We live in an image-saturated world. How do we make sense of the moving image and its powerful roles in shaping culture and mediating our relationship with the world? This course will equip students with the tools to understand and decipher film language. It introduces and interrogates the basic notions, technologies, terminologies, and theories of film analysis. We will study visual and compositional elements, like mise-en-scene, cinematography, editing, and sound. Films we discuss will include different geographies, genres, major directors, schools, and film movements. Through writing, students will learn to analyze films with accurate, medium-specific vocabulary, develop informed and nuanced arguments, and critically reflect on the position of the viewer.

Full details for COML 1104 - FWS: Reading Films

What do Frankenstein and Things Fall Apart have in common? What lies behind the fantastical stories of Aladdin? Do we have to like Garcia Marquez and Shakespeare? These texts and authors re-imagine the human experience at its most intriguing level. In this course, we will discuss human rights, intimacy, joy, isolation, and other controversies at the heart of these books. Throughout the semester, students will learn how to articulate an informed and nuanced position on these issues via formal practices in analytical readings, drafting, peer review, and self-editing. Actual selection of readings may vary depending on the instructor's focus.

Full details for COML 1105 - FWS: Books with Big Ideas

In 2015, Japan's SoftBank Robotics Corporation announced the world's first robot with feelings. Many people were excited, many more disturbed. If robots are simply, as the dictionary suggests, machines designed to function in the place of a living agent, then what is so disturbing about them? Since robots are designed to replace human labor (first economic, and now also emotional), do they represent a threat as much as they do an aid? What happens when robots exceed their purpose, and become more humanlike? How do robots read, write, and feel? How do the activities of coding and writing, or decoding and reading differ? Students will be equipped with the vocabulary and writing strategies to rigorously analyze, compare, and debate the meaning of robots in the human imagination from different epochs, countries, languages, and media. In doing so, they will write in a variety of registers about works such as the play R.U.R. by Karel Capek, who invented the term robot. Other materials may include philosophical texts, fiction, videogames, films, graphic novels, and hip-hop concept albums.

Full details for COML 1106 - FWS: Robots

Explore the culinary tradition and culture of Russia in broad historical, geopolitical and socioeconomic context through the lens of Russian folklore, short stories of Gogol, Chekhov, and Bulgakov, works of contemporary Russian-American writers, visual art, and international film. The literary journey will take you from the lavish tables of the 18th century aristocracy to the hardship and austerity of GULAG prison, to the colorful and savory regional fare of the former Russian Empire and Soviet Union, to the fridge and pantry staples in the everyday life of Russian family. Your writing assignments will help you develop critical thinking and argumentative skills, precision and clarity of expression, ability to write with discipline, creativity, and sense of style.

Full details for COML 1119 - FWS: A Taste of Russian Literature

The cannibal is always the other. And yet, the cannibal lives among us. In spite of real cases of cannibalism, most of these cannibals inhabit our reality only in books, films, songs, or art. This course investigates figures of the cannibal in different media and cultural contexts. Issues that will be at the center of our attention are cannibalism’s use to mark cultural differences, as well as for political and ideological purposes, and its relation to sensationalism and (spectatorial) pleasure. We will use a wide range of texts, from novels to television series, from films to video clips, from art to philosophical reflections, as food for thought and as models and inspiration for different writing practices.

Full details for COML 1127 - FWS: Cannibal Cultures

In this course, we will learn how to write criticism for a popular audience—in other words, how to write the kinds of book/film/music/art/fashion reviews you can read in magazines, newspapers, and digital media. We’ll talk about what makes for a good work of criticism (even if it might be a negative review) and about the pleasures of reading and writing criticism. In assignments, you’ll apply what we’ve learned by writing and revising your own reviews, often on topics of your own choice.

Full details for COML 1139 - FWS: The Art of Criticism

In this course, students will learn about animal welfare, behavior, and conservation through international films. We will discuss wildlife, companion, and farm animals in conjunction with human cultures, politics, and geography. The course will cover various animal species in fiction films, documentaries, and animated movies. In some motion pictures, animals will be central, and in others, peripheral. Students will learn how to compose film reviews and a film production analysis. All movies are streamed for students to watch in their free time. The course is listed as “sustainability inclusive” by the Cornell Campus Sustainability Office.

