as both a product and an interpretation of the world it describes and of its radical otherness: its representation of the otherworld, its relationship with religion and faith, its fear of death, its obsession with the Devil. We inquire into Dante's inventiveness and poetic technique, reviewing his magisterial use of realistic and figurative language. We observe how Inferno casts its long shadow on modern culture: in the description of the horror of Nazi concentration camps (Primo Levi's memoir), or in the representation of the inauthentic life in consumerist society (Pier Paolo Pasolini's rewriting of Inferno in contemporary Italy). We investigate the challenges that Dante's text elicits when it migrates to visual and cinematic arts (or to Disney comics), continuously camouflaging and adapting to different media. And we critically reflect on how, after seven hundred years, Inferno has not finished saying what it has to say. The course is conducted in Italian.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

ITAL238 What's in a Name? Autobiography and Autofiction in Modern Italian Culture

This course explores the relationship between a person's (or a character's) identity and their name, examining the crucial relevance of naming and renaming practices in shaping individual identities and collective narratives through a wide variety of Italian texts. In the first module, we read Holocaust memoirs and contemporary short fiction and we listen to podcasts and songs by Black and Jewish Italian authors to analyze the nuanced ways in which names shape racial identity, from the derogatory act of name-calling and the deprivation of personal names to the empowering act of reclaiming one's name and narrative. In the second part of the course, we consider coming out stories and gender transition accounts, including graphic novels and feature films, to reflect on the impact of putting into words one's gender identity and choosing new names in individual journeys of self-discovery and affirmation. In our last module, we focus on the last twenty years of Italian literature to study one of its dominant genres (that some Italian critics polemically named a "disease"): autofiction, a blend between autobiography and fiction. For the final essay or project, each student will choose a recently published novel to read, analyze, and adapt or (partially) translate. This course is conducted in Italian.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

ITAL241 Antonioni and Cinema of the Environment

From its earliest days, the cinema has sought to capture the wonders of the world: exotic landscapes, industrial inventions, and human prowess in the face of nature. At the same time, many important filmmakers--and particularly those in the Italian tradition--have mined their medium's capacity to register and comment upon environmental change. Few directors traversed the upheavals of the 20th century quite like Michelangelo Antonioni. Beginning with his early documentaries, we'll explore cinema's relationship to both the natural world and the built environment across Antonioni's long career. From the foggy landscape of the Po valley to the urban centers of Milan, Rome, London, and Los Angeles, we will assess the images produced by location shooting and realist techniques, but also by formal abstraction and non-narrative time. What might Antonioni's inclination toward abstraction and detachment ("Antoniennui," in a memorable pun) tell us about the world? How should we square his stylistic tendencies with his camera's attention to an environment under pressure? What lessons does his cinema hold for the present?



We'll approach these questions using the core methods of the humanities: close reading, careful viewing, and critical analysis. Along the way, we'll sharpen our understanding of film scholarship, and explore how to make critical (and creative) arguments about cinema and the environment.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: ITAL112

ITAL244 Re-imagining Dante's Inferno: Social Justice and the Arts

Sentenced to death for crimes he did not commit, Dante Alighieri wrote his epic poem about a journey from hell to heaven in an impoverished state of exile. Drawing on innovative techniques of music, dance, painting, and theater Dante denounced political corruption and social injustice in a story that has inspired artists throughout the world to create new work about the search for freedom, including the Russian dissident poet Osip Mandelstam, Black revolutionary playwright Amiri Baraka, the Chinese artist/activist Wei Wei, and 17th century prisoners of the Inquisition. Students will read selected cantos from Dante's "Commedia," consider contemporary news accounts of modern equivalents to medieval injustices, examine previous adaptations of the poem, and devise their own responses to Dante in the art form of their choice (theater, dance, poetry, playwriting, rap, music, spoken-word, visual arts).
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-THEA
Identical With: THEA222, COL235, MDST224, RL&L222
Prereq: None

ITAL245 Not Just Neorealism: Italian Cinema, its History and Politics (CLAC.50)

This 0.5-credit course is conducted in Italian and designed to supplement the English-language Italian cinema course "Not Just Neorealism: Italian Cinema, its History, and Politics" (RL&L 245). The presentations that are part of the requirements for the parent course (RL&L 245) will serve as our basis in this discussion-based section: Students will be responsible for screening films in addition to those required for 245, for presenting them, and, during the discussion sections in Italian, responsible also for linking them to the course material. Further, students enrolled in the CLAC will also make mini-presentations to the broader body of the students enrolled in the parent course only, linking the extra screenings to those that are part of the course syllabus, and enriching the discourse and knowledge base.



Students are required to be simultaneously enrolled in the parent course in order to enroll in the CLAC section. For this reason, enrollment is granted on a POI basis.



Students must have advanced competency in Italian: completed ITAL 221 or a course with a higher number, spent a semester (or more) in Wesleyan's Program in Bologna, or be linguistically proficient. For any questions about linguistic preparation, please contact the instructor.



Please note that at present this section is not acceptable as one of the nine required courses for the ITST major.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 0.50
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: CGST245
Prereq: ITAL221

ITAL246 Crises and Emergencies in Modern Italy

The COVID-19 pandemic revived a longstanding concern in Italian theory about the relationship between rule of law and state of exception. This course draws upon biopolitics and cultural studies to investigate the relevance and ramifications of the emergency management paradigm in modern Italy. It also provocatively questions an established trend in public discourse, namely the rhetoric of the crisis: "crisi di governo," "crisi di valori," but also "emergenza migratoria," "emergenza ambientale," and so on. Why is Italy constantly in crisis? By relying on various genres of literature and on a wide range of media including films, songs, and social media, we will analyze artistic representations of these crises and emergencies, as well as the state responses to them. The critical exploration of case studies from four interconnected thematic areas revolving around issues of public health, power, body, and space will often unveil diverging narratives, allowing for reflections on the tension between safety and freedom, vulnerability and resistance, individual and collective memory, and truth and fiction.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: ITAL222

ITAL247 Coming Out/Coming of Age: Narratives of Becoming in Italian Culture

By examining narratives of "becoming" in Italian literary and screen texts, we will work to read against a dominant "master" narrative of Italian culture that is cis-male, patriarchal, and "white." The literary and screen texts we will explore in depth include some "classic" narratives of coming of age in the Italian cultural tradition which we will lay alongside Italian cultural "coming out" narratives, some "classic," others less so. What can we learn from such adjacencies? What does one "come out" of with regard to either strand of inquiry? Is adolescence a "closet" out of which one emerges with a sexual identity? Does one come of age as an artist or "come out" as a practitioner of a particular artistic genre (filmmaker, poet, novelist)? How do artistic choices of practice subtend and inform sexual identity? What gets left behind in this "progress" of "becoming"? These are some of the questions we will address in this course, conducted in Italian.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: COL352
Prereq: None

ITAL249 Italian Filmmaking by the Book: Adaptations, Texts, and Contexts

This course explores the adaptations and transformations of Italian literary texts into their cinematic and televisual counterparts. We will principally study Italian narratives from the 20th and 21st centuries and their screen adaptations as a way of uncovering the modes and means by which Italian screen culture borrows from literary antecedents. Is the relation between literary texts and their screen adaptations a love story or bad romance? Is it characterized by a "faithfulness" to the text or a "betrayal"? Throughout the semester, students will acquire an enriched understanding of the assorted texts and their contexts by studying varied genres (short fiction, novels, nonfiction, detective stories), a variety of themes (crimes both real and imagined, petty and powerful; historical revisionism; personal and political dilemmas), and diverse geographical settings focusing principally on Southern Italy (including cities and islands reaching from the Mediterranean to the Adriatic).



All students in the course will study a common core of five author/director pairs. The core consists of "Il Gattopardo" (di Lampedusa/Visconti); "Io non ho paura" (Ammaniti/Salvatores); "L'amica geniale" (Ferrante/Costanzo); "Gomorra" (Saviano/Garrone/Sollima); and "Novelle per un anno/Caos" (Pirandello/Taviani). Additionally, students will, in consultation with the instructor, choose a sixth pairing from the list of the following titles, which will serve as the basis of their end-semester presentation as well as an element of the oral final exam: "Il giorno della civetta" (Sciascia/Damiani); "Il contesto/Cadaveri eccellenti" (Sciascia/ Rosi); "I Malavoglia/La terra trema" (Verga/Visconti); "Padre Padrone" (Ledda/Taviani); "Quo vadis, baby?" (Verasani/Salvatores); "Acciaio" (Avallone/Mordini); "Il conformista" (Moravia/Bertolucci); "Todo modo" (Sciascia/Petri); "Minchia di re/Viola di mare" (Pilati/Maiorca); "Benzina" (Stancanelli/Stambrini); "Il padrino" (Puzo/Coppola); "La tregua" (Levi/Rosi); and "Le forme dell'acqua" (Camilleri/Sironi). Students may also care to consider literary texts from earlier historical periods: Basile's 16th-century "Il cunto de li cunti/Il racconto dei racconti" (Garrone) and Collodi's 19th-century "Pinnochio" (with adaptations by Disney, Benigni, and Garrone). This course will be conducted in Italian. This course is appropriate for all students who have completed ITAL 112 or whose placement exam indicated a course numbered ITAL 221 or higher.



Students are encouraged to put the lengthened winter break to good purpose. All students are expected to read the first book of Ferrante's Neapolitan quartet, "L'amica geniale," during the winter break. It is a long novel, but students will find that the Italian is not challenging. Any edition in Italian will be fine (e.g., electronic, print, used, etc.). Reading in advance of the semester will facilitate students' workload as well as keep Italian flowing during the lengthy pause. It is further greatly recommended that students read di Lampedusa's "Il Gattopardo" in advance of the semester. If students have already taken an Italian course numbered 221 or higher, or have already studied in Italian, it is recommended that they read "Il Gattopardo" in Italian. Any edition will serve.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: COL289
Prereq: None

ITAL256 Medieval Gigs: Saints, Scholars, Sailors, Sinners

A friar preaching to birds, a scoundrel passing as a saint, a nun conversing with Jesus, a Greek hero sinking into hell, a scholar talking to the dead, and a merchant exploring uncharted territories: We find unusual professional figures gigging in Italy circa 1300. In this course we explore medieval alterity through the voices of its most illustrious representatives: from Francis of Assisi to Dante Alighieri, and through a variety of other workers in the Italian economy. We examine various aspects of medieval religious culture ranging from mystical visions to the institutional politics of the Church. We consider the development of mercantile capitalism and its emerging virtues of wit and self-reliance. We track seafarers as they encounter the Other during their maritime voyages. For those staying closer to home, like clerics and other literate "Italians," we review the dynamics of composition and reception from orality to manuscript culture. We observe how medieval culture is embodied through different media, from manuscript illuminations to film. And by combining micro- and macro-perspectives, we approach the Italian Middle Ages from a broad aesthetic, historical, and socio-anthropological standpoint.



