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Comparative Thought and Literature

Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences

Catalogue Home

  • Explore our Programs
  • University-​wide Policies and Information
    • Academic Policies and Information
      • Academic Calendar
      • Academic Integrity Policies
      • Animal Care and Use Program
      • Credit Hour Policy
      • FERPA
      • PHD Specific Policies
      • Transcripts and Enrollment Verifications
    • Admission and Aid
      • Tuition and Fees
        • Financial Aid
    • Higher Education Act Disclosures
      • General Institutional Information
      • Health and Safety Information
      • Student Financial Assistance Information
    • Office of Institutional Equity
      • Discrimination and Harassment Policy and Procedures
      • Equal Opportunity and Title IX Notice
      • Sexual Misconduct
    • Rights, Privileges, and Responsibilities
      • Academic Grievance Policy: Students and Postdoctoral Fellows
      • New Child Accommodations for Full-​Time Graduate Students and Postdoctoral Trainees
      • Personal Relationships Policy
      • Photography and Film Rights Policy
      • Student Conduct Code
      • Student Disability Services (SDS)
      • Student Health
    • Veterans Affairs
  • Bloomberg School of Public Health
    • Academic Calendar
    • Admission
    • CEPH Requirements
    • Departments
      • Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
        • Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, MHS
        • Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, ScM
        • Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, PhD
        • Non-​Degree Training
      • Department of Biostatistics
        • Biostatistics, MHS
        • Biostatistics, ScM
        • Biostatistics, PhD
      • Department of Environmental Health and Engineering
        • Environmental Health, MHS
        • Environmental Health, SCM
        • Toxicology for Human Risk Assessment, MS
        • Environmental Health, PhD
        • Non-​Degree Training
      • Department of Epidemiology
        • Epidemiology, MHS
        • Epidemiology, ScM
        • Epidemiology, PhD
        • Non-​Degree Training
      • Department of Health, Behavior and Society
        • Social Factors in Health, MHS
        • Health Education and Health Communication, MSPH
        • Genetic Counseling, ScM
        • Health, Behavior and Society, PhD
        • Non-​Degree Training
      • Department of Health Policy and Management
        • Health Administration, MHA
        • Health Policy, MSPH
        • Health Economics and Outcomes Research, MHS
        • Health Policy and Management, PhD
        • Health Policy and Management, DrPH (Tsinghua)
        • Non-​Degree Training
      • Department of International Health
        • Global Health Economics, MHS
        • International Health, MSPH
        • International Health, MSPH, Human Nutrition-​Dietitian
        • International Health, MA/​MSPH
        • International Health, PhD
        • Non-​Degree Training
      • Department of Mental Health
        • Mental Health, MHS
        • Mental Health, PhD
        • Non-​Degree Training
      • Department of Molecular Microbiology &​ Immunology
        • Molecular Microbiology &​ Immunology, MHS
        • Molecular Microbiology &​ Immunology, ScM
        • Molecular Microbiology &​ Immunology, PhD
        • Non-​Degree Training
      • Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health
        • Population, Family and Reproductive Health, MHS
        • Population, Family and Reproductive Health, MHS Online
        • Population, Family and Reproductive Health, MSPH
        • Population, Family and Reproductive Health, PhD
      • Doctor of Public Health (DrPH)
      • Graduate Training Programs in Clinical Investigation
        • Graduate Training Programs in Clinical Investigation, MHS
        • Graduate Training Programs in Clinical Investigation, PhD
      • Master of Arts in Public Health Biology
      • Master of Bioethics
      • Master of Public Health Program
        • DNP/​MPH
        • DVM/​MPH
        • JD/​MPH
        • LLM/​MPH
        • MBA/​MPH with China Europe International Business School
        • MD/​MPH
        • MPH/​MBA
        • MSW/​MPH
      • Online Programs for Applied Learning (OPAL)
        • Master of Applied Science in Community-​Based Primary Health Care Programs in Global Health
        • Master of Applied Science in Global Health Planning and Management
        • Master of Applied Science in Humanitarian Health
        • Master of Applied Science in Patient Safety and Healthcare Quality
        • Master of Applied Science in Population Health Management
        • Master of Applied Science in Spatial Analysis for Public Health
      • Residency Programs
        • General Preventive Medicine Residency Program
        • Occupational and Environmental Medicine Residency
    • Certificates
      • Adolescent Health, Certificate
      • Bioethics, Certificate
      • Climate and Health, Certificate
      • Clinical Trials, Certificate
      • Community-​Based Public Health, Certificate
      • Demographic Methods, Certificate
      • Environmental and Occupational Health, Certificate
      • Epidemiology for Public Health Professionals, Certificate
      • Evaluation: International Health Programs, Certificate
      • Food Systems, the Environment &​ Public Health, Certificate
      • Gender and Health, Certificate
      • Gerontology, Certificate
      • Global Health, Certificate
      • Global Health Practice, Certificate
      • Global Tobacco Control, Certificate
      • Health and Human Rights, Certificate
      • Health Communication, Certificate
      • Health Disparities and Health Inequality, Certificate
      • Health Education, Certificate
      • Health Finance and Management, Certificate
      • Healthcare Epidemiology and Infection Prevention and Control, Certificate
      • Humane Sciences and Toxicology Policy, Certificate
      • Humanitarian Health, Certificate
      • Injury and Violence Prevention, Certificate
      • International Healthcare Management and Leadership, Certificate
      • Leadership for Public Health and Healthcare, Certificate
      • Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) Public Health, Certificate
      • Maternal and Child Health, Certificate
      • Mental Health Policy, Economics and Services, Certificate
      • Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety, Certificate
      • Population and Health, Certificate
      • Population Health Management, Certificate
      • Product Stewardship for Sustainability, Certificate
      • Public Health Advocacy, Certificate
      • Public Health Economics, Certificate
      • Public Health Informatics, Certificate
      • Public Health Practice, Certificate
      • Public Health Preparedness, Certificate
      • Public Health Training Certificate for American Indian Health Professionals
      • Public Mental Health Research, Certificate
      • Quality, Patient Safety, and Outcomes Research, Certificate
      • Quantitative Methods in Public Health, Certificate
      • Rigor, Reproducibility and Responsibility in Scientific Practice, Certificate
      • Risk Sciences and Public Policy, Certificate
      • Spatial Analysis for Public Health, Certificate
      • Training Certificate in Public Health
      • Tropical Medicine, Certificate
      • Vaccine Science and Policy, Certificate
    • Policies
      • Academic
        • Academic Ethics Code
        • Academic Leave of Absence
        • Compliance Line
        • Grade Appeal Policy
        • Grading System
        • Graduation Policy
        • Interdivisional Registration
        • Involuntary Leave of Absence
        • Multi-​Term Course Policy
        • Post-​Doctoral Fellow Student Status
        • Student Grievance Policy
      • Research
        • Animal Research
        • Human Subjects Research
        • Worker's Comp
      • Student Life
        • Alternative Beverages
        • Donation Drive Protocol
        • Social Media Policy
        • Special Events Coordination
        • Student Fundraising
  • Carey Business School
    • Admission
      • Graduate Degree Requirements
      • Master’s Programs
      • Certificate Programs
      • Verification of Credentials
      • International Student Admission Policy
      • Inactive/​Deactivated Certificate or Degree Applications
      • State-​Specific Authorization for Online Courses
    • Degrees and Certificates
      • Business Administration (Flexible), MBA
      • Business Administration (Full Time), MBA
      • Business Analytics and Risk Management (Part Time), Master of Science
      • Business Analytics and Risk Management, Master of Science
      • Design Leadership, MBA/​MA Dual Degree
      • Finance (Part Time), Master of Science
      • Finance, Master of Science
      • Financial Management, Graduate Certificate
      • Financial Management, Graduate Certificate, Investments, Graduate Certificate, Applied Economics, MS
      • Health Care Management (Part Time), Master of Science
      • Health Care Management, Master of Science
      • Information Systems, Master of Science
      • Investments, Graduate Certificate
      • Leadership Development Program, Graduate Certificate
      • Marketing (Part Time), Master of Science
      • Marketing, Master of Science
      • MBA/​Applied Economics, MS Dual Degree
      • MBA/​Biotechnology, MS Dual Degree
      • MBA/​Communication, MA Dual Degree
      • MBA/​DNP Dual Degree
      • MBA/​Government, MA Dual Degree
      • MBA/​Healthcare Organizational Leadership, MSN Dual Degree
      • MBA/​JD Dual Degree
      • MBA/​MA in International Relations
      • MBA/​MD Dual Degree
      • MBA/​MPH Dual Degree
      • MSF/​MBA Dual Degree
      • Real Estate and Infrastructure (Part Time), Master of Science
      • Real Estate and Infrastructure, Master of Science
      • Business, Minor
    • Policies and Resources
      • Academic Ethics Policy
      • Academic Progress and Standards
      • Changing Degree Program
      • Grading Policy
      • Graduation
      • Attendance Policy
      • Leave of Absence
      • Registration
      • Student Accounts
      • Transfer of Graduate Credit
      • Waiver Exams
  • Peabody Institute
    • General Information, Procedures and Regulations
      • Introduction and Nomenclature
      • Mission
      • Accreditation
      • Links
      • Honor Societies
    • Procedural Information
      • Applicability
      • Studio Assignments
      • Course Numbering
      • Large Ensemble Participation
      • Competitions
      • Recitals
      • Academic Advising
      • Inter-​Institutional Academic Arrangements
      • Study Abroad Program
      • Outside Instruction and Public Performance
    • Academic Regulations
      • Applicability
      • Academic Code of Conduct
      • Program Classification, Status, and Credit Limits
      • Sources of Credit
      • Grading System and Regulations
      • Dean's List Criteria
      • Academic Standing
      • Registration Regulations
      • Attendance and Absences
      • Interruption of Degree Work
      • Graduation Eligibility
    • Degree and Diploma Programs
      • Bachelor of Music (BM)
        • Curricula
          • Bachelor of Music in Performance
            • Composition, Bachelor of Music
            • Computer Music, Bachelor of Music
            • Guitar, Bachelor of Music
            • Harpsichord, Bachelor of Music
            • Historical Performance, Bachelor of Music
            • Jazz, Bachelor of Music
            • Music for New Media, Bachelor of Music
