Courses
Fall 2024 Offerings Spring 2024 Offerings Course Info on SIS Courses by Category Archives
ILVS Course Descriptions
Note that any literature, film, media, or visual arts course would count towards the ILVS major. In fact, there are no required courses for the major. However, we have designated some courses as ILVS for they are exemplarily multi-cultural, comparative, and theoretical. Below please find examples of courses offered in the ILVS Program.
ILVS 3 Introduction to Contemporary Art. (Cross-listed as FAH 0003) Art since the postwar era with a particular emphasis on the present. Who is making contemporary art, where is it being made, and why? Do these elements constitute an “art world” or multiple and fragmented pockets of production? How do they relate to uneven flows of commerce and capital and what is their connection to emerging political and technological trends? Center/periphery relations; activist art and the counterculture; experimental groups across the Americas, Europe, and Asia; Conceptualism and abstraction; dynamics between offline and online reception; and dilemmas of producing art in a digital economy. Trips to contemporary art exhibitions and events in the Boston area.
ILVS 4 Introduction to Arts of Africa. (Cross-listed as AFR 4 and FAH 4) Survey of the diverse arts of Africa from antiquity to the present. Each class is devoted to a single civilization, emphasizing the ways the visual arts function with respect to larger cultural issues. Within this context, students consider the relationship of art to religion, cosmology, gender, identity, and political power, as well as the representation of the "other." Offered in alternate years.
ILVS 20 Black World Literature. (Cross-listed w/ENG 20 and AFR 22) Fiction, poetry, and drama written principally in English by black writers from Africa, the Caribbean, and South America. Relation of modern black writing to African folk literature, classical Greek drama, European existentialism, and other contexts. Attention to specific geographical areas illustrating the transition from traditional tribal values and forms of expression to the attempted accommodations to colonialism and industrialism. All works are read in English.
ILVS 26 Ancient Egypt. (Cross-listed as HIST 76, CLS 26, and ARCH 26) Survey of roughly 4,000 years of ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern civilization spanning c. 3,200 BCE to 651 CE. Analysis of the interrelations between art, architecture, history, and ideology, as preserved in material culture, inscriptions, and literary texts: pyramids, temples, tombs, settlements and cities, exceptional masterpieces and artifacts of daily life. Multiple excursions into religion, diplomacy, hieroglyphic writing, and artistic technique. Examination of the internal and external relations of Egypt in the context of a world system that included the kingdoms and empires of the Near East and the Mediterranean: from the Sumerians, Assyrians, Hittites, and Babylonians, to the Achaemenid Persian Empire, Alexander the Great, and the Imperium Romanum. Includes a field trip to the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts.
ILVS 27 Classical Archaeology. (Cross-listed as ARCH 27, FAH 19, and CLS 27). Survey of ancient Greco-Roman civilization spanning c. 3,100 BCE to 565 CE. Archaeological analysis of the interrelations between art, architecture, history, and ideology, as preserved in material culture, inscriptions, and literary texts: sculpture, temples, tombs, settlements and cities, exceptional masterpieces and artifacts of daily life. Multiple excursions into religion, sociopolitical organization, and artistic technique. Examination of the development and collapse of the Bronze Age civilizations of the Aegean and Italy. Exploration of the evidence of cultural transformations driven by trade, colonization, and territorial expansion leading first to the development of the city-state in archaic Greece and Italy, then to the Greek-speaking kingdoms of the eastern Mediterranean and Near East, and finally to the inclusion of the Latins, Etruscans, Greeks, Egyptians, and others within a single multicultural state: the Roman Empire. Assessment of the renegotiation of identities and historical narratives as polytheistic religions were supplanted by Christianity within the Roman state. Field trip to the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts.
ILVS 42 Music in Paris and Vienna at the Turn of the 20th Century. (Cross-listed w/ MUS 52) Paris and Vienna as epicenters of music, literature, and the visual arts. Studies of works by Debussy, Ravel, Satie, Stravinsky, Mahler, and Schoenberg, with attention to cultural and artistic contexts.
ILVS 50 Introduction to Film Studies. (Cross-listed as DR 50.) Introduction to fundamental methodologies for reading film. Overview of film studies with emphasis on film as a complex art form. Narrative as a formal system, film genres, style and its related techniques, critical approaches to film analysis, film history. Weekly screening of relevant films selected from both Hollywood and world cinemas.
