Course Descriptions

Term:

Locating Europes and European Colonies

Fall Quarter (F18)

Dept/Description Course No., Title  Instructor
ART HIS (F18)103  ANCIENT ATHENSMILES, M.
Emphasis/Category: Locating Europes and European Colonies

The celebrated monuments of Athens, such as the Parthenon, the Propylaia and the Erechtheion—and some which are little known or even lost—will be our focus.  We will see how the city developed, from a small village beneath the Akropolis into the seat of a far-flung empire, and the intellectual center of the Mediterranean world for many centuries.  Special attention throughout the course will be given to the historical, social, political, literary  and religious context of the monuments, art and artifacts we study:  how people made them, and why; how the temples were used and what the public buildings were for; what the sculpture and vase-painting can tell us about Athenian values and attitudes. In addition, we will consider the history and ethics of the “rediscovery” of Greece and Greek art during the past two centuries. The architects and sculptors set a high standard against which all subsequent art in the Western tradition is inevitably compared, and their art serves as an inexhaustible source of inspiration.
Days: MO WE  12:30-01:50 PM

ART HIS (F18)120  GLOBAL RENAISSANCEPOWELL, A.
Emphasis/Category: Locating Europes and European Colonies

This class focuses on artistic, religious, material, and technological exchanges between European cultures and African, Asian, and American cultures in the early modern period (roughly 1400-1800). The emphasis will be on how these exchanges manifest themselves in visual culture from prints to paintings, sculptures, architecture, porcelain, textiles, and more.
Days: TU TH  09:30-10:50 AM

CLASSIC (F18)170  ANCIENT ATHENSMILES, M.
Emphasis/Category: Locating Europes and European Colonies

The celebrated monuments of Athens, such as the Parthenon, the Propylaia and the Erechtheion—and some which are little known or even lost—will be our focus.  We will see how the city developed, from a small village beneath the Akropolis into the seat of a far-flung empire, and the intellectual center of the Mediterranean world for many centuries.  Special attention throughout the course will be given to the historical, social, political, literary  and religious context of the monuments, art and artifacts we study:  how people made them, and why; how the temples were used and what the public buildings were for; what the sculpture and vase-painting can tell us about Athenian values and attitudes. In addition, we will consider the history and ethics of the “rediscovery” of Greece and Greek art during the past two centuries. The architects and sculptors set a high standard against which all subsequent art in the Western tradition is inevitably compared, and their art serves as an inexhaustible source of inspiration.
Days: MO WE  12:30-01:50 PM

ENGLISH (F18)102B  18C BRITISH CULTUREHENDERSON, A.
EURO ST (F18)102  MEDIEVAL TOWNSMCLOUGHLIN, N.
Emphasis/Category: Locating Europes and European Colonies

Beginning around the year 1050, medieval Europe experienced a rapid increase in trade, population and urbanization. As more and more people moved from the countryside to trade centers, new towns formed and existing towns outgrew their walls. Town governments evolved and people formed voluntary associations for the purpose of regulating the practice of their trades and/or organizing their religious devotions. This economic, political, and cultural experimentation had a profound affect upon European society as a whole. In this course we will investigate this exciting development in medieval history, paying careful attention to three aspects of medieval urban life: One; what is a medieval town and what caused the rapid increase in urbanization historians have observed for the eleventh and twelfth centuries? Two; what was the range of wealth and poverty in a medieval town and how did medieval townspeople grapple with economic disparities? And Three; what types of urban identities were available to medieval townspeople and what strategies did people employ to confirm their own position and status?
Days: MO WE  10:00-10:50 AM

EURO ST (F18)103  CUSINE AS CULTURLEVINE, G.
Emphasis/Category: Locating Europes and European Colonies

In our study of the history and culture of particular peoples or countries, we most often focus on political and historical events, such as wars, monarchial reigns, or on aspects of social, political and economic change. We also investigate cultural artifacts created by a people, such as music, the visual arts, and literature. Food and the act of nourishing the body are considered by many to be so fundamental that they require no conscious reflection or consideration, that they are somehow independent of culture or history, or perhaps just the (by-)products of those. With a focus on the regions and countries of Europe, in this course we will explore the many ways that culinary culture both relates to, reflects, and in fact manifests historical events, cultural norms, cultural identities, and belief and value systems. Though our primary focus will be on the period from the early modern period to the present, we’ll begin in the medieval period and eat our way through the centuries, stopping at various stations to consider how food and drink, the acts of eating and drinking, and of course the production and preparation of food and drink, related to the many wars in Europe, the maintenance or subversion of social systems, and the regulation of social roles, such as those of men and women, rich and poor etc.