            • Orchestral Instruments, Bachelor of Music
            • Organ, Bachelor of Music
            • Piano, Bachelor of Music
            • Voice, Bachelor of Music
          • Bachelor of Music in Music Education
            • Composition, Bachelor of Music Education
            • Guitar, Bachelor of Music Education
            • Jazz, Bachelor of Music Education
            • Orchestral Instruments, Bachelor of Music Education
            • Piano, Bachelor of Music Education
            • Voice, Bachelor of Music Education
          • Bachelor of Music in Recording Arts
            • Composition, Bachelor of Music in Recording Arts
            • Computer Music, Bachelor of Music in Recording Arts
            • Guitar, Bachelor of Music in Recording Arts
            • Jazz, Bachelor of Music in Recording Arts
            • Orchestral Instruments, Bachelor of Music in Recording Arts
            • Piano, Bachelor of Music in Recording Arts
        • Minors
          • Business of Music, Minor
          • Directed Studies, Minor
          • Historical Performance, Minor
          • Historical Performance: Voice, Minor
          • Liberal Arts, Minor
          • Music Theory, Minor
          • Musicology, Minor
        • Combined Degree Programs
          • Peabody-​Homewood Double Degree Program
        • Accelerated Graduate Degrees
          • Five-​Year BM/​MM Program
          • Five-​Year BMRA/​MA Program
            • Five-​Year BM/​MA: Music for New Media Variant
      • Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA)
        • Minors
      • Master of Music (MM)
        • Master of Music: Performance
          • Composition, Master of Music
          • Computer Music, Master of Music
          • Guitar, Master of Music
          • Harpsichord, Master of Music
          • Historical Performance Instruments, Master of Music
          • Historical Performance Voice, Master of Music
          • Jazz, Master of Music
          • Orchestral Conducting, Master of Music
          • Orchestral Instruments, Master of Music
          • Organ, Master of Music
          • Piano, Master of Music
          • Piano: Ensemble Arts Vocal Accompanying, Master of Music
          • Wind Conducting, Master of Music
          • Voice, Master of Music
        • Master of Music: Academic Majors
          • Performance/​Pedagogy, Master of Music
          • Music Education, Master of Music
          • Musicology, Master of Music
          • Music Theory Pedagogy, Master of Music
        • Master of Music: Low Residency
      • Master of Arts (MA)
        • Acoustics, Master of Arts
          • Five-​Year BM/​MA Program Requirements: Acoustics
        • Recording Arts and Sciences, Master of Arts
          • Five-​Year BM/​MA Program Requirements: Recording Arts
      • Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA)
        • Composition, Doctor of Musical Arts
        • Guitar, Doctor of Musical Arts
        • Historical Performance Instruments, Doctor of Musical Arts
        • Orchestral Conducting, Doctor of Musical Arts
        • Orchestral Instruments, Doctor of Musical Arts
        • Organ, Doctor of Musical Arts
        • Piano, Doctor of Musical Arts
        • Voice, Doctor of Musical Arts
        • Wind Conducting, Doctor of Musical Arts
      • Performer’s Certificate (PC)
        • Guitar, Performer's Certificate
        • Orchestral Instruments, Performer's Certificate
        • Organ, Performer's Certificate
        • Piano, Performer's Certificate
        • Voice, Performer's Certificate
      • Graduate Performance Diploma (GPD)
      • Artist’s Diploma (AD)
    • Extension Study
      • Music Education Certification -​ Instrumental
      • Music Education Certification -​ Vocal
  • Nitze School of Advanced International Studies
    • Academic Policies and Resources
    • Degrees and Certificates
      • International Studies, Doctor of Philosophy
      • International Affairs, Doctor of
      • European Public Policy, Master of Arts
      • Global Policy, Master of Arts
      • Global Risk, Master of Arts (On-​site)
      • Global Risk, Master of Arts (Online)
      • International Affairs, Master of Arts
      • International Economics and Finance, Master of Arts
      • International Relations, Master of Arts
      • International Studies, Master of Arts
      • International Public Policy, Master of
      • Strategy, Cybersecurity, and Intelligence, Master of Arts
      • Sustainable Energy, Master of Arts (Online)
      • Chinese and American Studies, Hopkins-​Nanjing Center Certificate
      • Dual Degrees and Exchange Programs
      • Graduate Certificates
      • International Studies, Diploma
  • School of Education
    • Academic and Student Policies
      • Academic and Student Conduct Policies
      • Academic Standards
      • Grading System and Academic Records
      • Grievances and Complaints
    • Admission
    • Graduation
    • Programs
      • Doctoral Programs
        • Education (Online), EdD
        • Education, PhD
      • Master's Programs
        • Counseling, Master of Science
        • Education, Master of Science
        • Health Professions (Online), Master of Education
        • Special Education, Master of Science
      • Post Master's Certificates
        • Applied Behavior Analysis, Post–Master’s Certificate
        • Clinical Mental Health Counseling, Post–Master’s Certificate
        • Evidence-​Based Teaching in the Health Professions, Post–Master’s Certificate
      • Certificate of Advanced Graduate Study
        • Counseling, Certificate of Advanced Graduate Study
      • Graduate Certificates
        • Education of Students with Autism and Other Pervasive Developmental Disorders, Graduate Certificate
        • Educational Leadership for Independent Schools, Graduate Certificate
        • Gifted Education, Graduate Certificate
        • Leadership in Technology Integration (Online), Graduate Certificate
        • Mathematics/​STEM Instructional Leader (PreK-​6) (Online), Graduate Certificate
        • Mind, Brain and Teaching (Online), Graduate Certificate
        • School Administration and Supervision, Graduate Certificate
        • Urban Education, Graduate Certificate
    • Research and Development Centers
    • Scholarships
    • State Authorization of Distance Education and Higher Education Agencies in Other States
  • School of Medicine
    • General Information
      • Conduct in Teacher/​Learner Relationships (Student Mistreatment Policy)
      • Faculty Traveling Fellowship and Visiting Scholar Fellowship
      • Lectureships and Visiting Professorships
      • Loan Funds
      • Medical Student Advising
      • Named Professorships
      • Office of Medical Student Affairs
      • Scholarships
      • Student Research Scholarships and Awards
      • Tuition
      • Tuition and Other Fees
      • Young Investigators’ Day
    • Policies
    • Graduate Programs
      • Anatomy Education, MS
      • Applied Health Sciences Informatics, MS
      • Biochemistry, Cellular and Molecular Biology, PhD
      • Biological Chemistry, PhD
      • Biomedical Engineering, PhD
      • Biophysics and Biophysical Chemistry, PhD/​Molecular Biophysics, PhD
      • Cellular and Molecular Medicine, PhD
      • Cellular and Molecular Physiology, PhD
      • Clinical Anaplastology, MS
      • Clinical Informatics, Post-​Baccalaureate Certificate
      • Cross-​Disciplinary Program in Biomedical Sciences, PhD
      • Functional Anatomy and Evolution, PhD
      • Health Sciences Informatics, PhD
      • Health Sciences Informatics–Research, MS
      • History of Medicine, MA (On-​site)
      • History of Medicine, MA (Online)
      • History of Medicine, PhD
      • History of Medicine, Post-​Baccalaureate Certificate (Online)
      • Human Genetics and Molecular Biology, PhD
      • Immunology, PhD
      • Medical and Biological Illustration, MA
      • Medical Physics, MS
      • Neuroscience, PhD
      • Pathobiology, PhD
      • Pharmacology, PhD
    • Medical Program
      • Doctor of Medicine, MD
      • MD-​PhD, Combined Degree
      • Subject Areas
        • Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine
        • Biological Chemistry
        • Biomedical Engineering
        • Biophysics and Biophysical Chemistry
        • Cell Biology
        • Dermatology
        • Emergency Medicine
        • Epidemiology
        • Functional Anatomy and Evolution
        • Gynecology and Obstetrics
        • Health Sciences Informatics
        • History of Medicine
        • Institute of Genetic Medicine
        • Medicine
        • Molecular and Comparative Pathobiology
        • Molecular Biology and Genetics
        • Multi-​Department Courses
        • Neurology
        • Neuroscience
        • Oncology
        • Ophthalmology
        • Pathology
        • Pediatrics
        • Pharmacology and Molecular Sciences
        • Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation
        • Physiology
        • Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
        • Public Health
        • Radiation Oncology and Molecular Radiation Sciences
        • Radiology and Radiological Science
        • Section of Surgical Sciences
    • Postdoctoral Fellows
  • School of Nursing
    • Admission
    • Advising
    • Certificates
      • Healthcare Organizational Leadership, Post-​Master’s Certificate
      • Nursing Education, Post-​Master's Certificate
      • Pediatric Acute Care Nurse Practitioner, Post-​Master's Certificate
      • Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner, Post-​Master's Certificate
    • Doctoral Degrees
      • Doctor of Nursing Practice, Advanced Practice Track
        • Adult-​Gerontological Acute Care Nurse Practitioner, DNP Advanced Practice Track
        • Adult-​Gerontological Critical Care Clinical Nurse Specialist, DNP Advanced Practice Track
        • Adult-​Gerontological Health Clinical Nurse Specialist, DNP Advanced Practice Track
        • Adult-​Gerontological Primary Care Nurse Practitioner, DNP Advanced Practice Track
        • Family Primary Care Nurse Practitioner, DNP Advanced Practice Track
        • Nurse Anesthesia, DNP Advanced Practice Track
        • Pediatric Critical Care Clinical Nurse Specialist, DNP Advanced Practice Track
        • Pediatric Dual Primary/​Acute Care Nurse Practitioner, DNP Advanced Practice Track
        • Pediatric Primary Care Nurse Practitioner, DNP Advanced Practice Track
        • Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner, DNP Advanced Practice Track
      • Doctor of Nursing Practice: Executive Track
      • Nursing, Doctor of Philosophy
      • Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP): Advanced Practice Track/​Doctor of Philosophy in Nursing (PhD) Dual Degree
    • Dual Degrees
      • DNP Executive/​MBA Dual Degree
      • DNP Executive/​MPH Dual Degree
      • Healthcare Organizational Leadership, MSN/​MBA, Dual Degree
    • Financial Aid
    • Master's Degrees
      • Entry into Nursing, Master of Science in Nursing
      • Healthcare Organizational Leadership Track, Master of Science in Nursing
    • Online Prerequisites for Health Professions
    • Policies
      • Academic Integrity Policy
      • Academic Standards for Progression
      • Administrative Leave
      • Attendance Policy
      • Canvas and SON IT Help
      • Clinical Placements
      • Clinical Warnings
      • Complaint/​Grievance Policy
      • Compliance
      • Continuous Enrollment Policy
      • Course Policies
      • Criminal Conduct Policy
      • Examination Policy
      • Grading Policy
      • Health Insurance for Students
      • Incomplete Coursework
