MEMS Graduate Courses Fall 2015
English 627: Theories of Metaphor / Porter
If poetry is a distillation of what we mean by the literary, metaphor is a distillation of what we mean by
the poetic. Literally understood, metaphor is a carrying over of one meaning onto another. At its most
banal, it is the stuff the most ordinary speech is made of: language, as Emerson said, is fossilized
poetry. While still fresh and vital, metaphor's compressed juxtapositions have a remarkable power to
surprise, illuminate, transform, and transcend. Philosophers traditionally despised it for its capacity to
seduce and deceive. Poets--along with lovers and madmen--found its capacity to bend our thoughts
beyond the straight and narrow passageways of common sense or logical reason an essential source not
only of rhetorical power but of renewal, solace, and insight. In this course, we will explore the workings
of metaphor in considerable depth and from a variety of complementary perspectives drawn from
literary theory, philosophy, cognitive psychology, and anthropology. We will examine the ways in which
an understanding of metaphor, in turn, can cast new light on problems in comparative poetics, theories
of translation, and theories of mind. We will consider metaphor alongside the three other so-called
master tropes--metonymy, synecdoche, and irony--and poke and prod at evocative exemplars of the
device from selected works of English poetry of the past four centuries that retain, thanks largely to
their metaphorical genius, the ability to take the tops of our heads off. No prior experience with literary
or rhetorical theory is required or presumed, just a bit of imagination and a lively curiosity concerning
the intricate workings of language.
English 630: Literature of Race and Early Modernity in the Atlantic World /
Santamarina
While the legacy of Saids' Orientalism has profoundly shaped the study of intercultural relations in
colonial and post-colonial contexts, it has also informed scholarly perspectives on early modern
encounters, real and imagined, that conform less neatly to colonial or even proto-colonial paradigms.
Recognizing the potential hazards of Eurocentrism and anachronism attendant upon such readings, this
seminar will explore a variety of alternative, post-Saidian models for thinking about Englands' place in an
increasingly globalized early modern world, and, in particular, their implications for reconsidering the
literary history of the period. We will interrogate a number of contemporary English authors —
Shakespeare, Behn, Defoe, Pope, Montagu, Addison, Cook, and others — who grapple with these
questions, while at the same time surveying relevant recent scholarship from the fields of comparative
literature and cultural studies, world history, and East-West studies. We will consider questions of
influence, reception, and imaginative geography, but will also explore methodological problems raised
by more explicitly comparative approaches, including questions of commensurability and meta-historical
modeling. Specific topics to be addressed include early modern travel writing, race and enlightenment,
captivity narratives, the anxiety of empire, material culture history, and historical cosmopolitanism.
English 641: Chaucer: Major Works / Taylor
The late fourteenth century was a signal moment in the inception of an English literary tradition.
Geoffrey Chaucer was not only present at the scene, but also helped to shape the linkages between
English readers and the prestigious classical tradition; before the death of the author, he was indeed
instrumental in shaping the very notion of what it meant to be an author and a poet. We will read
Chaucer's major works, focusing especially on the incomparable classical romance Troilus and Criseyde
and the joys of variety in the Canterbury Tales. A few of the shorter poems--The Book of the Duchess
and The House of Fame., e.g.--will also help us get a sense of Chaucer's poetic career as French, classical,
and Italian materials were melded together into something altogether new: serious, ambitious
literature written in English, which, for all its ambition, is not just delicate, beautiful, and moral, but also
challenging, funny, and occasionally filthy. The course welcomes those with little or no previous
exposure to Chaucer or Middle English, provided you bring your sense of humor and appreciation of
irony. We will work on language enough so that you can read the poetry (and prose) with
comprehension and pleasure, and so that you can teach Chaucer in surveys and more specialized
courses with panache, but language will always be subordinate to literary and narrative issues. Classes
will balance lecture and discussion; I will provide historical, social, and literary backgrounds, and we will
devote collaborative attention to the insights (and blindnesses) opened up by various approaches to
Chaucer’s works.
Englisher 841: Phenomenologies of Conversion in Early Modern England /
Mullaney
The late fifteenth- and sixteenth centuries mark the period of the Reformation. It was also a time when
many other forms of conversion, extending far beyond the sphere of religion, emerged to change the
physical, economic, political, and affective geographies of England, France, Spain, and a number of other
European states. In this seminar, we will develop an historical understanding of “conversion” that will
clarify certain aspects of the early modern period and hopefully enlighten modern debates about
corporeal, sexual, psychological, political and spiritual kinds of transformation. Working with poetry,
theater, prose narrative, and personal as well as official documents, we will seek, in a collective and
collaborative fashion, to develop new ways to identify, analyze, and theorize how—and why—early
modern Europeans changed their confessional, social, political, gender, and sexual identities. Students
specializing in late medieval, early modern, and later seventeenth and eighteenth century literatures are
welcome. We will have guest speakers selected from the wide range of international scholars who
belong to the inter-disciplinary, five-year project called “Early Modern Conversions: Religions, Cultures,
Cognitive Ecologies.” Valerie Traub and I are Co-Participants in the project, and George Hoffman
(French) and Hussein Fancy (History) are also participating members. In addition, we are joined by
approximately fifteen UM graduate students from a number of disciplines, who participate as Graduate
Student Associates.