At the end of this course you should have a broad-based knowledge of the history of food and food culture in (primarily western and central) Europe, and you should have become a critical analyst and consumer of food in its relationships to culture and historical events. In the process of our culinary investigation, you’ll also become comfortably familiar with many traditional dishes and culinary traditions of France, Germany, Austrian, Britain, Spain, Italy, and other European countries.

COURSE MATERIALS
1. Flandrin, Jean Louis, and Montanari, Massimo (Eds.). Food: A Culinary History from Antiquity to the Present (European Perspectives). Penguin Books, 1999/2000.
2. Numerous pdf files, which are chapters and articles on a variety of topics. Each is clickable in the online Canvas site (course participants only). The readings include theoretical texts on foodways and culinary history and culture (e.g. Lévi-Strauss, Bourdieu, Elias, Bakhtin), and secondary literature by historians, anthropologists and sociologists (e.g. Albala, Counihan, Flandrin, Montanari).

Prerequisite: None.

Days: TU TH  02:00-03:20 PM

FRENCH (F18)117  FRENCH THEATERLITWIN, C.
Emphasis/Category: Locating Europes and European Colonies

Corneille, Molière and Racine are the three glorious playwrights of the French “Great Century.” This class sets out as an introduction to some of their most important tragic and/or comic works (Le Cid, Horace, Le misanthrope, Don Juan, Britannicus, Phèdre). While we will adopt a socio-political and historical contextualizing approach, we will also reflect directly on what makes those works live and resonate in different contexts as we watch and analyze videos of contemporary productions of these plays. Moreover, as we learn about the codes and the theory of French classical theater, we will also discuss its relationship to French “street” theater and “theater of cruelty”.
Days: TU TH  02:00-03:20 PM

FRENCH (F18)170  POSTWAR GENRESFARBMAN, H
Emphasis/Category: Locating Europes and European Colonies

This course will sample some of the exciting new combinations and permutations of prose genres that have emerged in French writing since 1945. Topics will include: the “New Novel”; the récit; hybrid genres; “autofiction;” and the relationship between writing and other media, especially film. Texts by Samuel Beckett, Maurice Blanchot, Marguerite Duras, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Roland Barthes, and Annie Ernaux.
Days: TUTH  03:30-04:50 PM

GERMAN (F18)105  GERMAN PROFESSIONSLEVINE, G.
Emphasis/Category: Locating Europes and European Colonies

This course is conducted entirely in German and intended for students who have completed at least German 2B with a grade of C or better, or the equivalent; it can be taken following German 2C, or concurrently with German 2C as co-requisite. The course is taught entirely in German. The main goals of the course are to advance your German at the high intermediate level, teach you some of the discourses and genres of German as part of professional life with a particular emphasis on German in the sciences and technology, particularly biological, physical, and environmental sciences and engineering.

Specifically, in this course students investigate several topics related to science and technology in the German-speaking world, Europe and the world in a broad-based but also critical way. The overarching themes are “Der Mensch und die Natur” and “Der Mensch und die Technik” and include the following specific topics along with “essential questions” addressed in each segment, specifically considering how the issue is being dealt with and debated in Germany, Austria, and Europe in general:

Die Menschen und die Natur

• Menschen und ihr Abfall: „Wohin mit dem Müll?“
• Menschen und die Umwelt: „Welche Maßnahmen sind am effektivsten, um die Erderwärmung zu verlangsamen oder anhalten?“

Die Menschen und die Technologie

• Roboter und künstliche Intelligenz: „Roboter und künstliche Intelligenz – Hilfe oder Menschenersatz?“
• Gentechnisch modifiziertes Lebensmittel (GVO, oder Genfood): „Sollen genetisch modifizierte Lebensmittel verboten werden?“

Through exploring these topics and questions, the course provides an introduction to communicating in German in the professional world, which includes business, non-governmental organizations, engineering, biological and medical sciences, etc. You also will learn to deal with many common professional situations (presentation, negotiation, argumentation, persuasion), as well as about German society and Germany within the European Union. Class time is spent with discussions and simulations of numerous sorts. Writing tasks will mirror those sorts of writing valued in professional life (resume writing, email, formal letters, briefs and reports, etc.).