The course is conducted in Italian. Authors include Francis of Assisi, Catherine of Siena, Angela of Foligno, Giotto, Dante Alighieri, Francesco Petrarca, Giovanni Boccaccio, Marco Polo, and Christopher Columbus.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: MDST258
Prereq: None

ITAL260 Castles of Cards: Italian Romance Epic Storytelling Lab

Celebrated authors of 20th-century Italian literature such as Italo Calvino and Gianni Celati have included in their works several features of Renaissance romance epic, from the importance of orality and the idea of sharing stories with a community of listeners to multi-threaded narratives and a playful attitude to the world of storytelling. The current popularity of fantasy literature and TV series puts us in an ideal position for the study of the chivalric romance and for an exploration of the continuities and the differences between past and present literary forms. In this course we focus on canonical and less canonical texts of the Italian Renaissance epic and their modern rewritings. After a multimedia investigation of Andrea da Barberino's "Guerrin Meschino," Luigi Pulci's "Morgante," Boiardo's "Inamoramento de Orlando," Ariosto's "Orlando Furioso," and Tasso's "Gerusalemme liberata" along with their rewritings by authors such as Bufalino, Nori, Celati, Calvino, and Giuliani, we will take inspiration from Calvino's "Il castello dei destini incrociati" to transform the classroom into a storytelling lab. The same deck of tarot cards that Calvino used for his book will help us to take part in a role-playing game and create a collaborative story that will gradually unfold throughout the semester. The class aims both at studying the Italian romance epic in order to reenact it creatively and also at using this collaborative rewriting as an interpretive tool to explore Renaissance literature from within.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: ITAL112

ITAL263 Mythic & Modern: Reappropriating Classical Themes in Contemporary Drama and Performance

What does it mean to defy the authority of the patriarch, of family, or of government? How do these structures of authority intersect in contemporary society? How do we, today, understand "destiny"? How do we challenge it, and what are the consequences for doing so? How do we break the patterns of shame and disenfranchisement inherited from the shared past? These are just some of the social, political, and ethical concerns transmitted over time by playwrights, stage and performance artists, and film directors who treat classical myths as valuable constructs for interrogating our contemporary world and society. In this collaborative, project-based course we explore how classical myths have been appropriated within the modern Italian and Italophone cultural context. Just as important as our study and discussion of modern adaptations of classical models are the staged readings of key scenes incorporated strategically throughout the semester that help us develop an organic understanding of the material from the inside. Our overarching aims include: 1) exposing what persists in modern adaptations of classical myths, 2) tracking the kernels of change that the adaptations present, and 3) understanding why performers over time, working in disparate cultural milieus, continue to seek and derive inspiration from classical myths. The mythic figures we examine may include any of the following: Sophocles' Antigone, Euripides' Oedipus and Medea, Aeschylus' Agamemnon, as well as figures from the Oresteia and from such epics as Homer's "Iliad" and Virgil's "Aeneid." This course is taught in conjunction with ITAL263 and FREN263. The final collaborative performance, scheduled during the final exams period, will involve students from across the Romance Languages and offers the unique opportunity for cohort building among students of French, Italian, and Spanish.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: THEA263
Prereq: ITAL221

ITAL267 Female Dicks: Police, Detectives, and Private Investigators in Contemporary Italian Culture

Through the act of detection and "solution" of a crime, classic detective stories and police procedurals often serve as consoling narratives, knitting up the unraveled social fabric and seeing that justice will either be served or promised. In solving the crime, the detective--sometimes called a "dick" in the classic American hard-boiled detective literature--often restores order to social chaos. What changes when women--female dicks--conduct the investigation? Do women investigators, as agents of detection, uphold existing (patriarchal) power structures, dynamics, and epistemologies? Challenge them? Transform them? These are some of the themes we will contemplate as we study Italian "gialli" published since 1995.



We will concentrate on three different types of female dicks: la Deferente (the deferential), la Scomoda (the disquieting, uneasy), and la Vendicatrice (the vindicator). We will read novels in several different book series privileging Bologna as a location; further, we will also explore films and television series, trying to plumb the relationship of these Italian screen texts to the phenomenon of global and transnational noir.



This course is conducted through the medium of Italian and is suitable for anyone who has already taken a fifth-semester course (or one that is more advanced) on the Middletown campus or who has participated on the ECCO Program in Bologna. If you have questions about whether this is the course for you, please contact the instructor.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: COL367
Prereq: ITAL112

ITAL280 Journeys of the Mind and Body

From Dante's descent into the underworld to contemporary narratives of migration, journeys -- both real and imaginary -- have shaped Italian literature, art, and film production. This course explores how movement, whether physical, psychological, or symbolic, serves as a catalyst for transformation, self-discovery, and historical reckoning. We will examine visionary landscapes in Dante and Leopardi, shifting bodies in Tasso and Tondelli, evolving female identities from Veronica Franco to Elena Ferrante, and testimonies of displacement from Primo Levi to Igiaba Scego. How do literary and artistic journeys negotiate the tension between reality and imagination? In what ways does movement -- whether forced or voluntary -- reshape identity and power? How do historical and cultural contexts influence the meaning of travel?
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: ITAL112

ITAL289 The Mediterranean Archipelago: Literary and Cultural Representations

"Islands which have / never existed / have made their ways / onto maps nonetheless" (Nicholas Hasluck). In this course, we study Mediterranean islands as geographical, textual, and metaphorical spaces. We focus on specific islands -- both fictional and real -- as case studies for the aesthetic, political, and metaphysical implications of insularity, while also aiming to present the Mediterranean as a spatial, historical, and cultural network of relationality and conflict. Elaborating upon Predrag Matvejevitc's statement that "the Mediterranean is not only geography," we approach Mediterranean insularity not only in cartographical representations (from Greek geographers to Arab cartographers), but also as poetic topos (from Ariosto's Island of Alcina to Goethe's Capri), narrative stratagem (from Homer's Phaeacia to Boccaccio's Rhodes), literary protagonist (from Deledda's Sardinia to Murgia's Sardinia), political concept (from Plato's Atlantis to Campanella's Taprobane), and existential condition (from Cervantes's Cyprus to Cavafy's Ithaca). We engage in a diachronic and synchronic exploration of Mediterranean islands' inherent dialectic between resistance and occupation, identity and assimilation, marginality and integration, zoological extinction and speciation, inbreeding and metissage, autochthony and allogeny, linguistic conservatism and creoleness, territorial boundedness and internal division. Our approach will also be archipelagic and include methods and concepts from historical linguistics and dialectology to diplomatic history and postcolonial poetics.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CHUM
Identical With: MDST360, WLIT340
Prereq: ITAL112

ITAL333 The Cosmos of Dante's Comedy - Medieval Italian Lab (CLAC .50)

This optional lab is dedicated to students who are taking or have taken RL&L 226 (The Cosmos of Dante's Comedy) and want to read and discuss sections of Dante's masterwork in Italian. The lab is designed for upper-intermediate and advanced learners of Italian, but students with reading knowledge of Italian should contact the instructor if they feel this course may be appropriate for them.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 0.50
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: CGST333
Prereq: None

ITAL401 Individual Tutorial, Undergraduate

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

ITAL402 Individual Tutorial, Undergraduate

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

ITAL403 Department/Program Project or Essay

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

ITAL407 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

ITAL408 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

ITAL409 Senior Thesis Tutorial

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

ITAL410 Senior Thesis Tutorial

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

ITAL411 Group Tutorial, Undergraduate

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

ITAL412 Group Tutorial, Undergraduate

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

ITAL419 Student Forum

Student-run group tutorial, sponsored by a faculty member and approved by the chair of a department or program.
Offering: Host
Grading: Cr/U

ITAL420 Student Forum

Student-run group tutorial, sponsored by a faculty member and approved by the chair of a department or program.
Offering: Host
Grading: Cr/U

ITAL491 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

ITAL492 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

ITAL502 Individual Tutorial, Graduate

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

PORT155 Portuguese (Romance Language Speakers) I

This course offers students who have a strong working knowledge of Spanish or another Romance language the opportunity to study Brazilian Portuguese in an accelerated format. This course is conducted entirely in Portuguese. Completion of both semesters is required for study abroad in Brazil.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: CGST155
Prereq: FREN112 OR ITAL112 OR SPAN112

PORT156 Portuguese (Romance Language Speakers) II

This course is the continuation of a yearlong course in intensive Portuguese. The second semester will concentrate on mastery of grammar points, with increasing attention to readings, writing, and cultural topics. Music, poetry, short stories, Internet resources, video, and journalism are integrated with the textbook.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: PORT155 or LANG155

PORT401 Individual Tutorial, Undergraduate

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

PORT402 Individual Tutorial, Undergraduate

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

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&L122F The Little Prince and Beyond: Literature and Childhood (FYS)

This first-year seminar will explore French literature and films for and about children. At the heart of our discussions in this class will be the question of how adults construct the child's point of view. How can we define childhood? How can we evoke it through narrative? How ought we make art for children? We'll look at a variety of sources including Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel memoir Persepolis, Antoine de St. Exupéry's The Little Prince, 19th-century didactic literature, films by François Truffaut, and classic fairy tales. No knowledge of French is required; all readings will be in translation and discussions will be in English. We will work on a variety of critical writing formats and students will also have the opportunity to produce creative writing as well.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
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, the Italian Peninsula, the Low Countries, Portugal, 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 have contemporary (21st-century) writers reimagined 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, 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&L216 Introduction to Literary Translation

In the first part of the semester, we'll discuss what, exactly, literary translation is, and we'll take a look at some long-standing debates in the field--is translation a form of creative writing, can a text be translated word-for-word, should translators modernize the language of older works--as well as some of the more recent debates surrounding large-language models and machine translation: wouldn't it be much easier to simply paste a novel in Google Translate or ChatGPT and go with it? From there, we'll dive into some of the practical strategies translators use by looking at everything from book titles (Dostoyevsky's Bésy, for example, which has appeared in English as Demons, The Devils, and The Possessed) to single sentences (such as the opening of Camus' L'Étranger) to longer paragraphs and passages from literary works that have now appeared in multiple English translations (such as Kafka's Die Verwandlung). Students will then use their newly filled "translator's toolbox" to plan, draft, and ultimately share their own translations with the rest of the class, while also learning to provide focused, supportive feedback for each other along the way. The emphasis in this workshop portion of the class is less on final products than on process. As such, students will keep a "translator's diary" in which they explain, analyze, and reflect on their developing process. Note: Knowledge of a second language is not required for this course, but you will be asked to consult with a native user of the language you wish to translate from for your final project.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-WRCT
Identical With: WRCT216, COL286, ENGL270
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&L218 Art and Architecture of Renaissance Florence

