ENGL 437: Joseph Viscomi: The Chief English Romantic Writers
TR, 3.00 – 4.15 p.m., Greenlaw 305
MUSC 289: Annegret Fauser: Sounds of War and Revolution, 1750-1850
TR, 11.00 a.m. – 12.15 p.m., Person 100
Fall 2009
HIST/PWAD 268: Karen Hagemann:
War, Revolution and Culture: Transatlantic Perspectives, 1750-1850 -
Cluster Gateway Course
Monday & Wednesday, 1:00 – 1:50 p.m. (Class) [location]
Recitation Sections: Friday [time and location]
Spring 2010
ART 370: Mary Sheriff: Visual Art in the Age of Revolution
GERM 330: Jonathan M. Hess: The Age of Goethe
HIST 457: Jay Smith: The French Revolution
HIST/PWAD 546: Kathleen DuVal: Revolution and Nation-Making in America, 1763–1815
Fall 2010
FREN 275: Philippe Barr:
Sex, Philosophy and Politics: Revolutions in French Literature, 1721-1834
HIST/PWAD 268: Karen Hagemann:
War, Revolution and Culture: Transatlantic Perspectives, 1750-1850 -
Cluster Gateway Course
Fall 2008
ENGL 437: Joseph Viscomi: The Chief English Romantic Writers
TR, 3.00 – 4.15 p.m., Greenlaw 305
Course Description:
Introduction to Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, the Shelleys, Byron, Keats, and a few essayists, and to main features of the Romantic Period in England. Concentration will be on close reading of particular poems. Some basic knowledge of 18th and/or 19th century British history and literature will be assumed (i.e., Undergraduate English majors should have taken English 121).
MUSC 289: Annegret Fauser:
Sounds of War and Revolution, 1750-1850
TR, 11.00 a.m. – 12.15 p.m., Person 100
Course Description:
Music has played a significant role in wars and revolutions throughout Western history. Songs and marches have rallied and mobilized soldiers and revolutionaries; music has formed part of state ceremonies, victory celebrations and funerals; musical works have provided an important language to communicate revolutionary ideals even in politically oppressive environments; and musical works have served to commemorate and reflect upon war and revolution, whether in battle symphonies, opera, or songs. In this course, we explore music's various roles in these historical and political circumstances, focusing on the century between the American Revolutionary War and the European Revolutions of 1848-49. We will address theories about music's physical and emotional impact, study the self-conscious use of music by governments, military, and revolutionaries to further their course, and examine music as a cultural product that reflects ideas about war and revolution within various cultural contexts.
Fall 2009
HIST/PWAD 268: Karen Hagemann:
War, Revolution and Culture: Transatlantic Perspectives, 1750-1850 - Cluster Gateway Course
Monday & Wednesday, 1:00 – 1:50 p.m. (Class) [location]
Recitation Sections: Fridays [time and location]
Course Description:
This course will focus on what some historians have called the age of revolution, the period from 1750 to 1850 when wars and revolutions broke out across Europe and the Americas. It introduces students not only to the transnational developments in Europe and the Americas in this period, but also to the multiplicity of approaches to the issues of war, politics and culture represented in the cluster by combining lectures from historians, art historians, and specialists in English, French, German and Russian literature and the history of music. The main aim of this interdisciplinary approach is to explore the relations between the dramatic historical changes in politics, military and society and their intersection with and reflection in arts, literature and music.
Format of the course: In the course specialists from different disciplines (art, history, English, French, German and Russian literature and music), who work on the course subject and period, will present lectures. The course gives students therefore not only the chance to get an historical overview of the developments between 1750 and 1850 in Europe and the America, but also to get to know the different disciplinary approaches involved in the cluster and the professors who teach a cluster course. Each class of the course will combine lectures and discussion, which will presume that the students have read the required reading for that day. Lectures will be coordinated with the assigned readings but will not duplicate them. Instead, the lectures are designed to suggest emphases, to draw attention to especially important points, and to provide additional material on selected issues. This course will feature guest speakers from a variety of disciplines, all experts on some aspect of the age of revolution, many of whom offer a course in the cluster. Moreover, the course will include recitation sections, which will give students the possibility for a deepened discussion of the assigned weekly reading.
For more see the course syllabus.
Spring 2010
ART 370: Mary Sheriff: Visual Art in the Age of Revolution
Course Description:
Prerequisite, 100-level art history course or permission of instructor.
This course focuses on the visual arts of Europe between 1750 and 1830, and addresses the political, social, cultural and aesthetic issues pertinent to art in an age of revolution. The course not only introduces students to the visual culture of this time, but it also addresses those works and themes that best represent “revolution” in the political, social, cultural and aesthetic senses of the term. Many of the themes we will explore are central to understanding war, revolution, and culture in an age of revolution, and include visualizations of revolts in the United States, France, Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), Surinam, and Egypt, as well as representations of Napoleonic battles, conquests, and defeats.
