Stalinism in Literature and Film
An interdiciplinary approach to issues relating to the Soviet Empire and Communist Gulag, Stalinist tactics, the Fall of the Berlin Wall, the Prague Spring and the totalitarian regimes of the countries of Central Eastern Europe before and after the triumph of the Bolshevik Revolution an the ensuing proletarian dictatorship. |
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Societies and Cultures in Modern Europe
The readings in this course examine the politics and ideology that led to the fall of the regions' empires; the rise of nationalism; the triumph of the Bolshevic Revolution and the ensuing proletarian dictatorship; and the questions one feels compelled to ask in dealing with post-war totalitariansim and the emerging democracies of the newest members of the European Union.
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Elementary Romanian
Studying Romanian will give you
access to the culture of a facinating place in the heartland of Europe,
to a country with interesting people and a rich history, medieval cities
with crooked cobblestone streets, painted monasteries, and the thick forests
of the Carpathian Mountains. |
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Intermediate Romanian
Interested in accelerating your
language study? For additional credit, intensive summer session courses
will be offered at the Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj, the capital city
of Transylvania and former site of a Roman castrum. |
| Women Against the State:
"The Second Sex" in Pre/Post-Communist Europe (498/598). As a
tongue-in-cheek play on Simone de Beauvoir’s controversial study, this
course proposes to discuss the works of 20th-century writers in Central
Eastern Europe that emphasize problematic issues of women’s lives in communist
regimes. |
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Literature and Politics in Pre/Post
Communist Europe. (498/598)
This course will focus on the four
decades of totalitarianism and on the literature following the 1989 collapse
of Communism. Reading selections will include political fiction from
Joseph Conrad's historical fiction to Solzhenitsyn's fictional histories.
We will also consider the various "-isms" of the period, from hardcore
Stalinism to socialist realism. |
Literature and Culture in Central
Eastern Europe (394). This course will explore the literature of pre
and post-totalitarian Europe, with selections from Kundera, Solzhenitsyn,
and Havel, among others. |
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Literature and Film
in Pre/Post Communist Europe (498/598).
Since dictatorships usually reject
any kind of unorthodox behavior and art, the four decades of totalitarianism
explored a wide variety of subversive formulas, even radical experiments
in the implicit political significance of a creative dissidence in film.
We will thus view and discuss the rhetoric of movies and their relation
to literature: one setting forth the image, the other using the word
to convey their respective reality. |
| Special Topics Seminar: Henry
James and the Decadent Fin-de-Siecle (345). Along with representative
works by James, the reading list includes selected works by DuMaurier,
Wells, Wilde, and Pater. Also discussions focusing on aestheticism as a
precursor to high modernity. |
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The American Novel (332).
This study of major American fiction in the second half of the 19th-century
and the first half of the 20th-century documents the American novel in
its social and historical context and as an expression of narrative theory. |
| American Literature Survey Course
(341 and 342).
Writing about Literature (218).
This course emphasizes both the
reading of and the writing about a variety of literary texts while addressing
the rhetorical and critical strategies writing about literature requires.
American Short Stories (352).Works
from the so called "classic tradition," many of which emphasize historical
and cultural diversity. |
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History of Literary Criticism
(I and II). Major critics and critical traditions in the Western world
from antiquity to pre-modern, and from early-modern to modernity, with
an emphasis on Romanian schools of thought. (University of
Bucharest).
World Literature (I and II).
A comparative literature course offered to graduate and undergraduate students.
Selections from the great literature of the world in translations and lectures
on the cultural background. |
Survey of English Literature
(222).
The focus is on how to present information
in clear cogent prose. I require eight writing assignments, a mid-term,
a final, and a short office conference with each student to review the
final draft for each final writing assignment.
History of the Drama (355).
Nature and characteristics of dramatic expressions from Greek to medieval,
from early-modern to modern periods. |
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Comparative Literature Survey
Course (I and II). Survey of literary and artistic works, from Homer
and Ovid to Rabelais (I); from Moliere to Flaubert and Thomas Mann, and
from Marquez to Achebe (II). (University of
Bucharest).
English Composition and Introductory
Courses in Writing. |
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