ENROLL

Candace Moore

This course focuses on the history, production, and consumption of cult television. The beginning of the seminar will be focused on critically examining a number of theoretical approaches to the study of genre and fandom. Building on these approaches, the remainder of the course will focus on cult television case studies from the last eight decades. We will draw on recent scholarship to explore how cult television functions textually, industrially, and culturally. Additionally, we will study fan communities on the Internet and consider how fansites, webisodes, and sites like YouTube and Netflix transform television genres.

Extra Time Required, evening screenings

Pierre Hecker, Andrew Carlson

This interdisciplinary course, taught in conjunction with a full-scale Carleton Players production, will explore one of Shakespeare’s most celebrated and performed works, Much Ado About Nothing. We will investigate the play’s historical, social, and theatrical contexts as we try to understand not only the world that produced the play, but the world that came out of it. How should what we learn of the past inform a modern production? How can performance offer interpretive arguments about the play’s meanings? Mixing embodied and experiential learning, individual and group projects may include a combination of research, assistant directing, choreography, music direction, dramaturgy, design, exhibition curation, and work in Special Collections.

Paul Petzschmann

"Ideology" is perhaps one of the most-used (and overused) terms of modern political life. This course will introduce students to important political ideologies and traditions of modern Europe and their role in the development of political systems and institutional practices from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. We will read central texts by conservatives, liberals, socialists, anarchists and nationalists while also considering ideological outliers such as Fascism and Green Political Thought. In addition the course will introduce students to the different ways in which ideas can be studied systematically and the methodologies available.

Scott Carpenter

The rise of newspapers and magazines in the nineteenth century promotes a variety of short genres that will remain popular to the present day: short stories, prose poetry, vignettes, theatrical scenes. In this short course (first five weeks of the term) we'll study short works by such authors as Diderot, Sand, Balzac, Mérimée, Flaubert, Allais, Tardieu, Le Clézio. Conducted in French.

Prerequisite: One French course beyond French 204 or instructor permission

1st 5 weeks

Scott Carpenter

Decried as scandalous, heralded as the first "modern" novel, Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary (published in 1857) sparked debate, spawned both detractors and followers, and became a permanent fixture in French culture and even the French language. In this five-week course we will read the novel, study its cultural context and impact, and see how it has been variously re-interpreted in film and other media. Conducted in French.

Prerequisite: One French course beyond French 204 or instructor permission

2nd 5 weeks

Laurence Cooper

Laura Goering

Fyodor Dostoevsky’s last novel, The Brothers Karamazov, is many things: a riveting murder mystery, a probing philosophical treatise, one of the best known novels in world literature, and a complex book worth reading and discussing with serious readers of diverse backgrounds. We will familiarize ourselves with the historical and philosophical context in which it was written, while grappling with the fundamental questions it raises: What does it mean to act morally? Why do humans so often act against their own best interest? How do we reconcile a world of chaos and suffering with the notion of a benevolent god? Conducted in English.

Prerequisite: No prerequisites and no knowledge of Russian literature or history required.

1st 5 weeks, in translation

Laura Goering

Against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars, Lev Tolstoy challenges readers to confront some of the most confounding questions of human existence: How can we reconcile the notion of free will with the seemingly ineluctable forces of history? Is individual moral action possible in war? How can we live a meaningful life in the face of inevitable death? And what might lie after death? In this course we read War and Peace in its cultural and historical context, while also considering how it continues to be relevant to our lives today. Conducted in English.

Prerequisite: No prerequisites and no knowledge of Russian literature or history required.

2nd 5 weeks, in translation

Mar Valdecantos

Prerequisite: Spanish 102 or equivalent