How did Florence rebound from calamitous plague to become the self-styled locus of the Renaissance? This survey of the art and architecture of Florence evaluates its cultural achievements against the improbabilities of their success. The city had negligible Roman history but championed the revival of classical antiquity; it was repressive but pushed the boundaries of representing gender and sexuality; its government slid from a republic to an absolute monarchy but fostered creative latitude; it spawned one of Italy's most popular religious zealots and popularized secular ideals; it had no empire but became a hub of global trade and knowledge transmission. To understand how this happened, we will study famous artists like Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, and Michelangelo alongside their lesser-known and even nameless contemporaries. Painting, sculpture, architecture, drawing, and printmaking will come alive in lectures and by discussing related texts in translation, recreating artistic techniques, and examining original Renaissance artworks in person.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: ARHA222
Prereq: None

RL&L219 Global Rome: Art and Architecture in Early Modernity

Rome has long called itself the "head of the world," but in the early fifteenth century, it was a backwater. This course surveys the art and architecture of Rome as it reclaimed the papal seat, grew its population, witnessed their deaths amid an infamous sack, and then amassed singular power through the transoceanic expansion of Catholicism. The local particulars of Rome will be considered alongside its global history, situating the accomplishments of Raphael, Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Artemisia Gentileschi, Bernini, and others in relation to Rome's ties to Europe, Africa, the Americas, and Asia. Particular attention will be given to Rome's relationship to its ancient empire, as well as the roles of female artists and patrons in a city whose population skewed increasingly male. Students will study architecture, painting, sculpture, drawing, print, tapestry, arms and armor, jewelry, clothing, and ephemeral design, as well as period texts in translation.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: ARHA226
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&L222 Re-imagining Dante's Inferno: Social Justice and the Arts

Sentenced to death for crimes he did not commit, Dante Alighieri wrote his epic poem about a journey from hell to heaven in an impoverished state of exile. Drawing on innovative techniques of music, dance, painting, and theater Dante denounced political corruption and social injustice in a story that has inspired artists throughout the world to create new work about the search for freedom, including the Russian dissident poet Osip Mandelstam, Black revolutionary playwright Amiri Baraka, the Chinese artist/activist Wei Wei, and 17th century prisoners of the Inquisition. Students will read selected cantos from Dante's "Commedia," consider contemporary news accounts of modern equivalents to medieval injustices, examine previous adaptations of the poem, and devise their own responses to Dante in the art form of their choice (theater, dance, poetry, playwriting, rap, music, spoken-word, visual arts).
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-THEA
Identical With: THEA222, COL235, ITAL244, MDST224
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: ITAL224, MDST223
Prereq: None

RL&L225 French Literary Masterpieces in Translation and on Screen

In this First-Year Seminar students will study five novels originally written in French, from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries, alongside and against their respective cinematic adaptations. We will begin with Marie-Madeleine de Lafayette's The Princess of Clèves (1678), one of Europe's first psychological novels, and Christophe Honoré's The Beautiful Person (2008). We will then read Choderlos de Laclos's epistolary novel Dangerous Liaisons (1782) and watch Roger Vadim's Les Liaisons dangereuses 1960, followed by Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary (1856) and Anne Fontaine's Gemma Bovery (2014). Moving into the twentieth century, we will discuss Colette's Chéri (1920) and Stephen Frears's Chéri (2009). We will end the course with Nobel-prize winner Annie Ernaux's Happening (2000) and Audrey Diwan's Happening (2021). Other adaptations that students may wish to explore include but are not limited to: Jean Delannoy's La Princesse de Clèves (1961), Manoel de Oliveira's The Letter (1999), Andrzej Zulawski's Fidelity (2000), and Rémy Sauder's 2011 documentary on how The Princess of Clèves has been taught in a French high school in Marseille; Miloš Forman's Valmont (1989), Stephen Frears's Dangerous Liaisons (1998), and Roger Kumble's Cruel Intentions (1999); adaptations of Madame Bovary by Vincent Minnelli (1949), Claude Chabrol (1991), and Sophie Barthes (2014); Pierre Billon's Chéri (1950). These novels and their adaptations will allow us to think about notions of canon formation (i.e., how do we define, and who decides, what a "masterpiece" is?); genre and narrative; the uses of history in fiction; censorship, controversy, and scandal; gender, sex, and class; and how these texts have been and continue to be read, used, adapted, translated, and transformed from their time of publication to the present day. Students who have sufficient knowledge of French will have the opportunity to read the texts in their original language and have discussions and written assignments in French.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
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, 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: 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 introduces 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&L252F French Literary Masterpieces in Translation and on Screen (FYS)

In this First-Year Seminar students will study an array of literary chefs-d'oeuvre originally written in French, from the seventeenth to the twenty-first centuries, alongside and against their respective cinematic adaptations. These novels and their adaptations will allow us to think about notions of canon formation (i.e., how do we define, and who decides, what a "masterpiece" is?); content and form, and how they relate to prose narrative and to the moving image; genre and narrative; the uses of history in fiction; censorship, controversy, and scandal; gender, sex, and class; and how these texts have been and continue to be read, used, adapted, translated, and transformed from their time of publication to the present day. Students will have the opportunity to write both academically and creatively. Students who have sufficient knowledge of French will be able to read the texts in their original language and have discussions and written assignments in French by enrolling in the 0.5 CR Cultures and Languages Across the Curriculum (CLAC) course linked to this seminar. (See the FREN 253F course description for the eligibility requirements to enroll in the CLAC course.)
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
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

SPAN101 Elementary Spanish I

This introductory course is designed for students without prior Spanish language study. Students will develop basic receptive and productive language skills (reading, listening, writing, and speaking) along with an awareness of the various cultures of the Spanish-speaking world, including the United States. Note that Span 101 and Span 102 are designed as a year-long course, with each course covering half of the textbook, along with other materials. Completion of Span 102, or evidence of appropriate level, will be required to continue onto Intermediate Spanish (111-112).
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

SPAN102 Elementary Spanish II

This course is the continuation of SPAN101, though students may place directly into 102 via the Wesleyan Language Placement Exam. The course further develops basic language skills (reading, listening, writing, and speaking) and incorporates readings and media from a variety of sources, allowing students to explore the cultures of the Spanish-speaking world.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: SPAN101

SPAN103 Elementary Spanish for High Beginners

SPAN103 is intended for students with prior experience in Spanish (and is considered the same level as SPAN 102). This language course places emphasis on the development of speaking, listening, reading and writing, within a cultural framework, so students can attain an intermediate level in the language (and subsequently enroll in SPAN 110 or 111).

To enroll in this course students must have placed into SPAN 102 or SPAN 103 on Wesleyan's Placement exam. Enrollment for Juniors and Seniors is contingent upon space availability during drop/add period. This course is not linked to another class.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

SPAN110 Spanish for High Beginners

Intermediate-level language course following SPAN103, with emphasis on the development of four basic language skills (reading, listening, writing, and speaking) within a cultural framework.

This course is comparable to SPAN111 and can be followed by SPAN112. Those seeking to follow with SPAN113 require permission of instructor. A weekly electronic journal is required for this course.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: SPAN102 AND SPAN103

SPAN111 Intermediate Spanish I

This intermediate language course places continued emphasis on the development of reading, listening, writing, and speaking skills within a strong cultural framework. The sequence SPAN111 and SPAN112 seeks to expand students' active and passive control of vocabulary and grammar and for students to gain experience in using formal and informal registers of Spanish. Note that Span 101 and Span 102 are designed as a year-long course, with each course covering half of the textbook, along with other materials. Completion of Span 112, or evidence of appropriate level, will be required to continue onto Advanced Spanish - Introduction to Hispanic Literatures (Span 221).
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

SPAN112 Intermediate Spanish II

This course leads students through a review and in-depth examination of advanced Spanish grammar issues and vocabulary expansion within a cultural framework that explores an array of topics connecting to other academic disciplines. Students will experience working with written texts and other media materials and produce a variety of written pieces. The course is a continuation of Span 111, though students may place directly into the course via the Wesleyan Placement exam or an appropriate AP score.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: SPAN111

SPAN113 Intermediate-Advanced Spanish

Within a cultural framework focused on the Spanish-speaking world--especially Latin America--this course leads students through a review and in-depth examination of advanced Spanish grammar issues and vocabulary expansion while providing the experience of working with written texts and other media materials. Students will explore an array of topics that connect to other academic disciplines.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: SPAN110 OR SPAN111

SPAN201 Spanish Play

Students will be in charge of directing and staging a play in Spanish with the assistance of a Spanish professor. The workshop will take place over 10 weeks. Minimum one hour per week, which will increase to 2 as the day of the opening approaches. Rehearsals will be split between activities including reading and commenting on the dramatic text and working on diction, which can be done collectively or in smaller groups, and workshopping and rehearsing the play. Although the play will be in Spanish, we will try to allow for a wider audience by providing a brief English translation of the plot.
Offering: Host
Grading: Cr/U
Credits: 0.50
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

SPAN203 Spanish for Heritage Speakers

This course is designed to meet the specific needs of students who are heritage speakers of Spanish to increase their language skills and confidence. Students who take this course must have placed into SPAN112 or above. Emphasis is placed on the following: development of linguistic strategies that advance students' written and oral expression beyond the colloquial level, grammatical and orthographic norms of Spanish, critical reading (reading for understanding and analyzing what is read), and expansion of vocabulary. The linguistic work will be conducted through course materials that explore, through a variety of literary and nonliterary texts, the use of Spanish in the U.S. Materials include a textbook or manual and topics related to the experience of Spanish speakers in the U.S.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

SPAN204 Teaching Spanish K-12: Second Language Pedagogy (CLAC 0.5)

This is a community engagement course in which students learn basic principles of language pedagogy and language acquisition to inform their teaching of Spanish to children at one of the Middletown public schools. Readings in English and Spanish; class discussion and assignments in Spanish. Students will familiarize themselves with characteristics of second language (L2) learning and teaching, a basic know-how on analyzing and preparing materials for language learning/teaching, and L2 teaching as a profession.

