Autumn Term
CONCENTRATION SEMINARS:
AR231 REPRESENTATION
Geoff Lehman
Art and Aesthetics Concentration Seminar I
Distribution Requirements: Concepts
Credits: 5
The starting point for this course is the fundamental interest human beings take in art, or in other words, an acknowledgment of the claim on our attention commanded by works of art. The course asks us to reflect on this basic interest by foregrounding questions about how art transforms ordinary experience through representation. Art-works (primarily works of visual art) will be studied thematically by selecting themes or concepts that identify simultaneously categories of ordinary experience and central themes in art. Examples for themes that could be treated in this course include the Nude, Gesture and Character, Space and Time, Perspective, Colour and Shape, Individuality (portraiture), Nature, The Sacred, Pain and Violence, Narrative, Morals, Figure and Ground, Gender,Mood.
The course is prescribed for BA students who have chosen Art and Aesthetics as one of their concentrations. If space permits, the course is open to AY and PY students also.
LT202 SHAKESPEARE'S THE TEMPEST
Laura Scuriatti
Literature and Rhetoric Concentration Seminar I
Distribution Requirements: Books/Authors, Genres/Styles
Credits: 5
The course focuses on some of Shakespeare's last plays, especially on The Tempest, examined principally through the investigation of their genre (the romance) and their cultural and aesthetic context. In particular, the course will focus on the history of the genre, the political subtext of colonization, the aesthetics and ideology of Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre. The course will also examine how the play has been interpreted through the historical and aesthetic concepts of Renaissance, Mannerism and the Baroque. Students will be asked to read numerous primary sources directly related to the main texts and also secondary material, so as to lead to the achievement of the following:
- critical understanding of a specific literary form and genre
- acquisition of instruments to investigate the relevance of literary texts in their relation to the historical conditions of their production
- familiarity with theoretical and interpretative methodologies suitable for the analysis of different types of languages (literary, visual, philosophical)
Classes will focus on the following main topics, thereby addressing historical, theoretical and genre issues as specified in concentration requirements:
- Literary and theatrical genres: masques, comedies, "romances"
- Language as an instrument of knowledge; the status of learning in the Renaissance
- The new world as paradise, utopia and dystopia
- Elizabethan staging techniques: aesthetics and ideology
Students are required to present one of the readings to the class. The oral presentation is aimed at introducing the assigned reading and at facilitating the discussion in class. It will be evaluated and will be considered as part of the overall performance during the course. A course paper of 7-10 pages is due on Week 9.
The course is prescribed for BA students who have chosen Literature and Rhetoric as one of their concentrations. If space permits, the course is open to AY and PY students also.
ETHICS AND POLITICS - Concentration Seminars in 2010-2011
Ewa Atanassow, Katalin Makkai and Thomas Nørgaard
General Description
This course is a year-long exploration of fundamental moral and political values: the ones we live by today, and some which glimmer in their absence. Our aim will be to articulate, as clearly and fruitfully as possible, important questions about these values and to look for plausible answers to such questions in ancient, modern and contemporary thinkers.
In class we will approach this task in two ways: through systematic work on key issues in ethics and politics and by close reading of relevant classical works from philosophy, sociology and literature.
Juxtaposing texts from different periods and genres will also invite us to discuss what we expect, or should expect, from moral and political reflection. What is the purpose of theorizing about ethics and politics? And what is (or should be) the relevance of theoretical reflection for moral and political practice or the way we live our lives?
This course is mandatory for all BA students who have chosen ethics and politics as their concentration for the year. The course can also be chosen as a regular elective - for one, two or three terms - by students in all ECLA programmes. It is not possible, however, to join the course in terms 2 or 3; since it's an integrated course, it must be followed from the beginning.
This year, in addition to the seminars, we will arrange 2-3 film screenings each term. These screenings are not mandatory, but invitations to watch and discuss some of the many great feature films and interesting documentaries that deal with moral and political questions. The class will pick the films together and the screenings will be open to all ECLA students, faculty and alumni.
Students who choose the ethics and politics concentration are also encouraged to join the Politics Club where ECLA students and faculty discuss themes, trends and events in contemporary international politics.
PT225 MEANS AND ENDS
Thomas Nørgaard
Ethics and Political Theory Concentration Seminar I
Distribution Requirements: Concepts
Credits: 5
The distinction between means and ends is important for the study of values generally, but crucial in ethics and politics. In term 1 we will attempt to elucidate this distinction (which is more tricky to handle than one might think) and then discuss some of the fundamental moral and political questions that live in its vicinity.
Are there natural ends that all humans pursue? Is there perhaps even one overarching end that naturally unifies all our pursuits? We'll discuss some of the traditional candidates - the good, happiness, pleasure and virtue - but also consider the possibility that there may be no such overarching end. What happens in ethics and politics if we accept that there are many natural ends in life which potentially conflict? Or if we think that there are no natural ends, only conventional ones that are relative to time and place? More specifically: if there are no natural ends, or if we cannot come to agree what they are, can we perhaps find another guide to ethics and politics that does not depend on such an agreement?