ILVS 51 Art of the Moving Image. Cross-listed as FMS 20. Exploration of cinema's basic aesthetic characteristics: its stylistic features, such as editing, cinematography, and sound, as well as its major narrative and non-narrative forms. Screenings include a variety of films from the US and abroad that exemplify cinema's myriad forms and styles: mainstream and avant-garde, fiction and non-fiction, narrative and non-narrative, black-and-white and color, silent and sound. Discussion of the extent to which cinema's aesthetic features are shared by television and interactive media such as video games, as well as what is artistically distinctive about these newer moving image media. (Category IV-b: Film/Media Theory)
ILVS 52 Global History of Cinema. Cross-listed as FMS 21. History of cinema beginning with the emergence of the technologies for making and exhibiting films around 1894 and the major genres of early cinema (1895-1904); the development of "classical" narrative film in the US in the 1900s and 1910s; the creation of alternatives to classical cinematic storytelling in the 1920s in France, Germany, the Soviet Union and elsewhere; the rise of documentary and experimental film; and the coming of synchronized sound in the late 1920s. European responses to the increasing political turmoil in the lead-up to WWII in the 1930s; Japanese popular traditions of filmmaking, the impact of WWII on film history; the emergence of Italian Neo-Realism and "modernist" art cinema in the late 1940s and 1950s; the New Waves of the late 1950s; and political modernist, post-colonial, feminist and other radical forms of filmmaking that arose in response to the political crises of the 1960s. Survey of world cinema since the 1970s, focusing on the changes that have occurred in mainstream Hollywood filmmaking and the work of filmmakers in Hong Kong and other non-western countries. (Category III-c: Cross-Cultural Film)
ILVS 54 Introduction to Media Culture and Theory. (Cross-listed with TPS 22 and FMS 44) Qualitative media studies, its history, intellectual development, and theoretical milestones. Introduction to study of popular media culture. Covers major areas of study, theoretical principles, methodologies, and debates that have shaped popular media studies. Theoretical approaches to issues and case studies (including representation, labor and authorship, contemporary media convergence, fandom and participatory culture, media globalization, reality television, game studies, industry research and more). Students acquire knowledge of the major theories that define the field and contemporary application of these theories in critical engagements with media texts and practices.
ILVS 55 Cultural History of the Modern Middle East. Cross-listed as ARB 55. A lecture-based introductory survey course on trends and developments in cultural activities (for example, music, cinema, literature, and the fine arts) across diverse Middle Eastern cultures, with emphasis on the Arab world, Turkey, and Iran, from the nineteenth century to the present day. Following these fields of artistic expression, the course traces a broad trajectory engaging with the formulation of the concepts of the "modern" and the "traditional" in these arts, with a focus on themes such as: innovation and reform, political resistance, revolutionary ideologies, the rural-urban divide, transformations of gender roles, the rise of youth cultures, new religious movements, and reactions to consumerism and globalization. (Category III-a, b, or c: Cross-Cultural literature/visual arts/film)
ILVS 57 Hitchcock Cinema, Gender, Ideology. Cross-listed as FMS 81, WGSS 50, ENG 80. Studies in the major films of Hitchcock with specific attention to the relations among popular culture, narrative cinema, and the social constructions of gender, sexuality, and cultural authority. Emphasis on various theories of cinema and spectatorial relations (feminist, psychoanalytic, queer) and close examination of the representational practices that "naturalize" heterosexual romance in relation to the narrative of "suspense." Recommendations: ENG 1, 2 REQUIRED or Fulfillment of College Writing Requirement. (Category II-b: Single Cultural film; III-c: Gender-oriented film, IV-b: Film theory)
ILVS 60 Introduction to Literary and Cultural Studies. An introduction to the major critical and theoretical approaches for the study of literatures and cultures, especially of foreign cultures. Issues studied include: How do we analyze cultural productions, whether our own or those of other societies? What do we learn in comparing texts from different cultures with each other? What is the value of literature, and how do we define it? How do cultural productions allow us to understand social issues, and to what extent does it contribute to social change? How can we be critical yet ethical producers and consumers of literature and other cultural productions in a world that is increasingly global? (Category IV-a: Literary theory; IV-d: Cultural theory)
ILVS 61 Film Theory. (Cross-listed w/ FMS 65) Survey of the major film theories and theoretical paradigms, including: formalism, realism, historical-materialism, Frankfurt school, structuralism, semiotics, psychoanalysis, feminist film theory, cognitivism, and philosophy of film.
ILVS 62 Translating the World. (Cross-listed as ILCS 61) Translation as an approach for understanding and communicating the world around us and our purpose in it. Focus on a range of literary and cinematic materials while tackling theoretical questions relevant to familiarity, politics of intercultural transactions, and alignment of cultural frameworks.
