Nanovic Institute for European Studies

This one-credit class is designed to give students an opportunity to learn the basics of Ukrainian. By the end of the semester, students will 1) use the Cyrillic alphabet with confidence, 2) understand the fundamentals of Ukrainian phonetics and grammar, and 3) be able to speak and write briefly about their personal and university biographies. The course will be scheduled to accommodate student schedules. One credit; Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory.

This seminar is designed to take a historical perspective on contemporary German foreign policy. The seminar will look at German foreign policy from various theoretical perspectives. We will discuss the contemporary challenges to German foreign policy.

Eastern Christians and their Churches are an indispensable part of global Christianity that sheds light on its origins, its basic theological tenets, its achievements and its historical failures, dilemmas, and challenges. The course provides an overview of the variety of Eastern-rite Christian Churches belonging to the different cultural traditions of Eastern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean. The students will be introduced to the theological views and liturgical life of Eastern-rite Christians, i.e., Orthodox, Oriental, and Eastern Catholic, and their fascinating history. Special attention will be given to the Byzantine tradition, from the medieval period to our day. Russian and Ukrainian religious history and contemporary church life will be explored in more detail: we will focus on the challenges their theology and history present to contemporary world and international relations. Reflections on the diversity of Eastern Christian traditions lead to insights into theological, moral, and cultural issues such as ecumenism and Christian unity, war and peacemaking, Christianity and totalitarianism, the role of liturgy and ritual in modern culture.

How and why do some of the roads taken by migrants (including refugees) lead to Rome and Italy? What are the challenges faced by migrants upon their arrival, and on their path to citizenship? How does civil society intervene to mitigate those challenges, and to facilitate mutual integration and engagement? What are the distinctive features of Roman lay and Catholic approaches to migration? The course addresses such questions, building on contemporary Rome both as a compelling case study and as a gateway to the causes, lived experiences, and consequences of global migrations. Migrants' reception and integration happens at the local level, and in interaction with residents and existing communities. Attention to the realities of the host civil society is therefore fundamental: migration is not an issue that can simply be delegated to experts, bureaucrats, and politicians. Students investigate how the experience of the city is at the same time the experience of globalization, embodied in older and new residents' everyday life in the built environment; and they appreciate situated social engagement and its potentialities.

The First World War is often referred to as the "seminal catastrophe of the twentieth century." It certainly brought the golden age of Europe's prosperity to an end. And its lingering effects would help bring about the rise of Bolshevik Communism in Russia, Fascism in Italy and other parts of Europe, and, of course, the rise of National Socialism in Germany. But what actually happened in the war? The course will include lectures with moments for discussion. Together, we will cover the usual suspects of diplomatic and military history of the war. We will learn about new technologies of war, new strategies and tactics on the battlefield, and the futility of attacking entrenched positions. But this war was "The Great War" because it entailed so much more than the front lines. We'll take a deep dive into memoirs and primary sources, emerging new interpretations of home and war fronts, and revisions to our understanding of both when the war ended and began. We will go beyond the western front and trench warfare to look at the important battles in the East and South. And, importantly, we will also take time to look closely at the larger social and cultural aspects that this era of total war introduced, including the emancipation of women, the growth of the state and the use and misuse of emergency powers, and the ways in which everyday people (at home and on the front) coped and endured with the hardships of war, hunger, and death. Time will also be devoted to the peace treaties after the war nominally ended and the continuum of violence that lingered into the interwar period. Music will be played and students may be encouraged to sing along.

This course will focus on the practical use of French in an international professional environment. Emphasis will be placed on developing communicative skills and cultural knowledge necessary for the professional world. Students will review relevant structures and vocabulary needed to accomplish specific tasks and skills necessary in a broadly-defined formal professional setting.

A vampire stalks you through a dark tunnel. A mad scientist gives human form to an android. Regimented masses march beneath monumental swastikas. Some of the most enduring images of the twentieth century were crafted by German filmmakers. They filmed in the shadow of the First World War, in the midst of economic turmoil, in the service of the Nazi dictatorship, and in a Germany divided by the Cold War. They used cinema to grapple with the legacies of military defeat, to articulate their anxieties about industrial modernity, to envision utopian futures, to justify the murder of millions, and to come to terms with these monstrous crimes. This course will integrate the disciplinary insights of history and film studies to examine how Germans confronted the upheavals and traumas associated with modernity, the utopian fantasies and cataclysmic horrors of the twentieth-century. Together, the class will pursue three major objectives. First, students will learn about the most important events and developments of modern German history. They will examine how shifting economic, cultural, and political realities shaped the German film industry, and how filmmakers used their work to understand and intervene in their social, political, and cultural issues of their day. Second, students will learn to critically analyze films. They will learn how the structural components of a film - choices in composition, editing, and sound-mixing - craft meaning through immersive spectacles that speak to audiences on multiple intellectual and emotional levels. Students will explore how filmmakers deploy these techniques to produce awe-inspiring entertainments, sophisticated instruments of propaganda, and radical social critiques. As historical artifacts, films reflect the society which created them. But students will also consider how films, as works of art, survive beyond their historical context, and are reinterpreted by new audiences with new priorities. Finally, students will practice the skills of historical literacy. They will digest, analyze, and criticize important scholarship (secondary literature). They will discern the relevance of particular interpretations for important debates. They will use sustained analysis of films as primary sources to develop, articulate, and defend their own historical interpretations and arguments.

What are cities, and how do they work? How do present (and how will future) societies respond to the challenges of pollution, sustainable development, exploitation of natural resources, equal access to infrastructure, education and welfare, human rights, food production and distribution, and energy consumption? This course welcomes students to reflect on these questions and respond to these challenges through the emerging field of urban ethics. Through lectures and readings, we will ask: 1.) Can we define an “ancient urban ethics?" 2.) Which disciplines are involved in urban ethics, and what strategies—from environmental to social ethics—should inform it? 3.) What policies, planning documents, and environmental and information technologies from the past and present can we avail from around the world to understand urban ethics? To ground our discussions, we will read excerpts from classical literature, philosophy, and cross-disciplinary works. We will also engage resources including maps, drawings, art, photographs, and videos. As we will discover through discussion and participation, urban ethics is a field in which everyone is involved.

This introductory course focuses on crucial developments in European art and architecture of the “long” nineteenth century. Drawing on a diverse range of case studies—including painting, sculpture, architecture, print and the decorative arts—it will explore intersections between art and political upheaval, industrialisation and colonialism, changing attitudes toward religion and the natural world, the changing role of the artist in society and the emergence of art institutions (academies, museums, universities). We will also engage in conversations about the ways in which art has constituted and challenged ideas surrounding gender, sexuality, race, class and the environment. Students will examine major movements of the period through the work of renowned artists—such as Vigée Le Brun, Caspar David Friedrich, William Blake, J.M.W. Turner, Gustave Courbet, Claude Monet, Paul Gauguin, and Camille Claudel—as well as artists traditionally excluded from the canon. Although focused on European centres of artistic production, a particular emphasis will be placed on transcultural interactions between Europe and the wider world. Finally, the course will introduce students to the discipline of art history and its knowledge-making techniques including formal analysis, comparative analysis and critical contextualisation. This course includes visits to the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art and will be exam based.

War belongs to the ugly reality of human history, and it would be naive to believe that this will change soon. The course addresses the specifically ethical dimensions involved with warfare - the question of legitimate reasons for going to war, the moral limits to warfare, and the moral challenges after the end of a war. We will proceed "inductively," starting with concrete issues, developing more general categories, and finally trying to find moral foundations. We will first read two dramas by Shakespeare and Schiller on two leaders in two of the bloodiest wars of European history, the Hundred Years' War and the Thirty Years' War, Henry V and Wallenstein, then study Michael Walzer's classical work Just and Unjust Wars and the recent book on post-war justice, a topic ignored by Walzer, by David Chwon Kwon: Justice After War. We will finally read the first and the third parts of my own book Morals and Politics, which lays out both foundations for ethics and moral strategies for dealing with some of the greatest political challenges of our time.

In 1419, a Florentine goldsmith designed a building that changed the history of Western architecture. It was the first structure since antiquity to systematically apply the formal vocabulary of ancient Greco-Roman architecture. This new experiment with old ideas took Florence and then Europe by storm. In this course, we will investigate the revival—and transformation—of the classical architectural language, the emerging ideas about architectural authorship, the ability of architectural forms and materials to convey particular meanings to particular audiences, and the deployment of architecture as an instrument of power.

This interdisciplinary course explores the FIFA World Cup as a global phenomenon that transcends sport. Focusing on the upcoming men’s FIFA World Cup 2026, co-hosted by the United States, Mexico, and Canada, students will examine how such a tournament can shape international identities, global economies, and societal change. From its origins in the early 20th century to its role in contemporary geopolitics, the course investigates key tournaments, legendary players, and landmark moments that have defined the game and the self-understanding of European nations like (West) Germany. Special attention will be given to the role of the World Cup in shaping national identity within the European context, as well as its impact on fan culture, international cooperation, media representation, and economic development. Students will work with a variety of sources, including documentaries, social and traditional media, academic and literary texts, and match footage.

In this class, we will explore the urban topography of the city of Rome from the first century BC to the year 2000 AD, or roughly the period from the emperor Augustus to the projects by Richard Meier, Zaha Hadid, and others to celebrate the Jubilee at the end of the second millennium. In our discussion of how buildings shape and are shaped to form the city, we will consider contemporary drawings, prints, texts, maps, and a range of other evidence. Special focus will be placed on critical strategies for understanding urban sites. In addition to the city of Rome, this course will focus on developing your skills as critical readers and writers.

This course, taught in French, is designed for students (and future professionals) interested in the medical field. Participants will develop and acquire skills, as well as communication strategies, through active, task-based learning activities and authentic situations, taken directly from professional scenarios in the healthcare sector.

This course explores journalism and media from French-speaking countries, deepening students’ understanding of cultural diversity within the Francophone world. Students will analyze media in different forms, such as online newspapers, videos, political cartoons, and social media. Each class unit will explore a current event in a French-speaking nation, examining how topics are presented across various media outlets. We will also gain insights into French and Francophone perspectives on global issues. The course will develop students’ French proficiency, as we build vocabulary to discuss journalism and current affairs. Students will increase reading and listening comprehension skills by analyzing media and will practice writing and speaking through reflections, presentations, and discussions. Taught in French.