Should we value virtue (or human excellence) as an end or as a mean, and what difference does it make? We will discuss this question in the abstract, but also consider particular virtues like truthfulness, justice and compassion.
In what sense, if any, is it true that the end justifies the means? The starting point for our discussion will be one or more of the concrete questions that occupy contemporary political discussion: Is torture ever a legitimate tool in the 'war against terrorism'? Is it ever noble for a politician to lie? Is it ever permissible for one country to wage war against another in the name of peace, democracy or human rights?
Our discussion of these issues will be guided by a number of ancient, modern and contemporary writers, including Aristotle, Euripides, Cicero, Machiavelli, Kleist, Mill, Nicolai Hartmann and Michael Walzer.
The course is prescribed for BA students who have chosen Ethics and Political Theory as one of their concentrations. If space permits, the course is open to AY and PY students also.
ELECTIVES:
LT215 Virginia Woolf
Laura Scuriatti
Concentration Requirements: Literature and Rhetoric
Distribution Requirements: Books/Authors
Credits: 5
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), novelist, essay writer, intellectual, feminist and publisher, is one of the most important authors of European Modernism. The course is centered on her most important works (Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, A Room of One's Own, Orlando, Three Guineas) in the context of Anglo-American Modernism, and in relation to some most important issues in this period. Through thorough reading of primary texts and relevant secondary literature students will be asked to focus on the aesthetic, stylistic and philosophical problems linked to the representation of temporality and of consciousness, to the relationship between realism and modernist narrative, and to the questioning of gender identity. Students will also be asked to read some of the fundamental texts of critical and literary theory on the novel, on modernism and cultural history.
PL227 Being Embodied: Merleau-Ponty and Phenomenology
Katalin Makkai
Concentration Requirements: N/A
Distribution Requirements: Concepts
Credits:5
"Phenomenology" names a twentieth century movement of thought whose best-known representatives are Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Beauvoir, and Merleau-Ponty. Broadly speaking, the phenomenologist holds, contra the tradition, that philosophy must found itself on phenomena-that is, the actual and concrete ways in which we experience things. Yet it might be said that it was only with Merleau-Ponty that phenomenology began to pay serious attention to the body and its role in our being in the world and with others. In this seminar, we will explore Merleau-Ponty's study of embodiment and perception, tracing his work as it crosses a wide array of disciplines including philosophy, psychology, politics, and art and aesthetics. Our main readings from Merleau-Ponty will be drawn from his Phenomenology of Perception, Humanism and Terror and The Adventures of the Dialectic.
PL 229 Morality and Psychoanalysis
Katalin Makkai
Concentration Requirements: Ethics and Political Theory
Distribution Requirements: N/A
Credits: 5
What are the implications of Freud's psychoanalytic theory for morality? Does Freudian psychoanalysis threaten the very foundations of moral theory, for example by exposing the subject as essentially irrational or arational, or by exposing the very idea of the subject as illusory? Or does Freudian psychoanalysis, on the contrary, promise crucial enrichment of our thinking about morality? This seminar will explore such questions through close reading of central texts of Freud's in conjunction with work by Melanie Klein, Richard Wollheim, Jonathan Lear, and others.
FM201 Introduction to Film Studies
Matthias Hurst
Concentration Requirements: Art and Aesthetics
Distribution Requirements: Disciplines/Methods
Credits: 5
Film is a language. Like any other language it has diverse elements of organisation and design, different accents and different levels of meaning, and it underwent structural and lexical development since its invention in the late 19th century. Understanding the language of film implies the awareness of film history and aesthetics and the ability to recognize and analyze structures of filmic narration.
This ECLA film course is an introduction to Film Studies and provides an insight into the basic knowledge of film history and theory, film aesthetics and cinematic language. Central topics are modes and styles of filmic presentation, film analysis and different ways of film interpretation. Students will talk about classical films, popular film genres and film directors, explore and discuss the meaning of film as an art form of the modern age, the elements of narration in fiction film and the representative function of film in our modern world and society, i.e. the ability of film to address important social and/or philosophical issues.
The course consists of both lectures/seminars and evening film screenings.
Course Requirements:
No prerequisites. Attendance is mandatory for all seminars and film screenings.
Students write two screening reports (2-3 pages) and a final essay (8-10 pages) due in week 10; the topic of this final essay will be a film interpretation. A list of film titles will be provided from which students choose one for an interpretation.
HI231 Political Pedagogues: German Intellectual Culture Around 1800
Ryan Plumley
Concentration Requirements: Ethics and Political Theory
Distribution Requirements: Periods/Places
Credits: 5
German philosopher J.G. Fichte claimed that philosophers should guide mankind toward their destiny as free beings. His contemporary Friedrich Schiller argued that art should educate mankind. And Friedrich Schlegel claimed that philosophy and art must be merged by the collective effort of an educated elite. These are just three positions in the urgent debate about modern intellectual culture that emerged out of the explosion of cultural activity-including philosophy, literature, theater, painting, and music-that took place in Germany in the final decades of the eighteenth century. Because of the pervasive sense that older forms of social, cultural, and political life were being eroded by an emerging "modern" world, German thinkers and artists tried to re-imagine and re-invent their role in society and the role of their work in transforming their communities and cultures. We will engage with their work as an entree into some of the most important problems facing the intellectual culture of the modern West.