Language and course requirement: Students must have recently taken a SPAN course numbered 221 or above. Preference will be given to EDST and HISP majors, as well as juniors and seniors.
Offering: Host
Grading: Cr/U
Credits: 0.50
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: CGST218, EDST204
Prereq: None

SPAN221 Introduction to Hispanic Literatures and Advanced Practice in Spanish

Poems, plays, essays, short stories, and films representative of various Spanish-speaking countries and different periods of literary history are used to improve speaking and writing skills and to introduce students to the fundamentals of literary analysis. It includes a formal review of recurring grammatical and rhetorical problems students have at this level in Spanish. The course is conducted exclusively in Spanish. Besides the three hours of class sessions with the professor, all students are required to attend a weekly one-hour conversation section with a Colombian or Spanish TA.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: SPAN112 OR SPAN113

SPAN225 Creative Writing in Spanish

Taught by renowned Mexican writer Cristina Rivera Garza, Distinguished Writer in Residence for 2024-25, this seminar will offer students the tools to articulate their ideas and experiences in Spanish in narrative forms. The course is designed to achieve this in two ways: learning specific techniques through readings of prose in Spanish and by working throughout the semester on crafting at least one short piece. The professor will make in-class observations and written suggestions on student texts as drafts of their work are presented. During the semester students will practice extensive writing, critical reading, and peer editing. The course introduces students to literary terminology and places significant emphasis on vocabulary building.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: WRCT225
Prereq: None

SPAN227 Writing Short Fiction in Spanish

This course will be both an examination of the short story form in Latin American letters, a genre that has been crucial to the region's intellectual traditions and its ruptures, and a deep exploration of the act of writing short fiction in Spanish. By examining diverse aspects of the craft of fiction writing, and through a discussion of their own writing and that of their peers, students will search for their (multilingual) voice to explore some of their philosophical, affective and linguistic concerns, become stronger writers and storytellers and improve their skills in Spanish. They will also familiarize themselves with some of the most captivating fiction produced by Latin American and Latinx short story writers over a century.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: CGST227, WRCT277
Prereq: SPAN221

SPAN230 Heroes, Lovers, and Swindlers: Medieval and Renaissance Spanish Literature and History

This course is designed to develop students' ability to make informed and creative sense of four fascinating, complex, and influential medieval and Renaissance Spanish texts in their multiple (literary, historical) contexts: the "national" epic EL CID (12th-13th century); the bawdy and highly theatrical prose dialogue known as LA CELESTINA (1499); the anonymous LAZARILLO (1554), the first picaresque novel; and María de Zayas's proto-feminist novella THE WAGES OF VICE (1647). Through these and selected historical readings, the course is also intended to provide students with a basic knowledge of Spanish culture (in its plurality) from the 11th through the 17th centuries, the texture of everyday life, and the larger movements of long-term historical change. We will draw on literature and history to imagine the world of chivalry and crusade in the medieval Spain of "the three religions of the book" (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam); of mercantile values, courtly love, and prostitution in the Renaissance city; of social injustice and religious hypocrisy in imperial Spain; and of the exacerbated gender and caste tensions that followed from the political crises of the 1640s. We will reflect on the interplay of literature and history in our efforts to come to grips with a past both familiar and strange; address the crossing of linguistic, artistic, ethnic, religious, caste, and gender boundaries that has long been a conspicuous feature of Spanish society; and consider what texts and lives of the past might still have to say to us today. No prior historical or literary preparation is required, only a willingness to engage the readings closely (textually and historically).
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: COL229, MDST228
Prereq: None

SPAN231 Classic Spanish Plays: Love, Violence, and (Poetic) Justice on the Early Modern Stage

From 1580 to 1690, Spanish and Latin American playwrights created one of the great dramatic repertoires of world literature, as inventive, varied, and influential as the classical Greek and Elizabethan-Jacobean English traditions. A distinguishing feature of this theatrical tradition is the unusual prominence it lent to actresses (and roles written for them), as well as to women in the paying audiences. This profit-driven popular entertainment of its day appealed to the learned and illiterate, to women and men, and to rich and poor alike. And the plays correspondingly mixed high and low characters, language, genres, and sources, with results regularly attacked by moralists. Vital, surprising, and ingenious, they exposed the creative tension between art and profit on a new scale, a tension that remains alive for us. We will examine five of the greatest of these plays by Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Calderón de la Barca, Tirso de Molina, and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (in Mexico or "New Spain") in a variety of genres and modes (history, epic, romantic comedy, tragedy, Islamic borderland, metatheater, parody, siege play, philosophical and theological drama), with their deft character portraits (the original Don Juan by Tirso; Calderón's "Spanish Hamlet" Segismundo; Lope's spitfire diva Diana, the Countess of Belflor; and Sor Juana's cross-dressing comic virtuosi) and their spirited dialogue, inventive plots, and dazzling metrical variety. We will look at the social conditions that enabled the Spanish stage to serve as a kind of civic forum, where conflicts between freedom and authority or desire and conformism could be acted out and the fears, hopes, dangers, and pleasures generated by conquest, urbanization, trade, shifting gender roles, social mobility, religious reform, regulation of matrimony and violence, and clashing intellectual and political ideals could be aired. We pay particular attention to the shaping influence of women on the professional stage (in contrast to England) and to performance spaces and traditions. Organized around the careful reading of five key play-texts in Spanish, together with historical, critical, and theoretical readings, this course assumes no familiarity with the texts, with Spanish history, or with literary analysis. However, an interest in engaging these wonderful plays closely, imaginatively, and historically is essential. There will be opportunities to pursue performance, adaptation, and translation. This counts as a Theater Method course for the Theater Major.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: COL313, THEA231
Prereq: None

SPAN232 Dialogue of Poets: Classical and 20th-Century Poetry in Spain and Latin America

This course samples the rich tradition of Spanish-language verse from its beginnings to the present. It is organized around four primary dialogues: (1) the creative reception by leading 20th-century poets from Spain and Latin America (e.g., Neruda, Lorca, Machado, Borges, Paz, Rossetti) of classical poets (Saint John of the Cross, Góngora, Quevedo, and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz); (2) the interplay of poetry and essays by those same poets; (3) the round-trip fertilization of popular and elite, oral and written forms of poetry; and (4) the crossing of linguistic, ethnic, religious, and gender boundaries that has shaped Spanish-language verse from its beginnings as love lyrics embedded in Hebrew and Arabic poems (jarchas) to the creative stimulus of other Romance languages (especially Galician and Catalan) in Spain, through Latin American poets open to Amerindian and African influences, and Hispanic-American poets exploring bilingualism in the U.S. We will read lyric, epic, and burlesque verse on a wide variety of themes (mysticism, sex, history, reason, travel, love, politics, sensory perception, death, and poetry itself); reflect on how poetry can best be enjoyed and understood; and consider how poetry has been produced, heard, read, and used (ritual and spontaneous song; minstrel performance of epic and ballads; courtly patronage, literary academies, and manuscript circulation; private reading of printed texts and commodification; and 20th-century singer-songwriter musical settings and politics). Although no prior expertise in poetry is expected, a willingness to engage it closely (textually and historically) is essential.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: LAST232, COL226
Prereq: SPAN221

SPAN236 Cervantes

Cervantes is known chiefly for DON QUIXOTE, often described as the first modern novel and fountainhead of one of the great modern myths of individualism. DON QUIXOTE also reimagines virtually every fashionable, popular, and disreputable literary genre of its time: chivalric, pastoral, picaresque, sentimental, adventure, and Moorish novels; the novella; verse forms; drama; and even the ways these kinds of literary entertainment were circulated and consumed, debated, celebrated, and reviled. It is a book about the life-enhancing (and endangering) power of books and reading and the interplay of fiction and history and truths and lies. Cervantes' art remains fresh and unsettling, sparing no one and nothing, including the author and his work. Distinguished by its commitment to the serious business of humor, make-believe, and play, the novel is at once a literary tour de force and a fascinating lens through which to examine the political, social, religious, and intellectual debates of its moment. Characteristic themes include social reality as artifact or fiction, the paradoxical character of truths, the irreducible diversity of taste and perception, the call for consent in politics and love, and personal identity (including gender) as a heroic quest. In this course, we will read, discuss, and write about DON QUIXOTE, along with a sampling of critical, philosophical, literary, and artistic responses it has inspired.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: COL327, MDST254
Prereq: SPAN221

SPAN239 Rebels and Rebellions in Early Modern Spain

What does it mean to be a rebel? This course examines literary, visual, and historiographical representations of rebels and rebellions in early modern Spain. Students will examine the uprisings of aggrieved comuneros (proto-bourgeois revolutionaries) in Castile and of outraged moriscos (Muslims converts to Christianity) in Granada and Aragon, the covert spiritual rebellions of crypto-Jewish conversas (Jewish converts to Christianity) and crypto-Muslim moriscas, as well as texts composed by women writers who rebelled against gender norms and Spain's most famous playwright's classic rebellion play. We will analyze the scathing testimonies of expelled moriscos and paintings that reimagine the pre-expulsion revolts of Valencian moriscos alongside gripping examples of local resistance to the moriscos' banishment, an astonishing and unprecedented tragedy in Spanish history. The seminar will introduce students to a critical framework for analyzing visual and multilingual texts. Close readings of "rebellious" texts will acquaint students with both known and nameless rebels of Spain, as well as with the unresolved legacies they left behind.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: COL239
Prereq: None

SPAN240 Writings from the Abyss: Andean Women Authors Between Territory, Memory, and Body

This course explores literature written by Andean women through a lens that centers the body, gender, and territory as key axes of resistance writing. We will ask ourselves how authors from regions such as Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador -- from the mid-20th century to the present -- articulate their experiences and genealogies from positions that engage with ancestral knowledge, Indigenous worldviews, Andean spiritualities, and political memory. The selected texts highlight representations of the female body as a site of conflict, pleasure, maternity, trauma, and rebellion. Topics will include the coloniality of gender, state violence, language and orality, racialization, and sexual dissidence. The course is organized thematically and combines literary analysis with approaches drawn from cultural studies, Andean feminisms, and decolonial theory. Readings will include texts written in Spanish as well as bilingual or translated works from Quechua, Aymara, or Kichwa, alongside visual materials, interviews, and digital archives when relevant.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: SPAN221

SPAN241 Contested Archives: Power and Memory in Latin American Archival Practices

This course explores the histories and politics of archiving in Latin America, from colonial record-keeping and imperial control to contemporary community-led, feminist, and dissident archival projects. What counts as an archive? Who decides what is preserved and erased? How are bodies, languages, and stories made (in)visible through archival dynamics? What alternative archival imaginaries emerge from Latin America's colonial and postcolonial contexts? We will analyze how archives have functioned both as instruments of domination and as tools of resistance, central to the construction of national histories, racial hierarchies, and cultural identities, but also capable of challenging erasure and reclaiming marginalized memories. Through an interdisciplinary and decolonial lens, we will engage with both historical texts and cultural and artistic interventions that challenge dominant archival logics, including literary works, films, visual art, performance, and digital media that interrogate, fictionalize, or subvert archival practices. We will examine a variety of materials, including state archives, ecclesiastical records, truth commissions, community memory projects, and speculative/fictional texts based on archival material. By reading across genres and media, the course highlights how cultural production can both expose and reimagine the power of the archive. Works include texts by Diamela Eltit, Horacio Castellanos Moya, Cristina Rivera Garza, Patricio Guzmán, Diana Taylor, Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, Aníbal Quijano, installation and performatic art by Regina José Galindo and diverse materials from archives and memory projects throughout Latin America.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: SPAN221