ILVS 63 Arabian Nights. Cross-listed as ARB 63. A survey of the composition, structure, history, and importance of the Arabian Nights, the famous tales narrated by Shahrazad during 1001 nights, with selected reading of the most important tales. The dissemination of the tales and their transmission to other regions of the world including their impact on other cultures as reflected in writing, art, and film. (Category III-a: Cross-cultural literature)
ILVS 64 Introduction to Yiddish Culture. Cross-listed as REL 65 and JS 65. An examination of the roots of East European Jewish culture, beginning with a 6000-year survey of the religions of Abraham; a brief examination of the origins of Judaism, the evolution of Christianity and Islam; the historic migration of the Jewish people from Asia to Western Europe and eventually to Czarist Russia; the rise and fall of Yiddish literature; the end of the Shtetl world; and the American experience. Readings include Sholom Aleichem, Sholem Asch, I. B. Singer, Bernard Malamud, and Phillip Roth. Stress on universal cultural patterns and similarities of ethnic experience.
ILVS 65 Travel Literature: The Arab and Muslim World. Cross-listed as ARB 65. An overview of travel writing as a literary form of expression. Within Arab and Muslim cultural contexts, analysis of how travel literature expresses inquisitiveness at the encounter with a different culture. Examines how the traveler-writer endeavors to decipher this different culture in the light of her or his own experience and knowledge. Comparison of travel writing from these regions to the genre in other cultural contexts. Issues such as tolerance/intolerance, transience/permanence, and universal/particular as they relate to the literary genres of travel writing in primary and secondary readings. In English. (Category III-a: Cross-cultural literature)
ILVS 66 Border Crossings in Literature and Film. (Cross-listed with ARB 66) Explores themes of border crossing, exile, deterritorialization, smuggling, trespass, perilous boat journeys, the contact zone of the refugee camp. Focus on literary and filmic works that redefine the meanings of home, visibility and identity, as well as on narratives that revise the concept of the border through the lenses of gender (women’s and trans literature), discourses of dis/ability, stories of crossing the human/animal divide, as well as violating the border between human and machine.
ILVS 68 Arab/Jewish Literature and Film. (Cross-listed with JS 68 and ARB 68) Literature and cinema by or about Mizrahi Jews, communities from Arab or Muslim lands produced both in Israel and in the Arab countries. Themes of exile, trauma, memory, haunting, estrangement, return, and hope. Cinema as a means of forging connections and retracing bonds between Mizrahim and non-Jewish Arabs, including links between Mizrahi and Palestinian histories, memories, and cinemas.
ILVS 69 Contemporary Arts in Africa. (Cross-listed with FAH 70) Examination of African art since the end of colonialism. Consideration of sculpture, painting, performance, film, and architecture. Emphasis on the changing meanings of art within different African contexts. Exploration of the tension between the tribal and the (post)modern with respect to the advent of national cultures and outside factors. (May be taken at 100 level with consent; see below.)
ILVS 70 Introduction to Visual Studies. Critical introduction to complexities of images in contemporary cultural life. Examination of how visual experience has been conceptualized. Interpretations from psychology, philosophy, art history, and literary studies. The goal is to become familiar with fundamental concepts of this capacious interdisciplinary field, and also to develop a precise and flexible vocabulary of one's own with which to address the visual. (Category IV-c: Visual theory)
ILVS 71 Love & Sexuality in World Literature. Cross-listed as CIV 71, RUS 71, JPN 71. Representations of love and sexuality in Japanese and Russian literature. Specific issues to be addressed across a diverse body of literature, film and art include 1) the fusion of sexuality and romance, 2) love as a problem versus love as an ideal, 3) societal conventions as to so-called proper or normative behavior (the various ways hetero-and homosexuality, celibacy, and hedonism have been understood and commented upon in artistic media). All discussions in English. (Category III-a: Cross-cultural literature)
ILVS 72 Television in the Age of Change. Cross-listed as FMS 165. Examines how new technologies and shifting viewing habits are transforming television; how storytelling is changing in light of TV’s industrial and technological evolution and our global, networked, media environment; and how contemporary viewing habits are reshaping our theories of audiences, styles, and viewing pleasures. Focuses on story creation, changing genres, programming conventions and global trends, shifting technologies, social media, TV fans, and streaming content—and how all these influence television narratives and our media culture. (Category III-c: Cross-cultural Film/Media)
ILVS 73 Classical Mythology. (Cross-listed as CLS 75) Exploration of the world of Greco-Roman mythology and its intersections with art, ideology, and ritual. Examination of the stories of the gods and heroes as cognitive tools for interrogating the essential questions of being human: justice and morality, fate and identity, humor and heroism, suffering and triumph – the meaning of life. Focus on how ancient myth has remained a powerful source of inspiration for millennia, informing the art and narratives of the Renaissance to the present.
