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Featured Courses in European Studies

Spring 2008 European Studies Seminars

French 346/335; English/CompLit 335: Why France Matters

TR 12:30-1:45, taught by Professor Steve Bishop (277-6344 or sbishop@unm.edu).

A look at French civilization and culture from the Revolution to the present day as seen through its interactions with other civilizations and cultures such as those of Germany, Spain, England, Italy, Algeria, Russia, Morocco, the US, and several African (ex-)colonies among others. Subjects to be treated will include the French Revolution, colonial empire, Napoleon, immigration, romanticism, art (impressionism, cubism, surrealism, etc.), and WWI+II among others.

English 455: The Later British Enlightenment, 1730-1800 -- A “noble and uncommon union of science and admiration”?

TR 4:00-5:15, taught by Professor Carolyn Woodward (woodward@unm.edu).

“The use of the passions ... cannot be ... unproductive to ourselves of that noble and uncommon union of science and admiration, which a contemplation of the works of infinite wisdom alone can afford to a rational mind.” Edmund Burke, 1757, A Philosophical Enquiry into ... Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful.

During the later Enlightenment, a massive charge of intellectual and political energy fired people to question and even replace absolute authority, under the guidance of reason. But “reason” cannot contain this period of high passion, in which, living in a time of nearly constant warfare, English people produced a literature of outburst. Middle- and working-class writers exploded into print, as did women of all classes. Global explorations became colonial exploitation. Sexual, racial, and other kinds of difference pushed at the limits of normalcy. Exuberant, troubled, and profound conversation marks the literature of this period, as people sought that “uncommon union” of reason and passion through which they could shape community. But in this most conversational of times, some things were unspeakable. These people constructed—and most heartily enjoyed—elaborate and gorgeous pleasure gardens, a theatre district that has flourished from their day to ours, and music festivals that took premier concerts from the metropolis to the provinces. Such pleasures were possible because international trade was thriving, specifically, the international slave trade. Everyone knew this. Hardly anyone spoke of it until well into the 1770s.

Reason made sense of everything. Reason could not touch what some Britons were practicing, nearly all were silently countenancing, and from which all were benefiting—in Africa, the Caribbean, India, and the South Pacific. In our readings, we’ll consider the unspeakable of the later British enlightenment for its possible connection to prevalent literary and cultural modes: sensibility, expressions of the uncanny, and satire that shades into bitter irony.

Readings: We’ll have a unit on the gothic (fiction by Horace Walpole and Ann Radcliffe, drama by Horace Walpole; and graveyard poetry), and a unit on empire (writings from and about the Mughal Empire and the Ottoman Empire); excerpts from slave narratives and abolitionist writings; and Obi, a novel based on the Jamaican folk hero Jack Mansong). Other readings include novels by Laurence Sterne and Jane Austen; satire by Alexander Pope and Jane Collier; engravings by William Hogarth; plays by David Garrick, Catherine Clive, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan; and poetry by James Thomson, Anne Finch, Stephen Duck, and Mary Collier. Perhaps more than any other single writer, Samuel Johnson grappled with Enlightenment ideals: we’ll read selections from his poetry and periodical literature; excerpts from his “oriental” tale Rasselas and his autobiographical Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland; and selections from Johnson biographies by James Boswell and Hester Thrale Piozzi.

Requirements: weekly brief reflection papers, one report, a midterm and a final examination, one 5-7 page analytical paper.

Fall 2007 European Studies Seminar

English 452/552: The Renaissance (and its Discontents)

W 4:00-6:30, taught by Professor Carmen Nocentelli (nocent@unm.edu)

The European Renaissance is often regarded as one of the most important epochs in the history of Western culture. In this course, we will look at how "the Renaissance" came to receive its identity, why that identity has been seen as significant, and what that identity has meant at various points in time. Among the questions we will tackle will be the recent debates on the terms "Renaissance" and "early modern;" the notion of "Renaissance self-fashioning" and how this meant different things for men and women; the "discovery" of America, globalization, and the impact of European expansion abroad. Primary texts from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries will accompany critical selections and ancillary materials. Primary sources may include: Juan Luis Vives, The Education of a Christian Woman; Desiderius Erasmus, The Praise of Folly; Baldassar Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier; Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince; Michel de Montaigne, The Essays; Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene; Christopher Marlow, Tamburlaine; and Elizabeth Cary, The Tragedie of Mariam.

Past Seminars in European Studies

“Tolstoy -- Seminar in Comparative & Russian Literature”

taught by Professor Byron Lindsey

Count Leo Tolstoy fits no paradigm. He was born a Russian but philosophically became a great citizen of the world recognizing no national boundaries. He was a European intellectual with a special affinity for the Oriental philosophy of Lao-Tse. An aristocrat, he championed the peasant. A Romantic and a fiercely anti-Romantic, he wrote great works of fiction, long and short, but then disavowed them as trivial hindrances to changing the world, a cause that he took on himself and even advanced, leaving marks that remain in our own lives a century after his death. This seminar will study his crucial works, early and late, representational fiction and philosophical essays, his sources and transformations, with his great historical novel War and Peace at the center. For undergraduate and graduates.

