IS-126-1: Global Narratives in the Arts of Europe
Westmont College
Europe Semester, Fall, 2015
PROFESSOR:
Dr. Randall J. VanderMey, Professor of English
Phone: 805-565-7145
Office: Reynolds Hall 101
Home phone: 805-683-1115 (cell) 805-403-4251
e-mail: vanderme@westmont.edu
REQUIRED READING AND/OR VIEWING
Reference Books for History of Art
Marien, Mary Warner and William Fleming. Arts and Ideas. 10th Edition.
Belmont, CA. Thomson/Wadsworth, 2005.
A substantial, well-illustrated presentation of the history of world art
organized around key movements in the history of ideas. To be used all
semester as we visit displays of visual art throughout Europe.
Menocal, Maria Rosa. Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and
Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain. New
York: Little, Brown and Co., 2002. ISBN: 0-316-16871-8
A very readable nonfiction account of a major era of cultural synthesis that
leaves traces in Spain even today and analyzes a model of possible
reconciliation in our own troubled times.
Foundational Texts for Global Narratives in the Arts of Europe
Holy Bible: Genesis; Exodus; Joshua; Judges; Ruth; 1-2 Samuel; 1-2 Kings; 1-2
Chronicles; Job; Ezekiel; Daniel; Jonah; Matthew; Mark; Luke; John;
Revelation. (NIV) Logos App: https://www.logos.com [Chronicles,
gospels, apocalyptic visionary prose]
You may well have read and studied all of these parts of the Bible, but
probably not in the context of a course in “global narratives.” You will
encounter allusions to these biblical stories in art of all kinds in all places.
Ovid, Metamorphoses.
http://www.poetryintranslation.com/klineasovid.htm [Poetry,
translated from Latin]
A beautifully written and psychologically insightful compendium of Greek
myths that you will find echoed in paintings, sculptures, plays, and poetry
throughout Europe and in the art of other nations around the world.
Poetry
Dante Alighieri. The Divine Comedy: Inferno. Trans. Robert Pinsky. Bilingual
Edition. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1994. [Poetry]
The first of the three canticles of the great medieval vernacular Italian
visionary epic poem about the pilgrim Dante’s journey through the realms of
the afterlife, resulting in a reunion with his beloved Beatrice and
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culminating in a mystical vision of God. The reading will correspond with
our sojourn in Dante’s home city, Florence, Italy.
Fiction
Doblin, Alfred. Berlin Alexanderplatz: The Story of Franz Biberkopf. Trans.
Eugene Jolas. New York: Continuum, 1961; 2004. ISBN: 0-8264-77895
A masterpiece of German literature and the first to adopt the stream-ofconsciousness techniques of the Irish genius, James Joyce. A study of fate in
an environment of poverty, crime, and rising Nazism in 1920s Germany.
Dostoevski, Fyodor. Notes from Underground. Trans. Michael R. Katz.
Norton Critical Edition. NY: W.W. Norton & Co, 1863; 1989.
A harsh and darkly satirical study of grace, free will, love, and the
oppressiveness of the Russian bureaucracy by one of the greatest Russian
novelists.
Hesse, Hermann. Siddhartha, Demian, and Other Writings. New York:
Continuum, 1951; 2001.
A highly popular Bavarian writer, writing in German translated into English,
studies the religious cross-currents between Eastern and Western religious
systems as he retells the story of the initiation and spiritual journey of
Siddhartha Gautama.
Laforet, Carmen. Nada. Trans. Edith Grossman. New York: The Modern
Library, 1945; 2008. ISBN: 978-0-8129-7583-3
The first novel by a precocious 24-year old Spanish writer who tells the story
of a young girl’s move from rural Spain to the strangely complicated family
life among relatives in 1942 Barcelona.
Levy, Andrea. Small Island. New York: Picador, 2004. ISBN: 978-0-31242952-2
An internationally bestselling novel humorously and honestly probing the
struggle of a Jamaican couple’s struggle to assimilate in post-WWII London
against barriers of race, class, and circumstance.
Matar, Hisham. Anatomy of a Disappearance. New York: Random House,
2012.
The author, a Libyan living in exile in London, who read live to audiences at
Westmont three years ago, writes about a young Libyan boy’s struggle to
make sense of life in the absence of his father, who was kidnapped by Col.
Muammar Gaddafi’s security agents.
