ECS 325
French Multiculturalism
Professor Susan A. Maslan
TTh 11:00 am - 12:20 pm

Why is it illegal to wear headscarfs to school in France? Why does France mandate that 50 percent of political candidates be women? Why were there riots night after night in the Paris suburbs? We will consider these questions and more as we explore what multiculturalism means in France, Europe's oldest democracy.

ECS 330 / COM 321
Communication and the Arts - Media and Literature
Professors Eileen A. Reeves
MW 11:00 am - 12:20 pm

This course examines the multiple connections of European journalism and the novel. Our particular focus will be the cultural impact and political influence of contemporary print media and volatile images, including photographs and cartoons. Special attention will also be paid to the self-appointed reporters' or pundit's displacement of the heroic journalist within the ambit of the novel.

COM 395 / ECS 395 / MED 414
Writing Power: Representations of Sovereignty in the Late Middle Ages
Professor Nikolaos Panou
TTh 11:00 am - 12:20 pm

A study of the relationship between politics and language in the late Middle Ages. Close readings and comparative analyses of selected moral and political works produced in Abbasid Persia, Byzantium, and Western Europe from the eleventh to the fourteenth century. Special attention will be given to the theoretical elaboration of monarchical power in relation to virtue, divinity, law, and social welfare. Questions of political theory, literary criticism, and cultural history will be treated with view to understanding the processes of symbolic construction and rhetorical consolidation of supreme authority and charismatic leadership.

ECS 408
Down the Garden Path
Professor Edward A. Eigen
M 7:30 pm - 10:20 pm

Before the naked city and joyless streets was the garden. This is its plot. Originally it was a "pleasant place," beyond which, in space and time, sprouted thorn and thistle. Later, much later, perhaps when it was already too late, came landscape (is it a noun or a verb, or both?). This course traces a serpentine path through the history of landscape, with occasional and revealing vistas to and from literature, the arts, and the sciences. "Down the Garden Path" suggests being taken in, willingly falling prey to the ruses that await us in the garden, and which are masked by its pleasures.