The course aims to interrogate a series of key questions concerning the visual arts. These questions will include: What was the overt political role of the arts during the age of revolution and how was this role continuous with or a change from earlier conceptions of art’s function in society? To what extent could the visual arts be effective “tools of propaganda”? Can we understand the stylistic “revolutions” in the arts as signaling a changing politics, or are stylistic changes primarily personal or aesthetic choices? How did the arts participate in forming national and individual identities in this period? How did they participate in forming a notion of “Europe” or “America” against which other cultures could be measured? To what extent did the visual arts support or subvert imperialism and racism in an age of revolution?
Format of the course: Each class combines lectures and discussion, which will presume that the students have read the required reading for that day. Lectures will be coordinated with the assigned readings but will not duplicate them. Instead, the lectures are designed to suggest emphases, to draw attention to especially important points, and to provide additional material on selected issues.
GERM 330: Jonathan M. Hess:
The Age of Goethe
Course Description:
All readings and course discussion in German.
This course offers students an in-depth introduction to the Age of Goethe, a period of enormous cultural renaissance that for many generations represented the very essence of modern German literature and culture. Over the course of the semester we will study a diverse group of texts by Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832) and his peers to sketch out the complex cultural landscape of the German lands in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
We will begin by reading Johann Joachim Winckelmann's pioneering Gedanken über die Nachahmung der griechischen Werke, a treatise that helped shape modern German culture's infatuation with ancient Greece for more than a century. We will then look at reflections on classical antiquity in a selection of Goethe's poems and the philosophical poetry of Friedrich Schiller, moving from there to a text often considered the epitome of German classical drama, Goethe's Iphigenie auf Tauris.
In the second half of the course, we will consider the flipside of German classicism, looking at the way German literature of the period dealt with issues of mental illness, with the dangers of obsessive reading, with incest and with madness. We will begin here by considering the blueprint for the study of empirical psychology developed by Goethe's friend Karl Philipp Moritz and then read Moritz's psychological novel, Anton Reiser. Against this backdrop, we will consider the great bestseller of the era and a classic of 18th-century youth culture, Goethe's Die Leiden des jungen Werther. Finally, we will study some of the fundamental challenges that Romantic tales such as Ludwig Tieck's Der blonde Eckbert, Kleist's Der Findling and E.T.A. Hoffmann's Der Sandmann issued to the worldview of the era.
HIST 457: Jay Smith:
The French Revolution
Course Description:
Origins and course of the French Revolution to 1815. Topics include: culture of the Enlightenment, collapse of the old regime, popular revolution, trial of Louis XVI, Reign of Terror, Napoleon
HIST/PWAD 546: Kathleen DuVal:
Revolution and Nation-Making in America, 1763–1815
Course Description:
In this course, we will study the causes of the American Revolution, the violent separation of thirteen British colonies from their empire, and the construction of a new nation. Along the way, we will consider the creation and evolution of American identity. What would the residents of North America in 1765 have called themselves? How did some of them come together to declare their independence from England and their unity as Americans? How did they go about defining themselves differently from their enemy and defeating a great world power? Why did some residents of North America fight for the British, leave the colony entirely, or remain untouched by revolution? Once the rebels won the war, who became citizens, and who was left out? What did it mean to be an American in 1776? 1783? 1789? 1803? 2010?
Fall 2010
FREN 275: Philippe Barr:
Sex, Philosophy and Politics: Revolutions in French Literature, 1721-1834
Course Description:
This course examines the French Revolution in French Literature and the various intellectual questions raised by literary representation in light of a historical event. Can one read the French Revolution as a sexual revolution? We will closely examine the interpretative problems one encounters in reading 18th century French Literature: How should we read texts that predate 1789 without letting them be foreshadowed by the Revolution? What type of readings did the fathers of the Revolution make of philosophical texts of the Enlightenment? How should we interpret the revolutionary images of sex and power forged by bourgeois writers of the 18th century: fantasy or reality? And finally, we will examine the representation of women in light of the French Revolution through the eyes of 19th century writers. The course will introduce students to this subject with the multidisciplinary approaches of the course. It will make interdisciplinary connections between literature, philosophy and art through a wide variety of media: theater, novels, paintings and feature film.
The course will be taught in English, readings will be available in English and French for majors and minors.
Format of the course: Each class will combine lectures and discussion about the required reading for that day.
Research component: The course will also allot time to purvey students with an extensive overview of various methodological approaches to research: defining a research topic relevant to the course and conducting preliminary research towards the preparation and the completion of the term paper. Students will be introduced to current bibliographic tools in order to prepare a short bibliography. The course will include recitation sections for the students pursuing the French major, which will give students the possibility for an in depth discussion in French of the assigned weekly reading.
HIST/PWAD 268: Karen Hagemann:
War, Revolution and Culture: Transatlantic Perspectives, 1750-1850 - Cluster Gateway Course
Course Description see above.