We will read works from Kant, Schiller, Fichte, Schleiermacher, Schlegel, Novalis, and E.T.A. Hoffmann, spend some time with music and visual art, and work with relevant secondary literature.
HI213 What is History?
Ryan Plumley
Concentration Requirements: N/A
Distribution Requirements: N/A
Credits: 5
In the context of a liberal arts education, we necessarily spend a great deal of time reading significant texts from the past. And we also assume that such texts are relevant to our present and future. But how can we critically assess the relationship between past, present, and future as we read? How does our own constitution as historical beings inform our reading? How does the historical constitution of the texts we read inform us?
What does it mean to have a history?
Is "history" just the sum total of what happened in the past? How do we know what happened? What is a "fact" or an "event"? Who decides what are historically important facts and events? And how do relevant contextual facts and events inflect what a text is about?
Or is "history" the set of stories that we tell ourselves about the past? How do we create and transform such stories? In what sense are they true or at least verifiable? What is the relationship between history and myth, legend, literature, or fiction? And how do we make significant texts part of narratives about historical change, development, progress, or decline?
In this seminar we will explore the distinctive modes of relating to the past that have emerged in the modern period. That is, we will examine "history" understood as a way of knowing about ourselves and our societies. We will think about the complicated relationships between past, present, and future. And we will interrogate the relationship between verifiable knowledge and story-telling or meaning-making. Along the way, we will keep in focus the question of how history can help us intelligently and critically read the texts of the past in the context of a liberal arts education.
Readings may include J.G. Herder, Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, Wilhelm Dilthey, Martin Heidegger, Hayden White, and more recent attempts to theorize history and historical thinking.
AR203 Nineteenth Century Art
Aya Soika
Concentration Requirements: Art and Aesthetics
Distribution Requirements: Periods/Places
Credits: 5
This course will look at 19th century painting in Germany and France, from "Romanticism" (Delacroix and Caspar David Friedrich) over "Realism" (Courbet and Adolf Menzel) and "Impressionism" (Edouard Manet, Max Liebermann), up to "Post-Impressionism" (Cezanne and Gauguin). These -isms can only be a rough summary of a variety of works by different artists which originated in direct (or indirect) response to the political, industrial, social and cultural revolutions of their period. We will approach selected works critically with reference to the writings by T. J. Clark, Michael Fried, Stephen Eisenman or Linda Nochlin, as well as with reference to texts or letters by the artists themselves, or by contemporary critics such as Charles Baudelaire (The Painter of Modern Life).
Visits to the Old National Gallery will allow the study of (both German AND French) originals, and allow us to reflect upon the role of this particular museum in late nineteenth century German culture.
PL223 The Cracked Ballad of the Existential Self
Bartholomew Ryan
Concentration Requirements: N/A
Distribution Requirements: N/A
Credits: 5
In this elective, we will analyse aspects of what has controversially been called "the existential self" which emerged with explosive force in philosophy, literature, art and theology from the 1840s to the 1940s. These hundred years may be viewed as the peak and collapse of modernity. We will journey through various themes of this provocative idea in literature and philosophy such as faith and nihilism (Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Kafka), self-deception, despair and the demonic (Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, Hansen's The Liar, Kierkegaard's Sickness unto Death), facing death (Tolstoy and Bergman), the problem of identity and alienation (Pessoa, Kierkegaard, Sartre, Beckett), the creation of the self and a landscape (Joyce), the political self and revolt (Marx, Lukács, Schmitt, Camus), the wanderer (Hamsun, Trakl, Benjamin), and the self and money (Melville, Simmel, Veblen). In this era of high subjectivism, the collapse of authority in king, nation, moral order and systems of belief, what emerges is a wide array of deeply psychological studies of anxiety, despair, the absurd, radical freedom and transcendental homelessness within some the most exciting and thought-provoking philosophy and literature in our history.
Winter Term
CONCENTRATION SEMINARS:
PL206 AESTHETIC CATEGORIES
Tracy Colony (t.colony@ecla.de)
Art and Aesthetics Concentration Seminar II
Distribution Requirements: Concepts
Credits: 5
This seminar focuses on some of the most important categories used to describe and understand art. In particular we will look at how individual works of art create, modify and undermine our general conception of these categories. Focusing on such concepts as mimesis, the sublime, the frame, and the gaze, we will pair readings on these topics with specific works of art in order to understand the importance and limitations of these key terms in aesthetic theory.
The course is prescribed for BA students who have chosen Art and Aesthetics as one of their concentrations. If space permits, the course is open to AY and PY students also.
