CMLT

What can epic literature and media teach us about religion? In this introductory seminar, students explore answers to this question, focusing on the ways epics dramatize the human relationship to divinity. We read the epics through the relationships of its central characters—humans, heroes, and gods. By following the winding quests and gory battles of these narratives, students examine how epics present various forms of human-divine relationships—transactional, intimate, inspirational, and manipulative. We employ a comparative approach to the genre; our readings originate in different world regions and historical periods—from ancient India and Greece to West Africa, England, and the contemporary US. We will read these texts closely and examine how they reflect particular views of the human condition within religious worldviews. Considering the contexts of post-colonization, nationalism, and globalization, we analyze how mass media—comic books, TV series, films, and social media—shape and spread those views to new popular audiences.

In October 2022, two Just Stop Oil activists were arrested after throwing tomato soup on Vincent van Gogh's “Sunflowers” painting. Their environmentally-motivated protest raises the question: did their action degrade the famous painting, or, on the contrary, did they revitalize the artwork's relevance in a world where "Sunflowers" has become a cliché image, adorning the walls of corporate offices and printed on mass-produced T-shirts? In other words, did the activists make "good" use of art? In this seminar, we will study and debate different positions regarding the uses and misuses of aesthetic experience, particularly art, while also taking seriously the possibility that, as Oscar Wilde wrote, “all art is quite useless.” We will consider questions such as: What constitutes good art? Should art be political? Beautiful? Useful? Can the experience of an artwork redefine our understanding of these very concepts? Does art change us, and if so, how? We will explore these themes through a variety of philosophical and literary texts, works of art, and creative assignments designed to expand and enrich our discussions. Theoretical readings include Aristotle, Longinus, Kant, Schiller, Nietzsche, Artaud, Huizinga, Arendt, Nussbaum, and others.

As a region colonized by various European imperial forces, the Caribbean has long been marked by histories of brutality, resistance, and revolution. What are the stakes of remembering, narrating, and/or fictionalizing these moments of violence? This course, supplemented by historical and theoretical texts, takes a close look at a selection of Caribbean literary works in order to illuminate the complex interaction between violent histories and cultural production. How do Caribbean writers represent historical epochs of terror and torture? What has been the function of violence in literary and cultural history? How do we ethically approach narratives of violence? Is it even possible? Thinking alongside these questions, students will craft close readings, argumentative stances, and personal reflections on the works read in class. These exercises will prepare students for the course’s final research project. Some of the authors we’ll read include Alejo Carpentier, Edwidge Danticat, Rita Indiana, and Jamaica Kincaid, which will help broaden our understanding of literary history across the varied Caribbean region. Materials will be available in their English translation and in their original languages. Course taught in English.

Money is everywhere: in people’s pockets and minds, behind their actions and beyond their dreams. And yet, what money is, how it works or organizes a society are questions that appear to elude us. For some, money is merely a tool used to carry out forms of exchange ingrained in human nature; for others, it is the most fundamental form of cultural mediation affecting from the manner we relate to each other to the way we think. This class aims to understand the functions, uses and representations of this peculiar object from a variety of perspectives. We will read short stories, ethnologies, philosophical texts, or analyze paintings and movies to try to understand money in its different milieux and as the complex institution it is. Other questions addressed in this course are the relation between money and value, the link between commoditization and ethics, or the different substances that historically have functioned as monetary tokens. Materials for this course will include a variety of sources from Marx and Smith to Marco Polo and Shakespeare among many others.

The poet and novelist Ulla Hahn (b. 1945) ranks among Germany’s best-known living writers. Yet, her work remains largely untranslated and thus little known outside the German-speaking world. In this course, we will read her 2001 novel Das verborgene Wort (The Hidden Word) in the original German. The book is the first of an autobiographical tetralogy and beautifully illustrates issues of gender, class, post-war trauma and Germany’s so-called Wirtschaftswunder (“economic rise”) following World War II. We will read the entire novel slowly and carefully, paying particular attention to the nuances of Hahn’s poetic prose style. Since the novel contains sentences in the Cologne dialect (Kölsch), the instructor will provide explanations and an introduction to the regional culture. Based on the novel, we will also discuss the larger historical and cultural context of Germany post-WW II.

The course is open to both undergraduate and graduate students and class discussion will be in English, but advanced reading knowledge in German is required. The course will be useful to students who wish to expand their German-language skills and learn about West Germany in the 2nd half of the 20th century.