“Studies in British Romanticism”

taught by Professor Gary Harrison

Emphasizing Romantic-era writing as a site where history, consciousness and nature converge in a generative contest, this course will provide a survey and overview of late eighteenth and early nineteenth century literary culture. Our readings will include works in several genres by the following writers: Rousseau, Schiller, Kant, Hegel, and Heine; Godwin, Wollstonecraft, and Malthus; Goethe, Blake, Charlotte Smith, the Wordsworths, Coleridge, Byron, the Shelleys, Clare, Sydney Owensen and Jane Austen. Readings will also include a range of classic and recent critical and theoretical writings about Romanticism.

“The French and the Not French”

taught by Professor Steve Bishop

A look at French civilization and culture from the Revolution to the present day as seen through its interactions with other civilizations and cultures such as those of Germany, Spain, England, Italy, Algeria, Russia, Morocco, the US, and several African (ex-) colonies among others. Subjects to be treated will include the French Revolution, colonial empire, Napoleon, immigration, romanticism, art (impressionism, cubism, surrealism, etc.), and WWI+II among others.

“European Capitals in the 19^th Century”

taught by Professor Eleni Bastea

In this seminar, we will focus on the architecture and urban design of 19th-century Paris, London, and Athens, within the broader context of broader 19th-century urban issues. We will analyze the programmatic requirements that governments placed on capital cities, the use of specific architectural styles to express the political ideologies of each regime, and the degrees of physical change effected on the urban fabric of each city. By concentrating on architecture and urban design, we can throw some new light on the complex forces shaping capital cities: government, social agendas, colonial or nationalist objectives, and modernity. Our aim is to see the city both through the eyes of those in power, and through the eyes of those who inherit it and use it. Students will complete 3 short papers based on the reading (2-3 pages) and a longer research paper (10-15 pages). No prerequisites.

“Studies in Romanticism: The Emergence of the Romantic Hero”
taught by Professor Gary Harrison

This course will provide an introductory overview of European and American Romanticism, focusing comparatively upon the emergence of what we might call Romantic Humanism, a celebratory construction of the self as an autonomous, creative agent whose Faustian desire and will ironically places him (sometimes her) outside of history.  The determination of such heroes, as we will find, is often undermined by the inexhaustibility of their desire and the depth of their alienation from others.  Beginning with the anticipatory works of Rousseau and Goethe, we will survey some key works of Continental, British, and American Romanticism that sometimes self-consciously and sometimes not, construct a version of the Faustian hero.  Through this course, students will recognize the uneven development of the variety of Romanticisms, as well as the distinctive national and regional inflections of concepts associated universally with Romanticism such as philosophical idealism, the revolution in aesthetics and taste, the imaginative agency of the creative subject, and the affinity for nature.

Beginning with Goethe's Werther and excerpts from Rousseau's Confessions, we will first examine the early moments in the Romantic construction of the self as a man of feeling, figured as anti-hero and hero, respectively. Using Schlegel's Lucinde and Charlotte Smith's sonnets, we will discuss the powerful influence of Goethe and Rousseau upon Romantic sensibility.  In the next unit, we examine how the man or woman of feeling is absorbed into various versions of the Faust figure--a sometimes noble and triumphant, more often than not self-tormented and melancholy Titan of sensibility, will and desire, whose hopes often fade into a horizon of unrealizable possibilities. Prominent in this unit will be Goethe's Faust, Part 1; Shelley's Alastor; Byron's Childe Harold; Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; and the poetry of Hölderlin, Novalis, Leopardi, Coleridge, Keats, Lamartine, Bequer, and Rosalía de Castro.  The course will conclude with an emphasis on writers who self-consciously figure the Romantic hero in relation to the legend of Napoleon.  Selected or excerpted works of Chateaubriand, Madame De Staël, Constant, Shelley, Byron, Carlyle, Pushkin, and possibly Stendhal.  Throughout the semester we will read selected critical and theoretical essays on Romanticism, and the primary texts will be supplemented by pertinent excerpts from the philosophical writings of Kant, Hegel, and especially Nietzsche. The course will require intensive as well as extensive reading, but our class discussions, presentations, and mini-seminars will aim to elucidate difficult concepts as well as to provide historical background and cultural context for understanding both the literary and the critical texts.  The literary texts will be supplemented by the paintings of David and Ingres, and at least sections from Beethoven's Eroica symphony.  I will also invite Dr. John Clubbe, a retired Byron scholar presently living in Santa Fe, to give a guest lecture and class visit. The texts I finally settle upon will no doubt vary somewhat depending upon the availability of translations.  All works will be taught in English; some students may opt read them in the original language.

