Sections offered SPRING 2023:

CLASS NOTES: IUB GenEd A&H credit; COLL (CASE) A&H Breadth of Inquiry credit

Class meets In Person. For more information visit https://covid.iu.edu/learning-modes/index.html

The study of European cinemas from a sonic perspective: how film commentators and bonimenteurs (film lecturers) flourished while accompanying silent movies; the astonishing technological and paradigmatic evolution, from silent film to the talkies in the 1930s; the surprising influences of popular and oral cultures on cinema after WWII; the question of music, dialogue, and background sound.

Taking a comparative, transnational approach, this course offers an introduction to European cinema (Pre-War propaganda, Italian Neorealism, French New Wave, etc.) as an evolving art and as a means of tracing the evolution of technology, aesthetic, and representation, during the twentieth century. We will also investigate how cinema was shaped by other media (like religious celebrations, popular fairs, dances, games, theatre, opera, novels, printmaking, radio shows, music recordings, etc.). In so doing, our study of film will naturally touch upon a variety of other disciplines, such as history, sociology, media and cultural studies.

Sections offered SPRING 2023:

CLASS NOTES: IUB GenEd A&H credit; COLL (CASE) A&H Breadth of Inquiry credit

Above class meets In Person. For more information visit https://covid.iu.edu/learning-modes/index.html

What do we mean when we say that an event is “tragic”? Is a death more tragic if it is the result of a murder than if it happened by accident or from natural causes? Do we say it is “tragic” in order to make sense of it or as a way of saying that we give up explaining it? Is it an expression of absence of meaning or pointing toward a logic of a different order? Is tragedy linked to a sense of justice or does it respond to the lack of justice? What role do religion, politics and chance play in our perception of life’s misery? And why has tragedy always been so central to popular culture, from the public performances of ancient Greece to the rise and fall of present-day celebrities? Indeed, how can we explain the pleasure we get from regarding the pain of others? In this course, we will address questions like these, as a way to explore tragedy in its relation to life, art, death and hope.

Material studied will include world famous literary works from the Bible, Greek and neoclassical tragedy (Sophocles and Racine), 20th-century tragedy (Miller and Beckett), examples from film and TV series (including the 1995 film by Mathieu Kassovitz, Hate; episodes from The Wire and Scandal), as well as critical texts related to the questions above, from Aristotle and Nietzsche to contemporary thinkers like Susan Sontag and Simon Critchley. Special emphasis will be put on the idea of tragedy in the 21st century, at once in our own lives, in critical writing and in artistic production (and pursued by the students in final research projects).

Sections offered SPRING 2023:

CLASS NOTES: IUB GenEd A&H credit; COLL (CASE) A&H Breadth of Inquiry credit

Class meets In Person. For more information visit https://covid.iu.edu/learning-modes/index.html

What advice did the “murderous” Machiavelli give to the prince of Florence? Was the Renaissance courtier obliged to obey the prince even when asked to do shameful and dishonorable things? How do we protect ourselves from a cruel tyrant? Should we run as far as we can, or should we fight back? Must we always tell the truth, or can we legitimately conceal our secret thoughts?

These are some of the questions addressed in this course, which focuses on the culture of the Italian Renaissance courts and the modern European national states. We will examine the complex relationship between literary creation and political power in an age that witnessed the origin of modern Absolutism in European history. How is poetry to preserve its freedom as well as its access to truth in the context of absolute and ruthless political power? The dilemmas of caution and resoluteness, simulation and dissimulation, heroism and conformity will be considered as some of the forces shaping early modern European literature.

The goal of the course is to read some of early modern Europe’s most representative works and understand them in their diverse historical contexts. We will analyze the cultural and political circumstances in which these works were produced and read, as well as the thematic and formal features indispensable for an accurate understanding of them. A selection of relevant introductory and critical essays will also be discussed.