LT240 REALISM
Catherine Toal (c.toal@ecla.de)
Literature and Rhetoric Concentration Seminar II
Distribution Requirements: Genres/Styles
Credits: 5
Around the end of the seventeenth century, a style of fiction-writing began to develop which was concerned with the concrete objects of the world and the practical situation of the individual, rather than with an overarching destiny decreed by supernatural forces. We will consider the reasons for the emergence of 'realism' (religious, economic, scientific, and aesthetic), a mode which is still with us, and ask what functions it served-and can continue to serve-in modern culture. The central text of the course is regarded as one of the points of origin for the genre of the novel. Written by a journalist, and based on a true story, Robinson Crusoe also became a notorious item of reference in the discourses of political economy and educational theory, as well as a source of numerous re-imaginings and reworkings, of which we will address one of the most famous and recent, by Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee.
The course is prescribed for BA students who have chosen Literature and Rhetoric as one of their concentrations. If space permits, the course is open to AY and PY students also.
ETHICS AND POLITICS
Concentration Seminars in 2010-2011
Ewa Atanassow, Katalin Makkai and Thomas Nørgaard
General Description
This course is a year-long exploration of fundamental moral and political values: the ones we live by today, and some which glimmer in their absence. Our aim will be to articulate, as clearly and fruitfully as possible, important questions about these values and to look for plausible answers to such questions in ancient, modern and contemporary thinkers.
In class we will approach this task in two ways: through systematic work on key issues in ethics and politics and by close reading of relevant classical works from philosophy, sociology and literature.
Juxtaposing texts from different periods and genres will also invite us to discuss what we expect, or should expect, from moral and political reflection. What is the purpose of theorizing about ethics and politics? And what is (or should be) the relevance of theoretical reflection for moral and political practice or the way we live our lives?
This course is mandatory for all BA students who have chosen ethics and politics as their concentration for the year. The course can also be chosen as a regular elective - for one, two or three terms - by students in all ECLA programmes. It is not possible, however, to join the course in terms 2 or 3; since it's an integrated course, it must be followed from the beginning.
This year, in addition to the seminars, we will arrange 2-3 film screenings each term. These screenings are not mandatory, but invitations to watch and discuss some of the many great feature films and interesting documentaries that deal with moral and political questions. The class will pick the films together and the screenings will be open to all ECLA students, faculty and alumni.
Students who choose the ethics and politics concentration are also encouraged to join the Politics Club where ECLA students and faculty discuss themes, trends and events in contemporary international politics.
PT226 AUTONOMY AND ALIENATION
Katalin Makkai (k.makkai@ecla.de)
Ethics and Political Theory Concentration Seminar II
Distribution Requirements: Concepts
Credits: 5
Dominant strains within the modern western tradition have placed the ideal of autonomy at the heart of thinking about moral, social, and political life. At its most abstract, the notion of autonomy is the notion of self-rule ("auto": self; "nomos": law): being governed by forces (e.g. desires, reasons or laws) that are not externally imposed upon oneself but that somehow come from or express one's true or authentic self. The antithesis of autonomy is hence a kind of alienation from oneself. This term, we explore a range of conceptions of autonomy and alienation, drawing from Sophocles, Rousseau, Kant, Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche, Emerson, Freud, Beauvoir and Ibsen. We examine how the conditions of legitimate authority have been analyzed in terms of the value of autonomy, investigate the underlying ideas of the nature of the self that give substance to the value of autonomy, and consider the roles accorded to others in the individual's realization-or recovery-of autonomy.
The course is prescribed for BA students who have chosen Ethics and Political Theory as one of their concentrations. If space permits, the course is open to AY and PY students who have taken the Ethics and Political Theory concentration seminar in the autumn term.
ELECTIVES:
LT242 Dionysos and Dionysian Poetics
Sarah Burges-Watson
Concentration Requirements: Literature and Rhetoric
Distribution Requirements: Books/Authors
Credits: 5
No Greek god has exerted greater fascination on the modern imagination than Dionysos, whose spheres of influence include wine, madness, orgiastic dancing, tragedy and the afterlife. This fascination is due in no small part to Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy, which proclaimed Dionysos as a metaphysical and artistic principle whose terrifying but exhilarating meaning had been uniquely understood and embraced by the Greeks. Nietzsche's Dionysos is the embodiment of the irrational, which tears down the great edifice of reason and morality constructed by Socrates and the Western philosophical tradition. He is also the dark antithesis of Christianity's comfortable illusions. And yet, while Nietzsche has perhaps come closer than any modern thinker to capturing a plausible 'essence' which Dionysos represents, when confronted with the god's bewildering multiplicity in Greek myth, literature and cult, one is bound to question whether and in what way such an 'essence' ever existed or if it is but one-highly influential but inevitably partial-construction of the god's long reception history. This course will confront Nietzsche's Dionysos with some of the ancient representations to which it is supposed to provide the key.