SPAN250 Defiant Echoes: Resistance and Reinvention in the Spanish Canon

Can the literary canon be both a tool of oppression and a space for rebellion? In this course, we will challenge traditional notions of the Spanish canon, exploring how voices of dissent have reshaped it from the 18th century to today. Through literature, comics, memoirs, theater, and essays, we will uncover how writers and artists have resisted imposed identities and fought for a more inclusive cultural landscape. From the groundbreaking works of Emilia Pardo Bazán and Federico García Lorca to contemporary creators like Quan Zhou Wu, Ana Penyas, and Desiree Bela-Lobedde, we will analyze how these voices question authority, identity, and belonging. Through engaging discussions and critical analysis, students will examine the evolving definition of Spanish identity and consider how narratives of power, exclusion, and resistance continue to shape the literary world. Whether you are interested in literature, history, cultural studies, or activism, this course will give you new perspectives on the power of storytelling as a force for change.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: COL219
Prereq: SPAN221

SPAN251 Cycles of Resistance: Indigenous Voices in Latin American Literature and Culture

This course explores the richness and diversity of Indigenous voices in Latin America, from early colonial records to contemporary expressions. Using a transhistorical methodology, we will examine how socio-political issues and topics like land defense, cultural resilience, gender violence, hybrid identity, and political resistance persist and evolve through diverse perspectives in Indigenous discourse and cultural production. We will analyze and compare foundational texts like the Popol Vuh and Nueva corónica y buen gobierno, as well as original manuscripts alongside contemporary voices such as those of Humberto Ak'abal, Yana Lucila Lema, and Sonia Guiñansaca. Special attention will be given to the writings of indigenous women, exploring how they have challenged hegemonic narratives and reclaimed their bodies and territories. Additionally, we will explore multimedia expressions and digital activism to understand how indigenous individuals and communities adapt and resist in a globalized world. This course invites students interested in literature, cultural studies, gender studies, and human rights to engage critically with indigenous perspectives, fostering a deeper understanding of the complexities of Latin American cultures.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: LAST251
Prereq: SPAN221

SPAN254 The World of Federico García Lorca: Tradition and Modernity in the Spanish Avant-Garde

This course focuses on one of the most charismatic authors of the 20th century. Known primarily as a poet, playwright, and public intellectual, Federico García Lorca cultivated a literary language whose allure has proven to be timeless. By exploring the reasons for this, we will heighten our sensitivity not only to the magical power of Lorca's writing but to the potentially transformative power of language and literature in general.



Lorca's writing (1919-1936) spans a pivotal historical crossroads, when avant-garde artists sought to forge a new, revolutionary style representative of the profound social and political changes sweeping the world. Lorca, like so many others of his day, did so fully cognizant of the national traditions within which he worked, and with a keen desire to modernize those traditions. We aim to develop a deep understanding of how Lorca's verse, plays, and high-profile initiatives intersect with his context in these terms.



Please visit the course web site at http://span254.site.wesleyan.edu/ to review in detail the materials, objectives, and modes of assessment for this course.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: THEA254
Prereq: None

SPAN255 Barcelona Beyond the Tourist Gaze: Margins, Memory, and Modernity

How do the margins of a city shape its identity? This course explores Barcelona beyond its iconic landmarks, focusing on how its cultural and physical landscapes have been constructed, contested, and reimagined over time. Through literature, film, photography, maps, and performance, we will examine how Barcelona's history of modernization, political struggles, and cultural production reflect broader tensions in contemporary Spanish and Catalan identity. Special attention will be given to the role of slavery, the city's penitentiary past, and the voices often left out of dominant narratives. By engaging with these complex histories, students will gain a deeper understanding of how the margins -- both literal and figurative -- reveal the layered realities of nationhood, memory, and artistic expression.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: SPAN221

SPAN256 City, Mobility, and Technology: Towards the Modern City in Spain

Movements, itineraries, encounters--these are some of the elements that have characterized modern literature. From the Baudelairean figure of the flâneur to the car chases of popular movies like Bullit, the city is described from a series of journeys that create a representation of urban space. However, these narratives reveal more than a personal account of the city: they show the urban architectures that allow the movement in those spaces (ie, paths, roads, lighting) and in doing so they portray the development of the modern city.



With this framework in mind, in this course we will analyze the construction of the modern city in Spain through literary and filmic texts. We will pay special attention to Barcelona and Madrid, but we will also look at how other international cities are perceived and represented in Spanish literature. In doing so, we will explore how these authors understand the modern city and the international connections and influences that shaped it at specific historical moments.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

SPAN257 Performing Ethnicity: Gypsies and the Culture of Flamenco in Spain

In this course, we will analyze how Gypsies and flamenco are associated, in fact and in fiction, and how and why they have emerged into the limelight of Spanish national cultural discourses. Although they represent discrete realities -- not all Gypsies identify with flamenco and not all flamenco artists are Gypsies -- correlations between the two have nonetheless been exploited by the media and by artists as an often unwanted emblem of Spanishness. The tensions surrounding this practice seem related to an undisputed fact of Spanish cultural history: Flamenco is unique within European culture; with a population of nearly one million, Gypsies are Spain's dominant minority; yet recognition of the artistic value of the former and acceptance and assimilation of the latter have been slow to congeal within Spanish society. Our practical aim will be to analyze these important aspects of Spanish culture in their historical context. We will study how the connection between Gypsies and flamenco has emerged; we will evaluate the extent to which it is valid; and we will attempt to assess what seems to be at stake in the struggles between those who promote and those who resist this connection as distinctive of Spanish national culture. In doing so, we seek to foster a deeper understanding of the importance of the Roma community within the framework of European and Spanish culture and a deeper appreciation for flamenco as a unique form of cultural expression. On the theoretical plane, we seek to understand how music, dance, literature, cinema, performance, and art can give expression to ethnicity; how cultural hegemonies emerge; and what role artists play in supporting or contesting those hegemonies. In general, this course is designed to help students develop critical skills of cultural analysis while increasing their proficiency in Spanish.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

SPAN259 Detective Fiction: Procedure and Paranoia in Spanish Narrative

The detective genre is the point of departure for an investigation that will lead us to solve a mystery: How do fictions about the detective--a person who is generally outside the law and sometimes crazy or paranoid--help us to understand the social construction of Spain? We will follow this figure through time (from the 19th century to the present) and space (visiting many Spanish cities) to build a theory of the genre in Spain and a panorama of Spanish society and culture. Following the trail left by novellas, novels, and short stories, together with critical texts, our investigation will allow us to unravel the mysteries of a multidimensional society.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: COL260
Prereq: None

SPAN260 Between Word and World: Major Spanish Poets of the 20th Century

Our goal in this course is to study how the leading poets in 20th-century Spain use the lyric mode to negotiate the relationship between themselves and their community at key junctures in the nation's history. In doing so, we will also identify and assess the various notions of community that arise in modern Spanish poetry, attempting to evaluate how those notions evolve or are affected by such events or movements as (1) the avant-garde and the second Republic (1920-1936), (2) the Civil War and the Franco regime (1939-1975), and (3) sweeping political and social transformations of the past 30 years as signaled by the country's democratization, integration into the European Union, economic development, and by the massive influx of immigrants from Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe (1977-present). Key essays (critical and theoretical), some by the poets themselves, are included in the syllabus to provide critical tools for discussing how the public experience is lyricized through the intimate filter of the poet's own sensitivity. We will seek to understand the role played by context in conditioning the decisions poets make in adopting the epic, elegiac, didactic, or testimonial mode of expression, to name just a few. The image of the poet standing at the crossroads of lyrical creativity--word--and historical circumstance--world--will be central to our critical inquiry.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

SPAN261 Sites of Resistance & Memory: Theater, Performance & Political Consciousness in Contemporary Spain

Compared to other literary genres, and given its essentially social (public) format, theater is an especially vulnerable mode of cultural expression and, therefore, can easily fall victim to both overt (institutionalized) and covert (social) systems of censorship. The tendency for authoritarian regimes to scrutinize stage practices is exemplified by the state censorship that prevailed under Franco (1939-1975) and that prompted Spanish playwrights to develop subtle strategies for resisting authority and for addressing the crucial social and political concerns of the day. The parliamentary regime born in the aftermath of the dictator's death in 1975 ushered in an era of experimentation unprecedented in recent Spanish cultural history. During these years, playwrights have increasingly embraced the struggle against more covert (social, market-driven) forms of censorship in attempting to craft a new social order for a new political context: a democratic mindset that will serve to solidify the foundations of the young democratic state. Our goal in this course is to trace these trends through a close reading of key works by the major Spanish playwrights active since 1950. We will focus on context, on how theater, society, and politics are intertwined, by evaluating both works of dramatic literature themselves and the place and meaning of the public, commercial, and alternative theater circuits where many of these plays were premiered. Our aim, broadly, is to understand the extent to which collective memory and national identity, as staged over the past three-quarters of a century, have become a battleground where Spaniards either seek or resist reconciliation with legacies of repression.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: THEA261
Prereq: None

SPAN262 Through Foreign Eyes: The U.S. in Spain in the 20th Century

Although the relationship between Spain and the U.S. has a long history that can be traced back to colonial times, during the 20th century, an extensive corpus of literature in which Spanish authors portray the U.S. prominently becomes visible. The appearance of this body of work gives rise to a series of questions: How do Spaniards see the U.S.? What are the consequences of this understanding? Why is there such interest in portraying the U.S. from a Spanish point of view? Of course, cultural and social definitions are constructions always limited to historic, social, and cultural events, be they of a military, political, or purely commercial nature. One could think that these portraits dwell on stereotypes; nonetheless, we are before a literary production that uses the U.S. to create a narrative about how Spain enters a global economic market through a cultural exchange. These are texts about traveling, the construction of the individual, and the shaping of a nation; texts that cross the boundaries of literary genres to define Spanish identity. We are before the construction of a narrative that questions the building of alterity and shapes the identity of modern Spain. In our approach to the main historic events that define the relationship between Spain and the U.S. during the 20th century, we will examine novels, poems, and movies that result from such events to analyze questions related to identity, globalization, localism, modernity, and nation. What we will engage in is, in fact, a debate about how we define ourselves, whether we are Spanish or American, through foreign eyes.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

SPAN263 Mythic & Modern: Reappropriating Classical Themes in Contemporary Drama and Performance

What does it mean to defy the authority of the patriarch, of family, or of government? How do these structures of authority intersect in contemporary society? How do we, today, understand "destiny"? How do we challenge it, and what are the consequences for doing so? How do we break the patterns of shame and disenfranchisement inherited from the shared past? These are just some of the social, political, and ethical concerns transmitted over time by playwrights, stage and performance artists, and film directors who treat classical myths as valuable constructs for interrogating our contemporary world and society.



