Peqod :: Classes - Columbia University Catalog of Classes

(Seminar). In his 1837 address to the Phi Beta Cappa Society, Ralph Waldo Emerson asserts that the American scholar is "one, who raises himself from private considerations, and breathes and lives on public and illustrious thoughts. He is the world's eye. He is the world's heart." One hundred and seventy six years later, what does it mean for an American woman or man to take on the role of a public intellectual, or to be cast as one? In particular how have public intellectuals taken on the role to tell us unpleasant or complex truths about ourselves? With the election of Barack Obama to the presidency in 2008, these questions acquired a renewed visibility and weight for Americans, who heard him offer his views on race in his speech "A More Perfect Union." In this course, we will consider how writers from many quarters of American life have extended and complicated Emerson's notion of the public intellectual. We will examine essays, speeches, open letters, and recordings by public intellectuals from the Progressive Era until the present. This course is organized to dramatize both the work of public intellectuals, and to engage with theories regarding the definition and roles of public intellectuals. In particular, we will consider how the essay as a genre adapted formally to the needs of changing publics. Course texts will include work by Randolph Bourne, E. B. White, James Baldwin, Martin Luther King, Jr., Susan Sontag, Edward Said, Cornell West, Barbara Ehrenreich, Rachel Carson, Andrew Sullivan, and Barack Obama. To help us to discuss key issues and themes, we will read short excerpts from cultural theorists on intellectual history such as John Dewey, Richard Posner, bell hooks, Richard Hofstadter, and Cornell West who have posed questions about the rights and responsibilities of the public intellectual inside and outside of academic contexts. Application Instructions: E-mail Professor Wallack (nw2108@columbia.edu) with the subject heading, "Dewey to Obama seminar." In your message, include basic information: your name, school, major, year of study, and relevant courses taken, along with a brief statement about why you are interested in taking the course. Admitted students should register for the course; they will automatically be placed on a wait list, from which the instructor will in due course admit them as spaces become available.

Department: English and Comparative Literature
T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
Instructor: Nicole Wallack
CULPA: 7 Info
4 points

Details

ENGL W3733

TWENTIETH CENTURY EPIC

Department: English and Comparative Literature
T 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
Instructor: Michael Golston
CULPA: 14 Info
4 points

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ENGL W3736

CONTEMPORARY LATINO LITERATUE

CONTEMPORARY LATINO LITERATURE

Department: Spanish and Portuguese
TR 11:40 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
Instructor: Gustavo Perez-Firmat
CULPA: 8 Wikipedia Info
3 points

Details

SPAN W3750

PHILOSOPHY OF LAW

Department: Philosophy
MW 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
Instructor: Michele Moody-Adams
CULPA: 20 Wikipedia Info
3 points

Details

PHIL V3752

EAST AFRICAN HISTORY

Department: History
TR 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
Instructor: Rhiannon Stephens
CULPA: 2 Info
3 points

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HIST W3764

SUPERVISED FAC-STUDENT RSRCH

Department: Political Science @Barnard
Instructor: Severine Autesserre
CULPA: 19 Wikipedia h-index: 14 Info
Instructor: Sheri Berman
CULPA: 19 Wikipedia h-index: None Info
Instructor: Alexander A Cooley
CULPA: 22 h-index: 33 Info
3 points

Details

POLS BC3765

NARRATING RAPE

TESTIMONY, GENDER & VIOLENCE

Department: English and Comparative Literature
M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
Instructor: Marianne Hirsch
CULPA: 4 Wikipedia Info
4 points

Details

CLEN W3775

BERL/ISTANBUL:MIGRATN,CLTR,VAL

Department: Germanic Languages
M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
Instructor: Mark M Anderson
CULPA: 2 Info
3 points

Details

GERM W3780

PERF & BEYOND-EARLY MOD STAGE

Prerequisites: the instructor's permission.
(Seminar). Early modern London was not only host to an explosion of professional, public theater--it was also host to a virtually continuous variety of performance traditions that filled the city's marketplaces, streets, taverns, and churches. This seminar explores how plays incorporate other forms of performance--from the pyrotechnics of fireworks to the gestures of sermons--into their acting conventions and production technologies. It will also consider what plays accomplish by depicting these traditions as features of a cosmopolitan, urban landscape. By harnessing this spectrum of performance modes, plays raised questions, in uniquely embodied form, concerning the operation of the senses, the relationship of action to word, the representation of identity through individual and collective self-display, the shifting boundary between spectator and participant, and the ways in which performance activates or repurposes civic space. Readings will range across the period's major dramatic genres and playwrights, including plays by Beaumont, Davenant, Dekker, Ford, Greene, Jonson, Kyd, Marlowe, Middleton, Shakespeare, and Shirley. At the end of the semester we will understand the actual mechanics and the conceptual stakes not only of the public stage itself, but of "motion men" and puppets, street pulpits, masques, automata, anatomy theaters, menageries, bear-baiting, horse racing, river-borne pageants, clowns, ballads, partsongs, jigs, psalters, morris dancers, tumbling and other "feats of activity," sleight of hand, beheadings and hangings, Church sacraments, artillery displays, and more. Application instructions: E-mail Instructor Williams (ssw2131@columbia.edu) with the subject heading "Spectacular City seminar". In your message, include basic information: your name, school, major, year of study, and relevant courses taken, along with a brief statement about why you are interested in taking the course. Admitted students should register for the course; they will automatically be placed on a wait list, from which the instructor will in due course admit them as spaces become available.

Department: English and Comparative Literature
W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
Instructor: Seth S Williams
CULPA: 1 Info
4 points

Details

ENTA W3784