In the intricate and interconnected society of the Late Middle Ages in the Mediterranean Basin (12th-15th Centuries), the short story emerged as a dominant literary genre, transcending cultural and geographic boundaries. The Mediterranean’s bustling commercial networks served as a conduit for stories, knowledge, and people, bridging distant shores. During this era, Italians held sway as the Mediterranean’s foremost commercial and naval power, a dominance reflected in the multitude of short story collections written from the 12th to the 14th Centuries. Figures like Giovanni Boccaccio, Franco Sacchetti, and Giovanni Sercambi skillfully portrayed the sociological, geographical, historical, and psychological intricacies of this cultural crossroads. The short story explored diverse themes, including courtly love, the Crusades, the interplay of the three Monotheistic Religions, class struggles, varied perspectives on women’s roles from Spain to the Arabic domains, and encounters between different cultures. This genre provided a window into the era’s multifaceted facets. This course aims to delve into the historical tapestry of the multiethnic and multicultural Italian peninsula during the Late Middle Ages. Through Italian short stories, we will explore its cultures, geography, and traditions, gaining insights into this captivating period.

A weekly tutorial required for students registered for HIST 30401 Nazi Germany, Nazi Europe or its cross-lists.

A vampire stalks you through a dark tunnel. A mad scientist gives human form to an android. Regimented masses march beneath monumental swastikas. Some of the most enduring images of the twentieth century were crafted by German filmmakers. They filmed in the shadow of the First World War, in the midst of economic turmoil, in the service of the Nazi dictatorship, and in a Germany divided by the Cold War. They used cinema to grapple with the legacies of military defeat, to articulate their anxieties about industrial modernity, to envision utopian futures, to justify the murder of millions, and to come to terms with these monstrous crimes. This course will integrate the disciplinary insights of history and film studies to examine how Germans confronted the upheavals and traumas associated with modernity, the utopian fantasies and cataclysmic horrors of the twentieth-century. Together, the class will pursue three major objectives. First, students will learn about the most important events and developments of modern German history. They will examine how shifting economic, cultural, and political realities shaped the German film industry, and how filmmakers used their work to understand and intervene in their social, political, and cultural issues of their day. Second, students will learn to critically analyze films. They will learn how the structural components of a film - choices in composition, editing, and sound-mixing - craft meaning through immersive spectacles that speak to audiences on multiple intellectual and emotional levels. Students will explore how filmmakers deploy these techniques to produce awe-inspiring entertainments, sophisticated instruments of propaganda, and radical social critiques. As historical artifacts, films reflect the society which created them. But students will also consider how films, as works of art, survive beyond their historical context, and are reinterpreted by new audiences with new priorities. Finally, students will practice the skills of historical literacy. They will digest, analyze, and criticize important scholarship (secondary literature). They will discern the relevance of particular interpretations for important debates. They will use sustained analysis of films as primary sources to develop, articulate, and defend their own historical interpretations and arguments.

This course examines Christian approaches to peace and justice in the context of contemporary global conflicts, with particular focus on the challenges posed by Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Through an interdisciplinary lens combining theological, historical, and ethical perspectives, students will analyze biblical teachings, Pacifism, Just War Theory, Just Peacemaking Theory, and the role of religious institutions in both conflict and peace-building. The course addresses how unresolved historical legacies contribute to current geopolitical tensions, while developing practical mechanisms for establishing and maintaining just peace through careful analysis of Scripture, Church teaching, and contemporary situations. This course will be taught by Rev. Yuriy Shchurko, a scholar from the Ukrainian Catholic University, whose visit is hosted by the Institute for Social Concerns and the Nanovic Institute for European Studies.

Taught by a veteran of the global apparel industry, this one-credit practical course explores “fast fashion.” This revolutionary approach to clothing manufacturing is taking the world by storm, based on unimaginably low prices that make clothing, essentially, disposable. We will together focus on the costs of this approach to fashion, starting with fast fashion brands themselves. With prices so low, how is this business model even viable? How does this affect what had previously been associated with the industry of fashion? And, importantly, what is the impact of fast fashion brands’ severe cost-cutting on the people who make our clothes? What other externalities – like pollution, waste, and damage to ecosystems – come into play? And how can we begin to calculate the true cost of this explosive mode of global apparel production? In workshops and class discussions, students will learn the unique way in which costing in fashion’s global supply chains is typically done. They will also engage in hands-on, real-life calculations of how living wage increases for the people making our clothes would impact the prices brands and consumers pay for a t-shirt or pair of jeans. Armed with their new skills and knowledge, students will be well-equipped to envision innovative solutions that can deliver a transformed and more hopeful future for global fashion.

Explore current affairs, cultural developments, and cutting-edge research by engaging visiting officials, artists, and scholars. Students will be required to attend five Nanovic events and instructor-led debriefing sessions. This course will introduce students to current research, ongoing debates, and the production of scholarship in European studies. Open to students from all years and majors.

Held each year in the fall, this course introduces students to the basic principles of research methods in European Studies. As the nebulous field of “European Studies” spans disciplines in the humanities and social sciences (and beyond), this course will be taught through a combination of introductory lectures and hands-on research workshops led by partners throughout campus (e.g., University Archives, Raclin-Murphy Museum of Art, Rare Books and Special Collections, Navari Center for Digital Scholarship, Nanovic Faculty Fellows, etc.). The instruction and workshops will be grounded in case studies from European Studies spanning a wide variety of disciplines, and students will apply this knowledge in practice during an immersive group research project in Europe over fall break (location and research topic to rotate each year). Following this immersive group research experience, the second half of the course will introduce students to Nanovic’s five research priorities and provide inspiration as they begin to develop their own research interests.

With roughly 70% of Notre Dame students who study abroad traveling to Europe, this course aims to enhance students' knowledge of countries they will study in and travel to. The course will provide deeper knowledge of the broader social and political context in which the countries they plan to travel to exist and engage broadly with ideas surrounding global citizenship. The course will pay special attention to the idea of the traveler as an informal ambassador, inviting students to investigate the politics of the countries they will travel to and equip students to discuss domestic and international politics abroad. This course seeks to create a more aware and engaged traveler through rotating lecturers who are native Europeans, experts on a given country, or European phenomena. Given the tendency for students to visit numerous countries while studying abroad in Europe, each class section will be dedicated to a country or region and will cover themes of current events and the political landscape in that area.

This course will prepare students to participate in the Midwest Model EU simulation hosted by Indiana University, Bloomington. Through class meetings, assigned readings, and a final written "Draft Directive" to be used during the simulation, students will gain a practical understanding of the purpose and functioning of European institutions and European politics. In addition to familiarity with current EU policy issues and current events, students will gain an understanding of and experience with executing member states' policy positions, various EU decision making processes, and EU policy creation. The course culminates with students' participation in Midwest Model EU at the beginning of April, representing European state governments in intergovernmental policy creation.

Diplomacy is a way of doing politics: the established method of negotiating inter-state relations and of influencing the decisions and behavior of foreign governments and peoples through presence and engagement, dialogue, and negotiation. Violence and wars, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine, show both the limits and strict necessity of diplomacy as a key tool for ensuring peaceful human coexistence. Diplomats are committed to their home country, but also their host country and the bigger picture of the common good. Contributors to peace building and peacekeeping, diplomats serve political purposes through cultural engagement. In this way, they contribute to "integral human development" in the design of international relations. The Nanovic Institute invites undergraduate students to join our Diplomacy Scholars Program through Deep Dive into Diplomacy. This course examines diplomacy as a tool in European relations and affairs while providing students the opportunity to hone diplomatic skills such as conflict mediation, judgment and decision making, intercultural competencies, and written and oral communication. Students will learn from present and former diplomats about the diplomatic way of life and participate in a number of simulations and activities beyond the classroom.

From the fifth century BCE till the present day, the theatre in Europe has been an important site of artistic, political, and philosophical expression. This course will situate the great works of European theatre within their historical and aesthetic contexts to gain a clearer understanding of the relationship between the theatre and European history. Each week we will analyze one work which is representative of its time and place starting with Aeschylus in Ancient Greece and ending with the modernist masterpieces of Samuel Beckett in France. This course will progress chronologically and address major developments in European theatre from various national traditions treating them as texts and performances. We will read all texts in translation.

This class aims to introduce how people, and especially the youth, mobilize to change the world. Through cases of collective action targeting issues of systemic racism, climate crisis, urban inequality, and gender violence in various European contexts, we will discuss how protesting can change the social world. In response to structural violence and the failure of existing institutions to provide peace and justice, we are witnessing waves of mobilization worldwide, including in Europe. While drawing on European cases, we will also discuss the transnational and comparative aspects of collective action. This class will provide students with a creative space to think about the role of collective action in building just societies.

A dark-haired woman with magic power betrays her father and her country for the love of a man—only to be deserted later. As Euripides tells the story, determination for revenge releases a flood of anger, misery, and sorrow; gruesome tragedy follows; and the dark-haired woman flies away to safety. The story of Medea is that of a foreign woman who betrays her family and sacrifices everything for Jason, only to be repulsed later when she is no longer of use to him. In this course, we will read Euripides along with radically different retellings of Medea's story, ancient and modern. As we follow this long tradition of literary revisions of the Medea myth, we will trace the constantly shifting gaze/perceptions towards the gendered, racial Other in European literature. Reading works by Euripides, Seneca, Pierre Corneille, Christa Wolf, among others, students explore evolving responses to the myth and and examine how different historical periods and situations reflect their anxieties and concerns regarding the Other through their own rendering of Medea's narrative.

This course will provide an introduction to the study of the Middle Ages through an examination of culinary history, customs, and foodways. Particular attention will be paid to food as a marker of class, ethnic, gender, and religious identity. The course will include a brief theoretical introduction to food studies by way of Claude Lévi-Strauss's culinary anthropology and Pierre Bourdieu's work on taste and class. Students will learn to analyze medieval primary sources through the combined critical lens of food studies and postcolonial theory.

Around the globe, communities are seeking to understand what to do with statues and memorials of figures who committed human rights abuses linked to slavery and colonialism. Is it wrong to alter statues of problematic historical figures, or is it a requirement of justice? How can we address challenging heritage in a way that brings communities together, rather than dividing them? This unique course is taught by one of the leading voices in the debates over Edward Colston in Bristol, UK, which culminated in the statue being toppled in June 2020 and dropped in the Bristol harbour. The course will focus in equal parts on the philosophy and practice of heritage-based activism, with concrete activities for students to use to explore their own history and heritage, and shape positive change for the future. This is an intensive 1-credit course that meets three times a week for the first four weeks of the semester.

