2020 - 2021 Curriculum

Thematically, this course will focus on the historical, literary, artistic, and philosophical issues raised during The Long Nineteenth Century (1789-1914). Practically, it will concentrate on the skills and the information students will need to pursue MLA graduate work at Stanford: writing a critical, argumentative graduate paper; conducting library research; presenting a concise oral summary of work accomplished; actively participating in a seminar. Readings and assignments will include Austen, Mozart, Wordsworth, Schubert, Balzac, Kierkegaard, Mann, Marx, Dickens, Darwin, Freud, and Woolf, as well as selected poetry and critical writings. The course will culminate in a research paper and a presentation of each students' findings.

In a world of touchscreens and instant knowledge, going on a journey for the good of the soul might seem strange. But pilgrimage—spiritual travel—has witnessed a huge resurgence. Why? We’ll investigate the pilgrimage through its long history, studying routes to some of the world’s most sacred places to consider this fundamental form of spiritual and personal expression. From Rome and Mecca, to Japan and Tibet, to Wales and California, these often-spectacular routes inspire, test, and reward travelers. Who travels on these routes and how do they travel? Who and what guides travelers on their way? What motivates these journeys and how did travelers access the spaces they desired to see? What objects testify to pilgrimage and the desire for salvation and remembrance? Indeed, what happens once we get to where we’re going? Working with personal accounts and with texts on cultural heritage, walking, pilgrimage, spirituality and individual growth, we shall emphasize these questions as we study some of the most well-trodden paths and most famous places in global history.

Between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries the republic of Venice created a powerful empire that controlled much of the Mediterranean.  Situated on the shifting boundary between East and West, the Venetians established a thriving merchant republic that allowed many social groups, religions, and ethnicities to coexist within its borders.  This seminar explores some of the essential features of Venetian society, as a microcosm of early modern European society.  We will examine the relationship between center and periphery, order and disorder, orthodoxy and heresy as well as the role of politics, art, and culture in Venice.  The seminar will conclude with a discussion of the decline of Venice as a political and economic power and its reinvention as a tourist site and living museum for the modern era.

What are the most pressing and challenging issues facing Americans today? Is the middle class shrinking? How do people who live at the extremes of American society- the super rich, the working poor and those who live on the margins, imagine and experience "the good life"? How does a soldier in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley (TRIBE/War), by Sebastian Junger) Valley come to experience friendship, kinship and masculinity? How does an African American researcher’s experience living in a “Whitopia” (Searching for Whitopia, by Rich Benjamin) change his preconceptions about race and class?  How does modern agribusiness (Tomatoland, by Barry Estabrook) draw immigrants from around the globe and how do we deal with these invisible populations? In “Tattoos on the Heart” by Father Greg Boyle we learn how a Jesuit priest in Los Angeles is literally turning lives around through compassion, business savvy and community engagement. What creative responses are generated to these problems by normal everyday people such as yourselves?  

This class uses the methods and modes of ethnographic study in an examination of American culture. Each of these narratives provides a window into the various ways in which Americans approach the subjects of wealth and the good life, poverty and the underclass, and the construction of class, race, and gender in American society. Students will not be required to have any previous knowledge, just curiosity and an open mind.