After a preliminary examination of Nietzsche's BT, we will begin our exploration of the poetic, ritual, and iconographic tradition with a look at early sources about the god and his cult. We will then move to Euripides' Bacchae, which tells of the tyrant Pentheus' resistance to the newly arrived god, who demands that the citizens abandon their customary roles and hierarchies and follow him to the mountains in ecstatic dancing. In conjunction with the Bacchae we will consider possible responses to the ancient saying that tragedy had 'nothing to do with Dionysos'. We will also explore Dionysos' connections with madness and the mask, looking at representations of his ecstatic female followers, including some fascinating vase paintings which show women dancing around a pillar to which a mask of the god is fixed. These will lead us to consideration of 2 major Dionysiac festivals in Athens: the Lenaia and the Anthesteria (the opening of the new wine). We will then move to satyr play, the mysterious and perhaps more obviously Dionysiac counterpart of tragedy, which refracts its themes through a kind of fun-house mirror, the protagonists being libidinous, semi-equine members of the god's entourage. As we read Euripides' Cyclops and Sophocles' Trackers we will also explore some of the iconography relating to satyrs and satyr play. In this connection we will consider Dionysos as the god both of wild nature and of the cultivated symposium. Our next stop will be comedy: Aristophanes' Frogs, in which Dionysos goes on a mission to Hades to find a tragic poet who can save Athens from the turmoil in which she was embroiled in the late fifth century. In conjunction with the Frogs we will look at fascinating texts from the Classical period in which initiates into the Dionysiac mysteries are promised better hopes for the afterlife. These texts overlap closely with Plato and therefore bring us back to the confrontation identified by Nietzsche between Dionysos and Plato or Christianity (which, in Nietzsche's view, was Plato for the masses). We will explore the paradox that Dionysiac religion spawns its alleged antipode. Our last stop will be a brief glimpse of the confrontation between Dionysos in Late Antiquity, when Dionysos becomes synonymous with paganism.
PL220 Introduction to the Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche
Tracy Colony (t.colony@ecla.de)
Concentration Requirements: Ethics and Political Theory
Distribution Requirements: Books/Authors
Credits: 5
Friedrich Nietzsche's influence upon the intellectual history of the 20th century is perhaps unparalleled. This elective course is designed to provide an introduction to Nietzsche's major works and their history of reception. All texts will be read in translation with simultaneous readings in the original German being encouraged and supported.
PL234 Aristotle on logos: Reading the so-called Organon
Michael Weinman (m.weinman@ecla.de)
Concentration Requirements: Literature and Rhetoric, Ethics and Political Theory
Distribution Requirements: Books/Authors, Disciplines/Methods
Credits: 5
This course is devoted to a close reading of Aristotle's work in fields of philosophical inquiry we would now call logic and epistemology. Said work is to be found in the series of works-Categories, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, Posterior Analytics, Topics, and On Sophistical Refutations-traditionally collected under the name "organon," or "instrument." These works, individually and collectively, make clear Aristotle's conviction that there is a deep intimacy between language and being, a conviction of crucial importance for his "major" works in ethics, physics and metaphysics. Our goal here will be to read a great deal of the central parts of these works-and at least something from nearly all of them-in order to see why Aristotle carried this conviction, and how it influenced his "method." That Aristotle himself never referred to these works as presenting an instrument or method, and might very well have collected them differently, will be both a starting point for our discussion of these works, and a cause for reflection once we have read them together.
Syllabus
HI232 Conservatism and Reaction
Brendan Wolfe (b.wolfe@ecla.de)
Concentration Requirements: Ethics and Political Theory
Distribution Requirements: Places/Periods, Concepts
Credits: 5
The study of history often concentrates on turning points and moments of great change, and the emphasis of intellectual history falls upon the arguments of those who favoured the changes. This course, where primary sources are available, will look at the neglected ideas of the opponents of historical changes, from the ancient world to recent times. It will ask if it is possible to distinguish between reactionaries (those who favour the preservation of the status quo only because it guarantees their privileges) and conservatives (who for principled reasons believe social or political change is wrong or wrongly proceeding). The course will further examine the origins and goals of modern political movements and parties that use the term 'conservative'.
Authors considered will include among others Aristotle, Cicero, Cato the Younger, Thomas Aquinas, Edmund Burke, Joseph de Maistre, Theodor Mommsen, Leo Strauss, Michael Oakeshott, Russell Kirk, and Roger Scruton.
PL238 Bio-ethics
Jens Reich (j.reich@ecla.de)
Concentration Requirements: Ethics and Political Theory
Distribution Requirements: Disciplines/Methods, Concepts
Credits: 5
The recent development in molecular and cell biology, embryology and neurobiology mark a new era in which Homo sapiens dares to cross the divide from the planned reconstruction of and mastery over external Nature to the redesign of his own inner constitution. This creates a challenge to our self-perception as autonomous beings with a free will that are able to make rational decisions about morality and good life. The unity of the human genus is endangered when the new generation comes into life by design rather than by procreation.
