COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
Spring 2007
RSCP 83100 - Monarchy, Nation, Others in
17th-Century France GC: W, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3
credits, Prof. Stanton, [68357] Cross listed with FREN. 73000
This course will begin by questioning the view of Benedict
Anderson and others that the nation is born after l789. We will take a set of
criteria for nationhood and examine the efforts of Louis XIV and his ministers
to unify the country into a nation with a single monarch, law and faith, with
centralized political structures, linguistic homogeneity, mapmaking, and
cultural propaganda, among other factors. We will, however, principally focus on
the idea that a nation forges an inside by creating an outside, that is, by
excluding a set of groups or people, though that enterprise is doomed to fail
since, to put it reductively, the outside never remains outside but invariably
mixes – hybridizes -- with the inside. Further, in late l7th-century France even
insiders, such as members of the noblesse d’épée,
felt like outsiders in an absolutistic monarchy, and invented/invoked the idea
of the nation over and against the abuses of Louis XIV.
The course will be mostly devoted to considering the specificity of four kinds of others: the religious other (both Protestants and Jews); the gendered other in a monarchic state founded on salic law; the sexual other-- the sodomite in a nation purportedly made up of virile Franks; and the racial other: oriental, African and most especially, American indigenous people. The number and complexity of these racial others make this area particularly fertile ground for research projects.
Readings will include work on the nation by Anderson and Foucault, specifically on the early-modern nation, by Hampton, Bell and Sahlins among others; historical documents, such as Le Code Noir; primary readings by Bayle, Bouhours, MoliPre, the Princess Palatine, Perrault, Racine, Saint Simon, Tallemant des Réaux, as well as a selection of Jesuit relations.
The course will be taught in English; the readings of primary sources will be in French. A previous knowledge of French 17th-century texts is desirable but not required.
Over and beyond the readings, work for the course will consist of a 20-page research paper on some aspect of nation-building and on othering in the early-modern period in France. Each student will also be asked to present one of the readings to the rest of the class.
Any questions, please contact Domna Stanton (dstanton112@aol.com).
RSCP 83100 - Renaissance Art/Global Perspectives
GC: R, 11:45 a.m.-1:45 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Saslow,
[68358]Cross listed with ART. 75000 Permission of the Art History Program
required.
The pathbreaking 1992 exhibit marking the 500th anniversary of
Columbus introduced the central concept of world-wide, cross-cultural encounter
and fluidity to a widened audience. This course examines European art of the
early modern period (1300-1750) in its increasingly international context.
The Renaissance in the arts coincided with increasing exploration of the Old
World and the discovery of the New World, both seminal historical processes
which had the paradoxical effect of decentering Europeans’ sense of their place
in the world through greater knowledge and cultural exchange, while also
affording the major powers unprecedented opportunities for colonization,
conversion, and wealth.
The survey will begin with Europe’s long cultural interactions with its nearest
neighbors, the Muslim and North African world; then, as European reach extended
farther to Africa, China, India, and Japan, attention will shift to these new
challenges to the received order of the West and their reciprocal influences.
After 1492, we will trace the processes by which the two halves of the world
were knitted together, at the cost of dramatic cultural upheaval in Europe, and
considerable cultural loss or adaptation for native Americans and others.
The course will consider artistic influence in all directions, from Asian
textiles and African ivories produced for the European market to the
incorporation of these and other foreign motifs into European arts, down to the
vogue for western motifs in Mughal India, the adaptation and subsequent
suppression of Christian art in China and Japan, and the Spanish establishment
of a round-the-world shipping network that facilitated both a syncretic Latin
American religious art and the importation of Asian goods and cultural forms to
both Latin America and Europe, touching off the world-wide Rococo-era vogue for
things oriental known as "chinoiserie."
Emphasis will be on processes of cultural transmission and exchange, artistic
reception, hybridization, and conflict that led to the international character
of the modern political and cultural world.
Course Requirements: Weekly readings and discussion. Brief oral critique of one
reading. Research paper on a topic approved by instructor.
ART. 87100 - Colonial Cities in the Americas
GC: W, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Quinones-Keber,
[67792] Permission of the Art History Program required.
This seminar approaches the colonial arts
of the Spanish Americas from the 16th to the 18th
centuries not as an undifferentiated "Latin American" entity but as the
distinctive creative output of vastly different colonial cities and regions.
Introductory lectures will survey such cities as Cuzco, Lima, Potosí,
Havana, Guatemala City, Mexico City, Puebla, and Santa Fe, incorporating such
themes as the relationship between a particular colonial city and its
prehispanic predecessor; missions as "city"; maps and painted images of cities;
artistic connection with Asian, African, or European cities; city scenes and
colonial society; and the distinctive schools of art engendered in individual
cities.
For their reports students may further explore these themes and cities, or
others of their choice. Requirements include weekly readings, written critiques,
and discussion as well as a culminating seminar report (oral and written).
Three auditors permitted, but they will be expected to do all readings and
participate in discussions.
Preliminary Readings: Students are
encouraged to view "The Arts in Latin America, 1492-1820" exhibition at the
Philadelphia Museum of Art (closing Dec. 31) and (or minimally) to survey the
objects in the catalogue of the show with attention to the subject of the "city"
and read "The Spanish American Colonial City: Its Origins, Development, and
Function" by Alfonso Ortiz, Crespo, pp. 23-38.
C L. 78100 - The Baroque Imaginary GC:
R, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Schwartz, [67758]
This course will reconsider some aspects of the rhetoric and ideologies of
the Baroque as an historical period in European literature, which extended
roughly from 1580 to 1680.
It will focus on a series of literary works that shared a common background of
motifs and images, which will be interpreted in relation to specific historical
and philosophical contexts, among them, labyrinths, masks, metamorphoses,
dreams, mirrors and visions.