In this collaborative, project-based course we explore how classical myths have been appropriated within the modern Hispanophone cultural context. Just as important as our study and discussion of modern adaptations of classical models are the staged readings of key scenes incorporated strategically throughout the semester that help us develop an organic understanding of the material from the inside. Our overarching aims include: 1) exposing what persists in modern adaptations of classical myths, 2) tracking the kernels of change that the adaptations present, and 3) understanding why performers over time, working in disparate cultural milieus, continue to seek and derive inspiration from classical myths. The mythic figures we examine may include any of the following: Sophocles' Antigone, Euripides' Oedipus and Medea, Aeschylus' Agamemnon, as well as figures from the Oresteia and from such epics as Homer's Iliad and Virgil's Aeneid. This course is taught in conjunction with Italian 263 and French 263. The final collaborative performance, scheduled during the Final Exams period, will involve students from across the Romance Languages and offers the unique opportunity for cohort building among students of French, Italian, and Spanish.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

SPAN264 Orientalism: Spain and Africa

Over the past several decades, North African and Middle Eastern cultures have become conspicuously important within the Spanish cultural arena. Translations of writers from Lebanon to Morocco abound in Spanish bookstores. Spanish writers have begun addressing North African and Middle Eastern issues with greater frequency, especially in their novels. The dramatic rise in the African immigrant population in Spain during the 1980s and 1990s, meanwhile, has been matched by a rise in press coverage of issues pertaining to Africa and the Middle East. These factors constitute the point of departure for our historical overview of the treatment of Islamic cultures in modern Spain, from early 19th century to the present. Guided by Edward Said's seminal essay, Orientalism, we will assess the extent to which (and the process by which) Spain passes from the Orientalized subject of European Romanticism (painting, literature, music) to an Orientalizing European power in the late 20th century. In doing so, we will seek to relate the representation of Islamic cultures in Spanish literature and painting to social, political, and economic factors, most important of which was Spain's military invasion into Morocco in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. We will also survey changing attitudes among Spanish intellectuals with regard to the Islamic world and toward Spain's Islamic heritage, the result, perhaps, of 20th-century modernization and, most recently, of Spain's full integration, after Franco's death, into Europe's military and political structures. The tools for this study include works of literature primarily, but we will also focus on painting, historical essays, newspaper articles, and film.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

SPAN265 History of Spanish Cinema for Spanish Speakers (CLAC.50)

Spanish 265 is designed as a discussion section for students who are enrolled simultaneously in SPAN 301 and who have advanced proficiency in Spanish. This half-credit course offers students the opportunity to master the critical vocabulary and tools of film analysis in Spanish.



Weekly student-led discussions will provide students with the unique opportunity to exercise these tools regularly and gain greater fluency in the language. Students will be responsible for the same material included on the SPAN 301 website at: https://span301.site.wesleyan.edu/. Students will submit their assignments in Spanish and contribute weekly posts to a blog set up for SPAN 265.
Offering: Host
Grading: Cr/U
Credits: 0.50
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: CGST265
Prereq: None

SPAN267 Image/Word: Narrative and Photography in Contemporary Spain

The objective of this course is to analyze the relationship between literature and photography, questioning the idea of representation that usually unites them. This relationship goes further than the simple representation of the environment that surrounds us: literature and photography modify not only the perception of, for example, urban space, but also its organization; that is, they have a direct effect on the built environment. This effect creates a productive linkage that challenges the limits of these disciplines and the worlds in which they are created, proving how their work aims not exclusively to describe or represent but also to build. This idea of creating is the base for this seminar, where students will develop a photographic and a narrative/analytic project in which they will test firsthand the relationships and skills seen in the class. Thus, they will be able to see the connections between disciplines and cultures that guide our everyday life. In this seminar we will work with Cuban artist and writer Jacqueline Herranz-Brooks, who will work with students in their creative project.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: COL280
Prereq: SPAN221

SPAN269 Appearing Acts: Visual Histories and Identity Construction Through Photography in Spain

In her reading of Plato's "Allegory of the Cave," Susan Sontag finds a close bond between photography and the world, our cave. Photography, she says, shows us a new visual code that constructs narratives that "alter and enlarge our notion of what is worth looking at," and in doing so can influence, guide, and condition our knowledge of the world. Keeping this in mind, when it comes to Spain, what kind of world does photography construct? How does the visual field influence and guide our knowledge of modern Spain? In this seminar, we will reflect on how photography has conceptualized social and national identities in Spain from the 19th century to the present, asking how images create, shape, and question the cultural and social archive. Through the examination of photographs, theories, and methods, we will draw a contextualized history of photography that will help us to consider its role in the interdisciplinary construction of Spanish identity.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: COL209
Prereq: None

SPAN270 Survey of Latin American Literatures, Cultures, and Ideas

A close study of texts from the colonial period to the present will serve as the basis for a discussion of some of the major ideas and cultural and political debates that have emerged in modern Latin America to this day. Thinkers include Las Casas, Sor Juana, Bolívar, Sarmiento, Martí, Neruda, Borges, García Márquez, Menchú, and Bolaño, among others. For purposes of understanding context, students will also read selected chapters from works by historians and cultural critics and will watch several films. (Please note that this course was previously called "Spanish American Literature and Civilization.")
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: LAST226
Prereq: SPAN221

SPAN271 Against Epistemicide: Latin American Critical Thought

This class explores seminal social and political texts that reconceptualize America Latina against the legacies of colonialism and Eurocentrism. We will focus on Liberation and Decolonial Latin American Thought in order to move from the idea of Latin America to that of Abya Yala. We will begin with the triad: La ciudad letrada by Ángel Rama, Culturas híbridas by Néstor García Canclini, and Colonialidad del poder, eurocentrismo y América Latina by Aníbal Quijano. We will then decolonize their own theories through the work of women thinkers such as María Lugones, Yuderkis Espinosa, Ofelia Schutte, Mary Louise Pratt, Linda Martín Alcoff, and Catherine Walsh.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

SPAN272 Cubanidad: Diaspora, Exiles, and Cultural Identity in Cuban Literature and Film

This course will examine shifting notions of Cubanness, or "cubanidad," from the 19th century to the present times from a diasporic framework. We will discuss writings by/about African slaves, Chinese indentured laborers and migrants, and Spanish immigrants in Cuba, as well as Cuban exiles in the U.S. and Spain from the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century. Through a variety of literary texts and films, we will then study select cases of European exiles who visited Cuba in the 1930s and '40s, the later massive waves of Cuban migration to the U.S. after the Revolution, and the more recent immigrants who have settled in Cuba.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: LAST272
Prereq: None

SPAN273 Beyond Machu Picchu & Macondo: Real and Imaginary Worlds in Latin American Letters

Latin American writers and intellectuals have long conceived of their particular literary and cultural practices in connection to individual spaces and sites, both real and imagined. In this course we will examine why and how they have done so, looking not only at well-known if not legendary ones such as Machu Picchu and Macondo, invented, respectively, by Neruda and García Márquez in certain moments of their careers, but also the América and Gran Colombia of Simón Bolívar, the New York City of the Cuban intellectual José Martí (1880s) and Nuyorican writer Tato Laviera (1970s), as well as Violeta Parra's other Chile, César Aira's Colón (Panamá), Fernando Vallejo's Medellín (Colombia), and Mayra Montero's eroticized Caribbean. In each case we will be concerned with understanding the relationship between local, national, and hemispheric history and the new imaginarios created by the author/intellectual in question in the context of north-south relations. Topics to be considered within this critical framework will include the Wars of Independence, industrialization in the late 19th-century, the construction of the Panama Canal (1904--1914), the Cold War (1947--1991), Latino identity in the context of Puerto Rico and New York City, the drug wars, and sexual identity. When possible, films and short videos will be used to help build knowledge of historical context.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: LAST273
Prereq: None

SPAN274 Insular Borders of Latin(x) America

Before and at the same time the United States established itself throughout the 19th century as a major power in the Americas and the world, various Latin American republics inherited and acted upon a similar imperialist agenda to expand their borders not only to neighboring territories but also across oceans. In this class, we will study and compare these imperialist gestures, among them the Spanish Empire's control of its remaining insular colonies in the 19th century (e.g., Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam) and the United States' successive claim to these very same islands. We will analyze literary works and films that interrogate these imperialist claims as well as the trajectories of islanders: for instance, the forced migration of the Rapanui (Easter Island people) in the second half of the 19th century (first as slaves to Peru and then to the town of Hanga Roa in Easter Island) and the island-to-island "intra-colonial" (Joanna Poblete) recruitment of Filipino and Puerto Rican laborers in sugar plantations in Hawai'i at the beginning of the 20th century. Some of the questions we will explore are: Why are islands so coveted by old and new empires? How have Rapanui, Filipino, and Puerto Rican migrants and their descendants resisted authorities on the insular borders of empire? How do writers and artists tell these silenced histories? Can we speak of Latinidad and Edouard Glissant's concept of Poetics of Relation in a Pacific Ocean context? Readings will be in Spanish and English. All discussions and assignments will be in Spanish.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CHUM
Identical With: LAST274, AMST289
Prereq: SPAN221

SPAN275 Multilingual Aesthetics in Latin America

This course examines writings by Latin American authors who are multilingual or have an intercultural awareness as a result of colonization, cosmopolitanism, migration, or bicultural upbringing. First, students will learn about a variety of Spanish American movements, such as "modernismo," "creacionismo," "negrismo," "indigenismo," "neoindigenismo," and "indianismo," all of which dialogued with diverse cultures and languages other than Spanish. Then, we will examine a series of collaborative projects, such as a quadrilingual poem co-written by Octavio Paz (Mexico), Jacques Roubaud (France), Edoardo Sanguineti (Italy), and Charles Tomlinson (UK); a selection of English-Spanish poems by Marjorie Evasco (Philippines) and Alex Fleites (Cuba); and the "Festival de poesía: lenguas de América," a bi-annual event that gathers poets from diverse multilingual regions in the Americas. Lastly, we will examine literary and scholarly work by/about Latin American writers of indigenous descent, as well as works in Spanish, English, and "Spanglish" by Chicano, U.S. Latino, and Filipino American writers. Throughout the semester students will reflect on how multilingualism can serve as a medium for aesthetic experimentation, intercultural dialogue, and/or political resistance. All discussions will be held in Spanish, and all readings will be in their original Spanish or in Spanish/English translation.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: LAST265
Prereq: SPAN221