Shafak, Elif. The Bastard of Istanbul. New York: Penguin, 2007. ISBN: 9780-14-311271-6
A lyrical novelist traces the experience of an Arizona woman who divorces
her Armenian husband and marries into a Turkish family to get back at him,
thus opening the story upon the dark history of the Turkish people’s
genocide against the Armenians early in the 20th century.
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Memoir
Levi, Primo. The Periodic Table. New York: Random House, 1984.
A literarily written memoir of a Jewish family’s culture and struggles in the
first half of the 20th century in Europe.
Drama
Frayn, Michael. Copenhagen. New York: Anchor Books, 1998; 2008. See
Movie version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hGAq2kc6u0
A celebrated play about the difficulties of the historical conversation
between two nuclear physicists, the Dane Niels Bohr and the German Jew
Werner Hiesenberg, over the physics that contributed to the invention of the
atomic bomb.
Mayorga, Juan. Way to Heaven. Trans. David Johnston. Oberon Books,
2006.
ISBN-13: 9781840025774 ISBN-10: 1840025778
A Spanish playwright’s treatment of the manipulation of the international
Red Cross by the Nazi overseers of the Teresienstadt Concentration Camp
some distance from Prague, then-Czechoslovakia.
McBurney, Simon. A Disappearing Number. Theatre De Complicite. 1st
Edition. London: Oberon, 2008. ISBN: 978-1-84002-830-0
A multi-media play in which a scholar investigates the story of a precocious
young Indian mathematician who was championed by a Cambridge
University don.
Film
Fitzcarraldo [1982]. Dir. Werner Herzog. Starring Klaus Kinsky, Claudia
Cardinale.
A movie directed by one Germany’s most prolific and daring contemporary
filmmakers, Werner Herzog, in which a mad German visionary enlists
native help to try to build an Italian opera house deep in the Brazilian
jungles. To reach his destination he has to attempt the nearly impossible: to
drag a huge steamship over a mountain.
Triumph of the Will [1935] Dir. Leni Riefenstahl. Starring Adolf Hitler.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0kwnLzFMls
The award-winning Nazi propaganda film by a German film director,
producer, screenwriter, editor, photographer, actress and dancer who died in
2003 at the age of 101.
WHAT IS “IS-126-1, Global Narratives in the Arts of Europe”?
This course is a semester-long engagement with global narratives in fiction,
poetry, drama, film, visual arts, and music, on the 2015 Europe Semester.
Narratives are renderings of events as carefully crafted stories. The phrase ”Global
narratives” can mean several things:
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1) stories that have come to have universal popularity and
influence, such as the Italian poet Dante’s Divine Comedy or the
ancient poet Ovid’s tellings of Roman myths in Metamorphoses, not to
mention the stories in the Bible.
2) stories that emerge from globally significant conflicts, such as
Simon McBurney’s play Copenhagen, that emerges from the German
and Danish scientific research that led to the development of the atom
bomb in WWII
3) stories that represent one cultural perspective on events that
would be interpreted quite differently from an opposing cultural
perspective, such as the the Bayeux Tapestry’s Norman (French)
depiction of the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, or Primo Levi’s
memoir of Jewish life in Europe during a century of war.
Since our travel in Europe will bring us to at least 11 countries, from Scotland to
Rome, we will have many encounters with art in all of these media, art ancient and
contemporary, sacred and secular, popular and academic, amateur and
professional, state-sponsored and subversive, traditional and experimental. We
will see cathedrals, plays, art galleries, folk dances, concerts, readings, street
musicians, public ceremonies, enactments of liturgies, modern dances, and much
more.
To bring order and sense out of this wealth of experience, IS-126-1 focuses on one
of the great common denominators of the arts: the mode of narrative. By
narrative, we mean the drive and craft that shape the telling of events into a story.
By focusing on narrative, we can teach ourselves to pay keener attention to detail
in the arts, and to understand five aspects of all the arts—purposes, principles,
preparations, performances, and perspectives. Some of the stories we encounter
will be ancient: renderings of classical myth, folklore, epics, tellings and retellings
of European history. Some will express the order of medieval Christian devotion or
the struggles of early modern nation-building. Some will embody the values and
ideals of Renaissance humanism, some will serve the ends of Modern rationalism,
some will advance or resist the causes of Romantic revolutions, and some will
reflect the decadence, the commercial interests, the utopian dreams, or the violent
conflicts that so strongly marked the 20th century in European life. Some will
reflect the daily lives of European peoples, and some will reflect the world of global
influences that have flowed through European markets and systems of value.
