Topics in Modern Languages

Courses in specific topics, such as culture, literary movements or genres, linguistics or film. Taught in English. May be repeated for credit with a different topic. May count towards European Studies minor.

Current Semester Information

295A: Tps:Wor(l)ds/GermanMusic

Tps:The Wor(l)ds of German Music: Text and Tone in Song, Opera, and Society

This course examines the textual side of the 19th-century German traditions of song and opera as well as their problematic continuations in the 20th. We will discuss the poems on which the most famous song cycles were composed (by composers like Schubert, Schumann, Wolf, Mahler, and Schonberg), as well as the dramatic texts of many operas (by composers like Mozart, Wagner, and Berg) in the historical context of contemporary literary movements and social upheavals. We will also examine various conceptions of the relationship between music and text and the place of music in a post-fascist society.

295B: Tps:Arab Cinema

Tps:Arab Cinema

We will screen and study a selection of contemporary masterworks of cinema from across the Arab world with emphasis on the countries of the Levant (Palestine/Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and Iraq). The first two weeks of the course will be devoted to covering basic film analysis concepts and terminology that will help us in better appreciating the films at hand. Films will be analyzed primarily as works of narrative art, with special attention given to the choices made by - and available to - the filmmaker(s). Each film will serve as a basis for discussing its larger cultural themes and content. All films will have English subtitles.