Full details for COML 1141 - FWS: Animals in Global Cinema

Moving beyond national, linguistic, and disciplinary borders, what cutting-edge debates shape the “planetary” field of comparative literature, film, and media studies? Through a wide range of comparative projects, from those often cited as foundational to the discipline to those currently expanding its frames of reference, aims and aspirations, contexts and stakes across the globe, this course will explore how different genres, networks, platforms, and media evolve, engage, question, inform, and transform one another. Topics may include: methods of comparison and approaches to reading, listening and viewing, aesthetics and politics, large-language models and philosophy of language, critical and postcolonial theory, psychoanalysis, translation, poetics, economies, and ecologies, world literature, and the increasingly pervasive role of AI. Writing assignments will include analytical essays, weekly canvas postings, and two in-class presentations. The course can count as a required first-year writing seminar.

Full details for COML 2030 - Comparative Literature, Film, and Media

Could a meter have a meaning? Could there be a reason for a rhyme? And what is lost and gained in translation? We'll consider such questions in this introduction to poetry. We'll see how poems are put together and we'll learn how to figure them out. Poets may include Emily Dickinson, Thomas Hardy, Gerard Manley Hopkins, A. E. Housman, Robert Frost, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Robert Hayden, Frank O'Hara, Alexander Pushkin, Mikhail Lermontov, Anna Akhmatova. All reading is in English.

Full details for COML 2050 - Introduction to Poetry

Where do we get our images of poets, and of poetry? Along with the images we find in poems themselves, how do poetry and poets figure in fiction and film, in music and popular culture? How do such figures inform both the images we find in poems and poetry's own image? What is poetry’s relation to other genres and discourses, to self and language, history and politics? Exploring such issues in verse and prose, in fiction, film, and other media, including among others Blake, Wordsworth, Keats, Dickinson, Poe, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Pound, Williams, Neruda, Parra, and Bolaño, the course will arc toward impactful recent interventions by such contemporaries as Claudia Rankine, Layli Long Soldier, Ilya Kaminsky, Jenny Xie, Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, and A.I.-generated poetry.

Full details for COML 2251 - Poetry's Image

This course offers a new way of understanding both the Holocaust and the broader history of modern Europe—from the ground up. Moving from Greece to France, and from Amsterdam to Moscow, we explore how Jewish communities experienced dictatorship, occupation, and genocide between 1918 and 1948. Students gain a full introduction to World War II and the Holocaust while working directly with diaries, letters, and survivor testimonies to see history through the eyes of its victims. Bridging the disciplines that meet in Jewish Studies, the course examines how violence, belonging, and moral choice shaped everyday life in one of the most turbulent eras of Jewish and European history. Along the way, students build critical interpretive skills, deepen their historical literacy, and learn how historians analyze personal narratives to understand large-scale events.

Full details for COML 2721 - The Holocaust in Europe:A Victim-Centered History

Language is a skin, the critic Roland Barthes once wrote: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire. Sexual desire has a history, even a literary history, which we will examine through an introductory survey of European dramatic literature from the Ancient Greeks to the present, as well as classic readings in sexual theory, including Plato, Freud, Foucault, and contemporary feminist and queer theory.

Full details for COML 2760 - Desire

What do comparatists do when we approach our objects of study? What enables or justifies comparison across different languages, different genres, different media, and different disciplines? Does all comparison assume a common ground of some kind (whether historical, formal, conceptual, or ideological), or is comparison inherently ungrounded, provocative, or political? We will explore these questions through examination of a wide range of comparative projects, from those often cited as foundational to the discipline and their most important critics to contemporary comparative projects that are reshaping the discipline and expanding it in new directions.

Full details for COML 3001 - Methods of Comparison

More than thirty years after the end of the Soviet Union, we have the distance needed to view the twentieth-century state socialist project from a historical perspective--even as Cold War tropes are revived amid another major confrontation with Russia. In this course, we will analyze memoirs, oral histories, historical fiction, films, and TV shows that look back at this period. How do the makers of these works use genre as a political as well as artistic tool? What are the political implications of comedy, cosplay, or melodrama when applied to communism? How does the portrayal of this period change as state socialism recedes into the distance? Texts from Russia, Ukraine, Germany, the Balkans, the UK, and the United States. All works will be in English. For an additional credit unit, students who can read Russian can (optionally) enroll in RUSSA 4491 for related practice in reading and discussions in Russian. (HIST-HEU)

Full details for COML 3012 - Remembering Socialism: Literature and Film After the End of History