History 622 History of Atlantic Economies / Bleakley
This course will cover the evolution of economic institutions and the role of these institutions in the
economic growth of Europe, Latin America, Asia and the United States. Topics include: The divergence of
Asian and European growth rates between 1500 and 1800. The creation of modern fiscal and monetary
institutions. The role of stock markets, banking systems and exchange rate regimes in historical
economic development. Particular attention will be paid to the Great Depression and historical banking
panics, stock market crashes and exchange rate devaluations. The course will explore the historical costs
and benefits of the different monetary and fiscal institutions adopted by Europe, Argentina, Brazil,
China, Japan, The United States, and Canada.
History of Art 666 Problems of 17th Century Art & Visual Culture: Perspectives on
Perspective / Brusati
By the seventeenth century perspective had come to encompass a wide range of practices and divergent aims, yet
twentieth century concepts and metaphors of perspective that have shaped both the modern history and practice of
art have drawn on fairly reductive models of what perspective is. Recent scholarship has begun to complicate these
accounts by reassessing primary sources, reframing the historical relations between perspective and experimental
optics, and considering materials from non-European pictorial and textual traditions. The seminar explores various
disjunctions between pictorial practice and ideas about perspective, and their implications are for our use of
perspective as a category of analysis. We will be discussing key texts on perspective from the early modern and
modern periods, including those by Panofsky, Ivins, Damisch, Elkins, Kemp, Belting, Massey, and Dupré and others
in order to examine and query perspective’s persistent identification with particular theories of vision, concepts of
space and historical distance, the ‘Western’ scientific gaze, and modern subjectivity itself. Alongside our reading of
key texts we will be examining ways that perspective served as a means of rationalizing pictorial space, but also as a
technology for looking at the contingencies and paradoxes of vision itself. Visual material will include paintings and
drawings, as well as anamorphic art, maps, prints, trompe l’oeil images, optical devices, manuscript illustrations,
Chinese and Japanese folding screens and hand-scrolls. Our aim will be to discover what aspects of pictorial practice
have been illuminated, marginalized, and/or eclipsed in the discourse of perspective, and to explore how we might
use it more profitably in the analysis of pictures and visuality. Class discussions will focus on early modern European
case studies, but participants may choose paper topics from their own areas of interest and research provided that
they engage substantively with the issues addressed in our readings and discussions.
Judaic 417/ 517 Jewish Thinkers in Islamic Spain: Sefarad and
Andalus / Stroumsa
The period known as the "Golden Age" in Islamic Spain is associated with some of the most famous
names in Jewish thought. The great philosopher Maimonides, for example, and the poet Judah Halevi,
are identified with this era even though they both left Spain. Through readings of individual thinkers in
their cultural context, this course will study the emergence of Jewish thought in Islamic Spain (alAndalus), and its development within and beyond its borders.
MEMS proseminar. History 698 / NES ?? Premodern Empires: Comparative
Studies / Bonner (NES), Van Dam (History)
This seminar is a survey of empires in the premodern period, especially the two millennia from 500 B.C.
to 1500 A.D. Most early states were empires of some sort, ruled by kings or emperors with dynastic
connections, dominated by great landowning aristocrats, supported through the exploitation of
peasants, made plausible by a religious ideology, and usually aggressive toward neighboring peoples or
states. Different combinations of these variables made for different empires. Some survived for
centuries, others were transitory. Aspects of empire, emperorship, and imperial rule have long been
important topics in modern scholarship. The readings for this seminar will include important modern
books and articles about premodern empires. The focus will be on the ancient Mediterranean and the
adjacent regions (e.g. the Athenian empire, the Roman empire), post-Roman Europe (e.g. the
Carolingian empire), and the Near East and Middle East (e.g. the Caliphate). Readings will also include
comparative studies from around the world. Topics to be discussed will include administration,
rulership, imperialism and frontier societies, cities and countryside, economy, culture, religion.