ILVS 74 Gender & Politics in Russian Culture. Cross-listed as RUS 70). Examination of how the social, economic, and political institutions in Russia have shaped the perception of women and gender over the scope of Russian history; how both women and men have tried to transcend prescribed gender norms; and how women fulfill their literary, artistic, and spiritual aspirations. Works to be considered will be drawn from folklore, poetry, fiction, painting, and film; authors will include both male and female writers (Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, Tolstaya, Petrushevskaya), women painters (Goncharova, Serebriakova) and filmmakers (Shepitko, Muratova). In English. May be taken at 100- level, as RUS 0170 with added hour in Russian.
ILVS 75 Japanese Visual Culture. (Cross-listed as JPN 113.) How do we account for the visual acuity of Japanese culture? An exploration of modern and postmodern Japanese space. Animism and its legacy. Monstrosity. Realism and perspective. Post-War fashion, manga, and anime. SMFA students welcome. Fulfills ILVS visual theory requirement. Taught in English. Inouye.
ILVS 77 Dada & the Avant-Garde. (Cross-listed as GER 81) Dada literary and art movement as subversion of society and culture. Use of irony, sarcasm, paradox, bombast, montage, etc. to undermine ideologies, e.g., capitalism, nationalism, religion, and militarism. Focus on individual signs, poetry, manifestos, photomontages and assemblages, and commodity forms and aesthetics, as objects of sabotaged meaning making. Avant-garde contexts from Dada’s predecessors, Cubism and Futurism, and successors, Surrealism, Situationalism, and Fluxus. Its continuing influence on popular culture. In English. If taken at the 100-level: Extra assignments and class meetings in German.
ILVS 78 Disney/Ghibli. Comparing Two Animation Studios: (Cross-listed w/ JPN 83 & FMS 50) Critical comparison of two of the most influential animation studios in the contemporary world, each a cultural phenomenon. Focus on the contrast between Japanese and American worldviews. History, aesthetics, and narrative style of both studios and their differing approaches to gender, national ideology, ethics, and environmental concerns. In English.
ILVS 79 Fascism: Then and Now. Cross-listed as GER 79. Comparative study of the various strains and manifestations of fascism, its history and foundations in social, political, and religious developments and ideologies; philosophical and historical concepts through literature, art, myth, and film. The structure of fascism and fascist iconography. Begins with fascist tendencies in twentieth-century Europe and Japan and culminates in the present age. In English. (Category III-a, b, c: Cross-cultural literature / visual arts / film)
ILVS 80 Walter Benjamin and the Crisis of Experience. Cross-listed as JS 80 and GER 80. Advanced survey of key works by the German literary theorist and cultural critic, focusing on his theories of experience. Includes the afterlife of the past; violence, destruction, fate, and law; language, literature, and translation; reception of Kant, Marx, and Husserl; childhood and memory; and the uses of theology. Ancillary readings from Goethe, Proust, Baudelaire, Freud, Brecht, Kafka. May be taken at the 100 level. (Category IV-a, b, c, d: Literary / media / visual / cultural theory)
ILVS 81 New Chinese Cinema. (Cross-listed w/FMS 91 and CHNS 81) A comparative exploration of films made in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the PRC in recent decades. Examination of how political, economic, and ideological contexts affect filmmaking in these different "Chinese" regions; how these differences help demonstrate diversities, specificities, contradictions, as well as interactions within and between these Chinese communities.
