European Studies

AHIS BC1002 INTRODUCTION TO ART HISTORY II. 4.00 points.

The second part of the Introduction to Art History goes from about 1400 to 2015, circles the world, and includes all media. It is organized around one theme for each lecture, and approximately 100 works of art. Visits to New York museums and discussions sections are crucial parts of the course

AHIS W4480 Art In the Age of Reformation. 3 points.

Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.

Artistic production in Germany and the Netherlands in the 16th century and the transformation of the social function of art as a consequence of the development of reformed theories of art and the introduction of humanist culture: Albrecht Durer, Hans Baldung Grien, Hans Holbein the Younger, Albrecht Altdorfer, Quentin Massys, Lucas van Leyden, Jan Gossaert, Jan van Hemessen, and Pieter Aertsen.

HIST BC1062 INTRO TO LATER MIDDLE AGES. 4.00 points.

Social environment, political, and religious institutions, and the main intellectual currents of the Latin West studied through primary sources and modern historical writings

HIST BC1302 EUROPEAN HISTORY SINCE 1789. 4.00 points.

Emergence of revolutionary and counter-revolutionary mass political movements; European industrialization, nationalism, and imperialism; 20th-century world wars, the Great Depression, and Fascism

HIST BC3062 Medieval Economic Life and Thought ca 1000 to 1500. 4 points.

BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).

Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required.

Traces the development of economic enterprises and techniques in their cultural context: agricultural markets, industry, commercial partnerships, credit, large-scale banking, insurance, and merchant culture. Examines usury and just price theory, the scholastic analysis of price and value, and the recognition of the market as a self-regulating system, centuries before Adam Smith.

HIST BC2116 The History of Money. 3 points.

Examining the history of money and the history of ways of thinking about money. We investigate how different monetary forms developed and how they have shaped and been shaped by culture, society, and politics. Tracing money from gift-giving societies to the European Monetary Union, the focus is on early modern Europe.

HIST BC2180 Merchants, Pirates, and Slaves in the Making of Atlantic Capitalism. 3 points.

BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Cultures in Comparison (CUL).

Examines how the Atlantic Ocean and its boundaries were tied together through the flow of people, goods, and ideas. Studies the cultures of the communities formed by merchants, pirates, and slaves; investigates how their interactions and frictions combined to shape the unique combination of liberty and oppression that characterizes early modern capitalism.

HIST BC2230 Central Europe: Nations, Culture, and Ideas. 3 points.

BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.

The making and re-making of Central Europe as place and myth from the Enlightenment to post-Communism. Focuses on the cultural, intellectual, and political struggles of the peoples of this region to define themselves. Themes include modernization and backwardness, rationalism and censorship, nationalism and pluralism, landscape and the spatial imagination.

HIST BC2321 COLONIAL ENCOUNTERS. 3.00 points.

Examines the shaping of European cultural identity through encounters with non-European cultures from 1500 to the post-colonial era. Novels, paintings, and films will be among the sources used to examine such topics as exoticism in the Enlightenment, slavery and European capitalism, Orientalism in art, ethnographic writings on the primitive, and tourism

HIST BC3360 LONDON:'GREAT WEN'TO WRLD CIT. 4.00 points.

Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required.
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required. Social and cultural history of London from the Great Fire of 1666 to the 1960s. An examination of the changing experience of urban identity through the commercial life, public spaces, and diverse inhabitants of London. Topics include 17th-century rebuilding, immigrants and emigrants, suburbs, literary culture, war, and redevelopment

HIST BC3368 HIST OF SENSES ENG ＆ FRANCE. 4.00 points.

Examination of European understandings of human senses through the production and reception of art, literature, music, food, and sensual enjoyments in Britain and France. Readings include changing theories concerning the five senses; efforts to master the passions; the rise of sensibility and feeling for others; concerts and the patronage of art; the professionalization of the senses

PHIL UN2101 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY I. 4.00 points.