Musicology 513 Topics in the History of Opera to 1800 / Stein
It is devoted to the study of opera in the first two centuries of its existence, from its beginnings just
before 1600 to nearly the end of the 18th century. Opera is to be studied critically as music, as theater,
as spectacle, as performance medium, and as cultural expression. Special aspects of this course include a
focus on the singers of baroque opera, opera's arrival in the Americas, and the financing and staging of
opera. While some of the lectures and listening assignments will be organized around excerpts, others
will be designed to focus on whole operas, their music and musical dramaturgy, historical significance,
economics, modes of production, and reception in performance. Composers to be studied include Peri,
Caccini, Da Gagliano, Monteverdi, Cavalli, Lully, Purcell, Hidalgo, A. Scarlatti, Handel, Vivaldi, Hasse,
Rameau, Gluck, Salieri, Sarti, Piccinni, and Mozart. Open to singers, musicians, and scholars interested in
early-modern musical culture, whether they are based in the SMTD, in LSA, or in other units.
Musicology 621 History of Music Theory / Borders
History of Music Theory I, will examine key issues that Western music theorists addressed from
Antiquity through the late Renaissance. We will observe how certain subjects weave like threads
through the rough fabric of history—here thickly, there thinly—and note how and when new issues
arise, in part due to changes in musical style. Toward the end of the semester, for example, we will see
how the history of theory comes nearly full circle with the rediscovery of important Greek texts. We will
note similarities and differences among the theorists’ ideas and approaches, along with modern
scholarly understandings of them. Whenever feasible, we will also discuss how issued raised in earlier
music theory may relate to our contemporary situation. More often, we will consider the relevance of
theory to practice and composition by examining examples of medieval and Renaissance music. Because
you may not be as current with these repertoires as you once were, supplementary reading and
listening assignments from the latest editions of textbooks will be suggested; the ability to read Western
musical notation will be assumed.
Spanish 459 Don Quijote / Garcia Santo-Tomas
Estudiaremos la obra maestra cervantina desde una perspectiva contemporánea, centrándonos en su
contexto socio-político, histórico y literario, e incorporando acercamientos críticos que se adapten a
nuestra sensibilidad moderna. Prestaremos particular atención a la imbricación de géneros en el texto,
analizando igualmente sus reverberaciones míticas y simbólicas. Nos enfocaremos en la construcción de
los personajes más significativos, haciendo parada en temas como el de la ley y la violencia, la vida
marginal, los espacios urbanos y rurales, la sexualidad latente o abierta, y los usos y significados de la
violencia y el cuerpo. La clase será en español.
Spanish 460 The Spanish Comedia / Garcia Santo-Tomas
How did the early modern stage work? How did actors live in the Spain of 1600? What were the tastes
of the public? Why was theater such an important pastime? This survey will cover a number of different
genres--tragedies, comedies, brief pieces, dances--as practiced by some of the most important
playwrights in Spanish history: Lope de Vega, Calderón de la Barca, Tirso de Molina, Miguel de
Cervantes.
Spanish 473: Spanish Colonialism and the Invention of Race
“The idea of race, in its modern meaning,” writes Peruvian sociologist Aníbal Quijano, “does not have a
known history before the colonization of America.” Sometimes it’s useful to return to the beginning.
This class will explore the colonial invention of race and racism in Latin America as a key component of a
system of domination that has endured for over five centuries. We will work through the following
questions: What are race and racism and what do they do? What is the relationship between colonialism
and race? How have notions of race and the operations of racism changed from the colonial period to
the present day? Why are race and racism so powerful and so successful at persisting over time?
Organized around the construction of several key categories (including “the Jew,” “the Indian,” “the
Black,” and “the White”), the course will attempt to highlight the commonalities and divergences across
these differential processes of racialization—all of which are linked by the project of Spanish
colonialism. Readings will include both primary and secondary sources, that is, texts written during the
colonial period as well as contemporary critical or analytical texts about the colonial period.
Spanish 487 History of the Spanish Lexicon / Dworkin
From an historical perspective the Spanish lexicon has three sources: (1) words inherited directly from
spoken Latin, the source of all the Romance languages, (2) words borrowed and adapted from other
languages with which Spanish has come into contact over its long history, and (3) words created
internally through such derivational processes as prefixation, suffixation, and composition. Within such a
framework, this course, taught in Spanish, will examine the growth and evolution of the Spanish lexicon.
It will also discuss the loss of words in the recorded history of Spanish, and lexical variation in the
Spanish-speaking world.
Spanish 650 The Origins of Authorship / Szpiech
This graduate seminar will consider the evolution of the first-person authorial voice in a number of
fourteenth-century Castilian and Catalan authors, possibly including Ramon Llull, Juan Ruiz, Don Juan
Manuel, Alfonso of Valladolid, Sem Tob de Carrión, Pero Lózez de Ayala, and Profiat Duran. We will
consider the intersection of notions of authority with authorship and the place of autobiographical and
and confessional writing, textual commentary, and literary style in the formation of authorial voice.