FM214 How The West Was Won: The Western Films
Matthias Hurst (m.hurst@ecla.de)
Concentration Requirements: Art and Aesthetics
Distribution Requirements: Genres/Styles, Periods/Places
Credits: 5
According to André Bazin the Western is „the American film par excellence." Its „profound reality" is „myth" combined with „the ethics of the epic", and thus it conveys - through its best examples - not a simple, but a complex vision of the moral and legal foundations of the United States. „The Civil War is part of nineteenth century history, and the western has turned it into the Trojan War of the most modern of epics. The migration to the West is our Odyssey."
As a form of modern mythology the genre of the Western film merges fact and fiction to reflect the history and the self-image of the American nation, the hopes and aspirations, but also the darker sides of a civilization born out of European roots in the New World.
The Western films speak about a time and a historical process in which both the individual and the collective struggled to find a way to establish a new social order of freedom, justice and progress along the frontier, translating national and cultural experience into popular images with a focus on the essentials in human nature and civil development.
Concepts and ideologies like the idea/myth of the frontier and its significance for the American history and mentality (Frederick Jackson Turner) or the enduring political psychology based on the belief in „regeneration through violence" (Richard Slotkin) are part of the appeal and the legacy of the Western films.
In this class we explore and discuss aesthetical, socio-historical, psychological and philosophical issues of the Western genre and its development from classical American to European and late Western films.
Film screenings, student presentations, seminar discussions.
AH214 Landscape
Geoff Lehman (g.lehman@ecla.de)
Concentration Requirements: Art and Aesthetics
Distribution Requirements: Genres/Styles, Places/Periods
Credits: 5
This course will examine European landscape painting, its origins and development as a genre in the Renaissance, its ascendancy in the 17th century, and its central role in the advent of modernism, through close readings of a small number of major works. Topics include nature and human experience; mood, the evocative, and subjectivity in the modality of landscape; the relationship between the depiction of nature and (scientific) knowledge; Renaissance perspective and the invention of landscape. Leonardo da Vinci, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Jacob van Ruisdael, and Claude Monet are among the artists whose works will be our focus, and readings will include literary as well as art historical and philosophical texts. Visits to Berlin museums to engage works of art firsthand are an integral part of the course.
TH240 Acting and Authenticity
David Levine (d.levine@ecla.de)
Concentration Requirements: Art and Aesthetics
Distribution Requirements: Disciplines/Methods, Concepts
Credits: 5
This studio class explores the practice of acting alongside philosophical, psychological, and scientific notions of authenticity and falsehood, sincerity, hypocrisy, presence, mimesis, and epistemology. What does it mean to turn into someone else? How total is the transformation? What are the implications for the practice of everyday life? Readings and acting assignments are assigned weekly. The class will conclude with a final performative inquiry into these issues.
Spring Term
CONCENTRATION SEMINARS:
AR225 What Is (Modern) Art?
Aya Soika (a.soika@ecla.de )
Art and Aesthetics Concentration Seminar III
Distribution Requirements: Periods/Places
Credits: 5
This class seeks to acquaint students with the changing meanings of the notion of "art" from the early twentieth century to the present day. Different texts reflecting "modernist", "avant-garde" or "conceptual" as well as "postmodern" positions will be discussed with regard to particular art works. Like the artists whose work we will analyze, many of the authors which we will read are in search of redefining or expanding previously existing notions of art. The class will consider these texts and images with regard to their aesthetic aims and objectives, and locate them within the history of art.
The course is prescribed for BA students who have chosen Art and Aesthetics as one of their concentrations. If space permits, the course is also open to AY and PY students.
LT239 Poetry and Philosophy
David Hayes (d.hayes@ecla.de )
Literature and Rhetoric Concentration Seminar III
Distribution Requirements: n/a
Credits: 5
What is the relation between poetry and philosophy? Are they fundamentally different, even antagonistic, as Socrates seemed to indicate when he referred to the "old quarrel" between them? Or do they share an aim and different only with respect to method or style, e.g., philosophy is more abstract and poetry more concrete? Philosophy seems to aim at knowledge, understanding, or wisdom. Does poetry also aim at these things? If not, what are its aims or purposes? If so, what do these have to do with certain common features of poetry which philosophy does not in general share, such as verse form and sonority? If poetry can be said to aim at knowledge or wisdom, is the kind of knowledge or wisdom evinced in poetry different from what one could expect to encounter in philosophy?
The course is prescribed for BA students who have chosen Literature and Rhetoric as one of their concentrations. If space permits, the course is open to AY and PY students also.
Ethics and Politics
Concentration Seminars in 2010-2011
Ewa Atanassow, Katalin Makkai and Thomas Nørgaard
General Description
This course is a year-long exploration of fundamental moral and political values: the ones we live by today, and some which glimmer in their absence. Our aim will be to articulate, as clearly and fruitfully as possible, important questions about these values and to look for plausible answers to such questions in ancient, modern and contemporary thinkers.
In class we will approach this task in two ways: through systematic work on key issues in ethics and politics and by close reading of relevant classical works from philosophy, sociology and literature.