For a fuller grasp of narrative at work in the arts, we will devote part of our study
to the history of the arts and artistic ideas in Europe, part of it to theories of
narrative, part of it to critiques of artistic presentations, and part to creative
productions on the parts of students—productions ranging from theatrical
improvisations to expressive movement to readings or displays of original work in
writing or visual art.
GOALS FOR STUDENTS
The primary goals for this course are consistent with the goals for General
Education (GE) courses in the Common Inquiries section under the headings
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“Performing and Interpreting the Arts” (II. 4. in the G.E. program) and “Thinking
Globally.” Here is wording from the “Description of General Education Program”:
Thinking Globally. Changes in economic, political and environmental
conditions are contributing to an increasingly interdependent and connected
world. Students will study cultural, religious, political or economic practices
with an eye to appreciating interactions between people from different
ethnicities and world contexts. In the process, they will better understand
other perspectives and world views---extending beyond those rooted in
“Western” experiences—and will appreciate the deep influence of culture on
the categories one uses to understand the world. Acquiring a global
perspective equips students to be informed agents of redemption and justice in
a rapidly changing world.
Performing and Interpreting the Arts. Students will expand their
understanding of the fine arts and performing arts, including music, visual arts,
theatre, or dance. Students will develop and expand perceptual faculties,
develop physical practices integral to the art form, and explore the critical
principles which guide artists in the area.
Specifically, you will:
• develop and expand your perceptual faculties (viewing art and drama,
listening to other’s stories,
• develop physical practices integral to various art forms
• explore and come to understand critical principles that guide artists in
a variety of media.
The major secondary goals fulfill some of the stated purposes of the Europe
Semester program. Specifically, you will
• integrate academic and experiential aspects of your education.
• broaden your perspectives on your own academic discipline through
interdisciplinary study and creative production
• broaden your faith by discovering how others of different faiths have
expressed themselves in art
• discover and clarify a sense of calling by measuring your own critical
and creative faculties against models in European culture.
IS-126-1 is designed for non-experts in the arts, and so it has no prerequisites
beyond the usual for participants on the Europe semester.
COURSE ACTIVITIES
READ
Summer assignments in textbooks (to be announced in Spring, 2015)
Historical writings (chiefly during summer, 2015)
Concert programs (during our travels, at scheduled and unscheduled events)
Novels and poetry (both before the trip and during it)
Scripts (for selected plays)
Movies (during summer 2015]
Written display material—historical markers, etc. (on site in Europe)
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Internet sites (prior to departure and in Europe)
Advertisements (on site in Europe)
Newspapers (on site in Europe)
VIEW
Critique plays at the following locations: Edinburgh Fringe Festival, London
(possibly New Globe, NT, and other venues), Stratford-on-Avon
Art gallery searches and critique of individual works: Tate and Tate Modern,
Louvre, Rijksmuseum, Prado, Sistine Chapel, etc.
Public monuments such as Trajan’s Column in Rome (and at a variety of sites)
Architectural sites—e.g., Coventry, Westminster Abbey, Notre Dame, Chartres,
Versailles, Brandenberg Gate, Auschwitz,etc.
Museum Displays (e.g., Caen Peace Museum, Resistance Museum in
Amsterdam, D-Day Museum at Arromanche, Bayeux Tapestry, etc.
INTERVIEW
Locals re. local lore
Actors, directors, musicians, journalists (if possible)
LISTEN
Symphony performances in London, Berlin, Vienna
Open air concerts
Debates in Hyde Park (London)
DISCUSS
Readings
Plays, concerts, and performances
Situational insights (with partners, small groups, and whole class)
Student projects in development
Museums, cathedrals, historical sites, brochures, radio and tv broadcasts,
Advertisements, photographs
Monuments
Theory questions
Narrative implications of other classes on EuroSem
WRITE
Synopses of and responses to summer readings
Keep a narrative journal, collecting narrative threads and ideas about global
narratives
Analyze historical presentations in museums and historical sites such as
Edinburgh Castle, Warwick Castle, Coventry Cathedral, Canterbury,
Normandy Coast, Amsterdam Resistance Museum, NATO headquarters in
Brussels, Jewish Quarter in Prague, Concentration camps in Germany,
Czech Republic and Poland, Vatican
Synthesis paper (major project on narrative, containing a narrative of your
experience with narrative, with meta-narrative commentary)
Essay of Reflection and Self-evaluation on creative project
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ORAL PRESENTATIONS
Reading of original poems, stories or libretti
Oral Exam: Evaluation of narrative journal and creative project, and discussion
of Synthesis Paper
CREATIVE PROJECTS AND PRESENTATIONS
Possibilities:
• Compose a fictional narrative with a globalized perspective and read it
to the group
• Compose and sing or play music that synthesizes Western and nonWestern traditions
• Present a slideshow of photographs you’ve taken that tell stories
containing global inflections
• Interpret a story in dance before the group
• Create group tableaux drawing upon materials in our reading list
• Collaborate with others on inventing and staging a multi-media multicultural journey story
• Do an interpretive reading or reader’s theater of material drawn from
our reading list
• Use a cell phone or ipad or video camera to film and edit a story
• Write and read to an audience a sequence of poems in which global
influences are at work
ACT
Theatrical improvisations (guided) in class
What Are Some of the Recurrent, Underlying Questions in the Course?