Images of tattooed, inscribed, and marked bodies abound in popular media, from television series to blogs, from performance art to popular literature. When the body becomes a canvas or text, this raises crucial questions about the definition and the reading of individual bodies and their ties to different categories, such as gender, race, culture, and society. This course we will pay particular attention to the shifting meanings of body modification in different cultural, theoretical, and historical contexts. Course material will include texts, films, and artwork by Michel de Certeau, Jacques Derrida, Georges Didi-Huberman, Lalla Essaydi, Peter Greenaway, Zhang Huan, Franz Kafka, Claude Levi-Strauss, Mirta Kupferminc, Christopher Nolan, Renata Salecl, Hortense Spillers, Qiu Zhijie, and others, as well as television series, internet forums, and other popular culture formats.

Full details for COML 3017 - Tattoo Cultures

Global Cinema and Media offers a survey of international film and media history from the late nineteenth century to today. Through a focus on key films and significant epochs, the course traces the evolution of form, style and genre, the medium's changing technologies and business models, as well as film and media's relation to broader cultural, social and political contexts. Screenings of narrative, documentary and experimental films and video will be accompanied by readings in film and media theory and history. (PMA-HTC)

Full details for COML 3261 - Global Cinema and Media

What role should moving images play in debates about transnational migration, one of the principal factors re-shaping communities and communication today? Focusing on cinema from the late 20th and early 21st centuries, with primary examples drawn from Germany, France, the United States, Italy, Denmark?in relation to Algeria, Senegal, Iran, Mexico, Korea, China, Benin, Turkey, Syria?this course explores how film re-imagines the fabric of social life affected by migration. Seminar-style discussion of films are paired with contextual readings and readings from film studies. Key concepts such as borders and movement, ethnoscapes and citizenship, cityscapes and place-making, mediascapes and personhood, lawfulness and illegality, labor and leisure, language and speech, art and perception will guide our discussions of films and readings. (PMA-HTC)

Full details for COML 3442 - Filming Migration

If humanistic research consists of finding consensus positions, articulating simple expressions, summarizing texts, standardizing identities, or doing passable translations, then this it: we arrived at the place where artificial intelligence is able to accomplish these missions to a convincing degree. However, we erred if we ever thought such tasks would constitute the humanities. Combining theory and practice, this interdisciplinary class aims to show what AI can generate, and capture… and what the humanities can create, and think. A critique of AI is essential, but it needs to be both scientifically sound and scholarly robust. Our course will look at key issues about language, cognition, textuality, or creativity, while taking advantage of ongoing research and editorial projects hosted by the Humanities Lab.

Full details for COML 3524 - Humanities in the Time of AI

This seminar will explore the unique “Kafkaesque” universe of metamorphoses, labyrinthine systems of law and (in)-justice, and uncanny societies of humans and animals. Focusing on Franz Kafka’s novels and tales, we will examine topics such as: the relationship between body and pain; society and the individual; authority and hierarchy; fathers and sons; writing and living; language and home; music and politics; and religion and persecution. Placing Kafka first within the socio-cultural context of Jewish-German-Czech Prague (and discussing problems of multicultural-lingual identity), we shall follow his literary journey to his vision of America (one of his novels). At the center of our discussions will be: the effect of his work on literature, film, and theatre. We shall also discuss the effects of his work on contemporary theories of psychoanalysis, law, performance, modernism, architecture, and literature. Texts include novels and novellas: the Trial, the Castle, America, the Penal Colony, Metamorphoses, the Judgment, the Country Doctor, The Burrow, Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk. Films by the Coen brothers and David Lynch; theoretical readings by Camus, Lacan, Deleuze, Guattari, Bataille, Blanchot, Benjamin and others. Readings and discussions in English.

Full details for COML 3688 - Kafka's Worlds: Castles, Trials, and Tribulations

This course examines the historic diversity of the modern Middle East, exploring histories of inter-communal contact and conflict. We begin by investigating the legacy of the Ottoman Empire and the impact of its dissolution. We will focus our attention on commercial centers that fostered inter-communal relations, as well as investigating sites of strife and cases of minority repression. We will read histories, memoirs, and fiction, and view films that help us better understand inter-communal relations, tensions, and conflict. We will also interrogate the terms for exploring a range distinctions among majority and minority populations including: religious difference (Muslims, Christians, and Jews); divisions of religious rite (Sunni and Shi'a); entho-linguistic minorities (Armenians and Kurds); national identities (Israelis and Palestinians); cultures of origin (Mizrahi, Sephardi, and Ashkenazi Jews). We will explore how these divisions inform urgent current conflicts: the civil war in Syria and the refugee crisis; the civil war in Iraq and the campaign by ISIS against minorities; as well as tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Full details for COML 3743 - Minorities of the Middle East

COML 4190 and COML 4200 may be taken independently of each other. Undergraduate student and faculty advisor to determine course of study and credit hours.