When somebody tells us about the nature of God or the gods, about what such beings want from us, about our experiences before this life or our destinies after it—why should we believe them? With equal and opposite force, why shouldn’t we believe them? Are the standards of acceptable belief entirely independent of what we’re told by religious authorities, or is it impossible to arrive at any such standards without presuming something we’ve been told? When confronted with diverse claims about the divine, should we try to ascertain which ones are true, should we combine or harmonize them in some way, or should we dismiss the entire conversation as wrongheaded? In this course, we’ll think through these questions with the help of influential texts drawn from the Buddhist, Hindu, Platonic, and classical Chinese traditions.

The Psalms are the most cited book of the Old Testament in the New Testament. No book of the Bible received more commentary by early Christian and medieval theologians, representing the foundation of all religious knowledge. Lay people through the ages used it in personal prayer and meditation, drawing strength and consolation from this unique Biblical genre. Teachers employed the Psalms to teach children how to write, ensuring that they became part of the linguistic vocabulary and mental imagery of literate people. Not surprisingly, the poetic sensibility and practice of major Western writers from Augustine, Judah Halevi, and George Herbert to Emily Dickinson and Paul Celan was informed by their reading of the Psalms. Given their importance for the religious and literary culture of the Judeo-Christian world, we will begin our course by closely reading a good number of the 150 Psalms, focusing on how they model a paradoxical communication, namely the conversation between a fallible self and an almighty and distant God. We will then hone in on the role of the Psalms for the conversion and formation of the self in number of seminal Christian thinkers such as Augustine, John Cassian, Saint Benedict, Martin Luther, among others. Since the Psalms were disseminated so widely, we will pay particular attention the material and medial forms in which they were read and performed. Readings and discussions in English.
 

The course will examine the long history of parrhesia, the Greek term for free and fearless speech, from ancient Athens to its current renaissance through the rediscovery by Michel Foucault. Focusing on the relation of truth and discourse, the course will consider not only the extraction of truth as a form of subjection to disciplinary power but also acts of telling truth to power as a practice of self- formation and exercise of freedom. Parrhesia implies a relation between the human self and the act of truth-telling that is suffused with interesting political, philosophical, and ethical possibilities, which students will be encouraged to explore. The course will begin by reviewing Foucault’s final lectures on parrhesia and “the courage of truth.” It will then examine some of the ancient Greek and Christian texts that Foucault analyzed. It will go on to consider early modern instances of parrhesia (e.g. Galileo and Descartes) and will conclude by surveying relatively recent versions (e.g. Greta von Thunberg and James Comey, JD’85), including contemporary feminist and queer practices of parrhesia. Lectures and discussions in English. No prerequisites.

Vampires, fire-breathing dragons, vengeful mountain nymphs. 7/8 and other uneven dance beats, heart-rending laments and a living epic tradition.This course is an overview of Balkan folklore from historical, political and anthropological, perspectives. We seek to understand folk tradition as a dynamic process and consider the function of different folklore genres in the imagining and maintenance of community and the socialization of the individual. We also experience this living tradition first-hand through visits of a Chicago-based folk dance ensemble, “Balkan Dance.”

This course introduces students to the various theories of militant or “fighting” cultures engendered by global struggles for decolonization throughout the twentieth century. Beginning with the global upswell of revolutionary movements at the end of World War I, intellectuals and artists from the colonial world began to enlist poetry, novels, art, music and other cultural forms in the struggle for decolonization. At the same that culture was instrumentalized for larger political struggles, meanwhile, “culture” itself was increasingly understood as a distinct site of struggle: The decolonization of culture was part and parcel of the decolonization of peoples. This course traces this evolving global discourse linking culture and decolonization across the twentieth century, exploring how writers and activists from the colonial world articulated a new cultural agenda within the context of broader programs of social transformation. Throughout we will contend with key questions and dilemmas faced by culture producers in the age of decolonization: What is the role of artists in a revolution? How does culture serve as a staging-ground larger political and ideological conflicts? What are the promises and pitfalls of treating decolonization as a metaphor? To answer these and other related questions, we will draw on case studies from the Harlem Renaissance, the Proletarian Literature movement, Haitian and Latin American Indigenist movements, Négritude, and Third Worldism.