ILVS 83 War Stories. Cross-listed as RUS 75 and PJS 75. Examination of how war has been represented in fiction, non-fiction, memoir, film, and documentary. Priority given to Russian and East European materials, supplemented by other European, Asian, and American texts of the 19th and (mainly) 20th and 21st centuries. Focus on strategies employed by writers, journalists, historians, and film makers in depicting war in different cultures and from differing points of view. Operative questions include: challenges of representing war in a text or onscreen; commonalities and differences in how war is rendered; and how these questions impact the understanding of conflicts. The course goal is to develop sophisticated skills for understanding, deciphering, critiquing and dissecting the ways in which war and conflict are presented, and to recognize the ideological and aesthetic strategies behind these representations. All texts and discussion in English. (Category IV-d: Cultural theory)
ILVS 84 Black Comedy. Cross-listed as ENG 84. Introductory course on relations between comedy and cruelty, laughter and shame, pleasure and fear, escapism and insult. Examples drawn mainly from film, but also from fiction, theater, and television. Primary focus not on race, but some attention to black comedy as comedy by African Americans. Recommendations: ENG 1, 2 REQUIRED or Fulfillment of College Writing Requirement. Recommended that the student already have taken either ENG 20,21,22, or 23. (Category III-a: Cross-cultural literature)
ILVS 85 From Beijing to Bollywood: Cinema of China and India. Cross-listed as ENG 48, FMS 68, and CHNS 83. Comparative perspective on China and India via their cinematic traditions, related historical contexts, modern cultural production, and social transformations using selected films and critical essays. Nationalism, revolution, globalization as film expression. (Category III-c: Cross-cultural film)
ILVS 86 Film and Nation: Russia and Central Asia. Cross-listed as RUS 85, CIV 85, and FMS 85. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia and several former Central Asian republics, now the independent countries of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan embarked on a nation-building project through cinema; topics considered: how ethnic and national identities were subsumed into a "Soviet" identity and then split apart in the post-Soviet period; constructions of new national identities, national spaces, heroes and myths in films ranging from the Russian mega-hits Brother and Company 9 to the international festival favorites, The Adopted Son (Kyrgyzstan) and The Hunter (Kazakhstan); influence of Hollywood and multi-national productions in historical action films such as Nomad and Mongol; changes in film styles and genres, as well as in the structure and economics of the film industry. No prerequisites. All films with English subtitles. (Category III-c: Cross-cultural film)
ILVS 87 Arab and Middle Eastern Cinemas. Cross-listed as ARB 57. An overview of the social role of cinema in the Arab world and the broader Middle East focusing on a historical perspective on the development and expansion of cinema in these parts of the world, as well as several thematic windows through which the relationship of cinema to these societies is examined. In English. (Category III-c: Cross cultural film)
ILVS 88 Warrior Nations: Russia & U.S. Cross-listed as RUS 78. Comparative study of how war is central to each nation's identity and to the narratives in popular culture that help shape it. Focus is thematic, not chronological, with the course structured around topics, including shared myths of exceptionalism, points of triumph (how WWII is memorialized in both) and catastrophic defeat, when the myth of exceptionalism is shattered (Vietnam, Afghanistan). Other topics include civil war and the cold war. Attention is also directed to how post-1991 changes impact the connection between exceptionalism and militarism regarding wars today and the renewed tension between the two in the dynamics of competing hegemonies. Texts include film, fiction, and popular history. Course taught in English; no prerequisites. (Category IV-d: Cultural theory)
ILVS 89 Postmodernism and Film. (Cross-listed w/ FMS 87 and ENG 81) Introduction to postmodernism through the study of late twentieth century and early twenty-first century film in relation to important texts of literary and cultural criticism. The movement from modern to postmodern, originality to mechanical reproduction, identity to difference. Readings from Baudrillard, Benjamin, Butler, Derrida, Foucault, Haraway, and Lacan, along with films by Cameron, Gilliam, Polanski, Scott, the Wachowski brothers, and Welles.
ILVS 91/92 Special Topics. Special Topics
ILVS 100 Classics of World Cinema. Cross-listed as WL 101 and FMS 86. Worldwide survey of major films from the silent era to the present. Trends in filmmaking styles and genres; the impact of modern history on cinematic art; cultural, theoretical, and philosophical issues related to the study of film. Filmmakers covered may include Eisenstein, Chaplin, Renoir, Welles, DeSica, Ray, Ozu, Bergman, Fassbinder, Sembene, and Zhang Yimou. (Category III-c: Cross-cultural film)
ILVS 101 Visualizing Colonialism. Cross-listed as ARB 155, FMS 175, and CST 10. An overview of the intersection between visual culture and the conditions of colonialism and post-coloniality. Readings and viewings on representations of the non-Western world in colonial-era painting and photography, leading to an examination of the history of colonial cinema, and to later postcolonial visualizations of the colonial period. The development of cinemas of anti-colonial resistance, and persisting effects of colonialism and empire in contemporary global visual cultures, including contemporary arts and new media. Materials drawn from a variety of regional contexts, with special emphasis on the Arab world. Secondary readings drawn from anti-colonial theorists and postcolonial studies. In English. (Category III-b, c: Cross cultural visual arts / film; IV-d: Cultural theory)
ILVS 113 WebCrawlers. Artists’ Book: (Cross-listed w/ GRA 113) Develop concept and design of an artist's book based on images and text sourced from the web. Examine artists who use the internet as an archive of popular culture and combine it with social, personal and historical elements including Mishka Henner, Paul Soulellis, Clement Valla, Penelope Umbrico, Lauren Thorson, David Horvitz, Trevor Paglen, Jason Huff and Mimi Cabell. Introduces basics of publication design, text and image relationships, typography, juxtaposition sequencing, and pre-press. Gain technical skills in InDesign, Photoshop, and Lightroom. Strategies for how to use found text, personal text, rewriting old text, and editing photographs. Open to all levels.