Full details for COML 4190 - Independent Study

In the field of aesthetics, the uncanny refers to an affective state, most commonly the sensation of encountering something-an object, a place, a situation- as both familiar and strange a the same time. Such experience of the "strange-familiar" (unheimlich) produces a disquieting sense of uncertainty, uneasiness, or doubt and may even spark extreme feelings of alienation, anxiety, dread, horror, and repulsion. This seminar explores the philosophical origins and conceptual terrain of the uncanny in relation to 20th and 21st century cinematic production.

Full details for COML 4196 - The Uncanny

Seminar on the essential features and qualities of culture and how it impacts human endeavors. Because understanding culture necessarily requires interaction across multiple areas of study, this interdisciplinary seminar will be based on discussions of recent research at the interface of cognitive science and the humanities. Topics may include: animal cultures, the evolution of language, the symbolic revolution, knowledge acquisitions, play, rituals and the arts.

Full details for COML 4229 - Culture, Cognition, Humanities

This is an introduction to the three 'master thinkers' who have helped determine the discourses of modernity and post-modernity. We consider basic aspects of their work: (a) specific critical and historical analyses; (b) theoretical and methodological writings; (c) programs and manifestos; and (d) styles of argumentation, documentation, and persuasion. This also entails an introduction, for non-specialists, to essential problems of political economy, continental philosophy, psychology, and literary and cultural criticism. Second, we compare the underlying assumptions and the interpretive yields of the various disciplines and practices founded by Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud: historical materialism and communism, existentialism and power-knowledge analysis, and psychoanalysis, respectively. We also consider how these three writers have been fused into a single constellation, 'Marx-Nietzsche-Freud,' and how they have been interpreted by others, including L. Althusser, A. Badiou, A. Camus, H. Cixous, G. Deleuze, J. Derrida, M. Foucault, H.-G. Gadamer, M. Heidegger, L. Irigaray, K. Karatani, J. Lacan, P. Ricoeur, L. Strauss, S. Zizek.

Full details for COML 4250 - Marx, Nietzsche, Freud

This course studies philosophical, literary, and scientific conceptions of nature and the ethics and politics of human-nonhuman relations. We will cover a wide array of texts and global issues-such as animal cruelty, indigenous ecological thought, climate justice, plant ecologies, and ecological sovereignty-while trying to trace a history of French and Francophone ecological thought, from the 16th century to today. Our readings will address a number of related questions: what is our responsibility to nonhuman beings? How must our conceptions of nature, humanity, ethics, and politics change to become more ecological? And are these issues contemporary or have they been with us for centuries, even millennia? Students will closely study and collectively discuss texts while undertaking assignments ranging from the analytic to the experimental.

Full details for COML 4252 - Ecological Thinking: Philosophy, Ethics, and Politics Beyond the Human

This StudioLab course connects critical design teams with researchers, NGOs, and nonprofits working on human rights, public health, and environmental and land rights in the US and abroad. Practicing methods of transmedia knowledge, critical design thinking, and strategic storytelling, students collaborate on projects with the Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide, Health Access Connect (Uganda), NYS 4-H, and SOOFA Ranch (GA). Consulting on partners' ongoing projects, teams study and practice processes from IDEO's Human-Centered Design Thinking and Stanford's Design for Extreme Affordability, as well as UX, tactical media, and activist organizing developed by ACT-UP, Black Lives Matter, Guerrilla Girls, and contemporary, multi-platform campaigns, presenting and sharing their collaborations via project site and other platforms. (ENGL-PST)

Full details for COML 4281 - Human-Centered Design and Engaged Media

This seminar will focus on the writings of the polymorphous Martinican poet and thinker, Edouard Glissant (1928-2011). We will attend to the historical context of French colonialism, particularly in the Caribbean, that gives his writing part of its impetus and to the anticolonial intellectuals with whom he engages (chiefly Aime Cesaire and Frantz Fanon) as well as to his major self-professed influences (William Faulkner, Saint-John Perse, Hegel) and to an array of interlocutors and fellow-travelers as well as a few dissenters. The seminar will examine the main preoccupations of Glissant's writing (world histories of dispossession and plantation slavery, creolization, Relation, opacity, flux, transversality, Caribbean landscapes as figures of thought, the All-World, etc.) but our focus will be on reading Glissant and attending carefully to the implications of his poetics and of his language for decolonial thought.