In 1987, R.E.M sang that ‘it's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.' They weren't the first to warn that the Apocalypse was around the corner; writers have expressed similar concerns for millennia. Whether it's about destruction of the environment, global conflict, or the rise of Artificial Intelligence, the Apocalypse is invoked in film, literature, journalism, and policy-making to emphasize urgency. But what assumptions are behind historical and contemporary ideas of ‘Apocalypse' in English literature? In this course, we will explore what, exactly, an Apocalypse is. What does it look like? How have its meaning and use changed over the years? What does the concept evoke? Why has it had such cultural staying power? This is a course with a broad historical overview, spanning early Western Apocalypticism to the modern era. We will begin with early Jewish and Christian texts that lay the foundation for Western Apocalypticism, before discussing the apocalyptic fears of the medieval millennium. With 18th century writers like H.G. Wells and Samuel Butler, we will consider the relationship between Apocalypse and science fiction. Finally, we will explore modern subgenres of apocalypticism, including dystopian fiction like Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men, and comedy, like Edgar Wright's Shaun of the Dead, will also feature. Students are not required to have prior knowledge to enroll.

In 1520, Giulio de Medici (Pope Clement VII) commissioned a history of Florence from Niccolo Machiavelli, which the latter reluctantly accepted. This commission produced Florentine Histories - a work which, much like others by its author, subverts the conventions of its genre. It is revealing of Machiavelli's own political thought. Yet, much like his other works, it leaves a lot unsaid. In this class, we will read excerpts from Florentine Histories and Machiavelli's other major works to become acquainted with Machiavelli's Florence. Discussions will focus on the significance of internal Florentine politics (family feuds, murders, the works), and the rise of the Medici.

This course covers the development of Weimar political thought, beginning in 1918 with Max Weber's vocation lectures and ending in 1933 with Martin Heidegger's infamous rectorate address. The aim of the course is to introduce students to the arguments presented in defense of the democratic constitution as well as challenges levied against it by thinkers on the far right and far left. Coursework will consist primarily of short readings from thinkers such as Hans Kelsen, Hermann Heller, and Carl Schmitt.

Description: The aim of this 1-credit course is to investigate the dynamics of the uses and abuses of memory in the post-conflict Western Balkans. The main challenges and obstacles in the process of reconciliation and management of memories of the Second World War and the Balkan wars of the 1990s will be considered. The law on lustration, the school curriculum, the nature of transitional justice, the role of the media, but also inclusive positive memory initiatives that contribute to the process of stabilization and dialogue in the Western Balkans will be discussed.

How do human rights intersect with trade in today’s globalized world? To answer this question, this course explores concrete, recent examples from Europe’s “fast-fashion-crazed” garment industry, which manufactures clothing, accessories, and home furnishings. Together we tackle key topics – such as living wages, workers’ right to organize, and forced overtime – and evaluate the root causes of endemic violations. How are these linked to the way global supply chains are structured? What steps have been taken so far to redress the power structures that undergird injustice in supply chains around the world? And what solutions are still needed, especially in light of increased climate change risks and automation? Through seminar discussions, workshops and guest lectures by practitioners from Europe, this course equips students with the tools to calculate the cost of human rights as part of a product’s price and to spot the differences between ‘greenwashing’ and authentic efforts for change.

Fundamentally, psychology is focused on better understanding the human mind and human behavior. This course seeks to apply the principles of psychology to the world of diplomacy, examining the interplay between how people think, feel, and act — and the impact that has on how they approach diplomatic situations. An understanding of psychological principles is especially valuable for those in roles involving diplomacy, where it can aid in fostering positive relationships with others, and improving the skills needed to enhance personal, and even international, relations. Through psychology, individuals can gain deeper insight into themselves, and into diplomatic skills such as communication, persuasion, negotiation, etc. Through classroom learning and hands-on activities, you'll learn to apply psychological constructs to real-world situations and gain a newfound appreciation for the role of psychology in human communication and interactions.

What was the Soviet Union? How does our understanding of Soviet history and culture change when we look through the lens of Kyiv or Kharkiv rather than Moscow or Leningrad? Why does Vladimir Putin refer to the origins of the Soviet Union in his war of aggression against today’s Ukraine? This course offers students a command of Soviet history and an unconventional exploration of politics and culture full of shock and surprise. It uncovers banned works, recovers lost films, and follows underground movements across Soviet Ukraine. We learn why the Soviet Union arose as a “union” of national republics and why it dissolved into a collection of nation-states. We also chronicle the long struggle and eventual triumph of the Ukrainian Catholic Church against the Kremlin. This urgent interdisciplinary course equips you with knowledge and skills that hold the key to understanding Russia's war on Ukraine, the gravest threat to Europe since World War II.

In this course students will be introduced to the general narrative of the First World War. From there, we will examine three different topics and eventually show how they are interrelated. First, we will study historiography; that is, the evolution of how historians have written about and understood the First World War. Students will quickly learn how historians work with narrative and elements of story-telling both to explain and to argue (with and against one another). Taking the idea of narrative as a point for opening up our understandings of the past, we will then examine works of fiction, memoires, and poetry that focus on the First World War. The Great War was distinguished by being a "People's War," which meant that all people of all classes fought side by side, farmers next to scholars, workers next to noblemen. There were thus many men at the front who were capable of recording what they saw and felt in both prose and poetry, leaving an extraordinary and unprecedented literary record of their experiences. Finally, students will study memorialization and public history work on the First World War. We will see how history-writing, literature, art, and memorialization are present in the way museums and memorials tell their own stories about trauma, heroism, social inequality, and - in the main - seek to impart understandings about the past. A trip to memorials and museums in London, Belgium, and France over fall break is an optional component for the course HIST 30055 / GE 33245 in the fall of 2019. The fees associated with travel will be no more than $3000. We are working on funding from various sources to reduce that amount significantly. This course requires an application to enroll. Students interested in the course should submit a paragraph to Professor John Deak, jdeak@nd.edu, stating the reasons for wishing to take the course.

What can we learn about Europe by exploring its cinema? Based on an extended version of the Institute's film series each semester, the content of this course will focus on the relationship between contemporary European cinema and the European ideas and realities it finds compelling in terms of social and imaginative power. The course will include some history of cinema, but emphasis will be laid on using cinema as a way of stimulating questions about the nature of Europe today. Open to students of all years and majors.

This class examines the social, spatial and intellectual history of integration in the United States & Europe from the publication of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's The Social Contract (1762) up to the so-called "global revolutions" of 1968. Students will gain a comprehensive introduction to how peasants, (im)migrants, people of color, and other disempowered populations negotiated confraternity and inclusion despite tenacious and arbitrary subjugation and exclusion within and across Western nation-states and colonial possessions between these years. Related topics range from "Indian removal" to persecuted religions; from absolute monarchies to gender discrimination and anti-homosexuality; and from legalized slavery and indentured servitude to histories of genocide. Our seminar, eclectic in scope and method, will put particular emphasis on the transnational implications of related social movements and cultural transformations. Course readings will include: Alexander Pushkin's The Negro of Peter the Great (1837), Maya Jasanoff's The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World (2017), Todd Tucker's Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan (2004), and Winston Churchill's "United States of Europe" (1946) speech. No prior background in history is either required or assumed.

This class looks at how sex and power operate in Irish literature from the bloodthirsty warrior queens and powerful sovereignty goddesses of medieval saga to the sly civility of the eighteenth century to today's activist punk poets and videographers. We will take particular interest in how women are represented by others and how they choose to answer back, but also look at what that means for ideas of masculinity and relationality. We will consider key genres of Irish verbal art in a wide range of compositions from medieval to contemporary. We will be helped along by relevant literary, anthropological and cultural criticism. Are "women's" voices (whether by known women or not) subversive of our expectations or intent upon maintaining the status quo? How can we acknowledge and deconstruct misogyny not as inevitable but as historically and contextually conditioned and subject to demystifying critique? What vantage can we gain on Irish literary history by asking these historical, theoretical and political questions? How do tradition and the canon look when we view them through a gendered lens? What kind of impersonations might we engage in when we read...and write? Genres considered include courtly love poetry, contemporary feminist verse, oral lament, modern love poetry, bardic verse, storytelling, early modern allegorical poetry, folk song, medieval allegory, and contemporary comic verse, all read in English. Your own work for the course will include papers of literary/cultural analysis, a presentation, and a creative writing option for those who want to flex those muscles.

Discover Dublin through its writers, artists, rebels, and revolutionaries. This course will examine the history of Ireland’s cultural capital from Georgian Dublin to the present day, examining the factors that have shaped the city’s development as the historical, cultural, and literary nucleus of the nation. Students will explore different ways of knowing and building the city: through literature, art, architecture, and technology. Themes of the course include walking and mapping the city; feast and famine; the Easter Rising; memory and monuments; and the urban novel. This course includes class visits to the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art and Hesburgh Library’s Special Collections. No previous background in Irish Studies, literature, or art history is required.

Traditionally set between the late eighth and late eleventh centuries, the Viking Age was a period of extensive expansion of Scandinavian traders, raiders, and kings across the globe. Alternately cast as history's worst villains or its greatest romantic adventurers, the realities of Scandinavian life, travel, warfare, and literature during the early medieval period are far more interesting than such simple characterizations could imply. This course examines the religious, literary, and cultural traditions of medieval Scandinavia as well as the impact of Viking Age expansion on the various cultures and political entities with which Scandinavian peoples interacted, especially in Ireland, England, France, Russia, and the North Atlantic islands.

This course invites students on an engaging virtual journey across Europe’s diverse regions, from its historic capitals to its lesser-known cultural crossroads. Through an exploration of Europe’s historical transformations, political landscapes, and cultural traditions, students will gain insight into the forces that have shaped the continent from antiquity to the present. Particular attention will be given to the interplay between national identities and broader European ideas, as well as to contemporary challenges and achievements within the European Union and beyond. By the end of the course, students will develop a deeper appreciation for Europe’s rich mosaic of languages, societies, and artistic expressions. The course will be scheduled to accommodate student schedules. Taught in English. One credit; Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory.

Germany is globally recognized as a leader in the fields of renewable energy, sustainable development, and environmental protection. But how did this come about? In this course, we will examine the roles that culture and history play in shaping human attitudes towards the environment. Our case studies will range over two centuries, from damming projects in the Rhine valley at the start of the nineteenth century to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster at the end of the twentieth. We will study novels, films, and philosophical essays alongside works by leading environmental historians. Over the course of the semester, students will develop a richer understanding of German environmentalism that also includes an awareness of its dark sides, such as the role that nature conservancy played within Nazi ideology.

Dante's Comedy is one of the supreme poetic achievements in Western literature. It is a probing synthesis of the entire Western cultural and philosophical tradition that produced it, a radical experiment in poetics and poetic technique, and a profound exploration of Christian spirituality. Dante I and Dante II are an in-depth study, over two semesters, of the entire Comedy, in its historical, philosophical and literary context. Dante I focuses on the Inferno and the works that precede the Comedy (Vita nova, Convivio, De vulgari eloquentia); Dante II focuses on the Purgatorio and Paradiso, along with the Monarchia. Students may take just one of Dante I and II or both, in either order. Lectures and discussion in English; the text will be read in a facing-page translation, so we can refer to the Italian (but knowledge of Italian is not necessary). Counts as an Italian Studies course for the Italian major, secondary major, and minor. Students with Italian have the option of also enrolling in a one-credit pass/fail Languages Across the Curriculum section, which will meet one hour per week to read and discuss selected passages or cantos in Italian. LIT - Univ. Req. Literature. Cross-listed with LLRO 40145, MI 40552, PRL 40115, THEO 40212. Ways of Knowing Core designations: Catholicism and the Disciplines; Fine Arts and Literature.

