HIST 96 CM: The Amazon

From the time of the conquest, the outside world turned the Amazon into an imagined place to unleash their adventure fantasies about lost cities of gold and their fears about savage jungles and Indians. From a historical perspective, this course interrogates the creation of Amazonia from the nineteenth-century rubber boom to contemporary environmental campaigns. We analyze visual images, explorers’ accounts, ethnographies, novels, films, advertisements and environmental campaigns. The point is to understand how the Amazon and its people have been imagined externally and internally, and why certain narratives hold power in the Western world. Instructor: S. Sarzynski [Elective]


GOVT 115 CM: Politics of Government

Analyzes the relationship between the political decision makers and the news media. Topics include: the structure and organization of print and electronic media; forms of political journalism, such as investigative reporting and commentary; ways by which political figures try to influence the news; the impact of news stories on public opinion. Instructor: Pitney [Elective]


KORE 130 CM: Korean Cinema and Culture

This course examines Korean history, politics, culture, and society through analysis of their representation in contemporary Korean cinema. This course will follow the history of Korea chronologically from Yi Dynasty to the present, focusing on topics such as Confucianism, the Colonial period, nationalism, the Korean War, national division, military government, democratic movements, and urbanization. The focus of the class will be equally distributed between the films themselves and the historical time and people captured on these films. Knowledge of Korean is not required. Instructor: M. Kim [Elective]


LIT 130 CM: Introduction to Film

From its inception, cinema has often been conceptualized as having a “language” of its own. This course examines that metaphor from aesthetic, cultural, social, and historical perspectives. We will begin with a close analysis of a contemporary popular film, in an effort to “defamiliarize” typical conventions of cinematic expression, and then proceed through a study of multiple movements and genres in the history of film, from German Expressionism to the French New Wave, from Hollywood to documentary to avant-grade and independent filmmaking. Overall, the course is intended to provide students with a broad introduction to film analysis and to the field of Film Studies. Instructor: Schur, Thomas [Introductory]


LIT 34 CM: Creative Journalism

An intensive hands-on course in feature writing styles and journalistic ethics; a primer for writing in today’s urban America. Essentially, journalism, like all art, tells a story. How that story is told is as critical to the success of a piece as the importance of its theme. A series of writing exercises and reporting “assignments” will give both inexperienced and more advanced writers the tools to explore their writerly “voice.” Special attention will be devoted to discussions of the role of the journalist in society. Instructor: Staff [Elective]


LIT 36 CM: Screenwriting

A seminar-workshop on the theory and practice of writing screenplays. We will view films and read scripts in a variety of genres, examine the roles of art, craft, and commerce in writing for film, and discuss in general the enterprise of being a writer. Each student will make substantial progress in the writing of an original screenplay. Instructor: Staff [Elective]


LIT 84 CM: The Lyric Voice in Modern American Literature & Film

This course examines currents in American literature and film from World War II to the present. Though the course surveys key trends over this period—especially against the backgrounds of modernism and post-modernism—we will concentrate in particular on the “lyric” impulse in American culture, studying works concerned with ideas of epiphany, meditation, contemplation, transcendence, a general conception of the “poetic” and the role of feeling and the emotions in modern life. With a primary focus on short forms, we will pay special attention to work that confronts the question of how to maintain “lyric” artistic standpoints amid cultural and social developments often inimical to them. Instructor: J. Morrison [Theory or Media History]


HIST 96 CM: The Amazon

From the time of the conquest, the outside world turned the Amazon into an imagined place to unleash their adventure fantasies about lost cities of gold and their fears about savage jungles and Indians. From a historical perspective, this course interrogates the creation of Amazonia from the nineteenth-century rubber boom to contemporary environmental campaigns. We analyze visual images, explorers’ accounts, ethnographies, novels, films, advertisements and environmental campaigns. The point is to understand how the Amazon and its people have been imagined externally and internally, and why certain narratives hold power in the Western world. Instructor: S. Sarzynski [Elective]


FREN 117 CM: Novel & Cinema in Africa & Caribbean

This course will examine works by writers and filmmakers from French-speaking countries of Africa and the Caribbean. Special emphasis will be placed on questions of identity, the impact of colonialism, social and cultural values as well as the nature of aesthetic creation. Prerequisite: French 44 or equivalent. Instructor: M. Shelton [Elective]


ARBC 140 CM: Arabic Media

This course provides an understanding of the nature and state of contemporary Arabic lanugage news an dopinion reporting. It focuses on the major Arabic language newspapers and selected Arabic satellite new channels and programs. Instructor: B. Frangieh [Prereq: Arabic 44 or higher. Elective]