In this course we will sample the range of mainstream and experimental drama that has been composed during the past century. Half of these plays are now acknowledged to be influential "classics" of modern drama; the other half are prize-winning contemporary plays that have broken new ground. We will study them both as distinguished writing and as scripts for performance. Moreover, all of these plays are historical: some draw their subject matter from past centuries, while others convey a sense of how contemporary events are informed by and located within a larger historical frame. During the first century of film, television, and computers, it seems that writers for the theater have been especially attuned to the relationships between past and present, in their art and in society. Within this multimedia context, we will consider what drama in particular has to offer now and in the future. This is also a HASS Communication-Intensive Course, in which we will work on improving your skills, awareness, and confidence as a writer and speaker; a variety of writing opportunities (including revision of at least one essay), class reports, and group performance work will aid us in realizing these goals.
This subject offers a broad survey of texts (both literary and philosophical) drawn from the Western tradition and selected to trace the growth of ideas about the nature of mankind's ethical and political life in the West since the renaissance It will deal with the change in perspective imposed by scientific ideas, the general loss of a supernatural or religious perspective upon human events, and the effects for good or ill of the increasing authority of an intelligence uninformed by religion as a guide to life. The readings are roughly complementary to the readings in 21L001, and classroom discussion will stress appreciation and analysis of texts that came to represent the cultural heritage of the modern world.
Examines competing ethical concepts and the ethical implications of certain actions and commitments by close reading of literary works. Topics include: origins of morality, ideals of justice, the nature of the virtues, notions of responsibility, ethics and politics, and the ethics of extreme situations. Philosophic texts by Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Kant. Narrative and dramatic texts by Sophocles, Euripides, Shakespeare, Swift, Ibsen, Shaw, Dostoyevsky, and Conrad; plus some Biblical materials. The aim of this subject is to acquaint the student with some important works of systematic ethical philosophy and to bring to bear the viewpoint of those works on the study of classic works of literature. This subject will trace the history of ethical speculation in systematic philosophy by identifying four major positions: two from the ancient world and the two most important traditions of ethical philosophy since the renaissance. The two ancient positions will be represented by Plato and Aristotle, the two modern positions by Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill. We will try to understand these four positions as engaged in a rivalry with one another, and we will also engage with the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, which offers a bridge between ancient and modern conceptions and provides a source for the rivalry between the viewpoints of Kant and Mill. Further, we will be mindful that the modern positions are subject to criticism today by new currents of philosophical speculation, some of which argue for a return to the positions of Plato and Aristotle.
Close study of a limited group of writers. Instruction and practice in oral and written communication. Topic for Fall: Willa Cather. Topic for Spring: Oscar Wilde and the 90s. At this distance Oscar Wilde seems not only to be on the threshold between centuries and between cultural-systems: in many ways he seems to be the threshold. His aesthetics look backwards to the aestheticism of Pater and the moral sensibility of Ruskin, and they look forward to Modernism. His antecedents are 18th century playwrights, and he opened a path of irony and structural self-reflexivity that leads to Beckett and Tom Stoppard. He was Irish but achieved his great successes in England. Arguably, his greatest success was his greatest public failure: in his scandalous trials he shaped 20th century attitudes toward homosexuality and toward theatricality and toward performativity. His greatest performance was the role of "Oscar Wilde": in that sense he taught the 20th century how to be itself.
This course analyzes major modern plays featuring works by Shaw, Pirandello, Beckett, Brecht, Williams, Soyinka, Hwang, Churchill, Wilson, Frayn, Stoppard, Deveare Smith, and Kushner. The class particularly considers performance, sociopolitical and aesthetic contexts, and the role of theater in the world of modern multimedia.
Studies the nature of love and sex, approached as topics both in philosophy and in literature. Readings from recent philosophy as well as classic myths of love and sex that occur in works of literature and lend themselves to philosophical analysis.
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