This course will examine Irish poetry, written both in Irish and English, through the prism of protest. A translation into English will be available for the poems in Irish. We will explore the public role occupied by the poet in Ireland and the concurrent anxieties and responsibilities of the role. The course will examine the formal prosodic dimensions of the poems and students will also learn about the historical circumstances in which the poems were produced. The course will include the work of WB Yeats, PH Pearse, JM Plunkett, Seán Ó Ríordáin, Máirtín Ó Direáin, John Montague, Seamus Heaney, Máire Mhac an tSaoi, Eavan Boland, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Paul Durcan, Paula Meehan, Liam Ó Muirthile, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Michael O’Loughlin, Aifric MacAodha, Thomas McCarthy, Ciaran Carson, Theo Dorgan, Gerry Murphy, Gail McConnell, Rachael Hegarty, Trevor Joyce . The course will be delivered in a chronological and thematic fashion. Learning outcomes: Knowledge and appreciation of contemporary Irish Poetry

Ireland’s changing political landscape and evolving sociology, throughout the 1900s and 2000s, tell the story of a country undergoing a turbulent century of conflict and unity, protest and peace, hope for the future while lamenting the past. To understand Ireland’s development more fully then, this course considers the political and sociological, as well as infrastructural and financial factors affecting Ireland as it is increasingly impacted by a changing international context. Two examples include Ireland’s accession and membership of the European Union (EU) and the influx of foreign direct investment (FDI) to the country. The course asks questions such as: to what extent did Ireland’s famous - yet often misinterpreted culture – contribute to facilitating and/or hindering development? To what extent can we attribute Ireland’s rapid economic growth to the “luck of the Irish”? Is this development specific to Ireland or are there lessons to be drawn from the Irish context that can be applied to currently developing nations?

This course looks at the way in which Ireland is remembered. It will do so by looking at different sources of memorialisation. The course will examine the memory of the diaspora and the representation of Ireland through songs and memoirs. It will be anchored both in the question of memory studies, drawing on the work of philosophers such as Paul Ricoeur. It will explore what gets remembered in times of commemoration of historical events, such as the 1916 Rising or the Great Famine. Students will also examine the notion of nostalgia. Other sources that will be studied in the course will be photographs, films, paintings and statues.

This course will examine the translation of the sacred on the Island of Ireland. It will offer an introduction to translation theory, examining many of the key issues linked to the translation of the sacred texts in a global context before turning its attention to the Irish context. Central to the course will be the translation of the bible into the Irish language, known as Bedel’s bible, undertaken at the behest of Queen Elizabeth the 1. It will examine how translation lay at the heart of the colonial project. Other topics examined will be the issue of Vatican 2 and the question of the vernacular, the Irish language masses composed by people like Seán Ó Riada or Tomás Ó Canainn, and the recent projects which offer a version of the gospels in Ulster Scots.

This course will examine the tradition of the long poem in Irish literature, both in the Irish and English languages. It will examine poems such as the epic, An Táin and “Cúirt an Mheánoíche” (The Midnight Court) in a variety of translations, or the poem the “Great Hunger” by Patrick Kavanagh. It will investigate the intersection between the epic and the long poem, and discuss the poetic sequence. It will also examine more contemporary long poems such as those by Martina Evans and Thomas McCarthy, alongside hyper-contemporary work by Dawn Watson.

Building on crucial insights of the “global turn” in art history, this course examines how the circulation of art and ideas, propelled by British expansionism, shaped cultural identities, artistic traditions, knowledge systems and arts institutions in Britain and its colonies from 1750 to 1950. Topics will include colonial collecting, period and contemporary debates around spoliation, cultural heritage, the formation of the British Museum and restitution, intersections between military conquest and landscape painting, relationships between colonial natural history, ecology and art, questions concerning race, representation and identity and the ways in which artists, including major figures like William Blake and J.M.W. Turner, grappled with empire and its deleterious effects. Although geographically and temporally focused on the British Empire, the course seeks to introduce methodologies that can be applied to different contexts and periods. Students are thus encouraged to think outside of the parameters of the course for their final projects (of which there is a choice between a formal research paper, a mock exhibition, or a creative work). This course includes visits to the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art.

This course examines the origins and development of contemporary opinions and policies concerning migrations and migrants. It does so by looking backward to the age when transoceanic mobility became more frequent and increasingly more accessible before moving forward to our own times. It is the central claim of this course that it is impossible to understand what drives policy today without first surveying the changing ideas of migration and the movement of people over time. It will therefore take students through the history of migration in the modern world, as well as studying the migrant journey, connections to home, the process and difficulties of assimilation and community creation, and the problems or opportunities that could arise for migrants from characteristics like race, religion, ethnicity, or language. Also considered will be the complex relationship between colonization and migration. In the process, Migrants and Mobility will also examine how different societies place value judgments upon migrants and analyze how and why migration/migrants have been categorized as “good” or “bad” over time. Students will also encounter and consider the effects of growing urbanization and industrialization, changing demography and global trade patterns, and, more recently, the impact of climate change. Migrants and Mobility will be primarily seminar based, placing a premium on participation and analytical discussion.

Humans are social creatures, dwelling in “imagined communities” of various forms across the world. Since the French Revolution, philosophers, politicians, and the politics of the masses have increasingly chosen “the nation” as the form their communities take. But what is nationalism? What is the nation-state? As the ideology behind many democracies, nationalism has waxed and waned in popularity at various times; for example, it reached new heights in mid-nineteenth century Italy, with Woodrow Wilson’s conceptualization of self-determination (1918), in Nazi Germany, and in our own contemporary political arena. The concept of the nation appears ever popular, yet its form and meaning shift over time and geographically. This course explores what nationalism is and to whom, moving from the French Revolution to contemporary politics, asking students fundamental questions about the relationship between citizens, democracy, governance, and the rule of law. The course will also challenge students to explore fundamental questions about identity, belonging, and the power of nationalism as an ideology in creating politically-motivated communities, sometimes in cooperation with other ideologies, such as religions. While the course approaches these topics first from a history of ideas and political philosophy approach, the ideas will meet the masses in global case studies that reveal the reality of nationalism as lived by citizens across time and place. Students will explore these questions primarily through reading-based seminar discussions, and their own writing and research to meet in three interdisciplinary ways of knowing: political philosophy, writing, and historical inquiry.

Why do we tell stories? Myths and legends can help us understand what the people who created them have valued at different places and times. These texts have been interpreted as vessels of national identity, points of access to divine truth, indices of level of civilizational development, and pedagogical tools. They have also inspired some of the most compelling works of art ever produced. Students in this course will learn more about some of the many cultures of Eurasia, the world’s largest continent, spanning West Asia (the Middle East), Central Asia, and Eastern Europe, from these cultures' perspectives. They will read about what role Raven played in the creation of the world, learn the secret of the legendary Simorgh, and watch the tragic love story between a forest spirit and a human. They will consider the links between ancient folklore and contemporary fantasy. They will also have the opportunity to think about the role these stories play in the cultures that produced them and in their own lives. This class is co-taught by two scholars with different backgrounds: a historian of West Asia and the United States and a specialist in the literature of Russia and the former Soviet Union. In this class, students will learn how scholars in different disciplines (including not just literature and history but also folklore and anthropology) might approach the same works very differently and learn how to articulate their own scholarly positions. Assignments include a folklore collection, an in-class presentation on one of the cultures studied, and a creative adaptation of a myth. Students will also be graded on class participation and given weekly online reading quizzes.

In this course on European politics we will examine the literature on three major issues: regional integration, origins of modern political authority, and industrial political economy. We will seek to understand the origin, current functioning, and possible futures for key European institutions, including the EU, nation-states, social provision, unions, and political parties. Readings on the European Union, monetary politics, Germany, France, and Spain will be drawn from both scholarly sources and contemporary analyses of political events.

The course offers an in-depth exploration of Ukraine's dynamic societal structures and vibrant cultural landscape. Students will engage with key themes such as national identity, political developments, social transformations, and cultural expressions in the post-Soviet era. Through diverse perspectives and case studies, the course aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of Ukraine's evolving role in both regional and global contexts. Participants will have the opportunity to analyze the country's rich traditions alongside modern influences, fostering critical insights into Ukraine's unique cultural dimensions. In English.

This course examines modern Germany from national unification in 1871 to the recent unification of the two Germanies and beyond. We will investigate cultural, political, and social dimensions of Germany's dynamic role in Europe and in the world. Topics include Bismarck and the founding of the Second Reich, World War I and the legacy of defeat, challenge and authority in the Weimar Republic, the National Socialist revolution, war and Holocaust, collapse of the Third Reich, conflict and accommodation in East and West Germany, and unification and its aftermath. Class format will combine lectures with discussion of readings from political, social, literary, and diplomatic sources.

Bismarck once declared that, as long as he was Imperial Chancellor, Germany would not pursue a colonial policy. He was mistaken. Colonialism would fundamentally shape the German Empire as well as the diverse places and peoples it colonized. The legacies of colonial rule remain critically important today. Between 1884 and 1918, Germany would establish colonies in Togo, Cameroon, Southwest Africa, East Africa, China, and on islands across the Pacific. During this comparatively brief period, colonialism transformed both the German Empire and its overseas possessions in radical, often horrifically violent, ways. This course will examine why the German Empire embarked on a policy of colonial expansion, how Berlin laid claim to such vast territories far from Central Europe, and the complex ways in which German colonial states and colonized societies interacted with each other. It will examine how colonialism reshaped political structures, cultures, religions, economies, national identities, notions of race, and ideas about gender in both Germany and colonized societies. Finally, it will explore the profound legacies of colonialism which continue to shape Germany, its former colonies, and their contemporary relations.

The course invites students on an engaging journey through the diverse landscapes and cultures of nations that have emerged from the Soviet Union's dissolution. This course offers insights into the historical contexts, political evolutions, and cultural identities of these countries, while highlighting their unique challenges and achievements in the modern world. Students will gain a deeper appreciation for the rich tapestry of traditions, languages, and societies that define this fascinating region. The course will be scheduled to accommodate student schedules. Taught in English. One credit; Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory.

