ECS 320 Cultural Systems: The Human Face of Soviet Socialism
Traditionally, life in the Soviet period is perceived as being polarized between the ideological constraints imposed by state authorities and acts of popular resistance by dissidents. In this course, we will try to understand how Communist ideology was "translated" in socialist countries into the language of everyday life. Through film, fiction, and academic studies of socialist life, we will analyze the cultural logic of socialism that still retains its legacy in a large part of the former Soviet world.
Professor: Serguei A. Oushakine
2:50 pm T Th

ECS 330/COM 321 Communication and the Arts: Media and Literature
This course examines the multiple connections of print journalism and the novel. Our particular focus will be the relationship of 20th-century discussions of the responsibilities, political influence, and cultural impact of the media to the various images of the bumbling journalists, self-appointed reporters, and eventual bloggers in modern and (mostly) European literature.
Professor: Eileen A. Reeves
11:00 am - 12:20 pm M W

ECS 331/COM 364
Communication and the Arts: Language and Culture in the Parisian Fifties and Sixties
An introduction to the intellectual and cultural history of Paris in the nineteen-fifties and sixties, tracing the rise of structuralism and the emergence of "post-structuralism" through such thinkers as Sartre, Barthes, Derrida, and Foucault. We will also explore contemporaneous developments in film (focusing on Godard) and literature (especially the New Novel and Oulipo), along with forms of social and political militancy, including Situationism, radical feminisms, and French Maoism. Students should be prepared to engage in an open-minded but critical manner with works that are intellectually challenging and aesthetically provocative.
Professor: Christopher P. Bush
1:30 pm - 4:20 pm M