Fall 2019
FALL 2019 CORE-UA 500, Cultures and Contexts: Topics—Global Christianities
Prof. Oliphant (Anthropology) [Syllabus]
The ongoing global formation and reformation of Christianity, from its origins in a pluralistic ancient Mediterranean world and spread throughout Europe and the Middle East, to its historical and ever-transforming role in Africa, Asia, and the New World. Rather than attempting to identify an essential core of this complex religious and cultural formation, we explore the problems and possibilities Christian texts, concepts, institutions, and narratives have posed for a diversity of populations over distinct historical periods, gaining an appreciation both for how various populations have responded to Christianity and the ways in which these encounters have subsequently disrupted and transformed Christian narratives. Exploring this global multi-sided conversation allows us to consider how Christian forms have not only justified and reproduced, but also critiqued and questioned the power of empires and nations, elites and tyrants, and reformers and critics.
FALL 2019 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 2019 CORE-UA 500, Cultures & Contexts: Topics—Wine and Feasting in the Ancient Mediterranean
Prof. Alfonso & Prof. Kotsonas (Institute for the Study of the Ancient World) [Syllabus]
We explore the social significance of the production and consumption of wine, which is characteristic of the early civilizations of the Mediterranean, including western Asia, discussing a range of practices of communal wine consumption (especially feasting), and the role of this consumption in the construction of cultural identities and the manipulation of social relations in select cultures of the mid 2nd to the late 1st millennium BCE. We also explore the ways in which these phenomena contributed to the development of shared cultural practices across the Mediterranean, but also generated varied social and cultural meanings over wine consumption in different contexts and parts of the region. The emphasis on communal wine consumption relates to the value of wine in antiquity. This value derives from the uncommon conditions required for the cultivation of the grapevine, as well as the intoxicating and healing properties of wine. It is because of these properties that wine was associated with cult practices (especially libations), manifestations of power and patronage, and the definitions of aristocratic identity (e.g., through the symposium) in palaces and cities, and sanctuaries and cemeteries of the ancient Mediterranean. Pursuing a diachronic and cross-cultural perspective, we reflect on textual accounts and archaeological correlates of ancient Mediterranean cultural practices centered on wine, as well as on social and anthropological theory on feasting. We read ancient texts in translation, and engage with archaeological evidence, including materials in the collections of the Metropolitan and Brooklyn Museums.
FALL 2019 CORE-UA 506, Cultures & Contexts: The Chinese and Japanese Traditions
Prof. Roberts (East Asian Studies) [Syllabus]
Essential aspects of Asian culture—Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Shintoism—studied through careful reading of major works of philosophy and literature. A roughly equal division between Chinese and Japanese works is meant to give a basic understanding of the broad similarities and the less obvious, but all-important, differences among the cultures of Confucian Asia. One reading is a Vietnamese adaptation of a Chinese legend. The last two readings, modern novellas from Japan and China, show the reaction of the traditional cultures to the Western invasions.
FALL 2019 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 2019 CORE-UA 510, Cultures and Contexts: Russia Between East and West
Prof. Kotsonis (Russian & Slavic Studies) [Syllabus]
Focuses on distinctive historical and geographical dichotomies and issues in Russian culture. Emphasis is on primary documents, including literary works, travel notes, works of art, and political statements from all periods, chosen to establish the particular matrix of competing positions that make up the Russian national and cultural identity.
FALL 2019 CORE-UA 514, Cultures and Contexts: Ancient Israel
Prof. Fleming (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 2019 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 2019 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 2019 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 2019 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 2019 CORE-UA 539, Cultures and Contexts: Asian/Pacific/American Cultures
Prof. Lee (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 2019 CORE-UA 541, Cultures & Contexts: New World Encounters
Prof. Eustace (History) [Syllabus]
During the Atlantic Age of Sail, from the fifteenth though the nineteenth centuries, the peoples of four continents—Europe, Africa, North American and South America—began to interact in sustained and complex ways for the first time. They brought to their encounters diverse cosmologies (beliefs about the spiritual world), epistemologies (systems of knowing and gathering empirical knowledge), family formations (networks of kinship), state configurations (forms of political organization), trading patterns (systems of material accumulation and exchange), and traditions of war and peace (forms of conflict and negotiation across groups). From their divergent approaches to the distribution and regulation of land, population, and goods arose a complex new transoceanic system that would tie together these four corners of the Atlantic. Reading early historical accounts, travel narratives, personal memoirs, novels, poems, and plays, we see how Atlantic peoples make sense of their changing worlds and the creative tensions of encounter, and come to understand the productive conflicts that ultimately gave rise to an Age of Atlantic Revolutions.
FALL 2019 CORE-UA 546, Cultures and Contexts: Global Asia
Prof. Ludden (History) [Syllabus]
Explores the expansive transformation of Asian cultures from ancient times to the present, focusing on networks of mobility, interaction, social order, and exchange that form the particularity of Asian cultures through entanglements with others. Beginning in the days of Alexander the Great and the formation of the Afro-Eurasian ecumene, follows tracts of Buddhist, Confucian, Hindu, and Muslim expansion; then turns to the age of early modern landed empires, Ottoman-Safavid-Mughal-Ming/Ching, and their interactions with seaborne European expansion. Studies truly global formations of culture in the flow of goods, ideas, and people among world regions, during the age of modern empires and nationalism, including the rise of the nation as a cultural norm, capitalism in Asia, and Japanese expansion around the Pacific rim. Concludes by considering cultural change attending globalization since the 1950s, focusing on entanglements of Asian cultures with the globalizing culture of the market, consumerism, and wage labor, and transnational labor migration as well as Asian cultural spaces in and around New York City, including our nearby Chinatown.
FALL 2019 CORE-UA 554, Cultures & Contexts: Modern Italy
Prof. Falkoff (Italian Studies) [Syllabus]
The statesman Massimo d’Azeglio is said to have said, “Now that Italy is made, we have to make Italians.” Whether or not he actually said these words, they seem to have struck a chord: It’s hard to find a history of Italian Unification that does not cite them. But what did it mean to make Italians? When Italy became a constitutional monarchy in 1861, most people living in the peninsula and islands identified more strongly with their local communities than with the abstract idea of Italy. We look at the relationship between cultural production and national identity, asking how literary, visual, musical, and culinary forms contributed to the making of “Italy” and “Italians.” Which elements of the diverse culture of the peninsula, diaspora, colonies, and islands were glorified and which were excluded in production of Italy as an imagined community?