ECS 320/ ART 330 Professor Francisco Prado-Vilar
Inscribed in the Flesh: Pain in European Visual Culture

What defines the human condition is not reason itself but, rather, the capacity to endow suffering with meaning. This course examines a wide variety of discourses that have frames, instrumentalized and promoted the representation of physical suffering in European visual culture, from the Christian theology of punishment and redemption to political ideologies of social control. Focusing on a diverse set of works, ranging from Gothic illumination to photojournalism, the course explores topics such as the iconography of the Passion, the phenomenon of martyrdom, the structure of torture, images of war, and others.
Th 1:30 - 4:20

ECS 330/ COM 374 Professor Rachel Gabara
Filming Displacement: Europeans in Africa and Africans in Europe

This course will examine the complex past and present relationships between European countries and their former African colonies via films about displacement and exile. Our primary texts will be European and African films that represent Europeans in Africa and Africans in Europe, films both from and about both the colonial and postcolonial periods. From tales of European "explorers" in the "Dark Continent," we will move on to post-independence African retellings of colonization, and then continue with African and European filmings of the changing stories of African students and immigrants in Europe from the 1950s to the present day. Accompanying readings will provide historical background as well as theoretical support for our analysis of the films.
T 1:30 - 4:20 Film TBA

ECS 352/ AMS 352 Professors Anson Rabinbach and Sean Wilentz
The Transatlantic '60s: Culture and Politics in Europe and the United States

This course will provide an intensive introduction to the cultural and political stirrings of the 1960s on both sides of the Atlantic. Attention will be paid to intellectual convergences and influences as well as differences.
T 1:30 - 4:20 Precept M 7:30pm-9:50pm

JDS 360/ HIS 459 Professor Olga Litvak
*The Jewish Enlightenment and Its Critics

This course examines the 18th century emergence of the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah), and tracks the ways in which the confrontation with modernity motivated the 19th century ideal of reforming Jewish society and religion. We will also examine contemporary experiments in self-fashioning undertaken by Jewish men and women, who encountered the contradictions between European culture and Jewish ethics in their own lives. At the same time, we will explore how the powerful impact of Enlightenment shaped a radical critique of Jewish modernity that crystallized into a variety of 20th century movements (e.g., socialism, nationalism, traditionalism).
MW 3:00 - 4:20

*This class will count toward credit for the ECS certificate.