Humanism, Individualism and the Foundations of Modernity. Today we hear much debate about the value of a humanistic education. What is a humanistic education, and where did the idea of the humanities come from? Who counts as human? Are all humans equal? And where does the natural world fit into our ideas about humanity? This course will focus on the emergence of “humanistic studies,” a key innovation in the formation of European Renaissance culture. Beginning in the fourteenth century, writers and artists who embraced something they called the studia humanitatis began to explore—and to champion—the uniqueness of human individuals. We see this pattern in literary works that probe individual psychology, and in portraiture that aims to convey individual “interiority.” We also see it in changing family attitudes toward children, and especially in the idea of the multifaceted, individual, scientific and artistic genius: the “Renaissance man”—a concept that was questioned by some women at the time. In this class, we will study how these humanists took ideas from Classical Greece and Rome to propose not only new practices, but also a new educational program—the humanities—that was dedicated to individual critical inquiry, creative recreation, experimentation, and learning from the past. We will explore changes in early modern society, economic innovation, and political culture that accompanied these developments. And we will finally consider the modern university and the changing  landscape on which college students and teachers operate today. Our task will be both to learn about the roots of many of our current ideas about education, and to measure our distance from that historical past.
Days: TU TH  12:30-01:50 PM

ES 100A: Migrant Voices in European Cinema

From Alice Diop in France and Rosine Mbakam in Belgium to Fatih Akin in Germany and Arash T. Riahi in Austria, migrant and second-generation filmmakers have shaped and continue to shape European cinema. Initiatives like the film laboratory FunKino and Refugee TV Film Lab encourage young migrants to share their experiences through film, and at the same time risk funnelling “migrant cinema” into formulaic narratives of hardship and persistence in the face of intolerance. What roles do national and European institutions
play in shaping “migrant cinema”? What obstacles must first- and second-generation immigrants face to be successful on the art and mainstream circuits? Should the corpus of “migrant cinema” function as a genre, with its own codes and recurring themes? Or does this “genrification” of the migrant experience limit the breadth of identities constitutive of migrant cinema?
Days: WE FR  12:30-01:50 PM

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