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May 18 - 29, 2009

Courses:

PHIL 4390: Philosophy, Art, Culture: London and Paris
Mon 5:30-6:45
Dr. Jeffrey M. Jackson

This course combines the study of the views of monumental figures in the Philosophy of Art - Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, Greenberg, etc. -with the exploration of two cities renowned for their rich and diverse collections of art: London and Paris. We will focus on three main themes:

• the nature of creativity and artistic genius
• the complex experience of artistic spectatorship - stimulating, pleasurable, disconcerting, etc.
• art's relationship to culture, politics and history

In London, we will contemplate these issues while exploring the vast collections of Western and non-Western art at the British Museum, the Tate Modern Museum, and the National Galleries. When possible, guided tours will be arranged to highlight topics dealt with in the course: aesthetic modernity, the political dimensions of art, the phenomenological and psychoanalytic dimensions of art, the cultural significance of non-Western forms of art, etc. In Paris, visits will be made to the Louvre, the Musee d'Orsay, and the Pompidou Center. We will visit and contemplate the architectural marvels of both cities.

PSY 4301: European and American History of Psychology.
Dr. Stephanie Babb
Tue 5:30-6:45
Course Syllabus

This course will examine the historical emergence of psychology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We will seek to understand the methodological and theoretical changes that lead to our contemporary conception of human psychological capacities, thereby hopefully achieving a clearer view on the direction and prospects of the science of the mind. The best way to understand the people who created clinical and experimental psychology is to see firsthand where they lived and worked and understand the context in which their ideas developed.

Visits in London will include the homes of Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud, the National Gallery, the Imperial War Museum, and Bethlem Mental Hospital. There will also be a Jack the Ripper Walking Tour and a Thames Terror Cruise in order to examine the darker side of London. Sights in Paris are the Louvre, the Paris Opera House, the Sorbonne, and the Musee Dupuytren.

ENG 3309: Creative Writing and the Delight of Travel
Dr. Robin Davidson
Wed 5:30-6:45
Course Syllabus

In his essay “Looking for Rilke” in Twentieth Century Pleasures, poet Robert Hass walks the streets of Paris seeking the voice of Rainer Maria Rilke, a Prague-born poet who lived for a time in Paris working as secretary to sculptor Auguste Rodin and writing his Dinggedichten (“thing-poems”). In his European wanderings, Hass seeks the voice that will call him away from his life, out of himself, or more accurately, “into the deepest places” in himself. Hass writes,

"There was probably nothing more suffocating than the life of a genteel, aspiring European household of the late nineteenth century in which failure brooded like a boarder who had to be appeased...All his life Rilke carried that suffocation inside him…Walking through European cities with [Stephen] Mitchell's Rilke in my ear, trying to see with Rilke's eyes, I could begin to feel in the new downtowns, in the old city squares like stage sets with their baroque churches by the rivers and restored fortresses on the hills, the geography of that suffocation; it flares in the brilliant anger of the Duino Elegies…The Duino Elegies are an argument against our lived, ordinary lives…the world of days and habits…They seem whispered or crooned into our inmost ear, insinuating us toward the same depth in ourselves."

In this particular section of English 3309 to be offered as part of the 2009 London Program, we too will step outside of our lives, listening for that inmost crooning, as we explore the craft of writing across a variety of genres, centuries, and cultures - both in our American classroom and in our travel abroad to London and Paris. Our one weekly 75-minute session in the U.S. will comprise: (1) a 15- to 20-minute period of lecture on a particular topic related to literary craft and an examination of one or more exemplar texts; and (2) a 55- to 60-minute workshop in which you will share your own creative work in response to writing assignments in poetry, memoir, and short fiction (composed both in and out of class). We will also spend 12 days abroad exploring twenty-first-century British and European landscapes as material for our own growth as poets and writers. (Note that English 3309 is an upper division course in the Department of English that counts as a "writing" course, is worth 3 college level credit hours, and may be repeated once for credit.)

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ENG 3341: Postcolonial Studies-Imperial Capitals, Colliding Cultures
Dr. Giuliana Lund
Thur 5:30-6:45
Course Syllabus

Imperial Capitals, Colliding Cultures

Come explore London and Paris, once the capitals of vast global empires, now modern multi-cultural metropoli. In this interdisciplinary course we will trace the history and culture of these imperial cities from the late nineteenth century to the present. We will investigate the many ways London and Paris have been shaped by globalization and cross-cultural encounters, first abroad, and then at home. We will follow the trail of artifacts and peoples from far-flung British and French colonies to the imperial capitals, where colonial conquests were glorified in monuments, where stolen artifacts filled museums and inspired new artistic movements, and where waves of immigration from the colonies continuously arrived to challenge local cultural traditions. We will prepare for our journey to the imperial metropoli by reading literary and historical texts and watching films that delve into the ethnic, racial, and religious tensions arising from colonization of and immigration from Africa, India, and the Caribbean. Once in Europe, we will visit the architectural marvels, museum collections, street markets, and other public spaces that reflect the collision of global cultures in these capital cities. Throughout the course, we will grapple with the complexities of contemporary British and French identity politics, the rights and responsibilities of citizenship, and the negotiation of competing allegiances to national, ethnic, and religious communities. This course should be especially valuable to students interested in modern European literature, art, or history as well as postcolonial or African-American studies, but prior knowledge of these fields is not required.

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Last updated or reviewed on 2/19/09