Fall 2020
FALL 2020 CORE-UA 500, Cultures & Contexts: Imagining Palestine/Israel
Prof. Lockman (Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies) [Syllabus]
Notwithstanding its small size, few pieces of territory have been so central to the imagination (both sacred and secular) of so many people as the land variously called Canaan, the Land of Israel, Palestine—or the “Holy Land”—and few lands have been so bitterly fought over, struggles that have been deeply informed by conflicting visions of its history and of whom the land rightfully “belonged to.” We explore the history of this land, going back to ancient times but with a focus on the modern era, in order to understand how and why Jews, Christians, and Muslims came to see it as in some sense sacred; how those who lived in it or ruled over it, as well as those who imagined it from afar, understood their relationship to it; and how, over the past century and a half, nationalist visions and colonial projects, along with historical events that unfolded elsewhere, all contributed to making this land the site of an often bloody (and apparently intractable) struggle for control. Along the way we seek to understand why those who have felt so passionately about this land and shaped their identities in relation to it have thought and acted as they did, and how the visions underpinning their actions have contributed to specific historical outcomes.
FALL 2020 CORE-UA 500, Cultures & Contexts: Topics—The Silk Road and Central Asia
Prof. Stark (Institute for the Study of the Ancient World) [Syllabus]
For centuries Central Asia has been a conduit for a variety of cultural encounters and transfers between China, India, the Near East and the Mediterranean. In an almost emblematic way, this position and function seems to be embodied in our image of the far-distant caravan trader, traversing on the so-called “Silk roads” the vast expanses between China and the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. However, it was not only traders that connected the civilizations of the ancient world via Central Asia: with and next to the traders’ caravans traveled diplomats, missionaries, artists and many more; and vast parts of Eurasia were, again and again, connected and controlled by confederations and empires of nomadic origin. We inquire into the many facets, which characterize the resulting network, oscillating around Central Asia, from the Bronze Age onwards up to the days of the Mongol Empire, taking a multi-disciplinary approach to a considerable variety of primary evidence, ranging from ancient travel reports and business letters to spectacular archaeological artifacts.
FALL 2020 CORE-UA 509, Cultures & Contexts: Caribbean
Prof. Fischer (Spanish & Portuguese) [Syllabus]
The culture and politics of the Caribbean considered through key moments of Caribbean history: “Discovery,” slavery and the struggles against it, colonialism and independence movements, U.S. occupations, dictatorships and revolutionary movements, the massive growth of a Caribbean diaspora, and the transformation of the Caribbean islands into so many tourist destinations. While the Spanish-speaking islands (Cuba, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic) are at the center, the French and English-speaking Caribbean, and questions that concern the Caribbean as a region, will be part of the discussion. Readings are drawn from primary sources (slave testimonies, declarations of independence, revolutionary discourses), literary texts, film, and important essays in cultural studies/critical theory, anthropology, and history.
FALL 2020 CORE-UA 512, Cultures & Contexts: China
Prof. Zhang (East Asian Studies) [Syllabus]
An introduction to the main issues and foundational texts of imperial and modern China. Selected readings include excerpts from early Chinese classics such as Classic of Odes and the Analects to the vernacular novels of late imperial China. The classical canon is then coupled with central texts from modern China, from the initial reflections of the mandarin scholars on a rapidly changing world, to writings on revolution, the modern state, and the new culture of the enlightened individual by leading Chinese intellectuals in the 20th century. Rather than a display of cultural and literary edifices, our intellectual and critical interest is to rethink Chinese traditions, both imperial and modern, in terms of continuity as well as discontinuity.
FALL 2020 CORE-UA 514, Cultures and Contexts: Ancient Israel
Prof. Feldman (Hebrew & Judaic Studies) [Syllabus]
Ancient Israel names the land and people of the Hebrew Bible, and it occupies a place in antiquity that is the “classical” background for Jewish, Christian, and Muslim religious heritage, much as Greece and Rome stand behind much of modern philosophy and science. Yet Israel in history remains difficult to approach, between a biblical text received only through centuries of later sifting, and archaeological data lacking names, voices, and stories. We piece together glimpses of ancient Israel through varieties of evidence, acknowledging degrees of uncertainty, with the ultimate goal of probing what life was like for everyday people.