This is a lecture course that will offer students an opportunity to delve into the dark history of Germany and Europe between the First World War and the Cold War. At the center of this course is the National Socialist movement, which dominated Germany from 1933 to 1945 and left its imprint on the world thereafter. The hope is that students become familiar with the movement's intellectual and cultural origins, the political contingencies that made it successful, and the policies that made it popular and feared in Germany and beyond. Topics will include Social Darwinism and racial pseduo-science, the Treaty of Versailles and Weimar Germany, the rise of National Socialism to power, and Nazi society and culture. In addition, we will look at how Nazi politics were received and imitated in central and Eastern Europe and how Adolf Hitler's international politics could appeal to peoples beyond Germany's borders. Students will also learn about the systematic and organized killing of peoples and groups in Europe under occupation, including six million Jews and the Holocaust. The course will conclude with the postwar occupation regimes in Germany and Europe, the erasure of complicity with Nazism in the subsequent histories of Europe, and the failed attempts at deNazification and justice for the regime's victims. Friday sections will consist of smaller discussion groups that will discuss the content of the lectures in part. Most importantly, students will read primary source material, including laws, witness statements, memoirs, and important scholarly debates. The Friday sessions will thus give students the opportunity to directly analyze accounts and sources. These skills will then be assessed in a document analysis paper and on our midterms and final exams.

This upper division lecture course examines some of the most important events, ideas, and personalities that shaped late Imperial, Soviet, and early post-Soviet periods of Russian history during the last one hundred years: from the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War and the Revolutions of 1905, WWI, and 1917 through the Great Terror of the 1930s, the experience of the Second World War and the emergence of the Soviet Empire, late Stalinism, the developed or mature socialism, the collapse of the communist regime and the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, as well as Russia's uneasy transition "out of Totalitarianism" and into Putin's authoritarianism. The course is open to all students, including freshmen, with or without background in modern Russian and European history.

This lecture/discussion course explores how historical actors, writers, artists, filmmakers, and historians, over the last century, have portrayed and interpreted the 1917 revolution. We will also explore how the centenary of this defining event is being commemorated in Putin's Russia.

Urban civilization as we know it was born in 19th century Europe. Rarely have the bright and dark sides of progress been so starkly juxtaposed as in the cities immortalized by writers such as Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo, and Fyodor Dostoevsky, with their railroads, department stores, and other modern wonders, but also their slums, cholera, and ubiquitous coal smoke. Those cities were the first to confront the challenges that cities have faced ever since: How can a government unify the people, police the streets, and preserve a livable environment? How can society organize itself to build infrastructure, develop the economy, integrate immigrants, educate the young, and uplift the poor? How can everyday men and women enjoy the city's wealth and freedom without becoming trapped by its cruelty and alienation? In this course, through modern scholarship and through fiction, journalism, images, and other sources from the period, we will explore the grimness and the glory of the 19th century European city.

In 1989 Poland became the cradle of socio-political transformation and the birthplace of democracy in Central Europe; since 2004 Poland has been a border country of the European Union in the East. Polish political and social history is vast and complex. Within a thousand years Poland has been under the influence of a variety of political and military forces from the East and the West. In this context, Poland presents a lens through which complex conflicts between Western, Central and Eastern Europe, between liberalism and authoritarianism, can be explored. The course offers an overview of the essential questions of freedom and authority in the Polish context throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.

In this course students will examine the complexities of historical memory in public spaces from a comparative European-American perspective with a focus on commemorative landscapes—statues, monuments, street names, etc. This course is built around case studies where commemoration and public memory has proved controversial or contested. The course will begin with a review of the principles and processes of commemoration, including the theoretical literature, as well as practical application, e.g., range of potential remedies. Students will then explore the European experience with the legacies of fascism, communism, and colonialism & slavery in public spaces. We will then apply these "lessons learned" to the current debates over the commemorative landscapes in the United States, including disputes over Confederate statues and depictions of Columbus statues, with a view to the planned rescripting of commemorative landscapes in advance of the 250th anniversary in 2026. Readings will include primary-source documents, e.g., memory & heritage protection laws, commission reports, etc.

In the wake of the Holocaust, the German author Gunther Grass concluded that we now finally knew ourselves. The Holocaust changed everything. Nazi Germany murdered more than six million men, women, and children in a systematic effort to exterminate the Jews of Europe. Its shocking and spectacular barbarism shattered comfortable ideas about European civilization and called into question the essential goodness of humanity. It compelled scholars to search for new ideas about evil, new words like "genocide" simply to place and comprehend the scale of the slaughter and devastation. Politics, art, culture, and even religions would be fundamentally and irrevocably transformed by the Holocaust. This course will investigate why Nazi Germany attempted to systematically exterminate the Jews of Europe, explore why so many Germans either participated in or accepted this act of mass violence, and consider why other Europeans so often assisted them. It will investigate the legacies of the Holocaust; how survivors and their families attempted to rebuild their lives in the wake of horror, how Germans variously struggled to come to terms with what they, their countrymen, or their ancestors had done, and how various understandings of the Holocaust have shaped political, cultural, and social discourses around the world. Along the way, students will practice the skills of historical literacy. They will digest, analyze, and criticize scholarship (secondary literature). They will discern the relevance of particular interpretations for important debates. They will use sustained analysis of primary sources to develop, articulate, and defend their own historical interpretations and arguments.

Between the early rumblings of the Reformations and the last cannon shot of World War I, Europeans profoundly changed how they conceptualized bodies as experience and metaphors. During these four centuries, Europeans grounded the ways in which they interacted with each other and the world in bodily imaginings. On an individual level, the living, human body provided a means of accessing and understanding the material or spiritual world. On a collective scale, the physical body, its adornments, and its gestures provided markers that Europeans used to fracture society along axes of gender, sexuality, class, race, mental aptitude, and even sacrality. Drawing in part from their myriad imaginings of the human body, Europeans constructed metaphorical political bodies. The body politic assumed diverse forms spanning from divine right monarchs to revolutionary republics to modern nation states. Our course will lay bare the human body as culturally constructed, while fleshing out how Europeans' evolving visions affected political imaginings.

The main objective of the course is to analyze the position of Central Europe within the framework of transatlantic security relations after the end of the Cold War, taking into account the changing international order, the strategies of the major players in the Atlantic community (the United States, major European countries, the European Union, NATO), policy of revisionist powers (Russia, China) and the nature of contemporary security challenges and threats. Although the emphasis will be on the presentation and analysis of the situation from the beginning of the 1990s to the present day, the broader historical perspective covering the Cold War period will also be taken into account. The course will be empirical and theoretical as the key theories of international relations will be used in the analyzes and discussions. Nowadays, from the geopolitical point of view, Central Europe may include, in the narrowest sense, the countries of the Visegrad Group or, more broadly, the countries of the Three Seas Initiative or the Bucharest 9.

This class analyzes the politics and cultures of remembrance in Europe from the late nineteenth century to today. Taking examples such as the politicization of Holocaust memory in Europe or the grassroots removal of monuments in Britain as points of departure, students will learn about processes of remembering and forgetting, and how memories of the past have shaped European identity and culture in the 20th and 21st centuries. We will pay particular attention to the mobilization and commemoration of Europe's traumatic pasts, including the World Wars, imperialism and decolonization, the Cold War, and histories of genocide, to investigate how Europeans have remembered these difficult histories and how these memories have shifted over time. We will look not only at how the traumatic past is represented today; but how memory work was enacted at the time and how Europeans have fought to revise these representations and demand new recognition of alternative visions of the past. In its focus on memory, broadly defined, this course will deeply explore how representations of the past have shaped European identity, culture, and politics both at the time and today. In its focus on memory and memorialization, this class also attends to the visuality and material culture of history and historical research. Students will learn to read visual and material sources as sources akin to political tracts, diaries, and memoirs. We will engage with sources including photo albums, monuments, memorials, museum spaces, memorial landscapes, film, cultural kitsch, and art all as critical primary sources to understanding the production and circulation of memory. We will read foundational texts on collective memory and remembrance to understand how scholars and theorists have defined and conceptualized memory. Students will also conduct an original research project on a topic of their choosing by exploring a case study of memory work or collective memory in the context of Modern Europe.

The history of Christian Apocalypse is about trying to place humanity in linear time. It is about bodily death, the end of the world, and immortality of the soul. But it is also about rebirth. These concepts have shaped European cultures, societies, and discourse for centuries. Apocalypse has been used to help us make sense of the events unfolding around us, from the turn of the Millennium, to the Black Death, to Y2K and COVID-19. This course will ask where our images of Apocalypse come from, why it exploded in popularity during the Middle Ages, and how those medieval developments in apocalypticism remain deeply ingrained in our world today.

Economic policy affects us all. That is why the best approach to solving the challenges that arise from it is an interdisciplinary one. From political science to economics to global affairs, each discipline offers something to this conversation that transcends national borders. Traditionally, they have operated in silos, but this course seeks to bring them together to address six multidisciplinary challenges facing contemporary society, including: 𝐓𝐡𝐞 (𝐬𝐮𝐩𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐝) 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐝𝐞-𝐨𝐟𝐟 𝐞𝐟𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐲/𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲— How do societies balance the need for efficiency with a view to preventing or reducing inequality? Is this perceived trade-off actually a trade-off? 𝐊𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐥𝐞𝐝𝐠𝐞, 𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐥𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐠𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐭𝐡: 𝐚 𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧-𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐚𝐜𝐡 — What is the root of innovation? How do external motivators and intrinsic motivations interact to stimulate growth? What is the role of government in these questions, and how has the European Union approached them? 𝐆𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐡𝐧𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐲 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐧𝐧𝐨𝐯𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 — How can we protect the environment and ensure a thriving ecosystem for generations to come while meeting our socio-economic needs? What is the relationship between sustainability and innovation in today’s rapidly evolving green tech market? 𝐑𝐨𝐛𝐨𝐭𝐬, 𝐀𝐈, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐮𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤 — To what extent will the rapid iteration of AI technology affect the world of work? How is the deployment of generative AI unique compared to previous automation movements? 𝐆𝐥𝐨𝐛𝐚𝐥 𝐯𝐚𝐥𝐮𝐞 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬, 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐝𝐞, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐝𝐲𝐧𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐜𝐬 — How do nations and businesses fit a value chain that occurs across borders? 𝐅𝐢𝐫𝐦 𝐡𝐞𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐨𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐢𝐭𝐲, 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐭𝐲, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐠𝐚𝐩 — How does the growing wage gap, even across firms in the same sector, relate to questions of inequality? Students will learn about how the European Union is addressing each challenge, as well as offering space for reflection on global responses. Students will come away from the course with a strong understanding of how Europe and the world see each topic and the implications for future policy decisions, ethics, and diplomacy.