Juxtaposing texts from different periods and genres will also invite us to discuss what we expect, or should expect, from moral and political reflection. What is the purpose of theorizing about ethics and politics? And what is (or should be) the relevance of theoretical reflection for moral and political practice or the way we live our lives?
This course is mandatory for all BA students who have chosen ethics and politics as their concentration for the year. The course can also be chosen as a regular elective - for one, two or three terms - by students in all ECLA programmes. It is not possible, however, to join the course in terms 2 or 3; since it's an integrated course, it must be followed from the beginning.
This year, in addition to the seminars, we will arrange 2-3 film screenings each term. These screenings are not mandatory, but invitations to watch and discuss some of the many great feature films and interesting documentaries that deal with moral and political questions. The class will pick the films together and the screenings will be open to all ECLA students, faculty and alumni.
Students who choose the ethics and politics concentration are also encouraged to join the Politics Club where ECLA students and faculty discuss themes, trends and events in contemporary international politics.
PT227 Liberalism, Fascism, Socialism
Ewa Atanassow (e.atanassow@ecla.de)
Ethics and Political Theory Concentration Seminar III
Distribution Requirements: Concepts
Credits: 5
In the spring term of the Ethics and Politics concentration we shall conduct a comparative examination of the three political creeds that reshaped the global order and left an indelible stamp on the social and ideological landscape in which we live. While offering competing political and moral visions of modern society, its structure and destiny, these three ideological movements also share common roots. All three took their bearings from the sense of radical novelty and irreversible change born of the French Revolution, and were elaborated as alternative reactions to that sense of inevitable transformation. From this shared point of departure, liberalism, fascism, and socialism developed in response to one another as critical and polemical interpretations of the character and meaning of the modern age. Finally, as heirs to Enlightenment philosophy, all three exemplify the power of thought to produce social change.
Drawing on philosophical, political and literary works as well as film, this course aims to introduce students to the values and ideals that characterize these ideological currents and the visions of society they propose. Readings include Melville, Tocqueville, Mill, Fichte, Gobineau, Nietzsche, Marx and Engels, Lenin, Heidegger, Schmitt, Jünger, Orwell and Milosz.
The course is prescribed for BA students who have chosen Ethics and Political Theory as one of their concentrations. If space permits, the course is open to AY and PY students who have taken the Ethics and Political Theory concentration seminar in the autumn and winter terms.
ELECTIVES:
LT237 The Odyssey
David Hayes (d.hayes@ecla.de)
Concentration Requirements: Literature and Rhetoric
Distribution Requirements: Books/Authors
Credits: 5
A close reading of Homer's epic poem. We will try to attend to the themes the poet himself considers significant. These include: coming-of-age, friendship, character and craftiness, pride and suffering, food and hospitality, fidelity and jealousy, humanity/monstrosity/divinity, the pleasures and dangers of poetry (and other temptations), community and solitude, depression and renewal, reunion and revenge, remarriage, travel and the value of home. Special attention will be given throughout to the problematic character of Odysseus and the difficulty of his reintegration into a post-heroic, domestic culture. Extra sessions will be offered for those who want to read selections from the poem in Greek.
PL249 De l'esprit des Lettres Persanes/The Spirit of Montesquieu's Persian Letters
Ewa Atanassow (e.atanassow@ecla.de ), Edit Gerelyes (e.gerelyes@ecla.de )
Concentration Requirements: Ethics and Political Theory, Literature and Rhetoric
Distribution Requirements: Books/Authors, Periods/Places, Genres/Styles
Credits: 5
Despotism and liberty, religion and politics, private and public, man and woman, East and West - these are among the central themes in Montesquieu's first and, arguably, most brilliant book. Often described as 'epistolary novel', the Persian Letters is an interdisciplinary work par excellence. Blending political, moral and cultural perspectives within a playfully ironic literary form, it satirizes established mores, challenges received opinions, and probes the inner recesses of the human heart, thus prompting the reader to a lucid self-reflection.
In this course we aim to introduce ECLA students to the enchanted and unsettling world of the Persian Letters, and to its author's philosophical vision and literary practice. We shall approach this task by reading Montesquieu's work both in the French original and in English translation. This bilingual approach will allow us to pursue a twofold objective: on the one hand, to immerse ourselves in Montesquieu's language and culture, and gain a more immediate access to the spirit and manner of his writing; on the other, in discussing crucial parts of the work in English, to engage more deeply with the ethical and political views of this seminal thinker of the Enlightenment. Required reading knowledge of French.
RE103 Introduction to Christianity
Judith Wolfe (j.wolfe@ecla.de )
Concentration Requirements: Ethics and Political Theory
Distribution Requirements: n/a
Credits: 5
This course offers an introduction to the shaping ideas of Christianity, both as a system and in their historical development. The reading will be taken both from contemporary sources (especially C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity) and from primary sources (the Bible, the Church Fathers, and the texts of Church Councils).
The course is designed both for students with no prior knowledge of Christianity and for those with an existing background in the subject.