FALL 2020 CORE-UA 525, Cultures & Contexts: Latin America & the Caribbean
Prof. Ferrer and Thompson (History) [Syllabus]
A general introduction to the history and culture of Latin America, focusing on major themes in the history of the region: colonization and interaction between Europeans, Africans, and indigenous people; the Atlantic slave trade and the creation of slave and plantation societies; race, nationalism, and revolution; and the place of the United States and Africa in the region. Readings include Spanish and indigenous accounts of the Conquest, firsthand accounts of the slave trade, revolutionary manifestos, political cartoons, and a range of other sources.
FALL 2020 CORE-UA 529, Cultures and Contexts: Contemporary Latino Cultures
Prof. Beltrán (Social and Cultural Analysis) [Syllabus]
Explores the political, social, and cultural practices of Latinos in the United States using a historical and interdisciplinary approach. Draws on literature, history, politics, as well as social and political theory to address issues of participation, under-representation, and civic and economic empowerment. Topics include immigration, social movements, figures of resistance, identities, popular culture, and language. Of particular concern is the idea and representation of a pan-ethnic “Latino” identity encompassing all the diverse national groups, and the emergence of this concept in both the cultural and political life of these communities.
FALL 2020 CORE-UA 532, Cultures and Contexts: African Diaspora
Prof. Gomez (History) [Syllabus]
The dispersal of Africans to various parts of the world and over time, examining their experiences and those of their descendants. Regions of special interest include the Americas and the Islamic world, centering on questions of slavery and freedom while emphasizing the emergence of cultural forms and their relationship to both African and to non-African influences.
FALL 2020 CORE-UA 534, Cultures and Contexts: The Black Atlantic
Prof. Morgan (Social and Cultural Analysis) [Syllabus]
[Networked with NYU Accra]
We consider the Black Atlantic as a socio-cultural and economic space from the 15th-century first arrival of Africans in the ‘New World,’ through the rise of slavery in the Americas, continuing on to slave emancipation and decolonization in the 19th and 20th centuries, and conclude with contemporary black life in the Atlantic world. We trace the origins and importance of the concept of the Black Atlantic in the context of European imperial expansion and the transformation of indigenous structures of governance in the Americas, paying special attention to shifting social relations that shaped community formation among people of African descent and laid the foundations for political and economic institutions. Topics include: civilization, slavery, colonialism, capitalism, freedom, and justice. We approach these broad concerns through focused engagement with African enslavement and settlement in Africa and the Americas; the development of transatlantic racial capitalism; variations in politics and culture between empires in the Atlantic world; creolization, plantation slavery and slave society; the politics and culture of the enslaved; the Haitian Revolution; slave emancipation; and contemporary black Atlantic politics and racial capitalism.
FALL 2020 CORE-UA 536, Cultures and Contexts: Indigenous Australia
Prof. Myers (Anthropology) [Syllabus]
The indigenous people of Australia have long been the subject of interest and imagination by outsiders for their cultural formulations of kinship, ritual, art, gender, and politics, and they have entered into representations as distinctively "Other"—whether in negative or positive formulations of the "Primitive." These representations—in feature films about them such as Walkabout and Rabbit Proof Fence, in New Age Literature, or museum exhibitions—are now also in dialogue with their own forms of cultural production. At the same time, Aboriginal people have struggled to reproduce themselves and their traditions in their own terms, asserting their right to forms of cultural autonomy and self-determination. We explore the historical and geographical range of Aboriginal Australian forms of social being through ethnographic texts, art, novels, autobiographies, film and other media, and consider the ways in which identity is being challenged and constructed.
FALL 2020 CORE-UA 539, Cultures and Contexts: Asian/Pacific/American Cultures
Prof. Saranillio (Social and Cultural Analysis) [Syllabus]
Examines significant historical and contemporary moments through an analysis of culture and power and how cultural productions--film, television dramas, novels, visual art, national monuments and memorials, among others--produce ideas, stories and silences in different historical moments about different Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders that have contemporary resonance today. For instance, how is it that the bikini, which most people associate with suggestive beach wear, has its origins in the U.S. nuclear testing of the first hydrogen bomb on the Bikini Atoll that irradiated much of the Pacific? How do historical representations of Asian American men make the meteoric rise of basketball star Jeremy Lin so unexpected and anomalous? How do histories of U.S. wars in Asia coupled with anti-Asian immigrant legislation shape ideas about Asian Americans as “perpetual foreigners” even centuries after Asian migration to the United States? Using different methods of cultural inquiry such as visual and popular culture, sports and media studies, literary critique, political economy and legal studies, we examine the complex ways that ideas about race, gender, sexuality, and indigeneity produce unequal power relations in U.S. society.