ILVS 118 Haruki Murakami and World Literature. Cross-listed as JPN 118. Comparative study of Haruki Murakami's literature in the context of World Literature. How some Western writers' works have shaped Murakami's work. How literature travels the globe, breaking national boundaries. The writers to be examined may include, besides Murakami, Kurt Vonnegut, Raymond Chandler, Raymond Carver, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Franz Kafka, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Dostoevsky. Freud, Girard, Karatani, Nietzsche, Damrosch, and others, provide theoretical insights. Taught in English. No prerequisites. (Category III-a: Cross-cultural literature)
ILVS 122 South African Writers. Cross-listed as WL 122. Survey of modern South African writers, with emphasis on the effects of Apartheid and the anti-Apartheid struggle on the life of the imagination, including literary, film, and theatre evocations of South African life. Writers may include Alan Paton, Lewis Nkosi, J. M. Coetzee, Agnes Sam, Zoë Wicomb, Athol Fugard, Njabulo Ndebele, Miriam Tlali, Breyten Breytenbach, Mongane Serote, Ruth First, Nadine Gordimer, and Besse Head. (Category III-a: Cross-cultural literature)
ILVS 130 Monsters in Literature and Film. (Cross-listed w/ ARB 130) Monsters embody collective cultural anxieties and fears, mark and overstep the boundaries of social normativity, and offer narrative and metaphorical avenues of literary and filmic revolt. Mermaids, Frankenstein’s monsters, and Jinn as monsters that probe rapidly-shifting artistic, political, and social realities. The meaning of monstrosity engages the themes of modernity; war; dictatorship; revolution; decolonization; Islamic and secular feminisms; and questions of gender. The current resurgence of monsters in contemporary cultural production raises questions of queer body politics; literature of disability; and the meaning of citizenship in an age of global migration. Literature and film as parts of a transnational network, without sacrificing cultural specificity.
ILVS 131 The Fantastic in Arabic Literature and Film. (Cross-listed with ARB 131) Short stories, novels, and films that feature marvels, spells, magical occurrences, moments of bodily flight, body-soul exchanges, enchanted creatures, and fantastical transformations that disrupt the rules of scientific reality. Connections from the supernatural to political discourses such as the literary expression of marginalized identities, the reimagination of postcolonial ideologies, the construction of indigenous ecologies, and the emergence of post-nationalisms in their local contexts.
ILVS 132 Book of Genesis and Its Interpreters. Cross-listed as REL 132, WL 132 and JS 132. A detailed study of the biblical Book of Genesis and related biblical texts, in their historical setting, with special attention to the role that Genesis played in postbiblical religious traditions and in art and literature from early modern times onward. All texts read in English. (Category III-a: Cross-cultural literature)
ILVS 133 Roots of the Jewish Imagination. Cross-listed as REL 126, WL 126 and JS 126. Jewish myths, legends, mystical teachings, and other subjects that influenced the formation of Jewish imaginative literature. Topics include: the journey of the soul; the Book of Job and why bad things happen to good people; Jewish heresy; Jewish dream lore; the Messiah and the End of Days; legends of the Golem (android, or artificial man); the dybbuk (spirit possession) and exorcism; tales and parables of Kafka; metamorphosis; hunger, food, and eating; the comic book and graphic novel; the Holocaust and modern trauma; Kabbalah, mysticism, and religious search; Ju-Bus (Jewish Buddhists); Israelis and Palestinians; women’s experience in Jewish life. All texts read in English.(Category III-a: Cross-cultural literature)
ILVS 142 Jewish Experience on Film. Cross-listed as REL 142, FMS 84, WL 142, and JS 142. Selected classic and contemporary films dealing with aspects of Jewish experience in America, Europe, and Israel, combined with reading on the cultural, historical, and philosophical problems illuminated by each film. One weekly session will be devoted to screenings, the other to discussion of the films and readings. In English. (Category III-c: Cross-cultural film)
ILVS 144 Media of the Middle East. (Cross-listed as ANTH 144, FMS 47, and CVS 134). Examines the contemporary Middle East through a variety of media and introduces anthropological methods for studying media and media practices. Looks at media and the Arab Revolts. Themes include: (1) media such as television, music, graffiti, cartoons, or social media that may consolidate or contest state power, (2) cultural forms such as Arab hip-hop and refugee poetry that are the product of global processes and migration, (3) religious media, and (4) anthropologists as media makers. Recommendations: One course in either Anthropology or the Middle East, or consent.