      • Independent Study Policy
      • Involuntary Leave of Absence
      • Leave of Absence or Withdrawal
      • Letters of Recommendation
      • NCLEX
      • Non-​Degree-​Seeking Students
      • Notification of Missed Clinical Time
      • Pet Guidelines
      • Printing and Copying
      • Professional Attire Policy
      • Professional Ethics Policy
      • Registration Policies and Procedures
      • Religious Observance Attendance Policy
      • Student Code of Conduct
      • Technical Standards for Admission and Graduation
      • Transcripts and Enrollment Verifications
      • Transfer of Graduate Credit
    • Tuition and Fees
  • Whiting School of Engineering
    • Full-​time, On-​campus Undergraduate and Graduate Programs (Homewood)
      • Undergraduate Policies
        • Academic Policies
          • Requirements for a Bachelor's Degree
          • Student Status
          • Registration Policies
          • Grading Policies
          • Academic Standing Policies
          • External Credit Policies
          • Study Abroad Policies
          • Graduation Policies
        • Student Life Policies
      • Graduate Policies
        • Graduate-​Specific Policies
        • Academic Policies
        • Admissions and Finances
        • Student Life
          • International Graduate Students
      • Departments, Program Requirements, and Courses
        • Applied Mathematics and Statistics
          • Applied Mathematics and Statistics, Bachelor of Arts
          • Applied Mathematics and Statistics, Bachelor of Science
          • Applied Mathematics and Statistics, Master of Science in Engineering
          • Applied Mathematics and Statistics, Minor
          • Applied Mathematics and Statistics, PhD
          • Data Science, Master's Degree
          • Financial Mathematics, Master of Science in Engineering
        • Biomedical Engineering
          • Bioengineering Innovation and Design, Master of Science in Engineering
          • Biomedical Engineering, Bachelor of Arts
          • Biomedical Engineering, Bachelor of Science
          • Biomedical Engineering, Master of Science in Engineering
          • Biomedical Engineering, PhD through the School of Medicine
        • Center for Leadership Education
          • Accounting and Financial Management, Minor
          • Engineering Management, Master of Science
          • Entrepreneurship and Management, Minor
          • Leadership Studies, Minor
          • Marketing and Communications, Minor
          • Professional Communication Program
          • Professional Development Program
        • Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
          • Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Bachelor of Science
          • Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Master of Science in Engineering
          • Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, PhD
        • Civil &​ Systems Engineering
          • Civil Engineering, Bachelor of Science
          • Systems Engineering, Bachelor of Science
          • Civil Engineering, Master of Science in Engineering (MSE)
          • Civil Engineering, Minor
          • Civil and Systems Engineering, PhD
          • Systems Engineering, Master of Science in Engineering (MSE)
        • Computational Medicine
          • Computational Medicine, Minor
          • Computational Medicine, Pre-​Doctoral Training Program
        • Computer Science
          • Computer Science, Bachelor of Arts
          • Computer Science, Bachelor of Science
          • Computer Science, Master of Science in Engineering
          • Computer Science, Minor
          • Computer Science, PhD
        • Doctor of Engineering
          • Engineering, Doctor of Engineering
        • Electrical and Computer Engineering
          • Computer Engineering, Bachelor of Science
          • Electrical and Computer Engineering, Master of Science in Engineering
          • Electrical and Computer Engineering, PhD
          • Electrical Engineering, Bachelor of Arts
          • Electrical Engineering, Bachelor of Science
          • Energy, Minor
        • Environmental Health and Engineering
          • Engineering for Sustainable Development, Minor
          • Environmental Engineering, Bachelor of Science
          • Environmental Engineering, Minor
          • Environmental Sciences, Minor
          • Geography and Environmental Engineering, Master of Arts
          • Geography and Environmental Engineering, Master of Science
          • Geography and Environmental Engineering, Master of Science in Engineering
          • Geography and Environmental Engineering, PhD
          • Occupational and Environmental Hygiene, Master of Science
        • General Engineering
          • General Engineering, Bachelor of Arts
        • Information Security Institute
          • Security Informatics, Master of Science
          • Security Informatics, Master of Science/​Applied Mathematics and Statistics, Master of Science in Engineering Dual Master's Program
          • Security Informatics, Master of Science/​Computer Science, Master of Science in Engineering Dual Master's Program
        • Materials Science and Engineering
          • Materials Science and Engineering, Bachelor of Science
          • Materials Science and Engineering, Master of Science in Engineering
          • Materials Science and Engineering, PhD
        • Mechanical Engineering
          • Engineering Mechanics, Bachelor of Science
          • Mechanical Engineering, Bachelor of Science
          • Mechanical Engineering, Master of Science in Engineering
          • Mechanical Engineering, PhD
        • NanoBioTechnology
          • Nano-​Biotechnology, Certificate of Advanced Study
        • Robotics and Computational Sensing
          • Computer Integrated Surgery, Minor
          • Robotics, Master of Science in Engineering
          • Robotics, Minor
      • Multi-​School Programs of Study
        • Business, Minor
        • Peabody-​Homewood Double Degree Program
        • Space Science and Engineering
    • Part-​Time, Online Graduate Programs (Engineering for Professionals)
      • Academic Policies
        • Academic Calendar
        • Academic Regulations
        • Registration Policies
        • Tuition and Fees
      • Admission Requirements
      • Applied and Computational Mathematics
        • Applied and Computational Mathematics, Master of Science
        • Applied and Computational Mathematics, Post-​Master’s Certificate
      • Applied Biomedical Engineering
        • Applied Biomedical Engineering, Graduate Certificate
        • Applied Biomedical Engineering, Master of Science
        • Applied Biomedical Engineering, Post-​Master’s Certificate
      • Applied Physics
        • Applied Physics, Master of Science
        • Applied Physics, Post-​Master’s Certificate
      • Artificial Intelligence
        • Artificial Intelligence, Graduate Certificate
        • Artificial Intelligence, Master of Science
      • Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
        • Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Master of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
      • Civil Engineering
        • Civil Engineering, Graduate Certificate
        • Civil Engineering, Master of Civil Engineering
      • Computer Science
        • Computer Science, Master of Science
        • Computer Science, Post-​Master’s Certificate
      • Cybersecurity
        • Cybersecurity, Master of Science
        • Cybersecurity, Post-​Master’s Certificate
      • Data Science
        • Data Science, Master of Science
        • Data Science, Post-​Master’s Certificate
      • Electrical and Computer Engineering
        • Electrical and Computer Engineering, Graduate Certificate
        • Electrical and Computer Engineering, Master of Science
        • Electrical and Computer Engineering, Post-​Master’s Certificate
      • Engineering Management
        • Engineering Management, Master of Engineering Management
      • Environmental Engineering, Science, and Management Programs
        • Environmental Engineering
          • Environmental Engineering, Graduate Certificate
          • Environmental Engineering, Master of Environmental Engineering
          • Environmental Engineering, Post-​Master’s Certificate
        • Environmental Engineering and Science
          • Environmental Engineering and Science, Graduate Certificate
          • Environmental Engineering and Science, Master of Science
          • Environmental Engineering and Science, Post-​Master’s Certificate
        • Environmental Planning and Management
          • Environmental Planning and Management, Graduate Certificate
          • Environmental Planning and Management, Master of Science
          • Environmental Planning and Management, Post-​Master’s Certificate
        • Climate Change, Energy, and Environmental Sustainability, Graduate Certificate
      • Financial Mathematics
        • Financial Mathematics, Master of Science
        • Financial Risk Management, Graduate Certificate
        • Quantitative Portfolio Management, Graduate Certificate
        • Securitization, Graduate Certificate
      • Healthcare Systems Engineering
        • Healthcare Systems Engineering, Master of Science
      • Information Systems Engineering
        • Information Systems Engineering, Graduate Certificate
        • Information Systems Engineering, Master of Science
        • Information Systems Engineering, Post-​Master’s Certificate
      • Materials Science and Engineering
        • Materials Science and Engineering, Master of Science
      • Mechanical Engineering
        • Mechanical Engineering, Master of Science
        • Mechanical Engineering, Post-​Master’s Certificate
      • Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
        • Occupational and Environmental Hygiene, Master of Science
      • Robotics and Autonomous Systems
        • Robotics and Autonomous Systems, Master of Science
      • Space Systems Engineering
        • Space Systems Engineering, Master of Science
      • Systems Engineering
        • Systems Engineering, Graduate Certificate
        • Systems Engineering, Master of Science
        • Systems Engineering, Master of Science in Engineering (ABET-​accredited)
        • Systems Engineering, Post-​Master’s Certificate
      • Technical Management
        • Technical Management, Graduate Certificate
        • Technical Management, Post-​Master’s Certificate
  • Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences
    • Full-​time, On-​campus Undergraduate and Graduate Programs (Homewood)
      • Undergraduate Policies
        • Academic Policies
          • Requirements for a Bachelor's Degree
          • Student Status
          • Registration Policies
          • Grading Policies
          • Academic Standing Policies
          • External Credit Policies
          • Study Abroad Policies
          • Graduation Policies
        • Student Life Policies
      • Graduate Policies
        • Academic Policies
        • Admissions and Finances
        • Graduate-​Specific Policies
        • Student Life
          • International Graduate Students
      • Departments, Program Requirements, and Courses
        • Anthropology
          • Anthropology, Bachelor of Arts
          • Anthropology, Minor
          • Anthropology, PhD
        • Archaeology
          • Archaeology, Bachelor of Arts
        • Behavioral Biology Program
          • Behavioral Biology, Bachelor of Arts
        • Bioethics
          • Bioethics, Minor
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Department website: http://compthoughtlit.jhu.edu/