Full details for COML 4368 - Reading Édouard Glissant

Sufism, the mystical tradition in Islam, has exerted considerable influence on modern European and American thought. Much like the adoption of yoga and other Eastern spiritual practices in the modern West, Sufism has been shorn of much of its medieval and Islamic origins in its transmutation into broader Western neo-spiritual and theosophic frameworks for understanding the human’s relationship to God, the world, the self and the body. In this course, we will explore Islamic mysticism through its adoption in modern Western literature. What about Sufism attracted Western spiritual seekers? How did they understand Sufi thought and ideas? How did they come to learn about Sufi practices and literature? In this course we will read deeply from the work of three significant Sufi-inspired authors. Beginning with the work of the extremely controversial Sufi psychologist Idries Shah, we will explore how Sufi stories were brought to bear on the field of psychotherapy and in European spiritualist circles. After this, we will explore the influence of Sufism on André Gide’s phantasmic celebrations of earthly sensuality, before turning to Doris Lessing’s speculative Sufi space fiction.

Full details for COML 4488 - Islamic Mysticism and the West

The environmental humanities pose a radically different set of questions to texts, materials, and contexts that were previously approached in terms of human intentions and actions alone. This seminar explores the theoretical and methodological potentials of this rapidly emerging and constantly evolving field from the interdisciplinary, comparative perspective that it also axiomatically demands. Together we will discuss seminal works that tackle four foundational concepts imperative for reframing the traditional concerns of the humanities under the sign of anthropogenic planetary change -- scale, form, matter/ energy, and distribution. The seminar will develop ways to configure these focal points to the theoretical and practical concerns of various disciplinary approaches and, especially, to participants' individual interests and research projects.

Full details for COML 4902 - Environmental Humanities: Theories and Methods

Times TBA individually in consultation with director of Senior Essay Colloquium. Approximately 50 pages to be written over the course of two semesters in the student's senior year under the direction of the student's advisor. An R grade is assigned on the basis of research and a preliminary draft completed in the first semester. A letter grade is awarded on completion of the second semester, COML 4940.

Full details for COML 4930 - Senior Essay

Times TBA individually in consultation with director of Senior Essay Colloquium. Approximately 50 pages to be written over the course of two semesters in the student's senior year under the direction of the student's advisor. An R grade is assigned on the basis of research and a preliminary draft completed in the first semester.

Full details for COML 4940 - Senior Essay

This course gives students the opportunity to work with a selected instructor to pursue special interests or research not treated in regularly scheduled courses. After getting permission of the instructor, students should enroll online in the instructor's section. Enrolled students are required to provide the department with a course description and/or syllabus along with the instructor's approval by the end of the first week of classes.

Full details for COML 6190 - Independent Study

In the field of aesthetics, the uncanny refers to an affective state, most commonly the sensation of encountering something-an object, a place, a situation-as both familiar and strange at the same time. Such experience of the strange-familiar (unheimlich) produces a disquieting sense of uncertainty, uneasiness, or doubt and may even spark extreme feelings of alienation, anxiety, dread, horror, and repulsion. This seminar explores the philosophical origins and conceptual terrain of the uncanny in relation to 20th and 21st century artistic, literary, architectural and cinematic production. If the uncanny traditionally signals a blurring of categories (familiar/unfamiliar, truth/fiction, reality/imagination) resulting in a fundamental distrust of observed reality, then what might its contemporary iterations reveal about our age of pervasive suspicion?

Full details for COML 6196 - The Uncanny

Structured around guest and public lectures by field members and beyond, the proseminar provides a common experience for students and facilitates the exchange of approaches to theoretical problems and methodological orientations. Thus, the course introduces students to the work and methods that animate their faculty's original contributions to their respective fields while offering them a forum to ask said faculty how to navigate the various stages of research and publication processes.

