Fall 2007 Course Descriptions

History 200, Section 5
Mediterranean Boundaries
Instructor: Ricardo Court
3 credits, Intermediate Level. Open to freshmen.
MWF 2:25-3:15

This class will explore a wide range of chronicles, memoirs, correspondence, material objects, visual art, and modern histories to explore a region: The Mediterranean. We will do this rather than explore the history revolving around a "nation" like Spain or Italy, which truth be told meant very little before the modern age. We will do this exploring military and religious conflict, economic and commercial interaction, and the philosophical and artistic influences between the major medieval and early-modern Mediterranean civilizations: the Greek Orthodox world of the last Byzantine emperors on the northeast shore; pressing against them, the Islamic world of the Ottoman sultans and their Arab and Berber allies and subjects on the southern and eastern shores; and the Roman Catholic world of the Latin Crusaders and Venetian and Genoese Merchants who carry them eastward from the northwest shore seeking both war and trade. Traditionally, scholars have investigated these three worlds, and the world-views of their members in separate classrooms and in separate books. But were those worlds and world-views really so discrete? In readings and paper topics we will explore a wide range of testimonies by the Mediterraneans themselves to gauge if they thought so as they crossed Mediterranean Boundaries.

Literature in Translation 277/Comparative Literature 368
Kafka and the Kafkaesque
Instructor: Hans Adler
3 credits, Intermediate Level. Open to freshmen.
TR 11:00-12:15

Franz Kafka (1883-1924) is one of those authors whose impact on World literature cannot be underestimated. Born an Austrian Jew; living in the German-speaking Diaspora of Prague; making his living during the day as a relatively successful employee of an insurance company and desperately trying to create fiction that meets his own extreme expectations; constantly at odds with the expectations of his family, friends, and fiancées/female acquaintances; and plagued by frail health, Franz Kafka struggled his entire life to reconcile the irreconcilable: life and writing. He published only very few texts during his lifetime, and on his death bed he asked his friend Max Brod to burn all remaining manuscripts - a last will with which Brod did not comply. Kafka’s texts constitute a new level and quality of literature that has triggered innumerable responses in many languages, media, and discourses. He is an "international" author of a new type of "world literature," the quality of which is clear yet denies all attempts to approach it by way of traditional means of interpretation: Kafka’s texts demand a transdisciplinary and comparative approach. It is perplexing: We understand the words and sentences of Kafka’s texts, but when it comes to envisioning the world created by these texts, our imagination falls short of being able to grasp both the universe of his texts and its internal logic. Similar to Kafka’s characters, who are losers from the outset, the readers of Kafka’s texts seem doomed to fail in their attempts to understand this uncanny world, created only from common language. And here lies the uncomfortable paradox: We can understand his texts but we struggle to follow their logic and the mysterious world created by them. The term "Kafkaesque" makes clear that the type and dimension of Kafka’s texts has been perceived as strange, uncanny, and resistant to any classification. Other authors have tried to adopt the Kafkaesque, situating themselves in the literary tradition of the uncanny that relies on the world of the mystified city of Prague with its long Jewish tradition as well as on Romanticist and Gothic texts.

In this course, we will read a wide selection of texts by Franz Kafka in order to prepare our understanding of his universe in comparison with other contemporary authors as well as authors from other cultures and eras (Borges, Poe, Meyrink, Y. Rosenberg, D. Frishman, H. Leivick, W.G. Sebald, T. Pynchon, H. Mulisch). In particular we will read texts from the literary tradition of the Golem, which can be traced back to the Psalms and Talmudic tradition, and which has been transformed several times into movies. And, believe it or not: As a poem by P. Celan, J.L. Borges’s El Golem (1958) and J. Hollander’s response (1971) as well as contemporary fiction in English show, the Golem is still alive! Lectures will also highlight literature, film, and art works in the tradition of the Kafkaesque. A small number of short writing assignments might be required (depending on funding for TAs or readers). There will be a midterm and a final exam.

Sociology 623
Gender, State, and Society
Instructor: Myra Marx Ferree
3 credits. Advanced level. Junior standing required.
MW 2:30-3:45

This course will focus on a comparison between the U.S. and Europe, including a week-long simulation activity designed to help students gain in-depth understanding of European Union (EU) and EU member state policies on parental leaves. The option of participating in a discussion section in German is also available. The course carries automatic honors for undergraduates and will count toward the European Studies Certificate.

CGES Research Collaborative - crosslisted as German, French, Sociology, History, and Political Science 804
Family Dynamics in a Changing Europe
Offered jointly with Stockholm University and the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
UW-Madison Instructor: Elizabeth Thomson
Wednesdays, 9:00-11:30 a.m.

The CGES Research Collaborative on Family Dynamics in a Changing Europe welcomes scholars from the humanities and specialists in qualitative methods as well as those who are familiar with indicators of demographic change. Readings and seminar discussion will be oriented toward theory and empirical results rather than methodology. Lectures will cover historical, anthropological and policy perspectives as well as sociological and demographic research. An introduction to demography will be provided to interested students (small book, short lecture) but is not required to understand and participate actively in lectures and discussions.

This graduate-level course provides an overview of recent theory and research on changes and dynamics in family demographic behavior in Europe . With its variation in cultural, political, economic, and institutional settings, Europe is the ideal place to test various hypotheses on the causes and consequences of family demographic change in economically developed societies. The recent transformation of Central and Eastern Europe , and the increasing importance of international migration have added to the variety of demographic dynamics of the continent. The seminar will cover changes in living arrangements and union dynamics; changes in childbearing dynamics; causes and consequences of family-demographic change; relationships between social and economic policy and family-demographic change; and transnational vital events, family dynamics in the course of international migration. Particular attention will be devoted to comparative research within Europe and to theoretically informative comparisons with low-fertility settings in North America , Oceania and East Asia .

The course is a joint venture between Stockholm University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison (USA). Class meetings will be held via video conference so that all faculty and students can participate simultaneously. The course is supported by UW-Madison’s Center for German and European Studies and by the Demography Unit at Stockholm University . It is designed to further a collaborative research agenda among faculty and doctoral students at both institutions. Professor Elizabeth Thomson leads the UW-Madison group. At Stockholm University , Dr. Gunnar Andersson (Docent), a leading expert on family demographic change in the Nordic countries, is the course organizer . Guest lecturers will include Professor Ron Lesthaeghe , Professor Emeritus of Demography and Social Science Methodology at the Free University of Brussels and Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan and the University of California-Irvine; Professor Caroline Bledsoe, Northwestern University; Dr. Gerda Neyer, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research; and Dr. Mikaela Kreyenfeld, University of Rostock and Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research. For more information, see the course announcement.