This course will examine the mythological and legendary traditions of the Celtic and Scandinavian worlds in the Iron Age and medieval periods. We will examine these traditions via the literary works produced by medieval Irish, Welsh, Scandinavian, and Icelandic writers, as well as in information recorded about them by foreign authors and in the archaeological record. We will also trace how these traditions impacted modern folklore and political ideologies. In so doing, we will aim to gain a better understanding of these historical peoples and the resonances and varied influences of their enduring literary traditions.

The Celts are often disregarded as peripheral, and are usually only superficially treated in discussions of European history. In this course, we discuss what defines the Celtic World and the history of the Celtic-speaking peoples in the Iron Age, the Roman period, and the early histories of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales in the medieval period. While Celtic history admittedly suffers from a lack of reliable narrative accounts, the medieval Celtic countries possess some of the richest traditions of surviving literature, law, and poetry in all of Europe, which offer exceptional insight into the medieval culture of these lands.

This course proposes to discuss the lives of Celtic women. To some, this might seem like an impossible task: if one is able to surmount the initial difficulty of defining just what a ‘Celtic woman’ is, then there remains the intractably spotty historical record to contend with. In this course, we will examine the historiographical difficulties of defining the Celtic World. We will undertake a broad and varied examination of the women who appear in the texts of ancient historians, of the historically attested women of the medieval political and ecclesiastical realms, and of literary and legendary women whose lives are placed in an ancient Celtic past by the medieval and modern authors who created them. Finally, a study of women active in the ‘Celtic Revival’ intellectual movement will demonstrate the continued significance of the ancient and medieval Celtic past into the modern era.

During the mid-nineteenth century, Ireland suffered a series of famines that nearly halved the island’s population—in less than one decade, from 1846 to 1855, between 1.1 and 1.5 million people died at the hands of starvation or disease and another 2.1 million emigrated. The difficulties of these years were captured at the time and later recalled through art, literature, music, and more. Indeed, few (if any) events have had a larger impact on Irish history, politics, or national memory than “The Great Hunger.” This course is designed to introduce students to the history of Ireland’s Great Famine and its lasting political, social, and cultural repercussions.

England's seventeenth century provides one of the most compelling epochs of human history, full of a cast of remarkable characters. Once Elizabeth I died in 1603, a new dynasty, the Scottish royal house, the Stuarts, came to the throne in the person of James VI & I. A new political dynamic ensued. Insoluble tensions arose between perceived licentiousness in high politics on one hand and puritan moral rigour on the other, between royal control of religion and a hankering after policies based on literal Biblical interpretation and also between a gaping royal treasury and public reluctance to contribute financially to the realm. These, and other factors, resulted in the unthinkable: the dissolution of the ties that had held English politics and society together. The Civil War (or "Great Rebellion", or "Puritan Revolution" depending on the interpretation favoured) that resulted gave rise to a welter of new constitutional ideas, religious experiments and virulent anti-Catholicism. These were all set loose as King and Parliament fought for domination of the country. We will pay particular attention to the figure of Oliver Cromwell, who came to command English politics both before and after the hitherto unimaginable public execution of the king (who many believed was God's anointed). We will also ask why the English after allowing their king to be executed and their toleration a substantial Interregnum subsequently restored Charles II, their erstwhile king's son, as monarch. Remarkable figures that we will encounter and evaluate include the Leveller John Lilburne, the poet John Milton, Praise-God Barebones (yes, that is a name) and the libidinous Samuel Pepys.

Jokes. Word play. Ribaldry. The Macabre. The Grotesque. Wit. Satire. Comic Verse. Parody. This course will read diverse examples of the long and fertile comic tradition in Irish literature (in Irish and in English), from medieval to modern, in order to enjoy a good laugh, get an alternative take on the Irish literary tradition, think about the politics of (Irish) humor, and get smarter. Authors will include unknown acerbic medieval scribes, satiric bardic poets, Swift, Merriman, Sheridan, Wilde, and Flann O'Brien. No knowledge of Irish is assumed or necessary. Coursework will include plentiful reading, several papers (including a creative option), and a final presentation. The course satisfies the literature requirement and counts toward the IRLL major and minor, and the IRST minor.

This course will explore literatures from a time of dramatic sociopolitical change in early modern (16-17th-century) Ireland, as England was renewing (and energetically justifying) its colonial errand in Ireland, to which Irish people responded in complex ways. We will read a range of texts from royal proclamation to rebel incitements, poetry of love to poetry of the lovelorn, early (anti-Irish, colonialist) ethnography to doggerel travelogue, professional praise poetry to scathing satire, and more. We will look at the intriguing survivals of poetry by women alongside texts that throw Irish manhood into question. In tandem with our reading of primary materials in various languages (read in English translation), we will consider critical debates and shifts in scholarly understanding of the period. Course work will include discussion, reading, short writing assignments and analytical papers, as well as a creative option, as we delve into a fascinating and formative period of Irish history. The course satisfies the literature requirement and counts toward the IRLL major and minor, and the IRST minor.

This course will explore modern popular imaginings of the Middle Ages through film. We will view several feature-length films and numerous clips, interspersed with readings from and about the Middle Ages. Together we will discuss and analyze both the texts and films. The films will range from early silent films to Monty Python spoofs to recent blockbusters. I have divided the course into six segments: (1) the Crusades; (2) Eleanor of Aquitaine: wife and mother of kings; (3) Robin Hood; (4) King Arthur; (5) the Black Death; and (6) Joan of Arc. Students will write short daily assignments, two short essays, and a final paper or take-home exam. There are two required textbooks and a course packet. The textbooks are Robert Brent Toplin, Reel History: In Defense of Hollywood (2002); and Daniel Hobbins (trans.), The Trial of Joan of Arc.

Imagine a world stripped of magic, where cold rationality reigns supreme and the supernatural has been banished to the realm of fiction. Now consider our own world, where Silicon Valley technocrats consult AI oracles, where political ideologies inspire quasi-religious fervor, and where the “spiritual but not religious” seek transcendence in everything from meditation apps to psychedelic retreats. Which of these worlds more accurately describes our modern condition? This course challenges the notion that modernity and secularization have disenchanted our world, proposing instead that enchantment persists and even thrives in unexpected corners of contemporary life. From Weber's Protestant ethic to UFO believers in the American Southwest, commodity fetishism in South America to Islamic modernities in Lebanon, we will ask fundamental questions: How do myths and rituals shape our understanding of the world, even in ostensibly secular societies? What role does enchantment play in science, technology, and politics? How do different cultures negotiate the boundaries between the sacred and the profane, the rational and the magical? Drawing upon ethnographic studies and theoretical texts, we will explore how the categories of “religious” and “secular” are constructed, contested, and reimagined in various cultural contexts.

In this course, we'll focus on some of the central issues in contemporary European cultures: how to construct a sense of historical memory and cultural heritage, how are gender, racial, and class struggles impacting national and increasingly transnational identities, and what is the role of the artist in depicting those changes. In each unit we'll compare how films, novels, television series, and conceptual art frame these issues, zeroing in on points of commonality and divergence. We'll also be incorporating films from the Nanovic Film Series at the Browning Cinema. Some of the texts we'll be discussing: Sciamma, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Almodóvar, Parallel Mothers, Pawlikowski, Ida and Cold War, Ferrante/HBO, My Brilliant Friend, Ferrante/Gyllenhaal, The Lost Daughter, Rohrwacher, Lazzardo Felice, Kay and Uzan, Lupin, Ladj Ly, Les Misérables, Price, Borgen, Donnersmarck, Never Look Away, Sorrentino, Hand of God and The Great Beauty, Varda and JR, Faces, Places

Migration is a prevailing global phenomenon that affects millions of peoples around the world. According to the UNHCR report, at the end of 2019, there had been 79.5 million forcibly displaced people around the world. At the same time, refugees and migrants experience migration- and displacement-related physical and psychosocial stress and trauma, which may increase their vulnerability and affects their health and well-being. This course will explore, engage, and analyze contemporary migration flows - movements of people across national and international borders - and the ways human mobility shape refugees' and migrants' lived experiences, cultural meanings, social values, and health. How and why particular modes of mobility are permitted, encouraged, and enabled while others are conversely, banned, regulated, policed, and prevented? How do contemporary forms of displacement may challenge conventional understandings of who gets to be defined and accepted as a refugee? Why do we have so many different categories of people who simply seek refuge? Do these different categories indicate different treatments? How is migration associated with higher levels of mental health disorders among refugee/migrant populations? The course will engage with such questions by focusing on events that occurred in the second half of the twenty-first century in Europe, including both the EU and non-EU states. We will rely on the selected readings and documentaries as they reflect an integrative anthropological approach to migration, displacement, and refugeeness. Taking into account lived experiences, identity, social values, cultural meanings, health, and well-being, we will explore migration, borders, and displacement as a subjective experience and sites of ethical, socioeconomic, political, and cultural examinations and critiques. Topics will include transnational migration, terminology, citizenship, borders, asylum policy, health, and well-being. This course will also enrich your understanding of the fluidity of different categories, processes underlying refugees and migrants' cultural and social tuning, as well as their biosocial responses, resilience, and adaptability under conditions of migration and displacement.

An introduction to Italian culture through the analysis and discussion of major forms of literary works in different genres from the Middle Ages to the present, as well as music, film, art, theatre, and opera. This is not an exhaustive survey, but a sampling of key works and themes of cultural significance, focusing on interpretation and intercultural communication. The course also constitutes a review of Italian language and grammar. Building on the strong foundation in the language from your previous courses, you will have the opportunity to fine-tune your command of spoken and written Italian. In short, the course should give you the tools to make your own passage into the rich, enchanting, beautiful world of Italy. Taught in Italian.

A cliché, a painful truth, an old story, a new one—this course explores alcohol and alcoholism in Irish literature, Irish society and Irishness, examining how alcohol infuses the stories Irish people tell and those told about them, and asking what happens if we take alcohol(ism) seriously as a framework and topic of analysis. We will think about the romance and conviviality of drink and drinking, pubs and wakes and more; and counterposed crusades against drinking (by Father Mathew and others), as well as the unromantic and destructive dimension so central to recent writing. We will think about alcohol(ism) in relation to political authority and nationalism, as well as in relation to colonial resistance, recalcitrance and recovery. We will ask how this "inheritance" travels into Irish America, and even to this campus, asking what legacies are being lived out, and why, and what we make of that. The course will feature a diverse set of texts across a span of Irish literary tradition, including medieval and contemporary, fiction and memoir, poetry and prose, verbal, visual and musical media. On the way students will work on their speaking, analytical and writing skills. Course work will include short writing assignments and analytical papers, a presentation, and a creative assignment.

