This course offers an introduction to the first century and a half of Islamic society, 600-700 AD. It builds on knowledge of ways of writing about the past which students have acquired in earlier courses. The focus of the course is the rise and development of the religion of Islam and the key events and figures in the process.
Read Full ArticleExamines the Allied partition of Berlin, the politics of the Cold War, the Berlin Air Lift, the emergence of two German states, the division by the Berlin Wall, and the reemergence of a unified city in a new Germany. Films, drama, and novels trace the historical development of the city. Includes a study trip to Berlin.
Read Full ArticleSurveys the history of urban form in the predominantly Muslim cities of the Middle East and North Africa. Students will study the relationship between urban morphology and society, practices of sacred space, and the interplay of power, belief, and architectural form. Also covered are the politics behind the forms now seen as the defining features of Islamic building and the question of the image in Islamic building.
Read Full ArticleOffers a detailed investigation of The Divine Comedy. Traces Dante’s development in several related areas (love, mysticism, allegory, poetics, politics) and his affinity with other key cultural figures (Virgil, St. Augustine, St. Bernard, St. Thomas, Boccaccio). Includes an overview of medieval history.
Read Full ArticleExplores the work of Anglo-American modernist writers in Paris, concentrating on the works of Ernest Hemingway, Wyndham Lewis, Gertrude Stein, Djuna Barnes, Jean Rhys, and other writers. Relates their formal experimentation to the visual arts and to the psychic dynamics of exile: the experience of liberation from the constraints of one culture and an alienated relation to the new environment.
Read Full ArticlePresents an anthropological approach to the study of cities, providing students with theoretical and methodological tools to think critically about the meaning of urban life today. Approaches this topics from a cross-cultural perspective, with a number of readings focusing on Paris in particular. Students will undertake a Paris-based qualitative research project during the course of the semester.
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