"Surrealism"
taught by Professor Walter Putnam

The course will be taught in English and will cover what might legitimately be called the most important artistic movement of the 20th century. It also presents a distinctly European dimension. As a self-declared movement, Surrealism grew out of the carnage of WWI and attempted to give artistic expression to the discoveries of psychoanalysis and politics. Paris quickly became the hub of activity for artists from most corners of Europe who grouped around Breton, Aragon and Soupault in a rather complicated constellation of friends and foes, affiliates who became foes, etc.: Max Ernst, Alberto Giacometti, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miro and many others. Although it has a marked literary component, the range of expression included painting, sculpture, photography, cinema and theatre. Beyond the pole of attraction that Paris came to represent for many artists, surrealism also extended its reach to most of the major European and world capitals. It is important to note that London, Prague and Berlin hosted surrealist exhibits. One of my goals in this course will be to examine the global dimension of the movement, often following political and national boundaries.

"The Habsburg Connection -- Vienna - Madrid - Santa Fe"
taught by Professor Peter Pabisch

The course will show the international family activities of the Habsburgs in the 16th and 17th century - and how they continued to a degree even into later centuries (Maximilian of Mexico). If plans work out as they should, a two week seminar will be offered after the semester for volunteer participants from this course and otherwise, taking us to Madrid, Vienna, Budapest and Prague to demonstrate the connections still visible from these eras; among them the art treasures in Spain's and Austria's capitals. The course intends to make students aware of the strong south-north history of this state, besides its run-of-the-mill east-west European influence mostly true for other US states.

"Memories of Trauma: Europe and the Holocaust"
taught by Professor Susanne Baackmann

This course will explore the effects of the Holocaust within European postwar culture. In many different ways this traumatic legacy has shaped European configurations of historical and national identity. Like no other historical event, the Third Reich legacy continues to be denied, discussed, exposed, and transformed within public debates and literary representations, both nationally and internationally. The Holocaust and its changing effects within contemporary culture or, more specifically, the memory and/ or denial of guilt and collaboration within post-war Europe will be our main focus. We will read selected examples of post-war literature in order to understand if, how, and in what way the past keeps informing the present. We will also discuss other cultural documents, such as pertinent magazine articles, museum designs and memorials in order to better understand shifts and changes in this complex and controversial discourse about the past. Since the Holocaust is also a highly charged trope in the American cultural imagination, we will look at how it is represented in the US.

"Welcome to the Euro: The European Union (EU) and the 'German Bloc'"
taught by Professor Peter Pabisch

The Euro will be introduced January 1, 2002, as the new European currency in twelve of the 15 member states of the European Union (EU).  This is seen as the onset of an important new era for the continent itself, but also for European-American relations.  In fact, the United States gave money to a destroyed Europe after World War II, so that it could rebuild and establish an equal market with which the U.S.A. could trade peacefully.  Less than sixty years later this concept has become a reality.  In thirty interdisciplinary topics light will be shed on the new Europe as it stands within a new world order.  Thereby the former German enemy countries of World War II will play an important role as peaceful and supportive players among equal democratic states.  Yet, the economic leadership of the Germans will be one of the key components of the success of this versatile, culturally rich and politically differentiated federation of states which all have to abide by uncompromising human, political and economic rules.

"Immigrant and Indigenous European Identity"
taught by Professor Steve Bishop

Europe struggles today to define continental and national identities in the midst of growing immigrant and migrant communities.  Whereas most European countries officially embrace a policy of integration, acceptance, and equality, the increasing influx of languages, religions, phenotypes, cuisines, dress, and other cultural and physical characteristics previously underrepresented in a region has led to social conflict and reactionary politics in many cases.  From Turkish workers in Germany and families of refugees from the Algerian war in France to the continued exclusion of Gypsies in Spain and the "Albanian flood" into Italy, examples about of cultural antagonism in what is supposedly an increasingly united Europe.

This course seeks to investigate the history of immigrant/ indigenous conflict and cooperation from the earliest Neanderthal/Homo sapiens interactions through the Roman Empire, the Viking invasions, and 1066 up through the 20th century.  The goal is to examine how cultural interaction has been a staple of European development throughout its existence, and that clear binary terminology such as 'immigrant' and 'indigenous' is often problematic, politically-fueled, and masking underlying complexities. While the course is not meant to be overly simplistic in declaring that all European interaction has been amicable and fruitful, it is designed to show how attempts at defining pure national identities and suppressing important minority contributions are both ignorant of the past and dangerous for the future.
Guest lecturers from a variety of disciplines will be central to the course's goals and success.