The faculty of the Department of Comparative Thought and Literature shares an ongoing commitment to questions at the intersection of literature, philosophy and aesthetics. Central to these concerns is the analysis of literary and philosophical texts, ranging across a set of diverse traditions, genres, and languages, in juxtaposition to ethics, religion, history, art history, anthropology, media studies, political theory, and the natural sciences. Questions of literary theory, the history and value of literature, and the constitution and development of philosophical and literary forms in a global context are similarly at the forefront of the department’s research and teaching.

The department’s interdisciplinary nature is one of its main strengths and provides crucial common ground for scholars from humanities departments across the university. Faculty members work in a variety of fields but are unified by a common investment in intellectual curiosity, flexibility, open-mindedness, and careful reading and criticism. Graduate students are encouraged to undertake projects addressing authentic philosophical or theoretical problems without the restriction of disciplinary conventions. Students may also cultivate strong ties with faculty in other departments working in their areas of interest.

Every year, the department hosts at least two associates, who are faculty members from other institutions that stay for an extended period to present lectures, give seminars, and interact with faculty and students. Previous and current associates include many distinguished scholars, such as Anita LaFrance Allen, Susan James, Barbara Cassin, David Wellbery, Robert Pippin, Jean-Luc Marion, Eli Friedlander, Sari Nusseibeh, and Toril Moi.

History

In the mid-20th century, the department, which was then known as the Humanities Center, was established as a meeting ground for the various humanities departments. With Charles Singleton as its first director, the center aimed to strengthen the humanities at Johns Hopkins and provide a place where scholars could engage in theoretical reflections on the human sciences, including recent European movements such as structuralist thought and literary hermeneutics.

The department’s first full academic year was 1966–67, and from the outset, its founders sought to establish a focal site for structuralism in the U.S., based on the model of the “sixième section” of the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris or the Institut für Sozialforschung at the University of Frankfurt. The conference held in the fall of its inaugural year, “The Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of Man: The Structural Controversy” brought many of the leading figures of European thought together in the U.S. and continues to be cited as both the substantial introduction of structuralist thought into the American academy and an important moment of transition between structuralism and post-structuralism. This model of exchange and innovation continued into the 21st century with a robust program of visiting scholars, professors, and lecturers.

As of January 1, 2018, the name of the Humanities Center has been changed to Department of Comparative Thought and Literature. The new name recognizes the department’s ongoing commitment to serious interdisciplinary study, with a focus on questions at the intersection of literature, philosophy, and aesthetics. It also represents the various literatures, philosophies, religions, political systems, cultures, and methodologies that its faculty studies and applies.

The department offers several courses taught by its faculty. These courses provide a broad introduction to the documents and thought of Western culture for all students, from those interested in a general liberal arts preparation to those in one of the university’s pre-professional programs.

For qualified juniors and seniors preparing for graduate school, the department also offers the opportunity to pursue an independent and often interdisciplinary research project through the Honors Program.

The Department of Comparative Thought and Literature does not offer a departmental major or minor. Students who wish to concentrate on the courses that it offers should consider a major in another humanities department.

Programs

  • Honors Program in the Humanities
  • Humanistic Studies, PhD

For current course information and registration go to https://sis.jhu.edu/classes/

Courses

AS.300.102.  Great Minds.  3 Credits.  

Introductory survey of foundational texts of modern philosophy, social and political thought, and literature. This semester will include works by Plato, René Descartes, Immanuel Kant, Karl Marx, Virginia Woolf, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Iris Murdoch, Cora Diamond, Judith Butler, Kwame A. Appiah, Jacques Derrida, and others. The course is taught in lectures and in seminar discussions.

Area: Humanities

AS.300.145.  Humanities Collaboratory.  3 Credits.  

The Humanities Collaboratory is designed for new researchers from across the humanities as they gain the applied skills and experience to conduct their own independent research projects in the humanities. The Humanities Collaboratory model uses a high-tech classroom to allow students and instructors to work, learn, and research together. Three sections of this course will share a core list of materials focused on humanities research techniques, but your primary course materials will be individually selected. Students will have the unique opportunity to participate in a humanities lab section where all three course sections merge for discussion. You will choose your own topic to research with no limits of time period, subject, or genre, and through constant collaborative and independent research, each student will develop the expertise in that topic to both write a research paper and create a final oral presentation.

Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

AS.300.207.  The American Literature of the Movies.  3 Credits.  

This course brings the question of film's status as art into historical focus by approaching it through the various forms of writing that cinema inspired. Following a brief historical and philosophical preamble, each of the three sections will present a literary vantage point on the movies: "inside," "outside," and "alongside." The "alongside" section centers on poets who incorporated film into an adjacent art form, the "inside" section centers on those within the moviemaking industry who wrote about it in their fiction, and "outside" on those who criticized and theorized it. Films that exemplify the issues at hand will accompany each section. Relevant scholarly and theoretical texts elucidate the topics, texts, and films of concern. Students will have the opportunity to read works by H.D., Hart Crane, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Agee, and other notable writers from the first half of the 20th century.

Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

AS.300.227.  Business Fictions.  3 Credits.  

When you are working for a company, how do you distinguish your ideas, actions, and responsibilities from the firms’—if that is even possible? What is corporate culture or a corporate person, and how is it similar or different from any other kind of culture or person? These and related questions inspired and fascinated writers from the nineteenth century through the present. By reading and thinking about short stories, novels, film, a television series, and a play, we will explore these issues and potential resolutions to them. The course especially considers how problems of action, agency, and responsibility become an intriguing challenge for writers of a variety of modern and contemporary fictions of the business world. Texts will include short stories by Herman Melville, Alice Munro, Ann Petry, and John Cheever; novels by Willa Cather, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Lydia Millet; films, plays, and television by Charlie Chaplin, David Mamet, and Dan Harmon (Community).

Area: Humanities

AS.300.300.  Honors Seminar.  3 Credits.  

The Honors Seminar is a mandatory component of the Honors Program in Humanities, which offers qualified undergraduates the possibility of pursuing an independent research project in their Junior and Senior years in any humanistic discipline or combination of disciplines: intellectual history, comparative literature, philosophy, critical theory, psychoanalysis, religion, film, etc., as well as points of intersection between the arts and the sciences. Sophomores who plan to study abroad in their Junior year should also consider applying to the Program. In the 2021-2022 academic year, the Seminar will focus on a close reading of Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych and associated texts by Plato, Montaigne, Heidegger, Beauvoir, Levi, Gawande, and others on death and dying.

Area: Humanities

AS.300.301.  Women and Work in the US.  3 Credits.  

This course offers an introduction to the political forces, cultural values, and social factors which have shaped the history of women’s labor in the US. This course will ask question such as: Why do we place a higher value on work which takes place in the public sphere than work in the home? How do representations of work in literature and popular movies reinforce or subvert gender roles? How have women negotiated gendered and racial boundaries through political action or writing? Focusing on racialized labor, domestic labor, sex work, and factory work, the course will provide an interdisciplinary cultural study of women’s work relevant to our current historical moment. Authors discussed include Saidiya Hartman, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Emma Goldman, and Kathi Weeks.

Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

AS.300.311.  Introduction to Intellectual History.  3 Credits.  

This course offers a conceptual and historical introduction to Intellectual History. What makes the “history of ideas” different from the history of other objects? What, if anything, distinguishes the history of ideas from the history of philosophy? What is it exactly that we call “ideas”? In what sense do they have a history? These are examples of the kind of questions addressed in the course.

Area: Humanities

AS.300.312.  Imagining Revolution and Utopia.  3 Credits.  

What form should revolution take, and what should society look like after the revolution? What would happen to the state, family, home, status of women, human interrelations, and everyday life? These questions consumed radicals in 19th century Russia and Europe, and their answers helped to shape the political culture of the 20th century. This course examines theories of revolution and utopia and responses to them in literature, art and film. Primary case study is Russia and the Soviet Union, with a comparative look at influential European works.

Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

AS.300.317.  The Russian Novel.  3 Credits.  

This course introduces students to the nineteenth century Russian novel and considers its lasting impact on world culture. We will read classic masterpieces of the psychological and philosophical novel, and their experimental forerunners. Short lectures on historical and cultural context and on methods of literary analysis will be combined with intensive group discussion. Novels include Anna Karenina, Crime and Punishment, Eugene Onegin, Dead Souls, and Hero of our Time.

Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

AS.300.319.  The Modernist Novel: Mann, Woolf, and Joyce.  3 Credits.  

In this course, we will survey the major works of three of the greatest, most relentless innovators of the twentieth century – Thomas Mann, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce – who explored and exploded narrative techniques for depicting what Woolf called the “luminous halo” of life.

Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

AS.300.322.  Lu Xun And His Times: China’s Long 20th Century And Beyond.  3 Credits.  

The “founding father of modern Chinese literature,” Lu Xun (1881-1936) saw himself as a contemporary of writers like Gogol, Ibsen, and Nietzsche in creating his seminal short stories and essays, and likewise, he has been seen by numerous Chinese, Sinophone, and East Asian writers as their contemporary since his lifetime until today. In this course, we will survey Lu Xun's canonical works and their legacies through a comparative approach. What echoes do Lu Xun's works have with the European and Russian texts he engaged with? Why did his works manage to mark a “new origin” of Chinese literature? How were his works repeated, adapted, and appropriated by Chinese writers from the Republican period through the Maoist era to the post-socialist present, even during the Covid-19 pandemic? How do we assess his cross-cultural reception? Are his times obsolete now that China is on the rise? Or, have his times come yet? Through our comparative survey, Lu Xun's works and their afterlives will offer us a window onto China's long twentieth century and beyond in a transnational context. All materials are provided in English translation.

Area: Humanities

AS.300.323.  Shakespeare and Ibsen.  3 Credits.  

William Shakespeare and Henrik Ibsen are the two most frequently performed playwrights in history, and both have been credited with reinventing drama: Shakespeare for the Elizabethan stage and Ibsen for the modern. In this course we will pair together plays by each author – those that stand in an explicit relation of influence as well as those that share a significant set of concerns – in order to investigate how each takes up and transform key problems in the literary, political, and philosophical tradition for their own historical moment. Plays to be studied: by Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, The Tempest, A Winter’s Tale; by Ibsen, St. John’s Night, Hedda Gabler, Rosmersholm, The Wild Duck, The Master Builder, When We Dead Awaken.

Area: Humanities

AS.300.324.  Cinema of the 1930s: Communist and Capitalist Fantasies.  3 Credits.  

Comedy and musical comedy film flourished in the USA during the Great Depression as well as in the USSR during the Stalinist Great Terror. This course will compare films of the era in a variety of genres (musical, epic, Western, drama), examining the intersections between politics and aesthetics as well as the lasting implications of the films themselves in light of theoretical works on film as a medium, ethics and gender.

Area: Humanities

AS.300.328.  Contemporary Sinophone Literature and Film.  3 Credits.  

A survey of contemporary literature and film from the peripheries of the Chinese-speaking world, with a special focus on Hong Kong, Taiwan, and overseas Chinese communities in Southeast Asia, the Americas, and Europe. We will not only examine literary and filmic works in the contexts of the layered histories and contested politics of these locations, but will also reexamine, in light of those works, critical concepts in literary and cultural studies including, but not limited to, form, ideology, hegemony, identity, history, agency, translation, and (post)colonialism. All readings are in English; all films subtitled in English.

Area: Humanities

AS.300.330.  Modern East Asian Literatures Across Boundaries.  3 Credits.  

Modern literature in East Asia is as much defined by creation of national boundaries as by their transgressions, negotiations, and reimaginations. This course examines literature originally written in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean in light of contemporary understandings of political, social, and cultural boundary demarcation and crossings. How do experiences of border-crossing create and/or alter literary forms? How, in turn, does literature inscribe, displace, and/or dismantle boundaries? Our readings will include, but not limited to, writings by intra- and trans-regional travelers, exiles, migrants, and settlers; stories from and on contested borderlands and islands (e.g. Manchuria, Okinawa, Jeju); and works and translations by bilingual authors. All readings are provided in English translation.

Area: Humanities

AS.300.331.  The Authoritarian Image: Russian Cinema from Stalin to Putin.  3 Credits.  

Vladimir Putin’s charismatic authority has a deep history in Russian culture. We’ll investigate that history through cinema, which Lenin called “the most important of the arts.” While Soviet cinema often served as immersive propaganda, directors also found ways to question authority and power. Films to be screened range from Sergei Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible (1944) to the 2013 documentary Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer. This course will combine study of Russian and Soviet culture from the end of World War II to the present with study of film history, style, and technique.

Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

AS.300.332.  From Chekhov to Chernobyl: Russian Literature of Environmental Catastrophe.  3 Credits.  

Environmental degradation and disaster offer a steady backdrop to the 20th century in Russia and the Soviet Union. While the Soviet regime promised mastery over the environment and Russian culture valorized the harmonization of humans with the natural world, environmental catastrophe proved the folly of those dreams. We will read works by authors who havegrappled with this ongoing catastrophe and its implications for relations between human beings and the world. Texts range from short stories and novellas to modernist experimental fiction and documentary prose. We will also engage with materials in special collections and screen selected films. Authors include: Chekhov, Bulgakov, Platonov, Solzhenitsyn, Rasputin,Petrushevskaya, and the Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich.

Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

AS.300.334.  Love and its maladies.  3 Credits.  

Much of what we know about love and desire we owe to fiction’s ability to evoke these experiences. Consider for example that the publication, in Germany, of The Sorrows of Young Werther inspired young men across Europe to dress and behave just like this lover. Just as nowadays film and television represent, as well as mold our conceptions of love, love-stories from the eighteenth-century onwards have given shape to gendered subjectivities in ways that still matter now. As, intriguingly, illness is a recurrent theme in many modern love stories, we will be prompted to decipher signs and symptoms in the bodies of mind of our protagonists. Why is it that in Western cultures, passion is tightly interwoven with a landscape of pain, suffering, and disease? In studying texts that represent major aspects of a romantic sensibility, we are indeed invited to trace the steps of a history of the body increasingly defined by gender and by medical knowledge. The readings for this class (all available in English) include: Austen, Persuasion; Balzac, The Unknown Masterpiece; Barthes, Lover’s Discourse; Goethe; The Sorrows of Young Werther; Mann, Death in Venice; Winterson, Written on the Body.

Area: Humanities

AS.300.336.  Forms of Moral Community: The Contemporary World Novel.  3 Credits.  

Literary and philosophical imaginations of moral community in the post-WWII period. Texts include: Coetzee, Disgrace; McEwan, Atonement; Achebe,Things Fall Apart; Ishiguro, An Artist of the Floating World; Roy, The God of Small Things; Lessing, The Grass is Singing; Mistry, A Fine Balance; Morrison, Beloved; and essays by Levi, Strawson, Adorno, Murdoch, and Beauvoir on the deep uncertainty over moral community after the crisis of World War II. Close attention to novelistic style and narrative will inform our study of the philosophical questions that animate these works. What does it mean to acknowledge another person’s humanity? Who are the members of a moral community? Why do we hold one another responsible for our actions? How do fundamental moral emotions such as contempt, humiliation, compassion, gratitude, forgiveness, and regret reveal the limits of a moral community?

Area: Humanities

AS.300.337.  The Tragic Tradition.  3 Credits.  

This course offers a broad survey of tragic drama in the Western tradition, from its origins in ancient Greece to the twentieth century. In weekly lectures and discussion sections, we will study the specific literary features and historical contexts of a range of different works, and trace the continuities and transformations that shape them into a unified tradition. Key questions and themes throughout the semester will include what counts as tragic, the tragedy of social and political conflict, the bearing of tragedy on the meaning and value of life, the antagonistic relation between world and humans, the promises and dangers of tragedy for contemporary culture. Authors to be studied: Sophocles, Euripides, Seneca, Shakespeare, Racine, Goethe, Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekov, Brecht, Pirandello, and Beckett.

Area: Humanities

AS.300.339.  Introduction to Comparative Literature.  3 Credits.  