SPAN276 Body, Voice, Text: Theater and the Transmission of Experience

Theater can and does exist as a written text, but we all know that its existence on the page is meant as a precursor to its live performance out in the world. In this course, our approach to a series of Latin American plays will be informed by competing notions of the theater as both a field of academic inquiry (built on reading, study, research, and interpretation) and also as an art form (built on reading, rehearsal, repetition, direction, and interpretation). We will combine traditional academic study of the written dramatic text with theater workshop exercises meant to train actors for the delivery of the staged performance text. Students will thus gain an understanding of how academic study and and workshop rehearsal take different approaches to what is essentially the same goal/problem: how to interpret the text written by the dramatist, whether for meaning or performance. This course will be taught in Spanish.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: THEA276, LAST276
Prereq: None

SPAN277 The Secret Life of Waste: Trash in Latin American Art & Literature

From space junk to microplastic particles found in human blood, man-made waste and pollution are ubiquitous. What are the effects of waste on the environment? What can the decomposition of waste create and/or undo? What is the afterlife of waste? Is waste apocalyptic? Through figures such as rottenness, radioactivity, mutation, and zombies, we will explore the ways in which Latin American art and literature try to answer some of these questions by imagining living amidst the remnants of hyperconsumption and by exploring the unforeseen effects that coexisting with waste could have upon the land and the body. We will study a wide range of visual and literary engagements with trash from novels, poetry, comics, and films to environmental art projects. Artists and writers may include Cecilia Vicuña, Daniel Lie, Samanta Schweblin, Fernanda Trías, Vik Muniz, H. G. Oesterheld, Javier Campos, and Alejandro Durán, among others.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: LAST277
Prereq: SPAN221

SPAN278 Narratives of the Latin American Jungle

This course is a critical exploration of the ways in which forests and its plurality of beings, and particularly the tropical territories marked as jungle or rainforest in South America (the Amazon, the Darien), have been narrated, imagined and contested in cultural production and in indigenous and peasant ontologies, place-based practices and resistance for more than a century. We will investigate the construction of jungle as a territory of dwelling shaped by the relational condition between human and other-than-human beings (plants, animals, water) and as a place where diverse anxieties about sovereignty, politics, race, development, gender, and subversion collide. We will examine this cultural geography in relation to diverse histories of modernization, development and extractivism, the global angst over the environment and its destruction, local processes of (cosmopolitical) resistance, and the various political and environmental conflicts that have shaped the region over the past century. Attending to Amazonian indigenous thought and to political ecology and other intellectual practices emerging from Latin America, as well as to literature, film, popular culture and visual art, we will discuss the potential to disavow modern/colonial binaries like nature-culture, human-nonhuman and civilization-barbarism, in a place that has been central to the way in which Latin America has been imagined for centuries.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: LAST278
Prereq: None

SPAN280 Screening Youth in Contemporary Latin American Cinema

This course will examine some of the most important Latin American films to emerge in the past three decades that have cast children and teenagers as protagonists. We will analyze a large body of films that address issues of historical memory, economic inequality, social conflict, political activism, education, sexuality, cultural identity, and citizenship through the lens of the child or adolescent. These films question the roles of minors in relation to the political arena and reflect upon the constructions of childhood that operate at a social level with important political implications. Students will explore the aesthetic and social dynamics at play in the representation of young protagonists and develop interpretative filmic skills through an exploration of the connections between the technical composition of the works and the social, political, and cultural contexts that they address. Besides the varied cultural, theoretical, formal, and historical elements that this course will examine, one of the central components is a creative module in which students will develop an idea for a short film based on their own personal coming-of-age narrative.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: LAST280
Prereq: SPAN221

SPAN281 Labor in Latin America and the Caribbean: Pedestals and Veils of Disposability

This course examines the racialized and gendered exploitation of labor that has long structured everyday life across the Western hemisphere. It asks how shifting productions of race and gender mediate the distinction between productive and disposable humanity. We will examine a variety of materials from the region spanning the colonial period to the present, including literature, film, visual and performance art, economic theory, political philosophy, grassroots activism, testimonials, chronicles, and journalism. Through these texts, we will problematize a range of interdisciplinary issues, such as the veiled continuities of conquest and enslavement, the accelerated pace of capitalist extraction of human and non-human value, and state responses to forced migrations of populations considered criminal, undesirable, or superfluous. We will also study aesthetic and lived examples of resistance from Latin America, the Caribbean, and their diasporas, with particular interest in how collective organizing has taken on new forms in the face of work's increasing informalization and precaritization. Building off these examples, students will develop an accessible final project that applies their research and analytical skills not only to produce knowledge, but to cultivate critical consciousness for the reader, listener, or viewer.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: LAST281
Prereq: SPAN221

SPAN282 Narratives of Crisis: Violence and Representation in Contemporary Latin American Culture

How have Latin American literature, film, and performance of the past three decades articulated the many forms of violence in a region facing complex armed conflicts, wars deployed around the drug trade, and diverse forms of political unrest? Focusing on Colombia, Peru, Central America, and Mexico, we will investigate how contemporary cultural artifacts reflect on the linguistic, ethical, and social dimensions of subjectivity in times of crisis and provide productive analytical frameworks to examine violence, history, and memory in the region.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: LAST285
Prereq: None

SPAN283 The Other 9/11: Dictatorial and Post-Dictatorial Films and Literature in Chile

This course explores how poetry, novels, and films, produced during and after Chile's military regime (junta de gobierno), try to make sense of state violence and cruelty. This class suggests that by actively performing the work of memory, of remembering the violent past and the forcefully disappeared ones (detenidos desaparecidos), films and literature oppose the politics of oblivion instantiated by the post-dictatorial state while claiming for and imagining social justice. We will understand films and literature as active, ethical memory technologies which we will read against the grain of Chilean politics and history (políticas de los acuerdos).



Some of the poets we will read include Eugenia Brito, Carmen Berenguer, Teresa Calderón, Malú Urriola, Rosa Betty Muñoz, and Raúl Zurita. In addition, we will watch films by Patricio Guzmán, Cecilia Vicuña, and Pablo Larraín. Finally, we will read novels by Alejandro Zambra, Roberto Bolaño, and Nona Fernández.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: LAST283
Prereq: None

SPAN284 Tales of Resistance: Modernity and the Latin American Short Story

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, and immigration to Europe and the U.S.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: LAST254
Prereq: None

SPAN285 Racial Capitalism and Resistance in Central America

In modern-day Central America and its diasporas, the most precarious communities are descendants of colonized, enslaved, and dispossessed populations. Yet while the fact of race and class intersecting is evident, why and how they have evolved together is not. This course examines the relationship between race formation and economic dispossession across the region through a transnational perspective. Through a wide range of Central American and hemispheric cultural objects, theoretical frameworks, and grassroots praxes, we will meditate on the theoretical paradigm of racial capitalism, which holds that racialism and capitalism are co-constituting and have evolved together to produce an economic world order dependent on colonialism, violence, exploitation, and containment. Students will develop their interpretive and analytical skills by collaboratively examining issues of whiteness, mestizaje, and multiculturalism; resource extraction; economic exploitation and expulsion; rage, resistance, and revolution; policing, counterinsurgency, and criminality; migration; identity and ethno-politics; and education. Beyond these cultural, theoretical, historical, and aesthetic concerns, a central component of the course is a creative or community engaged project that students will develop in close collaboration and in stages throughout the semester.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: LAST286
Prereq: SPAN221

SPAN286 Bolívar's Interpreters: Nation Construction in the Americas

No figure has been seized upon more as a symbol of cultural and political unity in Latin America than the liberator Simón Bolívar. In this course, we will examine not only the case of contemporary Venezuela with its cult-like tradition but also several of the countless appropriations of Bolívar that have occurred across the Americas and in Europe in the 180 years since his death. From the Cuban José Martí to the Colombian García Márquez, from the Spaniard Miguel de Unamuno to the U.S. socialist Waldo Frank, from, to be sure, the powerful tradition of the Latin America essay with its identity politics to the U.S.-led Pan Americanism of the 1920s, '30s, and '40s, Bolívar has been made to serve complex and important functions in discourse about national and continental identity. To consider all this, we will study a number of rewritings of Bolívar's life and works, focusing on the dynamic process in which literary, cultural, and political traditions have been formed around him, while giving special attention to issues bearing on race, gender, and modernization. A wide range of texts will be examined, including letters, essays, poems, novels, screenplays, and films.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: LAST258
Prereq: None

SPAN287 Constructions of the Self

How does one define oneself? What forces are active in the creation of our personal identities? How much control do we exercise over these processes? What role do writing and literature play in the construction of notions of the self? While these questions are timeless and know no geographical boundaries, we will examine how several different Latin American and U.S. Latino authors have addressed these concerns in their art, with an eye toward understanding the cultural specificity of each of their propositions, as well as how writing itself becomes the subject of writing in the search for subjectivity.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

SPAN288 Territories of Dwelling, Desire and Resistance in Latin America

What does it mean to dwell in a place? How are spatial orders and more-than human dimensions conceived of and what is the symbolic and material weight of these conceptions? This course seeks to examine the ways in which diverse spaces categorized as rural or as "natural frontiers" in Latin America have been inhabited, negotiated, and contested in the 20th and 21st centuries. How have cultural practices constructed them as territories of dwelling, desire, possession, dispossession, and resistance? How does narrative and art reflect on local modes of dwelling and on the relationships between community, embodiment, desire, memory and the materiality of place? We will focus on texts and artistic practices--literature, film, performance, and the visual arts--that, in thinking about mountains, rivers and other bodies of water, plants, more-than-human beings, seek to destabilize the hegemonic (colonial) gaze that has been projected onto rural spaces for centuries and complicate extractivist and other capitalist logics that have sought to transform them. We will trace how these texts intervene in urgent debates about extractivism, the destiny of rural lands, the uses, abuses and rights of nature, the struggles for peasant and indigenous rights, environmental justice, and the defense of alternative ontologies. We will focus particularly on the Andean and Amazon regions of South America, with specific attention to Colombia and Perú.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: LAST288
Prereq: None