PL231 Heidegger and Being and Time
Judith Wolfe (j.wolfe@ecla.de)
Concentration Requirements: Ethics and Political Theory
Distribution Requirements: Books/Authors
Credits: 5
This course offers an introduction to Martin Heidegger through a close contextualized reading of his magnum opus, Being and Time (1929). Heidegger is arguably the most significant European philosopher of the 20th century, indispensable to an understanding of movements as diverse as existentialism and deconstruction. This course will introduce students to the background (both in Heidegger's own thought and in the intellectual culture of his time) to Being and Time, and engage them in a close reading of the text, drawing on related texts and secondary literature where necessary. If time permits, the course will end with some perspectives on Heidegger's later work.
LT235 Ovid's Metamorphoses and Greek Mythology
Sarah Burges-Watson (s.burgeswatson@ecla.de)
Concentration Requirements: Literature and Rhetoric
Distribution Requirements: Books/Authors, Styles/Genres
Credits: 5
Ovid's Metamorphoses is a colourful, brilliant and immensely enjoyable epic poem, which gathers together, under the theme (and title) "Changes of Shape" (e.g. from wo/man to wo/man, wolf, bird, insect or tree), mythical narratives which it arranges in a chronological progression from the beginnings of creation to Ovid's own time. This compendium-approach to myth is first seen in Hesiod's Catalogue of Women and is adopted by Hellenistic poets as well as prose authors in the "mythographical" tradition. Such collections fostered the misconception that Greek myth constituted a fixed/canonical set of stories. In reality, however, these stories appeared in multiple literary and artistic variants. The Metamorphoses itself, far from presenting a crystallized canon of stories, is a highly sophisticated intertextual exploration of mythical tradition, which seamlessly combines a vast range of previous (and often contradictory) versions. It therefore provides a fascinating vehicle for thinking about Greek myth, seen from the vantage point of Augustan Rome. It was said by the Roman poet Horace that Greece, "once conquered by Rome, in turn conquered (artistically) her savage captor". The Metamorphoses is a remarkably comprehensive contribution to this ongoing engagement with Greek culture and its translation to a Roman context. We will read the poem closely and consider in detail its presentation of selected tales, examining Ovid's precursors/models (in tragedy, epic, lyric, Hellenistic poetry and vase painting) and reflecting on the poetic and cultural significance of his choices. As we explore these myths we will also consider their religious/cultural background in Ancient Greece. The playfulness and irreverence of the Metamorphoses is at odds with modern definitions of myth as (serious) traditional tales with religious/cultural significance; we will therefore consider the poem alongside some modern theoretical approaches to the study of Greek myth. A final avenue of inquiry will be the reception of (some of) Ovid's Metamorphoses, especially in Roman art and French opera.
FM205 Frames of Meaning: Self-Reflexivity and Interpretation
Matthias Hurst (m.hurst@ecla.de)
Concentration Requirements: Art and Aesthetics
Distribution Requirements: Disciplines/Methods
Credits: 5
The French film theorist Christian Metz claimed that - from a semiotic point of view - a film is so difficult to explain because it is so easy to understand. This may also be true in regard to story, narrative structure and inherent meaning.
In the first decades of the 20th century film developed from a mere technological novelty to an artistic medium of story-telling, and we all appreciate since the ability of movies to tell us stories in a visual display and therefore (sometimes) straightforward way. But more often than not a single film tells more than just one story, and sometimes it is difficult to perceive additional levels of meaning because the presented story seems to be so obvious and dominating, thus obscuring other, more subtle layers of representation. In order to see and understand all the possible stories or dimensions in a film we have to apply different methods of interpretation, different approaches to film as a work of art.
In this course we explore some of these different approaches of understanding and interpreting the aesthetics of film (e.g. structural analysis, sociological interpretation, psychoanalytical interpretation), discussing aspects of filmic story-telling and the construction of reality, with a focus on concepts of self-reflexivity, i.e. films that deal with forms of visual art and representation and thus calling attention to their own artifice.
AH225 German Art and Culture: 1900-1937
Aya Soika (a.soika@ecla.de)
Concentration Requirements: Art and Aesthetics
Distribution Requirements: Genres/Styles, Places/Periods
Credits: 5
This course will look at some of the most important artistic trends in German visual culture, from the turn of the century until 1937, the year when over 16.000 modern works were confiscated from German public collections under the National-Socialists. We will look, among others, at the Expressionist group's Brücke and Blauer Reiter notion of "primitivism", at Berlin Dada's phonetic poems and photo-collages, at the ideals and designs of the Bauhaus School of Art and Design, and at the political caricatures and paintings by Otto Dix and George Grosz. We will also examine the role of film and photography in interwar culture and discuss Walter Benjamin's stance on it, as it becomes manifest in his famous essay. One of the objectives of this class is to gain an understanding of the cultural politics of this particularly thriving period, from the Wilhelmine Empire, through the First World War and the Weimar Republic, until the dictatorial National Socialist regime.