ILVS 149 Colonial Soundscapes 1492-1800. (Cross-listed w/ MUS 149 and CVS 169) Survey of trans-cultural musical encounters during the peak period of exploration and colonization (16th-18th centuries). Role of music, musicians, and musical instruments in negotiating cultural difference, forging diplomatic relations, inciting or resisting violence, and partnering in projects of missionization and colonization. Examination of these musical encounters using non-traditional sources in music historiography (archeological evidence, local archives, travel narratives, missionary accounts, etc.), the documentation of oral traditions using European-style notation, and the problem of unequal power relationships embedded in many of these historical and musical accounts. Readings from historical ethnomusicology, musicology, postcolonial studies, and comparative music theory. For advanced undergraduates and graduate students.
ILVS 157 War and Cultural Memory in Literature and Cinema of the Middle East. Cross-listed as ARB 157 and FMS 178. Formation of cultural memory and/or memorialization of socially traumatic experiences such as war, viewed through literature and cinema. May include focus on: the Algerian war of independence, the Lebanese civil war, the Iran-Iraq war, the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, among others. Primary texts from these conflicts along with secondary texts on theories of social trauma and cultural memory. In English. (Category III-a, c: Cross-cultural literature / film)
ILVS 160 Environmental Justice And World Literature. (Cross-listed as ENG 160, ENV 160, CVS 111, and PJS 160). An examination of contemporary world literature in relation to environmental justice concerns. Works by Helena María Viramontes, Gloria Naylor, Karen Tei Yamashita, Ken Saro-Wiwa, Jamaica Kincaid, Amitava Ghosh, with particular attention to issues of environmental racism, ecofeminism, environmental imperialism, and urban ecologies. Emphasis on the role of literature and the arts in social change, including practical strategies for activism.
ILVS 162 The End of the World, Plan B. A comparative study of end-of-the-world narratives considered from the perspectives of Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Science. How and why our present notions about a final catastrophic moment are actually a misunderstanding of a paradigm that is common to these various traditions. Why justice is problematic as a cultural mode and as a societal goal. (Category IV-d: Cultural theory)
ILVS 163 Art and Anthropology. (Cross-listed with FAH 163) Focus on a number of key anthropological concepts and debates in the study of art. Assessment of their relevance, potential, and applicability for a critical understanding of artistic practice and the global art world. Questions range from notions of value and the difference between art and artifact art to the role of the body, the senses, and materiality. Course discussion on the basis of case studies from different parts of the world.
ILVS 164 Who Owns the Past? Art, Heritage, and Global Conflicts. (Cross-listed with FAH 164) Cultural heritage as a subject of identity and ownership. History of museum collections and preservation programs in the context of nationalism and colonialism and the aftermath of these developments on the basis of selected case studies from different parts of the world. From heritage and the process of nation-building to the debate on heritage in the Anthropocene era.
ILVS 173 Literary Theory. Cross-listed as ENG 173. Introduction to literary theory with special emphasis on questions of language, representation, and ideology. Readings may include primary texts by Saussure, Levi-Strauss, Lacan, Derrida, de Man, Jameson, Sedgwick, Butler, Spivak, Gates, Badiou, Agamben, Miller, Gallop, and Iek. Recommendations: ENG 1, 2 REQUIRED or Fulfillment of College Writing Requirement. Recommended that the student already have taken either ENG 20,21,22, or 23. (Category IV-a: Literary theory)
ILVS 176 Earth Matters: Global English Literature & Environment. (Crosslisted as ENV 176, ILVS 176, & CVS 110) Global English literature course in the environmental humanities. Major themes and topics include climate change, energy crisis, human rights, and resource equity. Authors may include Ben Okri, Amitav Ghosh, Rachel Carson, Rita Wong, Ken Saro-Wiwa, Rose Tremain, Benyamin, Sheena Wilson.