Full details for COML 6290 - Comparative Literature Proseminar

This seminar will focus on the writings of the polymorphous Martinican poet and thinker, Edouard Glissant (1928-2011). We will attend to the historical context of French colonialism, particularly in the Caribbean, that gives his writing part of its impetus and to the anticolonial intellectuals with whom he engages (chiefly Aime Cesaire and Frantz Fanon) as well as to his major self-professed influences (William Faulkner, Saint-John Perse, Hegel) and to an array of interlocutors and fellow-travelers as well as a few dissenters. The seminar will examine the main preoccupations of Glissant's writing (world histories of dispossession and plantation slavery, creolization, Relation, opacity, flux, transversality, Caribbean landscapes as figures of thought, the All-World, etc.) but our focus will be on reading Glissant and attending carefully to the implications of his poetics and of his language for decolonial thought.

Full details for COML 6368 - Reading Édouard Glissant

After having been reduced to a mere ideological formation of bourgeois origin, aesthetics has recently made a strong comeback in the field of theory. This course probes the reasons for this historical change. From the arguments of the critics we will derive a catalogue of criteria for a viable aesthetics in order to examine how contemporary aesthetic theory relates to cognitive theories, the historicity of art and taste (including specific practices and institutions), and the emancipatory potentials of ethics and politics. Readings may include Adorno, Berger, de Bolla, Bourdieu, Noël Carroll, Cavell, Danto, Derrida, Dickie, Eagleton, Goodman, Guillory, Gumbrecht, Halsall, Luhmann, Lyotard, de Man, Walter Benn Michaels, Obrist, Ohmann, Scarry, Seel, Shustermann, Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Williams and others.

Full details for COML 6370 - Contemporary Aesthetic Theory and its Discontents

This required seminar for the new graduate minor in media studies considers media from a wide number of perspectives, ranging from the methods of cinema and television studies to those of music, information science, communication, science and technology studies, and beyond. Historical and theoretical approaches to media are intertwined with meta-critical reflections on media studies as an interdisciplinary field of inquiry. Close attention will be paid to media's role in shaping and being shaped by race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, and other politically constructed categories of identity and sociality.

Full details for COML 6405 - Thinking Media Studies

Sufism, the mystical tradition in Islam, has exerted considerable influence on modern European and American thought. Much like the adoption of yoga and other Eastern spiritual practices in the modern West, Sufism has been shorn of much of its medieval and Islamic origins in its transmutation into broader Western neo-spiritual and theosophic frameworks for understanding the human’s relationship to God, the world, the self and the body. In this course, we will explore Islamic mysticism through its adoption in modern Western literature. What about Sufism attracted Western spiritual seekers? How did they understand Sufi thought and ideas? How did they come to learn about Sufi practices and literature? In this course we will read deeply from the work of three significant Sufi-inspired authors. Beginning with the work of the extremely controversial Sufi psychologist Idries Shah, we will explore how Sufi stories were brought to bear on the field of psychotherapy and in European spiritualist circles. After this, we will explore the influence of Sufism on André Gide’s phantasmic celebrations of earthly sensuality, before turning to Doris Lessing’s speculative Sufi space fiction.

Full details for COML 6688 - Islamic Mysticism and the West

The environmental humanities pose a radically different set of questions to texts, materials, and contexts that were previously approached in terms of human intentions and actions alone. This seminar explores the theoretical and methodological potentials of this rapidly emerging and constantly evolving field from the interdisciplinary, comparative perspective that it also axiomatically demands. Together we will discuss seminal works that tackle four foundational concepts imperative for reframing the traditional concerns of the humanities under the sign of anthropogenic planetary change -- scale, form, matter/ energy, and distribution. The seminar will develop ways to configure these focal points to the theoretical and practical concerns of various disciplinary approaches and, especially, to participants' individual interests and research projects.

Full details for COML 6902 - Environmental Humanities: Theories and Methods

A paranoid husband believes that his wife is a witch. A man rejects vehemently the very idea of the Devil's existence, unwittingly doing so right in his face.From outright horrifying to eerily funny, always dangerous, but at times benevolent, demons, witches, and other mysterious and elusive creatures of Russian lore inhabit people's imagination and figure prominently in a number of Russian books and films. In this course, we will read and discuss fairy tales, pieces of poetry, short stories, and one of the greatest novels in Russian twentieth century literature. We will also watch several feature and animated films.