Days: TU TH  11:00-12:20 PM

GERMAN (F18)150  CUSINE AS CULTURLEVINE, G.
Emphasis/Category: Locating Europes and European Colonies

In our study of the history and culture of particular peoples or countries, we most often focus on political and historical events, such as wars, monarchial reigns, or on aspects of social, political and economic change. We also investigate cultural artifacts created by a people, such as music, the visual arts, and literature. Food and the act of nourishing the body are considered by many to be so fundamental that they require no conscious reflection or consideration, that they are somehow independent of culture or history, or perhaps just the (by-)products of those. With a focus on the regions and countries of Europe, in this course we will explore the many ways that culinary culture both relates to, reflects, and in fact manifests historical events, cultural norms, cultural identities, and belief and value systems. Though our primary focus will be on the period from the early modern period to the present, we’ll begin in the medieval period and eat our way through the centuries, stopping at various stations to consider how food and drink, the acts of eating and drinking, and of course the production and preparation of food and drink, related to the many wars in Europe, the maintenance or subversion of social systems, and the regulation of social roles, such as those of men and women, rich and poor etc.

At the end of this course you should have a broad-based knowledge of the history of food and food culture in (primarily western and central) Europe, and you should have become a critical analyst and consumer of food in its relationships to culture and historical events. In the process of our culinary investigation, you’ll also become comfortably familiar with many traditional dishes and culinary traditions of France, Germany, Austrian, Britain, Spain, Italy, and other European countries.

COURSE MATERIALS
1. Flandrin, Jean Louis, and Montanari, Massimo (Eds.). Food: A Culinary History from Antiquity to the Present (European Perspectives). Penguin Books, 1999/2000.
2. Numerous pdf files, which are chapters and articles on a variety of topics. Each is clickable in the online Canvas site (course participants only). The readings include theoretical texts on foodways and culinary history and culture (e.g. Lévi-Strauss, Bourdieu, Elias, Bakhtin), and secondary literature by historians, anthropologists and sociologists (e.g. Albala, Counihan, Flandrin, Montanari).

Prerequisite: None.
Days: TU TH  02:00-03:20 PM

GREEK (F18)100  ANCIENT GREEKSTAFF
HISTORY (F18)110D  MEDIEVAL TOWNSMCLOUGHLIN, N.
Emphasis/Category: Locating Europes and European Colonies

Beginning around the year 1050, medieval Europe experienced a rapid increase in trade, population and urbanization. As more and more people moved from the countryside to trade centers, new towns formed and existing towns outgrew their walls. Town governments evolved and people formed voluntary associations for the purpose of regulating the practice of their trades and/or organizing their religious devotions. This economic, political, and cultural experimentation had a profound affect upon European society as a whole. In this course we will investigate this exciting development in medieval history, paying careful attention to three aspects of medieval urban life: One; what is a medieval town and what caused the rapid increase in urbanization historians have observed for the eleventh and twelfth centuries? Two; what was the range of wealth and poverty in a medieval town and how did medieval townspeople grapple with economic disparities? And Three; what types of urban identities were available to medieval townspeople and what strategies did people employ to confirm their own position and status?
  (Satisfies Pre-1800 Requirement)
Days: MO WE  10:00-10:50 AM

HISTORY (F18)21A  WORLD:INNOVATIONSDARYAEE, T.
Emphasis/Category: Hispanic, US Latino/a and Luso-Brazilian Cultures, Locating Europes and European Colonies, Pacific Rim, Inter-Area Studies, Locating Asias (Nation, Culture, and Diaspora), Atlantic Rim, Locating Africas, Global Middle East

How does the legacy of human evolution affect our world today?  How have technological innovations shaped human societies?  How have human societies explained the natural world and their place in it?  Given the abundance of religious beliefs in the world, how have three evangelical faiths spread far beyond their original homelands?
This class follows the major themes of world historical development through the sixteenth century to consider how developments in technology, social organization, and religion—from the origins of farming to the rise of Christianity—shaped the world we live in today.
(Satisfies Pre-1800 Requirement)
(IV, VIII)
Days: TU TH  11:00-12:20 PM