SPAN289 Contact Zone: Introduction to Amazonian Narratives

Often, the Amazonian region has been considered a marginal space within the territorial limits of Perú, Colombia, Venezuela, and Brazil. However, this territory is and has been key for these nations' past, present, and future. Beyond its outstanding biodiversity, the Amazon rainforest has housed for various centuries multiple and diverse native and non-native linguistic and ethnic groups. From the original Yanomami inhabitants to the contemporary European descendant citizens of Iquitos, the Amazonian territory has been a zone of contact where multiple cultural and cosmological views interact. In this class students will engage with a variety of materials, including literary works, travel diaries, films, and photographs that explore the Amazon rainforest: modern odysseys (La Vorágine), shape-shifting ghost stories (Las tres mitades de Ino Moxo), accounts of guerrilla warfare in the jungle (Naturaleza común), and apocalyptic prophecies (A queda do céu). By analyzing the literary and audiovisual archive resulting from multiethnic and multilingual interactions in the region, students will examine the role of the Amazon and its inhabitants in shaping the modern Latin American nations surrounding it. They will acquire a comprehensive understanding of the Amazonian region, its cultural diversity, and the complex issues it faces, such as racial and ethnic clashes, resource extraction, and the existential threat this poses to both human and non-human beings inhabiting it.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

SPAN290 From the Muralists to the Narconovela: The Public Intellectual in Mexico

Mexican writers, intellectuals, and artists, both male and female, have long been recognized for the brilliance with which they have used their work to comment on and shape the direction of the Mexican state and to engage with the multiple traditions (indigenous, European, and mestizo) that define them. In this course, we will examine the writings and artistic and filmic work of several major figures with the goal of understanding how they see and imagine Mexico in particular historical moments. The course will cover the entirety of the 20th-century and the beginning of the 21st, extending from the Mexican Revolution (1910--1917) and the Muralists (1920s--40s), through the post-1945 period including 1968, and to the drug wars and the Zapatista movement (since 1994). Students will analyze novels, essays, art, poetry, and film.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: LAST291
Prereq: SPAN221

SPAN291 Spanish American 'Modernismo' in a Global Context

The publication of Nicaraguan Rubén Darío's AZUL... in 1888 is often considered to be the inaugural event of "modernismo," the first Spanish-language literary movement that originated in Spanish America and spread thereafter throughout the Hispanophone world. In March 1916, about a month after Darío's death, a magazine in the Philippines claimed that Darío also belonged--at least "spiritually"--to the Philippines. Inspired by this statement, in this course students will read poems, short stories, and crónicas (short journalistic articles) by canonical Spanish American modernista writers, such as Darío, Julián del Casal, José Martí, Amado Nervo, José Enrique Rodó, Leopoldo Lugones, and Delmira Agustini, in conjunction with Filipino modernistas, including Fernando María Guerrero, Jesús Balmori, Manuel Bernabé, and Evangelina Guerrero. We will also read a selection of works of Spanish writers, such as Salvador Rueda, who visited Cuba and the Philippines in the 1910s. Some of the salient characteristics of modernismo that we will cover are the rejection of immediate reality and materialism, the search for linguistic renovation and cosmic harmony, and the celebration of Hispanism. When focusing on this last aspect, we will assess how modernismo helped to keep Spanish America connected not only to Spain but also to the Philippines, which became a U.S. territory in 1898, alongside Cuba and Puerto Rico. Thus, we will explore to what extent modernista writers responded to the spread of U.S. imperialism.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: LAST292
Prereq: None

SPAN292 The Abya Yala Connection: Latin American Ecological Literature and Art

This course will examine the role that literature and the visual arts have played in imagining and suggesting ecological relations between humans and more-than-humans during our ecological crisis. Through the analysis of literary and visual aesthetic strategies, we will identify forms of resistance, endurance, and solidarity between feminist, queer, and indigenous bodies and the planet.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: LAST289
Prereq: None

SPAN293 Writing Women's Bodies: Gender and Sexuality in Latin America

This class explores the narrative fiction of 21st century Latin American women. Through an analysis of visuality, art, ecology, nanotechnology, sexuality, and memory, among other themes, we study the ways in which women construct their bodily experience and forge ethical relations with the world through linguistic and aesthetic innovation. We will read authors such as Samanta Schweblin, Gabriela Wiener, Brenda Navarro, María Gaínza, Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, Juliana Javierre, and Lina Meruane.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: LAST293, FGSS291
Prereq: SPAN221

SPAN294 Queering Latin America: Contemporary Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Literature and Film

This course studies important and groundbreaking films, novels, and poetry by contemporary gay, lesbian, and transgender artists. It focuses on their strategies to survive, respond to, and defy the changing socio-political Latin American landscape of the last 80 years. We will introduce some key critical concepts and debates from queer theory to guide our discussions. Some of the artists we will study include: Alejandra Pizarnik, Lucía Puenzo, Manuel Puig, Pedro Lemembel, Karim Aïnouz, Lorenzo Vigas, Rosamaría Roffiel, and Norma Mosgrovejo, among others.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: FGSS294, LAST294
Prereq: None

SPAN295 Voices, Noises, and Son: Modern Sounds in Hispanic Caribbean Cultures

What happens to our understanding of Hispanic Caribbean cultures if we think about it through the category of sound? From the recorded voices of indigenous Caribbean peoples denouncing the atrocities of neo-colonialism to the contemporary Afro-Caribbean reggaeton rhythms in San Juan, sound has been a key component for this region's expressions and literatures. In this course, students will explore how multiple kinds of sound-voices, noises, music, and rhythms-shape and define the literatures and cultures of the Caribbean basin. We will read literary works and pay attention to the "sounds" described in them in order to examine how diverse ethnic groups have contributed to the production, perception, and transformation of various Caribbean "sonorous" landscapes.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: LAST295
Prereq: SPAN221

SPAN296 Cuban Literature and Film: Imagination, Revolt, and Melancholia

This course surveys the major aesthetic and socio-historical movements in modern and contemporary Cuba. Since the late 19th century, the island of Cuba has been at the center of a number of key epochal disputes: between colonialism and independence, racism and racial justice, neocolonialism and revolution, liberalism and socialism, isolationism and globalization. In the arts, the turn of the century launched a period of great imaginative invention. Considering the singular place of Cuba in Latin America, the Caribbean, and the globe, this course addresses some of the most representative works of Cuban literature and film since independence until the present time. Imagination, revolt, and melancholia are the three concepts that will orient our discussion. Imagination refers both to artistic creation and to the collective capacity of projecting new worlds, utopias, or impossible realities. Revolt, as opposed to revolution, is not restrained to politics as usual but relates rather to a deep experience of discontent and a return (from the Latin revolvere) to ancient psycho-social strata. Finally, melancholia serves as a point of view to understand what happens when history does not live up to emancipatory expectations. Special attention will be given to Afrocubanismo, ethnographic literature, the avant-garde aesthetics of the group Orígenes, Marvelous Realism, testimony, revolution, socialist experimental film, diaspora, the Special Period, and post-Soviet life.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: CGST324, COL314, LAST315
Prereq: SPAN221

SPAN297 Caribbean Rebels and Revolutionaries: Modern and Contemporary Cuban, Dominican, and Puerto Rican Lit

This course offers an introduction to Hispanic Caribbean literature and cultural productions from the nineteenth century to the present with an emphasis on gender, sexuality, race, and politics. We will study works by representative writers, artists, and filmmakers from the Spanish-speaking insular Caribbean. They may include Julia de Burgos, Luis Palés Matos, Mayra Santos-Febres, Eduardo Lalo, and Noelia Quintero Herencia from Puerto Rico; Juan Francisco Manzano, Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, José Martí, Nicolás Guillén, Lydia Cabrera, Severo Sarduy, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Sarah Gómez, Reinaldo Arenas, Nicolás Guillén Landrián, and Tania Bruguera from Cuba; and Salomé Ureña, Aída Cartagena Portalatín, José Zacarías Tallet, Rita Indiana, Elizabeth Acevedo, and Lorgia García-Peña from the Dominican Republic.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: SPAN221

SPAN298 "Un pedacito de la historia negra": Afro-Latin American Literature and Culture

The significant contributions of Afro-descendent individuals to the development of Latin American culture have been frequently overlooked or torn to pieces. Yet, the experiences and bodies of racialized people have been key in shaping and transforming the region's culture. Beyond their representation in early colonial and republican works, Afro-descendent writers and characters have been crucial in the modern aesthetics of Latin American literatures. Along with musicians and other artists, they have provided a continuous challenge to the idea of Latin America and its cultural production as a product of a homogeneous cultural and racial miscegenation. Inspired by Colombian artist Joe Arroyo's opening to a famous salsa song, wherein he sets out to tell "un pedacito de la historia negra," in this seminar we will study short stories, novels, poetry, music, and film, including works that explore the experience of being racialized in Latin America, poetic experimentalism through orality, and the retelling of the history of Black resistance in the Caribbean through modern media. Engaging with historical and contemporary issues such as racial discrimination, social inequality, and cultural pride and preservation, this course invites students to critically analyze the fundamental role of Afro-Latin Americans in shaping Latin American cultures and histories.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-LAST
Identical With: LAST297
Prereq: SPAN221

SPAN299 Decolonizing Speculative Fiction in Latin America

This course interrogates what it means to imagine alternative futures in colonial and postcolonial settings. As the writings of conquistadors, explorers and missionaries show, Europe envisioned the New Continent as the land of the future or utopia, to the point that contemporary decolonial theorists have observed that nothing was "discovered" by the first European travelers to America but the idea of discovery itself. Modern temporalities of progress became thus inseparable from the image of the Americas as a frontier of imperial expansion, religious conversion, and economic exploitation. If European SF (science fiction/speculative fiction) emerged hand-in-hand with positivist notions of progress and civilization, Latin American SF contested Eurocentric epistemologies by claiming the ability to imagining the future and fictionalizing worlds otherwise. The course will center on three key moments of Latin American literary history: 1) the early to mid-twentieth century experiments in fantastic literature from the Southern Cone, which broke with realist mimesis from the margins of modernity; 2) post-1989 SF novels from Bolivia, Guatemala and Chile, that address the making of neoliberal globalization from the vantage point of the Global South; and 3) contemporary Dominican and Cuban works in which Afro-Caribbean religions and gender formations engage in productive conversations with digital technologies, biomedical engineering, game cultures, and climate change.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: LAST299
Prereq: None

SPAN401 Individual Tutorial, Undergraduate

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

SPAN402 Individual Tutorial, Undergraduate

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

SPAN403 Department/Program Project or Essay

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

SPAN404 Department/Program Project or Essay

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

SPAN407 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

SPAN408 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

SPAN409 Senior Thesis Tutorial

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

SPAN410 Senior Thesis Tutorial

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

SPAN411 Group Tutorial, Undergraduate

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

SPAN412 Group Tutorial, Undergraduate

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

SPAN420 Student Forum

Student-run group tutorial, sponsored by a faculty member and approved by the chair of a department or program.
Offering: Host
Grading: Cr/U

SPAN466 Education in the Field, Undergraduate

Students must consult with the department and class dean in advance of undertaking education in the field for approval of the nature of the responsibilities and method of evaluation.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: None
Prereq: None

SPAN491 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

SPAN492 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