ILVS 180 Psychoanalysis and Cultural Criticism. Cross-listed as ENG 180. Advanced seminar in the relation between Lacanian psychoanalytic theory and contemporary literary and cultural analysis. Focus on various essays from Lacan's Écrits and several of his seminars, with additional readings in literary theory selected from the works of authors including Jane Gallop, Slavoj Zizek, Judith Butler, Alenka Zupancic, Diana Fuss, Leo Bersani, and Joan Copjec. Recommendations: ENG 1, 2 REQUIRED or Fulfillment of College Writing Requirement. Recommended that the student already have taken either ENG 20,21,22, or 23. (Category IV-a, b, c, d: Literary / film/media / visual / cultural theory)
ILVS 181 Film and Modernism. (Cross-listed as FAH 150 & FMS 184) Modernism in cinema from its emergence in the 1920s to its supposed demise in the 1970s and replacement by postmodernism. Consideration of modernism in the other arts and its influence on filmmakers in Europe, the United States, and Japan. Other global regions may be examined.
ILVS 182 Unlimited Edition Artist Books. (Cross-listed with GRA 109 and PHT 109) Use your photos, drawings or creative writing to produce a semester-long project that combines text and imagery in the form of a photobook, print-on-demand publication, one of a kind sculptural book, zine, comics, RISO or web narrative. Studio/seminar course covers a wide spectrum of contemporary artist’s books starting from the 60s. Weekly discussions are organized by themes. Discussion based on readings will focus on developing a critical language about artists’ books. Students will collaboratively create a blog with their analysis of a chosen book. Intermediate/advanced levels. Non-SMFA students and MAT Art Education students will receive a letter grade.
ILVS 183 Codex in Context: Studio. (Cross-listed with GRA 110) Studio component of GRA-0109 seminar. Work on a long-term project using text and imagery in the form of a publication. Class demos include InDesign and Photoshop. Formats, approaches, and processes may include sculpture, photography, print-on-demand, zines, comics, RISO, screenprinting, and offset lithography. Group sessions will include demos, critiques, readings, and studio time. Recommendations: one GRA class prior and production of at least one artist’s book, third- or fourth-year students, graduate students, post-bac students, or permission of instructor.
ILVS 184 Forgiveness & Revenge. (Cross-listed as ILCS 180) Literary depictions of forgiveness, apology, revenge, and reconciliation and their evolution over time and across cultures. Contemporary conceptions of reconciliation in a world where apologies are disseminated through social media, often garnering attention and debate. Readings may include Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, and works from authors including Plato, Aeschylus, Søren Kierkegaard, Anton Chekhov, Rainer Maria Rilke, Franz Kafka, Flannery O’Connor, Elie Wiesel, and Haruki Murakami.
ILVS 185 China and the West. Cross-listed as CHNS 185. How Chinese and Western cultures perceive and represent one another in film, fiction, TV shows, scholarly writings, and other media. Cultural, political, and historical reasons and implications involved. Prerequisite: junior standing. In English. Fulfills Chinese seminar requirement. (Category IV-d: Cultural theory)
ILVS 186 How Films Think. Cross-listed as ENG 186 and FMS 186. Advanced seminar exploring the languages of cinematic representation. Attention to visual logic and the relation between techniques of cinematic rhetoric (montage, the long take, shot/reverse shot) and the effect of cinematic thought. Close study of films by directors such as Welles, Scorsese, Coppola, Tarantino, and Lynch; additional attention to recent work in film studies and cinema theory. (Category IV-b: Film theory)
ILVS 187 Film and the Avant-Garde. (Cross-listed as FMS 179 & FAH 159) The role of film within avant-garde art, primarily in Europe and North America. Artists who made avant-garde films FILMS from the 1920s such as Fernand Leger and Marcel Duchamp, as well as filmmakers belonging to cross-media movements such as Dada and Surrealism. Post-war artists in the United States updating pre-war avant-garde film genres while pioneering new ones, like the lyrical film and the collage film. Considers Structural film of the 1960s and the pluralism of avant-garde film since the 1970s. The proliferation of moving image installations in art galleries and museums. Attention to the historical conditions that gave rise to these developments, the theories behind them, and the use of avant-garde film by feminists and others for socio-political critique.
ILVS 191 / ILVS 192 Special Topics. No description at this time.
ILVS 193 / ILVS 194 Directed Study. Directed Study.
ILVS 198 / ILVS 199 Senior Honors Thesis. Senior Honors Thesis.