European Cultural Studies
- ANT 326/COM 329/ECS 315/TRA 326: Language, Identity, PowerLanguage determines our expressive capacities, represents our identities, and connects us across various platforms and cultures. This course introduces classical and contemporary approaches to studying language, focusing on three main areas: 1) language as a system of rules (structure), 2) language as a symbolic mechanism through which individuals and groups mark their presence (identity) and 3) language as a tool of communication (sign). The course examines various ways through which language molds our individual selves in cultures from Africa to the Americas to Asia to Europe: from organizing dreams and desires to shaping autobiographies.
- ART 439/HIS 453/ECS 439: The Invisible Renaissance: Science, Art, and Magic in Early Modern EuropeHow did early modern people depict phenomena they could not see? This course traces attempts to represent the invisible: from angels and the influence of stars and magnets, to microscopic creatures and magical effects. Philosophers, painters and magi puzzled over these unseen forces, beings and structures, seeking to describe them in writings and artworks. We will unpack their arguments and try to reconstruct their practices, including optical tricks and alchemical experiments. The course culminates in a virtual exhibition, curated by students, as we follow in the steps of Renaissance thinkers and artists, and put the invisible on display.
- ART 455/VIS 455/ECS 456: Seminar in Modernist Art & Theory: Alienation in Modern Art & LiteratureAlthough "alienation" might seem passé as a concept, modern art and literature were long steeped in this condition. This seminar will explore its principal expressions by its primary voices--artists, writers, and philosophers--from Baudelaire, Marx, and Manet through Rimbaud, Nietzsche, and Gauguin, to Existentialist philosophy and outsider art, and on to "Black Dada" today. Among our themes will be the underground, spleen, dandyism, detachment, primitivism, art brut, absurdity, and objectification.
- ECS 301/EPS 301: Turning Points in European CultureDrawing on the expertise of distinguished Princeton faculty and visitors, this seminar aims to provide a broad, multidisciplinary perspective on turning points in European culture from the early modern period to the present. It serves as the core course for the Program in European Cultural Studies (ECS) and the Program in Contemporary European Politics and Society (EPS).
- ECS 381/COM 458: Incorrect Literature: Modernist Masterpieces and the Controversies They UnleashedWhy do we continue to read politically incorrect novels? This seminar will analyze a selection of controversial masterpieces of European modern fiction, from Spain to Austria, that were deemed offensive. Some of them touch on issues that are still important to us, like race and ethnicity, while others touched on issues such as religion and national identity that were sensitive at the time but are less so today. We will read excerpts from Plato to Marx on the function literature plays in society. Is literature inherently evil, as Bataille suggested?
- ENG 340/ECS 368: Romanticism and the Age of RevolutionsThe Romantic era witnesses a revolution in literary styles and subjects during an age of revolutions...American, French, and heated debates about the rights of men, of women, and the atrocity of the slave trade, and amid, within, and across this, the vital power of imagination. Our study shall be literary aesthetics, formations, and practices, and consideration of ethical thought and moral values. In conflicts of judgment, and how we organize our lives together, writing is a powerful medium of negotiation and reflection. The syllabus invites you to engage its texts along these lines--in conversations, informal postings, and formal essays.
- FRE 350/COM 381/ECS 366/ART 399: France on Display: Shaping the Nation under the Third Republic, 1870-1940This course is a metaphorical visit to Third Republic France (1870-1940) in which we will examine images and public spaces as a language communicating republican ideology. We will investigate how the Republic molded the new citizen in schools and townhalls; served as gatekeeper of culture and advocate of progress in museums and world fairs; and influenced the marketplace. We will consider how writers, artists, architects, and filmmakers contributed to the representation of France and how they critiqued its displays. The seminar will draw parallels with the U.S. at moments of its history when shaping a common sense of nationhood was paramount.
- GER 307/ECS 307: Topics in German Culture and Society: Cultures of Melancholy: Literature, Art and ScienceOscillating between insanity and furor divinus, the concept of melancholy has been linked to genius and creativity from Aristotle through the medieval concept of acedia, to literary work around 1800 and into the 20th Century. The course will trace the development of melancholy in its diverse relations to visual art and literature, and to different medical, philosophical, astrological, religious and psychological discourses. By focusing especially on the impact melancholy has on sign systems and on the imagination, it explores melancholy not only as a topic of literature and visual arts, but as a basic component of expression as such.
- HIS 281/ECS 304: Approaches to European HistoryAn intensive introduction to the methods and practice of history, designed to prepare students for future independent work through the close reading of sources on three different topics in European history. This year these will be: 1) Luther in Worms, 1521; 2) the trial and execution of Marie Antoinette; and 3) the Eichmann trial. The class combines lecture with discussion, to introduce students to the basic vocabulary of European historiography and to develop their skills in the interpretation and analysis of documents, the framing of historical questions, and the construction of effective arguments.
- HIS 487/ECS 487: The Age of Democratic RevolutionsIn the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a wave of revolutions swept across the Atlantic world. They shook the empires that had controlled this area of the globe, launched bold new experiments in democratic politics, challenged or overthrew existing social, cultural and religious hierarchies, and were accompanied by considerable violence. This course will examine this remarkable period in world history, concentrating on the American, French and Haitian revolutions, and devoting significant attention to issues of gender and violence, the overall global context, and theories of revolution.
- HUM 450/ART 482/ARC 450/ECS 450: Empathy and Alienation: Aesthetics, Politics, CultureIn 19- and 20-c. debates that crossed borders among disciplines including psychology, sociology, anthropology, art history, philosophy, and political theory, empathy and alienation emerged as key terms to describe relations among human beings, works of art, and commodities. This seminar addresses the dynamics of empathy and alienation across a range of discourses and artifacts in European culture. Our explorations of how relationships between empathy and alienation were variously conceptualized in psychological aesthetics, psychoanalysis, and critical theory will aim to open up new perspectives on recent debates about identity and affect.
- PHI 332/POL 401/ECS 314: Early Modern PhilosophyTopic: Hobbes and Spinoza on Religion and Politics-- Hobbes began a revolution in our understanding of the material world, human beings and society, and Spinoza extended it in even more radical directions. In this course, we will examine the interconnections between politics and religion in these two original and highly influential thinkers, and how their metaphysics and natural philosophy contributed to their vision of the world.
- SLA 345/ECS 354/RES 345: East European Literature and PoliticsThis seminar will examine 20th-century Eastern European history through literary works from a number of countries in the region, from the Austro-Hungarian Empire to present-day Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Belarus, and the Balkans. Readings will generally consist of one novel per week, but we will also look at a number of other genres, including the short story, poetry, drama, the journal, and reportage. While discussing the historical and political dimensions of this period, we will consider the limits of what literature can depict, and a range of possible ethical and aesthetic responses to authoritarianism.