This course offers an introduction to the history, theory, and praxis of comparative literature. We will read texts from some of the founding figures of the discipline and look at the most recent debates in the field, including translation studies, literary theory, and world literature, among others. Particular attention will be given to the methodologies and problems of studying literatures in different linguistic traditions and the relation between literature and other areas of thought and culture, such as philosophy, art history, and psychoanalysis. Case studies in comparative approaches to literature will provide concrete examples to our discussions.

Area: Humanities

AS.300.340.  Literature and Film of Unintended Consequences.  3 Credits.  

Sometimes brilliant ideas and plans don’t work as anticipated, or go very badly—for example, empowering the “invisible hand” of the market, building a huge hydroelectric dam, or plotting a double murder by two strangers. This course explores these and other fascinating literary instances of unintended consequences—the unanticipated results of actions that people planned ending up a very different way. Reading or watching mainly twentieth-century American literature and movies, as well as some essays and poetry, we will follow a range of different creators as they think about unplanned effects and why they matter. What can these works tell us about how we intend, act, or make meaning at the limits of our control? Texts will include films by Charlie Chaplin, Billy Wilder, and Alfred Hitchcock, poetry or fiction by Wallace Stevens, Patricia Highsmith, and Zadie Smith.

Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

AS.300.341.  Transwar Japanese and Japanophone Literatures.  3 Credits.  

A survey of Japanese and Japanese- language literatures produced in Japan and its (former)colonies during the “transwar” period, or the several years before and after the end of WWII. This periodization enables us to take into account the shifting boundaries, sovereignties, and identities amid the intensification of Japanese imperialism and in the aftermath of its eventual demise. We aim to pay particular attention to voices marginalized in this political watershed, such as those of Japanese-language writers from colonial Korea and Taiwan, intra-imperial migrants, and radical critics of Japan’s “postwar” regime. Underlying our investigation is the question of whether literature can be an agent of justice when politics fails to deliver it. We will introduce secondary readings by Adorno, Arendt, Levinas, Derrida, and Scarry, among others, to help us interrogate this question. All readings are in English.

Area: Humanities

AS.300.343.  The Cinema of Revolution.  3 Credits.  

This course examines global political revolutions through cinema and the ways in which cinema helped to make political revolutions. Early cinema was intimately intertwined with the Russian revolution, and Russian revolutionary cinema had a profound impact on the ways in which media was used for revolutionary purposes through the 20th century and around the world. Students will be introduced to films from a number of different countries, and the history and context of their production and reception. They will also learn methods of film analysis and produce their own video essay.

Area: Humanities

AS.300.344.  Literature and the World.  3 Credits.  

This course interrogates how modern literature not simply reflects the world but functions as world-making power. What is a world? How do we conceive of, live in, and change it? What if there are multiple worlds? How are literature and other aesthetic forms crucial to tackling these questions? We will survey literary and philosophical texts in a comparative setting, engaging examples from both Europe and East Asia. All readings are in English. Open to graduate students.

Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

AS.300.345.  Narrative Imagination in Philosophy and Literature.  3 Credits.  

We are constantly immersed in narratives or, as Roland Barthes said, narrative "is simply there like life itself. . . international, transhistorical, transcultural." As a bridge between experience and language, narrative informs the way we understand history, gender, politics, emotion, cognition and much more. Through reading a series of philosophical and literary texts, this course will provide a systematic understanding of how narratives are composed, how they are experienced, and eventually, how they evolve. The first part of this course will focus on building a foundation in the formal study of narrative, focusing on elements such as genre, plot, character, narrator and reader. We will start with a brief consideration of ancient approaches to literary narrative in Aristotle's Poetics and Plato's Republic. From there, we will engage with a wide range of readings in narrative theory. The second part of the course will focus on critical approaches to narrative, such as gender and narrative, social and political critique of narrative, narratives in the age of artificial intelligence, and conclude with the evolving concept of narrative in the Anthropocene.

Area: Humanities

AS.300.347.  Imagining Climate Change.  3 Credits.  

Climate change poses an existential threat to human civilization. Yet the attention and concern it receives in ordinary life and culture is nowhere near what science tells us is required. What are the causes of this mismatch between crisis and response? What accounts for our collective inability to imagine and grasp this new reality, and how can it be overcome? In pursuit of these questions, we will pair literary works and films with texts from politics, philosophy, literary theory, and religion, that frame climate change as a fundamental challenge to our ways of making sense of the human condition.

Area: Humanities

AS.300.348.  Modern Drama.  3 Credits.  

This course offers a survey of modern drama, from the mid nineteenth century to the present. We will sample a broad range of dramatic styles and movements in order to uncover the variety of ways theatre has made sense of the human experience over the past two hundred years.

Area: Humanities

AS.300.349.  Capitalism and Tragedy: from the 18th Century to Climate Change.  3 Credits.  

In contemporary discussions of climate change, it is an increasingly prevalent view that capitalism will lead to the destruction of civilization as we know it. The notion that capitalism is hostile to what makes human life worth living, however, is one that stretches back at least to the early eighteenth century. In this class, we will examine key moments in the history of this idea in works of literature, philosophy, and politics, from the birth of bourgeois tragedy in the 1720s, through topics such as imperialism and economic exploitation, to the prospects of our ecological future today. Authors to be studied: George Lillo, Balzac, Dickens, Marx and Engels, Ibsen, Weber, Brecht, Arthur Miller, Steinbeck, Pope Francis, and contemporary fiction, politics and philosophy on climate change.

Area: Humanities

AS.300.351.  The Concept of Time.  3 Credits.  

The purpose of this course is to ask the most important questions concerning the concept of time. What is time? Does time exist? Is it a fundamental aspect of the cosmos or just an illusion of human perception? Do different cultures, historical periods, or individuals have unique conceptions of time? Or are there universal aspects of time that transcend our differences? Do animals perceive time or is the perception of time a uniquely human phenomenon? Is time travel possible? The history of philosophy, both Western and Eastern, provides an array of different answers to these and other fundamental questions related to time. Additionally, there is much contemporary research on the concept that is entirely original. In the past four decades, time has been a major interdisciplinary theme, often bringing together humanists and scientists fascinated by its paradoxes. The guiding concern of this course will be to diagnose those aspects of time that are most relevant to us. What can we add to what has been written about time? Does our unique place in time—post COVID-19 pandemic, on the verge of a possible Third World War—prepare us in any specific way to examine the concept? The syllabus for the course will juxtapose canonical philosophical texts by some of the greatest thinkers of time with contemporary writings about time. The readings will support a problem-centered approach, exploring different possibilities for understanding the concept of time and different possible solutions for its many difficulties.

Area: Humanities

AS.300.366.  Russian Avant-Garde Cinema.  3 Credits.  

Russian cinema was born out of the intense artistic experimentation of the fin-de-siècle avant-garde and developed in a climate of dramatic political and cultural change in the twenties and thirties. While subject to draconian censorship in the Soviet period, it nonetheless engaged in active dialogue with the film industries of Western Europe and America and had a lasting impact on world cinema. This course examines the extraordinary flourishing of avant-garde cinema in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 30s including films by Eisenstein, Vertov, Pudovkin, and Dovzhenko, their theoretical writings, and their far-reaching influence on film and film theory. All readings in English, films subtitled in English.

Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

AS.300.367.  Seeing Like a Woman.  3 Credits.  

What does it mean to “see,” think, desire, feel, speak, act, or write “like a woman”? Gendered notions of seeing have had an impact on politics and society long before the #metoo movement and far beyond debates about women’s rights in isolation. This seminar examines the issues of female desire, subjectivity, spectatorship and performance in fiction, poetry, memoir and film from a variety of cultures and theoretical perspectives. This is not a course on “the image of the woman” in literature, film or politics, but a course in which we examine the ways in which both male and female theorists, novelists, poets, and filmmakers have imagined how women “see,” feel, think and behave.

Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

AS.300.399.  Cinema and Philosophy.  3 Credits.  

What do films and philosophy have in common? Do films express, with their own means, philosophical problems that are relevant to our experience of ourselves and the world we live in? This term we will study such issues with a particular focus on questions of justice, truth, revenge, forgiveness, hope, hate, and fear.

Area: Humanities

AS.300.402.  What is a Person? Humans, Corporations, Robots, Trees.  3 Credits.  

Knowing who or what counts as a person seems straightforward, until we consider the many kinds of creatures, objects, and artificial beings that have been granted—or demanded or denied—that status. This course explores recent debates on being a person in culture, law, and philosophy. Questions examined will include: Should trees have standing? Can corporations have religious beliefs? Could a robot sign a contract? Materials examined will be wide-ranging, including essays, philosophy, novels, science fiction, television, film. No special background is required.

Area: Humanities

AS.300.410.  China in Imagination.  3 Credits.  

What is China? This question has gained new relevance amid the nation’s recent rise as a global power. We survey how China was imagined, represented, and conceptualized in literature, film, and philosophical writings from mainland China, overseas Chinese communities, East Asia, and the West from the late nineteenth century to the present. Through exploring this complex history, we aim to understand China and the contemporary world in a diversified, historically self-reflective way. Topics of discussion include, but not limited to, representation, identity, form, allegory, exile, diaspora, modernism, translation, world history, and universality. All readings are in English; all films subtitled in English.

Area: Humanities

AS.300.418.  The Modernist Novel: James, Woolf, and Joyce.  3 Credits.  

In this course, we will survey the major works of three of the greatest, most relentless innovators of the twentieth century – Henry James, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce – who explored and exploded narrative techniques for depicting what Woolf called the “luminous halo” of life.

Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

AS.300.421.  Introduction to Concepts and Problems of Modern Philosophy, Aesthtics, and Critical Theory.  3 Credits.  

This seminar is addressed to first and second year graduate students as well as to advanced undergraduates. It aims at providing a survey of some fundamental concepts and problems that shape modern and contemporary debates in philosophy, literary studies, and the humanities at large. This term we will study in particular notions of existence, language, truth, power, otherness, race, gender, and reality.

Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

AS.300.425.  Modernities and Comparison.  3 Credits.  

Comparative survey of literary modernities in Europe and East Asia (China, Japan, and Korea). We will study works of modern literature as well as critical and philosophical texts from these civilizations in each other’s light. We will, as a working hypothesis, begin our examination by bracketing off the conventional center-periphery (Europe-Asia) scheme and considering literary modernities to be singular and contested, yet mutually resonating attempts at reconstruction, restoration, and revolution vis-à-vis the deconstructive forces of capitalist modernity. Ultimately, we will interrogate how we should understand literary modernities in the plural, as they emerged in distant civilizations. Topics of discussion include decadence, repetition, the trope of the human, ideology, the sublime, ritual, and translation. Readings in Hegel, Nietzsche, Mann, Benjamin, Baudelaire, Proust, Breton, Soseki, Kobayashi, Wang Guowei, Lu Xun, and Yi Kwangsu. All readings are in English.

Area: Humanities

AS.300.437.  Literature and Philosophy of the Everyday.  3 Credits.  

The ordinary, the common, the everyday: why does literary realism consider the experiences of the average individual to be worthy of serious contemplation? In this course, we will read closely a set of novels by Flaubert, Mann, Dickens, Eliot, Zola,Tolstoy, and Woolf from the period between 1850 and 1950 in which the development of realism reaches it climax. These novels transform the conventions for the representation of lives of lower and middle class subjects, revealing such lives as capable of prompting reflection upon deep and serious questions of human existence. Theoretical and philosophical texts on the everyday by Auerbach, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Sartre, Beauvoir, Lefebvre, Certeau, and Wittgenstein will accompany our discussions.

Area: Humanities

AS.300.439.  Stories of hysteria.  3 Credits.  

Many are the stories that recount episodes of hysteria, and we owe them not only to medicine. To the modern observer, they are a puzzle, involving strange beliefs about wandering wombs, demonic possession, and female virtue (or lack thereof). Closer to our time, contemporary media, as well as accounts in the social and clinical sciences have evoked cases of “mass hysteria” in America and across the globe. Marriage, it was thought for a long time, might be the best cure, which might be the reason case-studies of this illness can be as intriguing and troubling as novels. Against a backdrop of medical and historical materials, we will examine a selection of stories, from the 17th century onward, that evoke aspects of hysteria. They serve as our case-studies and as prompts to study an illness born at the convergence of histories and myths, of medical science, and of cultural and gender assumptions. Among the notions we will explore: The birth of psychoanalysis, trauma and PTSD, the concept of repression, the visual aspects of an illness and its spread in the arts, including cinema.

Area: Humanities

AS.300.501.  Independent Study.  1 - 3 Credits.  

Prerequisite(s): You must request Independent Academic Work using the Independent Academic Work form found in Student Self-Service: Registration > Online Forms.

AS.300.508.  Honors Seminar.  3 Credits.  

The Honors Seminar is a mandatory component of the Honors Program in Humanities, which offers qualified undergraduates the possibility of pursuing an independent research project in their Junior and Senior years in any humanistic discipline or combination of disciplines: intellectual history, comparative literature, philosophy, critical theory, psychoanalysis, religion, film, etc., as well as points of intersection between the arts and the sciences. Sophomores who plan to study abroad in their Junior year should also consider applying to the Program. In the 2021-2022 academic year, the Seminar will focus on a close reading of Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych and associated texts by Plato, Montaigne, Heidegger, Beauvoir, Levi, Gawande, and others on death and dying.

Prerequisite(s): You must request Independent Academic Work using the Independent Academic Work form found in Student Self-Service: Registration > Online Forms.

AS.300.601.  How to Read Proust?.  

Given the difficulty of his prose, closely and patiently would seem the best way to read Proust, but who has time – time to read a book that, ironically, begins with “Longtemps” and ends with “le temps”? This course will offer for critical examination surgically selected passages of A la Recherche du Temps Perdu as a training ground for the (lost?) art of close reading and as entry points into wide-ranging aspects of literary criticism and theory.Open to advanced undergraduates with permission of the instructor.Taught in English. Knowledge of French is desirable, but not required.

Area: Humanities

AS.300.608.  The Physics and Metaphysics of Handwriting.  

When word processing machines that can be held in the palm of a hand, why use pen and paper? Handwriting -- and its juxtaposition against digital forms of communication -- offers a unique approach to studying human interactions and the ways in which meaning, truth, intimacy, and agency are shaped by our changing technologies. At a time of exponential growth in machine writing, a study of this older form of communication enables a comparative approach that, perhaps surprisingly, opens up what are contemporary political questions. Centered on a few case-studies involving works by Sand, Chopin, Manet, Giacometti, Mallarmé, and Proust, this course takes a backward glance at a culture of written expression at a great remove from our word processing world and yet explicitly vested in an aesthetics of free expression. This modern graphological culture saw in the tracings of the hand, the uniquely personal marks of an intertwining of mind, body, and of subjectivity. Merleau-Ponty and recent word on embodiment will provide us with critical tools for our investigations into the “physics” of this activity, as will the methods of textual criticism and the new domain of creativity studies. The “metaphysics” of handwriting call, meanwhile, for a return to Heidegger, to Derrida and other major contemporary theorists of writing. They will help us see how hand and digital writing emerge as fundamentally different modes of human expression – philosophically and politically. Knowledge of French is not required for this course. Undergraduates accepted with the permission of the professor.

Area: Humanities

AS.300.613.  Modern Drama.  

This course offers a survey of modern drama, from the mid nineteenth century to the present. We will sample a broad range of dramatic styles and movements in order to uncover the variety of ways theatre has made sense of the human experience over the past two hundred years.

AS.300.614.  The End of Art.  

In this course we will examine Hegel’s seminal claim that art has come to an end in the modern world. In addition to Hegel’s original argument, readings will include important elaborations of the idea by Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Adorno. In a final section of the course, we will relate these texts to reflections on the function and prospects of art under the unprecedented condition of the Anthropocene.

Area: Humanities

AS.300.617.  Philosophy and Literature in Either/Or.  

Celebrated and reviled alike, Kierkegaard’s 1843 Either/Or has been viewed as both the culmination of the Enlightenment project and the birth of existentialism, a playful work of romantic literature and a piece of late-Hegelian philosophy, a vindication of the secular everyday and the articulation of a modern faith in a transcendent God. In this course we read the work closely and in its entirety and pay particular attention to the relation between its philosophical arguments and literary forms of presentation.

AS.300.618.  What is a Person? Humans, Corporations, Robots, Trees..  

Knowing who or what counts as a person seems straightforward, until we consider the many kinds of creatures, objects, and artificial beings that have been granted—or demanded or denied—that status. This course explores recent debates on being a person in culture, law, and philosophy. Questions examined will include: Should trees have standing? Can corporations have religious beliefs? Could a robot sign a contract? Materials examined will be wide-ranging, including essays, philosophy, novels, science fiction, television, film. No special background is required.

Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

AS.300.620.  Cosmopolitanism: Conflicted Legacies, Potential Futures.  

In its modern version cosmopolitanism is a defining aspect of Enlightenment that bespeaks its emancipatory aspirations as well as the shortcomings of its Eurocentric and gendered presuppositions. In our time of resurgence of violent nationalisms and mass refugees crises, this seminar aims at reassessing the conflicted legacies of cosmopolitanism and its critical value for the present. Authors studied include: Montaigne, Kant, Marx, Derrida, Lévinas, Kwame A. Appiah, Seyla Benhabib, and others.

Area: Humanities

AS.300.621.  Immersive Poetics and Permeable Screens.  

Victor Shklovsky claimed that the art exists “to return sensation to life, to make us feel objects, to make a stone feel stony.” This seminar examines various ways of understanding Shklovsky’s concept of ostranenie (“enstrangement”) across media (literature, art, cinema, and beyond) and in comparative perspective, considering the problematics of politics, philosophy, and aesthetic form. Students will be encouraged to present on texts in their own area of expertise over the course of the term.

Area: Humanities

AS.300.622.  The Concept of World: From Descartes to the Apocalypse.  

In this course we will examine the idea of the world as it operates in a range of different literary, philosophical, and theoretical contexts. Beginning with the birth of the modern world in texts like Camões’s “The Lusíads,” Descartes’s “Le Monde,” and More’s “Utopia,” we will pursue its evolution through Baumgarten’s invention of aesthetics, Kant’s critique of dialectical reason, Husserl’s phenomenology, and Heidegger’s fundamental ontology, to the rise of world literature and the study of indigenous cosmologies in contemporary anthropology. We conclude with reflections on the end of our world in the Anthropocene and its implication for the humanistic disciplines. This course serves as the proseminar in methods and theory for graduate students in Comparative Thought and Literature but is open to students in all departments.

Area: Humanities

AS.300.624.  Logics of Recognition.  