ITALIAN (F18)150  HOLOCAUST IN ITALYCHIAMPI, J.
Emphasis/Category: Locating Europes and European Colonies

This course will concern itself with the response to the Holocaust in the memoirs of Primo Levi and Liana Millu, and in the fiction of Giorgio Bassani. Framing their writings will be brief readings in the work of historians Liliana Picciotto Fargion, Michele Sarfatti and Susan Zuccotti.

Italy had no native tradition of anti-Semitism to compare with the French or Austrian (Action Française; Karl Lueger’s Christian Social Party). Moreover, the Holocaust in Italy begins comparably late–in 1943 with the overthrow of Mussolini–and continued with the consent of the Republic of Salò, the largely puppet state the Germans set up for him after his rescue. The class will briefly address such historical questions as the relation between Italian Fascism and anti-Semitism, the role and responsibility of the Papacy in the eventual deportations, and, finally, the heroism of Italian individuals and even institutions (the diplomatic corps) in the face of unspeakable atrocity. In Levi and Millu we shall address more literary questions: Italian identity, for example. What did it mean to be an Italian Jew in the camps– hence Sephardic–thus to speak no Yiddish and not to be observant, i.e. to be both culturally and religiously ignorant? On the other hand, what did it mean for an Italian Jew to be cultured and completely assimilated to Italian life: “tutti dottori, tutti avvocati” unlike Austrian, Hungarian and Russian Jews? We will study the development of the identity of the protagonist as s/he struggles to survive in the Italy of the race laws and then in the inconceivable conditions of Auschwitz. Incidentally, according to Liliana Picciotto Fargion, the total number of Jews deported was 8,613 or whom 7,631 died. She adds 291 who were murdered in Italy; this out of approximately 43,000 Jews. All readings are in English.
Days: MO WE  02:00-02:50 PM

RUSSIAN (F18)150  19TH C RUSSIAN LITZLATINA, S.
Emphasis/Category: Locating Europes and European Colonies

In this course, we will study major works, authors, genres and movements in 19th-century Russian literature, with emphasis on the classic works by Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Chekhov. In addition to examining each author's distinctive style and contribution to Russian and world literature, we will explore a number of critical themes that have come to define the 19th-century Russian intellectual discourse: the rise of the Russian Empire and its encounter with East and West; the haunting duality of Russian urban and rural life; and the role of the Russian nobility and intelligentsia in Russia's cultural and socio-political transformation; the role of women; and others. 
Days: TU TH  11:00-12:20 PM

SPANISH (F18)101A  INTRO IBER LIT&CULTMAHIEUX, V.
Emphasis/Category: Locating Europes and European Colonies

An introduction to Spanish America’s principal texts and literary movements, with particular emphasis placed on the 19th and 20th centuries. The course aims to encourage reflection on the historical and political implications of literature and its role in defining, or questioning, a Latin American cultural identity. Includes workshops on developing skills for literary and cultural analysis.
Days: MO WE  11:00-11:50 AM

Courses Offered by Global Cultures or other Schools at UCI

Locating Europes and European Colonies

Fall Quarter (F18)

Dept Course No., Title   Instructor
GLBLCLT (F18)103A  CULTR,MONY&GLOBLZTNLE VINE, M.

Emphasis/Category: Hispanic, US Latino/a and Luso-Brazilian Cultures, Locating Europes and European Colonies, Pacific Rim, Inter-Area Studies, Locating Asias (Nation, Culture, and Diaspora), Atlantic Rim, Locating Africas, Global Middle East
This course examines the fundamental dynamics of cultural production and consumption under conditions of globalization. Rather than focus on jargony post-modern scholarly analyses of culture (although we'll read some of that too), we will attempt whenever possible to examine the sources ourselves--particularly music, film, literature and architecture--and develop our own hypotheses about how crucial issues, such as identity (race, gender, ethnicity, religion) power, politics and economics are inflected by and impact the production and consumption of culture during the last two decades.
Days: TU TH  12:30-01:50 PM