Full details for RUSSL 2500 - Demons and Witches in Russian Literature and Film

The nineteenth-century Russian novel had its start in a period of short fiction; it ended in another one. When Tolstoy was preparing to write Anna Karenina, he reread Pushkin’s tales. Dostoevsky’s characters have roots in Lermontov’s fiction. The Russian novelists also wrote short works. This course focuses on the stories and tales of Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, and others. It covers the nineteenth century and may extend a few years in either direction, to the beginning of modern Russian fiction in the late eighteenth century and to the prerevolutionary years of the early twentieth century.

Full details for RUSSL 3341 - Short Russian Fiction: 19th Century

Independent reading course in topics not covered in regularly scheduled courses. Students select a topic in consultation with the faculty member who has agreed to supervise the course work.

Full details for RUSSL 4492 - Supervised Reading in Russian Literature

Reinforces the speaking skills learned in RUSSA 1121. Homework includes assignments that must be done in the language lab or on the students' own computer. Detailed description at russian.cornell.edu.

Full details for RUSSA 1103 - Conversation Practice

Gives a thorough grounding in all the language skills; listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Course materials include clips from original Russian films and televisions programs. Homework includes assignments that must be done in the language lab or on the students' own computers. Note the RUSSA 1103 option. Detailed description at russian.cornell.edu.

Full details for RUSSA 1121 - Elementary Russian through Film

The emphasis is on reading unabridged articles on a variety of topics from current Russian web pages and translating them into English; a certain amount of discussion (in Russian) may also be undertaken. Detailed description at russian.cornell.edu.

Full details for RUSSA 1125 - Reading Russian Press

RUSSA 1131 and RUSSA 1132 cover the standard Cornell first-year Russian language curriculum at a slower pace than RUSSA 1103 -RUSSA 1104 and RUSSA 1121 -RUSSA 1122, the pace to be chosen by each individual student in consultation with the instructor. Somewhat larger homework reading, writing, and interactive online assignments with fewer meetings with the instructors in very small groups. Detailed description at Russian.cornell.edu.

Full details for RUSSA 1131 - Self-Paced Elementary Russian I

Guided conversation, translation, reading, pronunciation, and grammar review, emphasizing the development of accurate and idiomatic expression in the language. Course materials include video clips from an original Russian feature film and work with Russian web sites, in addition to the textbook. Detailed description at russian.cornell.edu.

Full details for RUSSA 2203 - Intermediate Composition and Conversation

Taught on a specialized basis for students with special projects (e.g., to supplement a non-language course or thesis work).

Full details for RUSSA 3300 - Directed Studies

Reading, writing, and conversation: current Russian films (feature and documentary), newspapers, television programs, Russian web sites, and other materials are used. If taken for 1 or 2 credit hours, students attend 1 or 2 classes per week, respectively. Detailed description at russian.cornell.edu.

Full details for RUSSA 3303 - Advanced Composition and Conversation

Intended for students who speak grammatically correct Russian but do not know Russian grammar and have not learned to read or write Russian well (or have not learned written Russian at all). May be taught slightly faster or slower in a given year, depending on the needs and interests of the students. Two classes a week teach writing and grammar and include related reading. These classes are required, and the students who take them receive 2 credit hours. The third (optional) class teaches reading and discussion, and grants an additional credit hour. Detailed description at russian.cornell.edu.

Full details for RUSSA 3305 - Reading and Writing for Heritage Speakers of Russian

Involves discussion, in Russian, of authentic Russian texts and films (feature or documentary) in a variety of non-literary styles and genres. Detailed description at russian.cornell.edu.

Full details for RUSSA 4413 - Modern Russia: Past and Present I

The course is designed for advanced students of Russian who are interested in Russian studies requiring fine active control of the language. Students will have an opportunity to speak formally and informally on topics in their field of interest. Fine points of syntax, usage, and style will be discussed. The subject matter differs from year to year. Detailed description at Russian.cornell.edu.

Full details for RUSSA 4433 - Russian for Russian Specialists

To be taken in conjunction with any Russian literature course at the advanced level. Students receive 1 credit for reading and discussing works in Russian in addition to their normal course work. Detailed description at russian.cornell.edu.

Full details for RUSSA 4491 - Reading Course: Russian Literature in the Original Language

The course is designed for advanced students of Russian who are interested in Russian studies requiring fine active control of the language. Students will have an opportunity to speak formally and informally on topics in their field of interest. Fine points of syntax, usage, and style will be discussed. The subject matter differs from year to year. Detailed description at Russian.cornell.edu.