Corequisites: PHIL V2111 Required Discussion Section (0 points). Exposition and analysis of the positions of the major philosophers from the pre-Socratics through Augustine. This course has unrestricted enrollment

PHIL UN2201 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY II. 4.00 points.

Prerequisites: PHIL UN2211 Required Discussion Section (0 points). PHIL UN2101 is not a prerequisite for this course. Exposition and analysis of the metaphysics, epistemology, and natural philosophy of the major philosophers from Aquinas through Kant. Authors include Aquinas, Galileo, Gassendi, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant. This course has unrestricted enrollment

PHIL W3264 19th Century Philosophy: Hegel. 3 points.

Examines major themes of Hegel's philosophy, with emphasis on social and political thought. Topics include Hegel's critique of Kant, the possibility of metaphysics, the master-slave dialectic, and the role of freedom in a rational society. Readings from Fichte help explain how Hegel's project develops out of Kant's transcendental idealism.  Some knowledge of Kant's moral theory and his Critique of Pure Reason is presupposed. Prerequisite: at least one of PHIL 2201, 2301, or 3251.

PHIL UN3352 Twentieth Century European Philosophy. 3 points.

Prerequisites: one prior philosophy course.

Reading and discussion of selected texts by central figures in phenomenology, existentialism, hermeneutics, critical theory, and recent Continental philosophy. Authors may include Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Gadamer, Horkheimer, Adorno, Foucault, Bourdieu.

POLS UN3401 Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe. 3 points.

This course will examine the development of democracies and dictatorships in Europe from the French Revolution to the present day. It will analyze the nature and dynamics of European political history and use the European experience as a foundation upon which to build a broader understanding of how different types of political regimes emerge, function and are sustained over time. Prior knowledge of European history and comparative politics is welcome, but not presumed.

POLS BC3505 COLL: MAKING DEMOCRACY WORK. 4.00 points.

Beginning in the mid-1970s a democratic wave swept the globe. It started in Southern Europe, spread throughout Latin America, parts of East Asia and Africa, and engulfed the former Soviet bloc. In all, dozens of new democracies emerged during the late twentieth century and by the early 21st century there were more democracies in the world than there had ever been before. Over the last decade and a half, however, a democratic undertow has sent in. Many new democracies have slid back towards dictatorship and many old democracies have experienced significant problems as well. This colloquium will exam the literature on democratic consolidation and backsliding, providing students with an overview of the most important theories about what makes democracy work—or not

THTR V3141 Socialism/Communism in Performance. 4 points.

Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.

Prerequisites: Sophomore standing. Enrollment limited to 16 students.

Analyzes dramatic texts and performances under the Communist regimes behind the Iron Curtain before 1989. Principal focus is on Czech, Polish, and East German playwrights and their productions; we will consider their work in both legal and illegal contexts. In order to gain a wider understanding of the diversity of underground performative cultures, works from Hungary, Romania, and Slovenia will be considered as well. The seminar also attends to dissident performative activities in the framework of the 1980s revolutions, and reflects on works by western authors and emigrant/diasporic writers produced on stages behind the Iron Curtain.  Fulfills one (of two) required courses in dramatic literature for Theatre/Drama and Theatre Arts major.

THTR V3152 Nazism in Performance. 4 points.

BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: The Visual and Performing Arts (ART).

Prerequisites: Course enrollment limited to 16; permission of instructor given at first class meeting.

Explores the cultivation of national and transnational performances as a significant force of National Socialism, at the same time as challenging the notion of “Nazi Theatre” as monolithic formation. The core of the course inquires into the dialectical analysis of artistic creations in diverse art genres, while working towards an understanding of the social dramaturgy of such events as staging the Führer and the racialized body of the privileged people. Nazism did not harbor ideologies without benefits for the allied nations. Thus, the dynamic performance of transnationalism among the “brothers in arms” will be included as well, in order to elucidate how works of art crossing into the Third Reich were reimagined, sometimes in ways challenging to the presumed values of the state stage. Fulfills one (of two) required courses in dramatic literature for Theatre/Drama and Theatre Arts major.