These in turn will be compared with images in pictorial and emblematic texts (Alciati
and Vaenius). The particular aesthetics of wit, and the function of the conceit
in Baroque écritures will be
also examined in its ideological implications.
Readings will include María de Zayas The Disenchantments of Love (Desengaños
amorosos); R. Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy;
Quevedo’s The Swindler (El Buscón),
and his collection of satires called Dreams (Los
sueños);
von Grimmelshausen’s Courasche; Calderón’s The Great
Theater of the World and Life is a Dream; Shakespeare’s A
Midsummer Night’s Dream; Góngora’s Soledad primera (Solitudes I);
Gracián’s Oráculo manual
(The Art of Worldly Wisdom) and selected poems by
Tasso and Marino; Quevedo and Góngora, Donne and Marvell; Gryphius and Silesius;
Tristan, d’Aubigné, Saint-Amant and d’Aubigné, as well as some
theoretical/critical works on the Baroque in art and literature.
ENGL. 70800 - Medieval & Renaissance Drama GC:
T, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. TBA, 2/4 credits, Prof. McCoy, [68082]
An examination of the links between medieval miracles, mysteries, and morality
plays and early modern comedies, tragedies, and romances, focusing on the
festive, redemptive, and ritual elements that survived the suppression of
religious drama and the anti-theatrical animus of England’s reformation.
I am particularly interested in exploring similarities and differences between
an earlier "sacramental" theater and performances in which belief is optional
and a sense of presence sustained by imagination.
Works considered will include Abraham and Isaac, The Crucifixion, The Second
Shepherds’ Play, The Harrowing of Hell, The Croxton Play of the Sacrament,
and Everyman and The Spanish Tragedy, Doctor Faustus, The Jew of
Malta (in performance with The Merchant of Venice at TFNA),
Henry V, The Winter’s Tale, The Duchess of Malfi, and The Revengern
’s Tragedy as well as some transitional early Tudor dramas such as
Gammer Gurton’s Needle and Jack Juggler.
One research paper and one oral presentation.
ENGL. 82300 - Miltonic Romanticism GC:
W, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. TBA, 2/4 credits, Prof. Wittreich, [68062]
It has been said that with the publication of Paradise Lost Milton
effects a revolution in the history of literature, with Paradise Lost,
subsequent to its publication in 1667, leaving its imprint everywhere, on poetry
and prose alike.
We will read Paradise Lost, along with Lycidas, Paradise
Regain’d, and Samson Agonistes and then examine their formative
influence on such works as William Blake’s Milton,Mary Wollstonecraft’s
Maria,William Godwin’s Caleb Williams, Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein, Percy Bysshe Shelley’s The Cenci and s22
Prometheus Unbound, Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage and
Charles Robert Maturin’s Melmouth the Wanderer.
We will look at lines of connection between Milton and these writers, some of
which are established by authors who, in conversation with one another about
Milton, give us an amplified sense of what Christopher Caudwell calls "Miltonic
Romanticism."
Requirements: 1 oral presentation, and an end-of-term essay of approximately
twenty (20) pages.
MUS. 86700 - Music & Society in the 17th & 18th
Centuries GC:F, 10:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m., Rm. GSUC3491, 3 credits, Prof. Hanning,
[68109]
The course will study paintings on musical subjects, principally from the
16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, and how they reveal the ways in which music as
an embodied practice, a physical activity subject to the gaze, encodes complex
and multiple levels of meaning.
Topics will include emblem books as a source of the visual vocabulary of the
Baroque affections; images of 17th-century Italian solo singing; musical themes
in art of the Dutch Golden Age; representations of music-making in the
18th-century French salon; and the relationship between musical performance
practice and the depiction of performance in art.
Special attention will be paid to the treatment in art of women musicians, both
amateurs and professionals, saints and muses.
The following course will also count as an elective for the Renaissance Studies certificate:
SPAN. 76200 - Spanish-American Colonial Literature GC: W, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Chang-Rodriguez, [67874]
In-Between Worlds and Traditions: Rereading the "Crónicas de Indias" This course will study a diverse group of testimonies from the early contact period and beyond. Generally grouped under the label "crónicas de Indias," they will include letters, histories and chronicles written by authors of diverse backgrounds and ethnicity.
These works will be situated in their historical and literary contexts in order to analyze the objectives of their authors and understand their meaning in the shared culture and history of Europe and the Americas.
Among the issues to be discussed are: 1) how these texts became "literature;" 2) the polemics about the indigenous population; 3) alphabetic culture vis-à-vis native traditions; 4) the eye-witness and the construction of the "texto fidedigno;" 5) the indigenous perception of the conquest; 6) gender issues.
Illustrations will be used as part of the instruction. The specific bibliography will be distributed in class.
Readings will include: selections from Cristóbal Colón, Bartolomé de las Casas, Hernán Cortés, Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, and Catalina de Erauso. The specific bibliography will be distributed in class.
Among the general requirements are: active class participation is expected and it should reflect previous reading of the assigned texts and critical material; teamwork, oral reports, a research monograph (MLA Style) about an author/work not discussed in class. Communication will be facilitated through Blackboard.
Texts:
Cristóbal Colón,
"Carta a Santángel;" (Ed. Consuelo Varela,
Alianza, latest ed.);
Bartolomé de las Casas, Brevísima relación de la destruición de las Indias;
Hernán Cortés, Cartas de relación (la 2da) (Ed. de Angel Delgado Gómez, Castalia);
Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Comentarios reales (Porrúa or FCE);
Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, Primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno (selection; online);
Catalina de Erauso, Vida y sucesos de la monja Alférez (Cátedra; or Ed. Rima de Valbona, Arizona State University).
Information:
rchangrodriguez@ccny.cuny.edu