This course will consider questions of gender, culture, and identity in looking at the history of women in Ireland. How has Ireland historically been figured female? We will consider the gendering of Ireland as a nation through the allegories of Éire and Hibernia, but also through the writing and representation of figures both real and mythic—from Cathleen Ní Houlihan to Maud Gonne and from Saint Brigid to the women of the Magdalene laundries. Along the way, we will examine related concerns including questions of masculinity, motherhood, class, race, and religion. This course will cover a range of humanities disciplines and mediums, considering gender and representation in art, literature, music, film, and poetry. The course will utilize collections at Notre Dame's Raclin Murphy Museum of Art and Hesburgh Library's Rare Books & Special Collections. No background in Irish studies is required.

This course aims at establishing a conversation between past and present and between the conceptions, justifications, laws, practices and experiences of slavery in different cultures. To this goal we will start from the Greeks and the Romans and then explore forms contemporary slavery in Europe and beyond including a social ethics lens. An initial comparison between Greek and Roman conceptions of slavery will introduce the students to the variety of the phenomenon: for the Greeks, slavery depended on the superiority of some races over others, and this superiority was so self-evident that it needed no demonstration. It logically follows that they saw slavery as natural, racial and permanent. Romans practiced slavery on a larger scale, but saw it as a necessary evil, which depended on the back luck of single individuals, and therefore was not necessary permanent nor racially-based. The contract between these two conceptions will provide a blueprint to look at later conceptions of slavery. It will also introduce an interdisciplinary approach, to explore slavery especially from a philosophical, moral, legal, economical and human point of view.

The popes who ruled seventeenth-century Rome were political as well as spiritual leaders who faced a series of daunting challenges: climate change, an unpredictable global economy, social unrest, the Protestant Reformation, and violent conflicts, including the cataclysm of the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648). Their responses ranged from controversial trials like those of Giordano Bruno (1600) and Galileo Galilei (1633) to a far more successful campaign to present Rome to the world as an Eternal City, mustering the persuasive powers of public preaching, liturgy, art, literature, theatre, graphic arts, music, and architecture to transform a flagging political power into a capital of spirituality and culture. Women, including Christina, the expatriate queen of Sweden, played an increasingly important role in the cultural sphere of a city with an unusually large proportion of male residents, as patrons, performers, and powers behind the throne, and the abundance of surviving bureaucratic records provides insight into the daily life of Romans from every level of society, from the taverns frequented by the painter Caravaggio and his rambunctious friends to the walks Pope Alexander VII took in the Vatican gardens with the great artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini.

This course is designed as a general introduction into the early and middle Byzantine period, focusing on the various aspects of transformation from the late Roman Empire to Byzantium at the end of the so-called 'Dark Ages'. The main topics are the Christianization of the Empire and the separation between East and West; reactions to the barbarian migrations, the Slavic expansion, and the Islamic conquests; patterns of social and economic change; iconoclasm; Byzantine relations with the Carolingian and Ottonian Empires.

This course explores the major developments in Byzantium and the Eastern Mediterranean from the time of the crusades and the eastward expansion of the Italian naval powers until the rise of the Ottoman Empire to a new universal power unifying the Balkan Peninsula and Asia Minor under the rule of a Muslim sultanate. The encounter between Latin and Greek Orthodox Christians in the wake of the crusade led to political rivalries and religious discord, culminating in the Latin conquest of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade of 1204. While the eastward expansion of Italian naval powers had already begun in the late eleventh century, it was mainly as a result of 1204 that Venice and, later on, Genoa became predominant political and economic factors in the Eastern Mediterranean, controlling much of the long-distance seaborne trade between Italy and the Syrian coast. The Anatolian Seljuk Turks initiated the gradual Turkification and Islamization of Asia Minor. In the thirteenth century, the Eastern Mediterranean endured increasing pressure from the Mongols and the Mamluk sultanate. One of the results of this development was the rise of the Ottoman principality to a leading political power incorporating large parts of the Balkan Peninsula and, in 1453, the city of Constantinople. We will discuss both socio-economic and political aspects of these developments.

The claim that Russians and Ukrainians are one people, “a single whole,” has been resounding in Russian mass media, film, and other discourses for the last two decades. Putin took a pronounced colonial turn with his return to the Presidency in 2012, describing Russia as a state-civilization, in which Russians and Ukrainians are joined in “spiritual unity.” In his long essay on “historical unity,” published in July 2021, Putin argued that Ukraine and Russia were a single country, bound by a shared origin. In this logic, the broken unity must be restored, even if through violence. History thus serves as a justification for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The claim that a nation does not exist is a rhetorical preparation for destroying it. The course will look at historical facts and cultural artifacts of Russia and Ukraine to determine the roots of Russia’s current aggression in Ukraine. Among others, the course will discuss the following questions. Is Kyivan Rus part of Russian or Ukrainian history, or neither? Does Ukraine have its own history and culture that is distinct from Russian? Was autocracy inherent to the Russian state or were there any democratic alternatives? Are Ukrainians divided into Russian-speakers (aspiring to join Russia) and Ukrainian-speaking nationalists (aspiring to EU)? The course will examine the origins, points of intersection and divergence of Ukrainian and Russian cultures through the lens of history, art, and literature from the Christianization of Rus (10th century) to the present time. We will look at the history of Russian imperialism, centuries of appropriation of Ukrainian cultural achievements, annihilation of Ukrainian traditions, extermination of Ukrainian intellectuals, and the politics of Russification with the purpose to see how the current events reflect a tendency that has already existed for centuries. The course will look closely into recent history, specifically the annexation of Crimea (2014), a sacred space in Putin’s neo-imperialism, as well as the war in Donbass initiated by Russia yet left largely unnoticed by the Western world since 2014. It is only after the full-scale invasion in February 2022, that the West suddenly became interested in the difference between Russia and Ukraine, or how to pronounce Kyiv. This entrapment in the imperial framework and silencing the war in Eastern Ukraine as a regional conflict allowed Russia to continue with its war crimes today. As a successor of the Soviet State, Russia continues its politics of totalitarianism, expansionism, militarization, repressions, censorship, and propaganda in a renewed form and context. All of what we see in Putin’s Russia today has existed there before. One of the tasks for this course is to identify and analyze the historical precedents in order to define the further trajectories.

Over the last two decades of Putin's presidency, Russia's geopolitical strength and imperial ambition were placed at the center of Russia's political line. Military incursions in the neighboring countries have expanded Russia's territorial claims and reasserted its aspirations to former Soviet spheres of influence. While Russian identity continued to be imperial after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Ukrainians set off on a journey of building their national identity. The course considers how post-Soviet cinema revives tropes and aesthetic tendencies of the earlier periods, such as stark depictions of the self and Other, spiritual superiority and monumentalism, as well as updates them for a contemporary context. The class explores the Putin-era Russian cinema and Ukrainian national cinema of the last two decades in the light of the common past that these two countries share and how the past is reshaped for the present. No previous knowledge of Russian is required, the course is taught fully in English.

From the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, several simultaneous transformations took Western Europe from the peripheries to the center of the global stage. Political units grew more centralized and administratively organized, allowing all levels of society to be more highly regulated and forming the structures of the modern state. Thanks to exploration, trade, conquest, and enslavement, these same states enjoyed a massive influx of material goods and information from all parts of the globe. Increasing knowledge of the world beyond Europe fused with the ongoing information revolution of the printing press. The accelerating speed at which knowledge could be produced and transmitted, however, contributed to the fragmentation of earlier systems of thought: new media proved vital to the spread of Renaissance humanism and Reformation theology. The new worlds of knowledge that developed were deeply shaped by—and often oriented towards—the growing power of Western states. A couple centuries downstream from these transformations, this course will survey the distinct but intertwined histories of power and knowledge in early modern Europe, with special attention to issues of politics, intellectual life, and media.

This class examines architecture and urban planning in one of Europe's most dynamic eras. During that time, capital cities like Paris, London, St. Petersburg, and Madrid were created. Elites used palaces, country houses, and gardens to project their power and status. Astounding churches and monasteries were created to heighten the intensity of religious experience. Architecture in the form of theaters and observatories, libraries and universities, served the secular activities of the urban public.

In AD 1095, the Roman (Byzantine) Emperor Alexius Comnenus sent a letter to Pope Urban II, asking for succor from Latin Christendom in order to repel the Muslim invaders who were overrunning his empire. Pope Urban II did not merely comply with this request, but transformed it into a call to restore to Christendom the lands of Christianity's origin, which had been lost to Muslim rule in the seventh century. In doing so, Pope Urban inspired and unleashed an outpouring of religious fervor - and bloodshed - unique in the annals of Christian history. This course will be dedicated to the examination of this extraordinary movement, from the initial overwhelming response it aroused among Christians across Europe through the fall of Acre in 1291. Among the issues it will explore are the historical, political, and ideological background to the Crusades, in Byzantium, Europe, and the Islamic world; The Peasants' Crusade and the Children's Crusade; the Latin principalities in the Near East, their organization and societies; interactions between Muslims and Christians; the status and treatment of religious minorities; the legend of Prester John and how it inaugurated the beginning of the European exploration of Central and Eastern Asia; the Italian communes and growth of commerce; the military orders; the career of St. Louis in the Near East; the Ayyubid and Mamluk sultanates and the geopolitical consequences of the Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century; and more. Students will spend the second half of the course researching and writing a capstone research paper utilizing primary sources in translation.

This course offers an ethnographically grounded understanding of contemporary European cultures and societies. We start by presenting a brief history of the idea of Europe. Then, we define its geographical focus: where are the boundaries of Europe? Are Israel and Turkey part of Europe? Who gets to decide? Are there European Muslims? We will then read recent works focusing on selected regions and on diverse urban populations. We will explore and discuss socio-cultural facets of European everyday life; trends and challenges in technology, the environment, popular culture, demography, and politics; and the diversity of urban/rural, north/south, and more generally intra-European ways of life. The course will be of interest to students of contemporary global issues, and in particular to students who intend to spend a semester in Europe; are back from the field; or intend to write a related senior thesis.

"The Second World War is the largest single event in human history, fought across six of the world's seven continents and all its oceans. It killed fifty million human beings, left hundreds of millions of others wounded in mind or body and materially devastated much of the heartland of civilization." The above quote from historian John Keegan summarizes the significance of studying the Second World War. In this class, students will receive an introduction to the largest conflict in human history, from the origins of the war in Asia and Europe to the postwar settlements that continue to shape the modern world. Class content will focus on the military, diplomatic, and political narratives of the war, while exploring the lived experience of the war through primary source readings. This course satisfies the university history requirement and is open to all students; no previous knowledge of the topic is required.

The period from 1485 to 1603, often feted as something of a 'Golden Age' for England, saw that country undergo serious changes that challenged the traditional ways in which the nation conceived of itself. These included the break from Rome, the loss of England's foothold in France, and the unprecedented experience of monarchical rule by women. Each of these challenges demanded creative political responses and apologetic strategies harnessing intellectual resources from classical, Biblical, legal, chivalric and ecclesiastical sources. This course will examine these developments. It will also look at how the English, emerging from under the shadow of the internecine dynastic warfare of the fifteenth century, sought to preserve political stability and ensure a balance between continuity and change, and, furthermore, how individuals could use these unique circumstances to their own advantage.