1. What is narrative? What are the main ingredients of narrative? How are
narratives framed and structured? What are the conventions of narrative?
2. Where does the impulse toward narrative come from?
3. How does the master narrative of Christianity interact with other narratives in
European history and contemporary culture?
4. Who shapes narratives and toward what ends?
5. What is the psychology, the politics, and the sociology of specific narratives
that you encounter?
6. What global narratives are embedded in images and artistic representations,
and how?
7. What power is lodged in or channeled through artistic narratives?
8. What are some of the prominent global narratives in European culture, past
and contemporary (e.g., stories of conquest, stories of migration, stories of
confrontation and synthesis, stories of discovery, stories of rescue, etc.)? How
are these reflected in the arts?
9. Who is excluded from certain global narratives? How do narratives frame
issues of gender, race, and economic privilege?
10. How are counter-narratives generated? What happens when narratives meet
counter-narratives?
11. What happens to artistic narratives in postmodern culture?
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12. How should a Christian “read” and “critique” difficult narratives, as they are
employed in the arts?
What Specifically Am I Required to Do in the Course?
You must:
1. Keep a narrative journal throughout the semester, filling it out in ways that will
be prescribed in detail before the beginning of Summer, 2015. You may expect
to include such writings as the following: a) synopses of plays, novels, poems,
historical accounts, etc. b) records of interviews with people you meet in
Europe, c) reflections on questions posed by the instructor in transit, d)
exploratory analyses of plots, tales, designs, librettos, e) lists of story motifs, f)
sketches of narrative structures and rhetorical relationships within narratives,
etc. [Worth 20% of final grade]
2. Read assigned background readings before the end of Summer 2015 and give
account of your readings in summaries, as the instructor will require. [Worth
10% of final grade]
3. Participate in standing discussion groups (5-7 members each); present two
analyses to the whole group, focusing on global narrative elements you
encounter in artworks along the route. [Participation grade worth 10%]
4. Complete a major project consisting of a synthesis paper in which you draw
together materials you’ve gathered in all the countries you will have visited and
discuss larger questions about global narratives [Worth 30% of final grade]
5. Present a creative project to the group, worked out in collaboration with
members of the discussion group and the instructor. Include an essay of
explanation, reflection, and self-evaluation on the project. [Worth 10% of final
grade]
6. Complete oral exams in pairs [Worth 20% of final grade]
7. Attend designated performances and displays and select other performances
and display for encounter and response on site in Europe.
How Will My Work Be Evaluated?
• Grades will express the following judgments on the instructors’ part:
A = Exceptional; surpasses others of its kind; well argued or developed;
original; shows uncommon insight; maturely and correctly presented
in style and form; leaves little to be desired.
B = Exemplary; good, solid, even admirable; insightful; quite complete
and refined; shows promise.
C = Satisfactory; meets basic requirements; complete and
comprehensible; has some substance; offers some valid insights;
reasonably clear
D = Unsatisfactory; needs to be more thorough or show better basic
comprehension; needs to be expanded; generally unrefined
F = Failure to complete, failure to hand in, failure to comprehend
demands of the assignment
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VanderMey—IS-126-1 “Global Narratives in the Arts of Europe” Syllabus EuroSem 2015
Summary of Requirements and Weight in Final Grading
• Narrative journal
• Synopses and reflections on readings
• Oral analyses of narrative elements in artworks
• Synthesis paper (in consultation with the instructor)
• Creative project
• Oral exam
%
20
10
15
25
20
10
[Calendar to follow after completion of a detailed, day-by-day itinerary for EuroSem 2015
in mid-spring semester, 2015.]