Global Culture and Society

04:30 PM to 07:10 PM M

Instructor: Alok Yadav

The Enlightenment is the name both of a historical era in the European world (roughly the period from the late 17th century through the end of the 18th century) and of a self-consciously modern and progressive intellectual and cultural movement that took shape during this era. This intellectual and cultural movement was not necessarily the dominant cultural force in the era, but it was a powerful critical or dissident force that has—in its contest with anti-Enlightenment counter tendencies—shaped fundamental aspects of our modern world. Helping students to gain a richer, deeper understanding of the Enlightenment is thus one main objective of this course.

More particularly, we’ll be interested in examining how ideas, especially new ideas, manifest themselves in literary culture and in literary works. The Enlightenment was a period of great intellectual ferment in European societies, as a new spirit of inquiry took hold of the intellectual and cultural worlds of these societies and all sorts of received ideas were questioned or critiqued. This led to reformist attention to many aspects of social and cultural life and, in turn, to challenges for literary authors on whether and how to grapple with this ferment in their works. In our own time, literary authors face a very similar challenge: how to engage contemporary intellectual-cultural-social concerns in literary works? How might an author take up contemporary debates around multiculturalism, immigration, and the changing face of US society; about feminism (e.g. the MeToo movement); about income and wealth inequality in a democratic society; about prison and policing reform and racial injustice; about the climate crisis, etc.? How do these concerns find their way into contemporary writing? Writers in the Enlightenment faced similar challenges in relation to the issues of their own day, some of them very different from the issues we confront, some of them with some resonance with our own concerns. In this course, we’ll be interested in examining the literature of the Enlightenment period with an eye to the variety of ways authors took up the intellectual debates of their time., what forms a literature of ideas and/or engagement took in this era.

Our focus will be on the range of old and new genres that were adapted for these purposes, but that often fall to the side of our typical focus on novels, poetry, and plays. Genres such as philosophical dialogues, conversations with the dead, fables, periodical essays, fictional travels, Oriental tales, popularizing science writing, philosophy, reviews and criticism, lectures and demonstrations. We will read British writers as well as European ones (in English translation) as we explore the ways in which a new kind of literary culture emerged under the influence of the Enlightenment and as a way of propagating enlightenment.

07:20 PM to 10:00 PM W

Instructor: Alexander Monea

04:30 PM to 07:10 PM R

Instructor: Raluca Romaniuc

07:20 PM to 10:00 PM R

04:30 PM to 07:10 PM T

Instructor: Peter N. Stearns

This course focuses on the development of modern societies – in the United States, in Europe, and in other key world regions. The course thus serves students with interests in these three categories, with somewhat different readings depending on interest. And the course will be actively comparative. The fundamental issue involves exploring the tension between seeing modern societies largely in terms of economic and industrial change, and taking a wider perspective involving politics, family and gender, and popular culture.

03:00 PM to 04:15 PM MW

Instructor: Gregory Unruh

04:30 PM to 07:10 PM W

Instructor: Rose M Cherubin

Instructors: Dr. Rutledge Dennis (SOCI), Dr. Rose Cherubin (PHIL)

The Du Bois – Locke Seminar explores the sociological, philosophical, and historical writings and perspectives of Du Bois and Locke as they create, analyze, and critique issues pertaining to race and ethnicity, art and culture, value, identity, and aesthetics, both within and beyond the Black World. Though their scholarship and activism began in the first decades of the twentieth century and was central to the world of the Harlem Renaissance, and though there were similarities and dissimilarities in their views, Du Bois and Locke each proposed ideas, values, and themes that transcended that world and period, extending well into the Black Power Movement and beyond, including resonances in the contemporary Black Lives Matter Movement.

For PHIL MA students in the Traditional and Contemporary focus, this course can be used to fulfill the contemporary philosophy requirement, or can be used as an elective.

For PHIL MA students in the Ethics and Public Affairs concentration, this course can be used as an elective.

04:30 PM to 07:10 PM T

03:00 PM to 04:15 PM MW

Instructor: Mark D Jacobs

04:30 PM to 07:10 PM M

Instructor: Jennifer Leeman

Instructor: Lisa M. Rabin

As the enduring and ever-evolving telenovela shows -- from its origins in the radio drama; to its coming-of-age on national networks; to its reshaping on globalized formats -- Latin American mass media and Latin American popular culture are closely entwined. At the university, scholars have researched the Latin American mass media from various angles: as industrial products; as popular culture; and also as works of the imagination. This advanced course in the Spanish B.A. and M.A. program introduces students to several of these approaches in the academic disciplines of communication studies, cultural studies and film and media studies. Students will have an opportunity to apply these approaches in their analysis of historical and contemporary media narratives, including newspapers of the early republics; turn-of-the-century serial novels and radio dramas; comics and industrial film musicals in the age of nationalisms; national telenovelas in the dawn of television and globalized telenovelas in the digital present.

Recommended prerequisites: SPAN 370, 385, and 390; students may also register with professor’s permission. Course taught in Spanish and entirely online | Cross-listed with SPAN 482 DL. 

04:30 PM to 07:10 PM W

Instructor: Antonio Carreño-Rodríguez

04:30 PM to 07:10 PM T

Instructor: Yevette Richards Jordan