Full details for RUSSA 6633 - Russian for Russian Specialists

By the end of this course, you will be able to carry on basic conversations in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian on many topics from your daily life. You should be able to make polite requests, ask for information, respond to requests and descriptions, impart personal information, and have simple discussions on familiar topics. You will also acquire the skills to read and understand simple informational texts, such as newspaper headlines and menus, announcements and advertisements, and to extract the general idea of longer informational texts. You will master the writing systems of the languages, and you should be able to write notes or simple letters and keep a journal.

Full details for BCS 1131 - Elementary Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian I

The intermediate course in BCS is a continuation of the elementary course and is intended to enhance overall communicative competence in the language. This course moves forward from the study of the fundamental systems and vocabulary of the Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian to rich exposure to the spoken and written language with the wide range of speakers and situations. The goal of the course is to give students practice in comprehension, speaking, and composition, while broadening their vocabulary and deepening their understanding of grammar and syntax. The course will focus on the following skills: conversation, writing, role-playing, interviewing, and summarizing. To develop these skills the students will be assigned dialogues, language exercises, translations, descriptions, summaries, and a final independent project.

Full details for BCS 2133 - Intermediate Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian I

Full details for BCS 3302 - Advanced Bosnian-Serbian-Croatian Through Literature and Film

The Elementary Finnish I course is designed for students without prior knowledge of Finnish. Students have an opportunity to practice listening, speaking, reading and writing in Finnish. Students learn to provide information about their opinions and feelings, their families, their immediate environment and their daily activities. The course is taught in Finnish.

Full details for FINN 1121 - Elementary Finnish I

This course teaches language as a gateway to Ukrainian literature, history, and arts and the means of communication in everyday life, offering thorough grounding in listening, speaking, reading, and writing.On successful completion of Elementary Ukrainian I and II, students will have control of the basic linguistic structure and common core vocabulary of Ukrainian; converse with native speakers with a degree of confidence and grammatical accuracy; communicate in speech and writing on general subjects; read simple accounts of current events; and function successfully at Ukrainian schools, urban communities, stores, restaurants, theaters, etc.The course is centered around an all-skill textbook used at leading universities in the US and integrates an interactive audio-visual component based on Ukrainian songs, developed at Cornell by Krystyna Golovakova.

Full details for UKRAN 1121 - Elementary Ukrainian I

This course offers a close look at the language, history and culture of Ukraine, tracing its journey toward independence and statehood. Historical mileposts, along with the role of language and culture in defining Ukraine’s place in the world, are discussed in depth. This is not a course in history or government; the recent complex (often cataclysmic) events in Ukraine are investigated in the context of the everyday life of our contemporaries. How have Ukrainians pursued self-determination through culture and language after decades of oppression and control? We will attempt to understand how historical experiences, cultural traditions, and aspirations for independence have combined to create contemporary Ukraine. Detailed description at https://ukrainian.as.cornell.edu.

Full details for UKRAN 2200 - Understanding Ukraine: History, Culture, Language, and the Road to Independence

Taught on a specialized basis for students with special projects (e.g., to supplement a non-language course or thesis work).

Full details for UKRAN 3300 - Directed Studies

Intended for students who speak more or less standard Ukrainian but have only beginner's understanding of Ukrainian grammar and have not learned to read or write in Ukrainian well (or have not learned written Ukrainian at all). May be taught slightly faster or slower in a given year, depending on the needs and interests of the students. Two classes a week teach writing and grammar and related reading. These classes are required, and the students who take them receive 2 credit hours. The third (optional) class teaches reading and discussion, focusing on contemporary styles.

Full details for UKRAN 3305 - Reading and Writing for Heritage Speakers of Ukrainian

This course is for students who can read Ukrainian and wish to practice reading various texts: poetry, folklore, short stories, essays, and larger works. The exact list of texts is discussed and finalized with the class and depends on the interests and proficiency of the students. It varies from semester to semester, and therefore the course can be repeated. The goals of the course are to improve students' reading and speaking fluency, expand their active vocabulary, and deepen their cultural understanding through literature. All discussions are in Ukrainian. While UKRAN 3305 is a natural precursor, it is not required for enrollment. Detailed description at https://ukrainian.as.cornell.edu.

Full details for UKRAN 3306 - Reading in Ukrainian: Language, Literature, and Culture