FALL 2020 CORE-UA 541, Cultures and Contexts: Brazil
Prof. Weinstein (History) [Syllabus]
Brazil's transformation from a colonial, agrarian, slave society to a predominantly urban, industrialized nation, and an aspiring world power. Considers how Brazil became both a major industrial power and a society with all the classic social ills of a “Global South” nation. We also explore the relationship between mainstream notions of modernity and development, and the many different social and cultural initiatives that have produced Brazil’s hybrid popular culture and multiple national identities. Topics include slavery, racism, and emancipation, urban life, immigration and industrialization, changing gender roles, carnaval and popular culture, and democratization.
FALL 2020 CORE-UA 544, Cultures and Contexts: Spain
Prof. Mendelson (Spanish & Portuguese) [Syllabus]
Spanish modernity, from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic: Spain has not been a major world power in over 200 years, during which its competitors and successor empires (France, Britain, and the U.S.) branded it, via a conglomeration of ideas called the “Black Legend,” as a backwards and feudal bastion of superstition and intolerance, good only for anthropologists and tourists. A hotbed of state-building in antiquity, Spain emerged as a center of Renaissance learning under Arab and Berber rule. While the rest of Europe languished in feudalism, its seven centuries co-existence of Christians, Muslims, and Jews saw the rebirth of classical knowledge, the spread of literacy, the development of a human-centered cosmology, the emergence of narrative self-making and the novel, and Europe’s first primarily urban society, where philosophy, the sciences, architecture, and the arts flourished. After Christian princes defeated the last Islamic foothold in the Peninsula in 1492, Castilian language and culture was the backbone of Spain’s imperial expansion across the Atlantic and produced the first modern, disciplining state, the privileging of individualism, private property, and capitalism, and theses of popular sovereignty, the nation state, and theories of racial inequality. Outpaced in industrialization by the late 18th-century, still Spain (and the new nations of Spanish America) kept pace with liberal reforms that culminated in the clash of competing fascist-capitalist and democratic-socialist ideologies, leading to the Spanish Civil War, World War II, the Cold War, and the re-birth of Spanish democracy in the post-Franco and European Union era, and Spain’s current avant-garde role in culture and the arts. Materials include history, ethnography, literature, and film.
FALL 2020 CORE-UA 545, Cultures and Contexts: Egypt of the Pharaohs
Prof. Roth (Art History/Hebrew & Judaic Studies) [Syllabus]
The culture of ancient Egypt in the New Kingdom period, 1550-1069 B.C.E. During this period of imperial conquest, the ancient Egyptian civilization, already more than sixteen centuries old, increasingly interacted with peoples and civilizations beyond its borders. We examine the remains of this newly cosmopolitan pharaonic culture, including a variety of primary sources—texts (literature, popular stories, religious writings, letters, and administrative documents), as well as material culture (works of art, architecture, archaeological remains). Students learn how scholars analyze this material to reconstruct New Kingdom cultural life and use these methods themselves to gain insight into the Egyptians' religious beliefs, social forms and organizations, and conventions and achievements of their literature, art, and architecture, as well as to critically evaluate the interpretations and reconstructions in the secondary scholarship. Finally, we try to see how cultural assumptions interact and reinforce each other, playing out in a wide range of Egyptian cultural products.
FALL 2020 CORE-UA 554, Cultures & Contexts: Modern Italy
Prof. Forgacs (Italian Studies) [Syllabus]
Almost anything one might think of as typically Italian, from pasta to pizza, neorealism to Sophia Loren, Armani to the mafia, has been made or remodeled by contact and exchange with the world beyond Italy. This does not mean that they are “not really” Italian. They are, but what has made them really Italian have been circuits of international travel and trade and the accompanying processes of naming and comparison by which non-Italians have defined certain things as essentially Italian and Italians have seen themselves mirrored in those definitions, modified them, or branded and marketed themselves through them. To look at how all this works, we start with an overview of ideas of Italy from classical antiquity to the eighteenth century, moving to an analysis of travel to and within Italy, the internationalization of Italian food, drink, music, and fashion, the Futurist assault on Italy’s cultural heritage, and the Italian film and television industries in a global system. We examine how movements of people, both out of and into Italy, have involved a remaking of collective identities. Finally, we turn to international relations and changing perceptions of Italy on the world stage as a result of foreign policies, wars, and entry into the European Union. Throughout, students are invited to reflect critically on how Italy’s culture, political identity, and icons have been produced over time, and to consider how far similar process are at work in other nations, including their own.