Since the publication of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, the struggle of consciousness for recognition has played an important role in moral and political philosophy. This seminar aims at studying Hegel’s account of subjectivity and its antagonistic encounter with the other as well as the responses and critiques it has elicited in contemporary philosophy. Readings include Foucault, Butler, Derrida, Lévinas, Cavell, Honneth and others.

Area: Humanities

AS.300.625.  Russian Literary and Critical Theory.  

Close reading of major authors from the Russian literary theoretical and critical tradition including Bakhtin, Eikhenbaum, Jakobson, Lotman, Shklovsky and Tynianov. Student will present primary sources or case studies from their own fields and research.

AS.300.628.  Introduction to Concepts and Problems of Modern Philosophy, Aesthtics, and Critical Theory.  

This seminar is addressed to first and second year graduate students as well as to advanced undergraduates. It aims at providing a survey of some fundamental concepts and problems that shape modern and contemporary debates in philosophy, literary studies, and the humanities at large. This term we will study in particular notions of existence, language, truth, power, otherness, race, gender, and reality.

AS.300.629.  Theory, Now and Then: Autonomy, Form, Critique.  

This course explores recent developments and disputes in critical theory in relation to their longer philosophical genealogies. The three topics—form, autonomy, and critique—have been the subject of much recent debate, contention, and new analysis, yet each was also a source of critical and philosophical interest in years past. Our aim will be to make sense of today’s interventions in conversation with earlier theory. “Historical” theory writing will include Adorno, Lukács, Cavell, and Jameson; contemporary theory will include Nicholas Brown, Rita Felski, Caroline Levine, Mark McGurl, and Toril Moi.

Area: Humanities

AS.300.631.  On Literature and Ethics.  

Arguments for the immorality of literature, the morality of literature, and the amorality of literature. Can a literary text be evaluated on ethical grounds, and how? How do literary texts make ethical arguments? What does it mean to read literary texts or do literary criticism in an ethical mode? We will be concerned throughout with the philosophical uses, and abuses, of literary forms.

Writing Intensive

AS.300.635.  Foucault’s Late Seminars: the Courage of Truth and the Care of the Self.  

In his latest seminars Foucault shifts his attention from power relations and historical scientific paradigms to the study of the history and philosophical, ethical, and political implications of the knowledge and care of the self as well as its relation to truth. In our current context, where speaking of a supposed “post-truth” epoch is commonplace, the analysis of the later works of Foucault provides precious insights in the nature of subjectivity, social and power relations, and the enduring significance of the search for truth regardless of any particular epistemological attempt to define what ‘truth really is.’

AS.300.638.  Happy and Unhappy Words: Austin, Wittgenstein, and Cavell.  

This seminar studies how words help shaping the world we inhabit and how the power and limits of language affect the possibility of living in a shared world in the works of Austin, Wittgenstein, Cavell and others.

Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

AS.300.639.  Literature and Philosophy of the Everyday.  

The ordinary, the common, the everyday: why does literary realism consider the experiences of the average individual to be worthy of serious contemplation? In this course, we will read closely a set of novels by Flaubert, Mann, Dickens, Eliot, Zola,Tolstoy, and Woolf from the period between 1850 and 1950 in which the development of realism reaches it climax. These novels transform the conventions for the representation of lives of lower and middle class subjects, revealing such lives as capable of prompting reflection upon deep and serious questions of human existence. Theoretical and philosophical texts on the everyday by Auerbach, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Sartre, Beauvoir, Lefebvre, Certeau, and Wittgenstein will accompany our discussions.

AS.300.647.  Comparative Methods and Theory: Formalism and Materialism (Graduate Pro-Seminar).  

This pro-seminar provides a brief overview and map of the theoretical and philosophical positions in the major debate, still ongoing, between formalism and materialism. Its aim is both theoretical and historical: to help graduate students understand the range and depth of these positions as well as their development over time, continuing to this day. We will study fundamental philosophical works (Kant, Hegel, Marx, de Beauvoir), classic theoretical texts (Propp, Lévi-Strauss, Foucault, Derrida, Bourdieu), and contemporary variations on these debates (Fish, McGurl, Moi, Pippin), to name a few. The course fulfills the pro-seminar requirements in comparative methods and theory for CTL but is open to all graduate students.

Area: Humanities

AS.300.666.  Russian Avant-Garde Cinema.  

Russian cinema was born out of the intense artistic experimentation of the fin-de-siècle avant-garde and developed in a climate of dramatic political and cultural change in the twenties and thirties. While subject to draconian censorship in the Soviet period, it nonetheless engaged in active dialogue with the film industries of Western Europe and America and had a lasting impact on world cinema. This course examines the extraordinary flourishing of avant-garde cinema in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 30s including films by Eisenstein, Vertov, Pudovkin, and Dovzhenko, their theoretical writings, and their far-reaching influence on film and film theory. All readings in English, films subtitled in English.

Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

AS.300.802.  Independent Study Field Exam.  
AS.300.803.  Dissertation Research.  
AS.300.804.  Dissertation Research.  
AS.300.805.  Literary Pedagogy.  
AS.300.810.  Thesis Seminar.  

Thesis Seminar.

AS.300.811.  Independent Study.  

New course

Area: Humanities

AS.300.891.  Summer Research.  

Summer Research

Cross Listed Courses

Computer Science

EN.601.769.  Events Semantics in Theory and Practice.  3 Credits.  

This course explores selected topics in the nature of event representations from the perspective of cognitive science, computer science, linguistics, and philosophy. These fields have developed a rich array of scientific theories about the representation of events, and how humans make inferences about them -- we investigate how (and if) such theories could be applied to current research topics and tasks in computational semantics such as inference from text, automated summarization, veridicality assessment, and so on. In addition to classic articles dealing with formal semantic theories, the course considers available machine-readable corpora, ontologies, and related resources that bear on event structure, such as WordNet, PropBank, FrameNet, etc.. The course is aimed to marry theory with practice: students with either a computational or linguistic background are encouraged to participate. [Applications]

EN.601.783.  Vision as Bayesian Inference.  3 Credits.  

This is an advanced course on computer vision from a probabilistic and machine learning perspective. It covers techniques such as linear and non-linear filtering, geometry, energy function methods, markov random fields, conditional random fields, graphical models, probabilistic grammars, and deep neural networks. These are illustrated on a set of vision problems ranging from image segmentation, semantic segmentation, depth estimation, object recognition, object parsing, scene parsing, action recognition, and text captioning. [Analysis orApplications] Required course background: calculus, linear algebra (AS.110.201 or equiv.), probability and statistics (AS.553.311 or equiv.), and the ability to program in Python and C++. Background in computer vision (EN.601.461/661) and machine learning (EN.601.475) suggested but not required.

First Year Seminars

AS.001.146.  FYS: Nature, Nurture, Cognition.  3 Credits.  

Using both seminal and contemporary readings as a foundation, we will explore the foundations of cognition and how they support human cognitive development, focusing on how ‘nature’ and ‘nurture’ collaborate to shape development of the human mind. This semester, we will read at least three, and possibly four books, along with supplementary readings, as appropriate. Our focus will be on understanding the roles of nature and nurture in the context of typical and atypical development, including an understanding of how knowledge about objects, language, number, and other minds all emerge during human development, from infancy to adulthood, in typically and atypically developing individuals.

Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences

AS.001.189.  FYS: Language, Advertising, and Propaganda.  3 Credits.  

Advertising pervades our culture; interactions with advertising are an unavoidable fact of modern life. This class uses tools from linguistics and cognitive science to analyze these interactions, and understand the impact of advertising on its viewers. A central theme is to treat ads as communicative acts, and explore the consequences -- what can theories of communication (from linguistics, psychology, and philosophy) tell us about ads? How do ads use central features of human cognition to accomplish their aims? Do ads manipulate, and if so, how successfully? The theories of communication we explore include Gricean pragmatics, theories of speech acts, linguistic theories of presuppositions, and more. Students will collect, analyze, and discuss advertisements in all mediums.

Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences

Music

AS.376.371.  Introduction to Music Cognition.  3 Credits.  

What underlies our aesthetic response to music? How and why are we able to identify certain sounds as music? To what extent are music and natural language similar? What is it about music that evokes such powerful emotions such as happiness and sadness? What is unique to musical creativity? Examining such questions from cognitive science, neuroscience, psychology, and philosophical perspectives, this course explores relevant research and theory in the emerging domain of music perception and cognition. Students will complete a final research paper on the topic of their choice that integrates the course material.

Area: Natural Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences

AS.376.372.  Topics in Music Cognition.  3 Credits.  

This course explores the similarities and differences between music and language, the effects of musical training on cognitive development, and the expressive power of music, with an introduction to music and its role in film. We will read relevant research and theory on these topics from cognitive science, neuroscience, psychology, musicology, and philosophical perspectives.

Area: Natural Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences

Psychological & Brain Sciences

AS.200.313.  Models of Mind and Brain.  3 Credits.  

This is a seminar surveying computational approaches to understanding mental and neural processes, including sensory and conceptual representation, categorization, learning and memory. The course will also develop familiarity with computational tools such as numerical simulation, linear transformation and data visualization. Recommended Course Background: AS.110.106 / Calculus I OR AS.110.108 Calculus I, AS.050.101 / Cognition OR AS.200.211 / Sensation & Perception OR AS.080.105 / Introduction to Neuroscience OR other introductory coursework in cognitive & neural sciences. Experience with at least one programming language is strongly recommended.

Area: Quantitative and Mathematical Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences

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