This course will explore the history of art in the 20th century from a global perspective, focusing on several locations and movements that were crucial to the development of an avant-garde and its legacies including places such as Paris, Tokyo, Moscow, Berlin, Zurich, London, Rome, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, New York City, and Mexico City. The course will examine a wide variety of figures, movements, and practices within the visual arts, situating them within the social, political, and historical contexts in which they arose. The history of these artistic developments (e.g., abstraction, the readymade, conceptual art, feminist art) will be traced through the rise of mass-media technologies (such as photography and print media) alongside the aesthetic accomplishments of the avant-garde. Exploring the forces of feminism, capitalism, and urbanism, we will attempt to understand how artistic innovations fundamentally altered, negotiated, and framed the ways in which we understand and represent the world. Artists we will look at include Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Georgia O’Keeffe, Dorothea Lange, Frida Kahlo, Jacob Lawrence, Jackson Pollock, Eva Hesse, and Andy Warhol. The curriculum will also include visits to the university museum. This course is largely taught in a lecture format and assessment is exam-based.

From the Plantation of Ulster in the early seventeenth century to today the hegemony, and later the survival, of native Irish culture in the Irish language has been challenged by English language culture. This course seeks, by analyzing primary sources in Irish (available to students in translation) in their historical context, to chart this process over time. The course also seeks to ask questions about the extent to which the Irish Catholic population resisted or collaborated in the process of anglicization that took place. Was the 'Sacsa nua darbh ainm Éire' /(New England going by the name of Ireland) culturally alien to the Irish population that resided in it?

Between 1643 and 1789, France underwent one of the most pivotal national transitions in modern European history. In the second half of the seventeenth century, Louis XIV reigned as the most powerful divine right monarch on the continent. He marshaled religious ideology, set cultural standards, pursued economic projects, and waged wars to consolidate his authority over the French and foreign powers alike. Yet, by the late eighteenth century, Louis XVI's crumbling crown gave way to the Revolution. The French ultimately dethroned the king and established a republic. Our class will explore how the French negotiated this tumultuous trajectory from subjects to citizens. We will analyze three main themes over the course of the Old Regime. First, we will wrestle with issues of modern state building including administrative reform, military campaigns, financial ventures, and expansion in the New World. Second, we will study the relationship among politics, culture, and religion as the French vacillated between critique and reform. Finally, we will probe the origins of the French Revolution. These sparks ranged from Enlightenment debates over contract theory and social privilege to the stresses of everyday life including taxes and food shortages. We will close as the revolutionaries imagined nascent citizenship on the eve of the republic. In sum, this course will ask: how did European democracy find its roots in an absolute monarchy? And how did generations of French work out this transition through their everyday lives?

The French Revolution created a turning point in history by paving the way for modern politics and society. Napoleon's empire, on the other hand, toppled some of the oldest European monarchies and shook up the international status quo. During two and a half turbulent decades, the French destroyed feudalism, created a constitutional monarchy, founded a republic, and built an empire that stretched across the continent. Our course will focus on how the French reinvented the social, cultural, and political dimensions of their world from the 1780s to 1815. We will ask major questions such as: What were the origins of the French Revolution? How did the revolutionaries recreate political culture and social structures? Why did the Revolution radicalize at first but eventually slide into an empire? Was Napoleon the "son of the Revolution" or did he betray its major goals? Of special note, our course includes a 4-week "Reacting to the Past" game that allows you to engage in history from a completely new perspective. During this historical role-playing unit, you will become a specific member of the National Assembly or the Parisian crowd. To win, you must pass a constitution favorable to your position while wrestling "with the threat of foreign invasion, political and religious struggles, and questions of liberty and citizenship." Although we may change the course of history within the unit, you will root your arguments in resources available to your historical persona: primary documents, political treatises, inspiring speeches, secret collaborations, and "current" events.

The French Revolution, along with the American Revolution, is often considered the founding moment of modern democracy. And yet, democracy was not achieved once and for all in 1789. Over the course of the next two hundred years, France went through five republics, two empires, two monarchies, and one (arguably) fascist regime. In addition, it took hundreds of years for the egalitarian promises of the revolution to be extended to all members of French society. This course tells the story of this ongoing experiment in democratic governance—one that continues to this day. It introduces students to the major themes in the political and cultural history of modern France from 1789 to the present, examining how the universalist promise of the Republic has been contested and reshaped through its encounter with colonialism, industrialization, the rise of radical ideologies, religion, war, feminism, and multiculturalism. Course materials are drawn from a variety of sources, including novels, manifestos, political cartoons, films, works of art and philosophy, as well as secondary works by historians.

Between the early rumblings of the Reformations and the last cannon shot of World War I, Europeans profoundly changed how they conceptualized bodies as experience and metaphors. During these four centuries, Europeans grounded the ways in which they interacted with each other and the world in bodily imaginings. On an individual level, the living, human body provided a means of accessing and understanding the material or spiritual world. On a collective scale, the physical body, its adornments, and its gestures provided markers that Europeans used to fracture society along axes of gender, sexuality, class, race, mental aptitude, and even sacrality. Drawing in part from their myriad imaginings of the human body, Europeans constructed metaphorical political bodies. The body politic assumed diverse forms spanning from divine right monarchs to revolutionary republics to modern nation states. Our course will lay bare the human body as culturally constructed, while fleshing out how Europeans' evolving visions affected political imaginings.

Catholic Great Power. Medieval Holdover. Sick Man on the Danube. Prison of the Peoples. Laboratory of the Apocalypse. The Habsburg Empire has been called many things, but I bet you never have heard of it. But I bet you have heard about the Austrian Archduke, Franz Ferdinand, whose assassination sparked the outbreak of the First World War; or maybe your parents made you listen to Mozart as a child in the hopes that you'd be brilliant. What you probably don't know, because historians have generally forgotten it, is that the Habsburg Monarchy stood at the center of Europe and European politics and culture for nearly four hundred years. Germans, Croatians, Slovenes, Poles, Jews, Czechs, Slovaks, Serbs, Bosnians, Romanians, Italians, Ukrainians and (last but not least) Hungarians all played a role in the longevity and vibrancy of this multinational Empire. In this course, we will explore the history of this great continental empire from its modern origins during the reign of Maria Theresia (1740-1780) to its collapse and dismemberment in the First World War. In the process we will learn much about the history of Europe itself and about what becomes common knowledge and what does not. Our topics will include Enlightened Absolutism, the French Revolution, Liberalism, German Unification, Music and Culture, modernity, economic development, Jewish emancipation and identity, and finally the First World War.

Russia under the tsars was a vast empire, a land of stunning achievement and immense inequality, mired in backwardness yet also a laboratory of modernity. Through works of scholarship, art, and cinema, and writings by Russians from the 18th to the early 20th centuries, we will explore how women and men, peasants and aristocrats, conservatives and revolutionaries, experienced the power and contradictions of the Romanov empire. This is a seminar. There will occasional lectures, but mostly we will have oral discussions about the readings, Russian historical films, and works of art that depict the everyday life of diverse groups in imperial Russian society. There are many ways of knowing the world - scientific, artistic, and other ways. Ours will be historical. This means that we will examine how the totality of life changed over time. We will consider the past from many angles, for instance, politics, culture, and the social order. We will discuss interpretations proposed by historians, analyze the primary sources on which they are based, and construct our own interpretations. We will not render facile judgments on the people of the past, but we will also explore what their legacy means for us today. We will examine imperial Russian history from three distinct perspectives: - What do we know about the actual course of imperial Russian history? - What are the original sources on which our knowledge is based? - What role do artistic representations of this era play in modern Russian culture?

Europe made a violent and dramatic entry into the modern age in the tumultuous decades from 1789 to 1871. The period opens with the French Revolution and closes with the unification of Germany and Italy. In between lie the revolutionary Reign of Terror in France, the Napoleonic Wars, the independence wars of Latin America, the revolutions of 1830 and 1848, the Industrial Revolution, and the invention of liberalism, conservatism, socialism, feminism, nationalism, democracy, atheism, and modern science. Europeans in 1789 still lived in a world that in many ways was similar to the 16th and 17th century; by 1871, the outlines of Europe in the 20th century were beginning to form. How this profound transformation occurred will be the subject of the course.

This is an introductory course for complete beginners in Ukrainian. The course aims to provide a solid foundation in four major communicative skills: speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Students will learn to communicate effectively across cultural and linguistic boundaries while developing knowledge of the Ukrainian language, traditions, and culture. Emphasis is placed on the acquisition of basic structures, vocabulary, and sound systems. Students will be encouraged to use their language skills to communicate and interact in a variety of situations and contexts. Cultural awareness will be enhanced with authentic audio-visual materials, literary texts, and cultural artifacts. By the end of the course, students will be able to read short original Ukrainian texts and communicate on everyday topics. No prerequisite.

This course explores the history of Italian film from the silent era to the 1960s, an epoch stretching from Francesca Bertini's Assunta Spina to Federico Fellini's La dolce vita. At the center of this period is the age of Italian neorealism, when directors such as Vittorio De Sica, Roberto Rossellini, and Luchino Visconti invented new ways of looking at the world that radically transformed the history of world cinema. Focusing their attention on issues and individuals that had gone unseen in Fascist and post-Fascist Italy, the neorealists challenged established norms by making the experiences of ordinary Italians increasingly visible, developing techniques for representing reality that continue to influence filmmakers across the globe. We will analyze how questions of class, faith, gender, identity, and ideology intersect on screen as Italian directors explore and attempt to intervene in a rapidly transforming modern world. With a filmography featuring both masterpieces of world cinema and cult classics, this course will investigate how the quest to capture reality reshaped every genre of Italian film, including action & adventure, comedy, crime, documentary, melodrama, mystery, thriller and more. The course is taught in English and all films will have English subtitles.

Since the eighteenth century, Europeans have grappled with a number of transformative events and developments, from the French Revolution and the birth of an industrial economy, to catastrophic wars and the rise and fall of European empires. In the process of making sense of these events, they produced works of philosophy, political theory, art, and literature that continue to shape the way we understand our place in the world today. This course introduces students to the history of European thought from the Enlightenment to the present, a period that birthed the many great "isms" that have defined the modern world: liberalism, socialism, nationalism, feminism, existentialism, totalitarianism, and colonialism. Course readings will be drawn from a range of primary sources, including novels, works of philosophy, political treatises, films, and works of art, as well as secondary sources by historians. By reading these two kinds of sources together, we will explore not only how ideas and works of art were shaped by the historical context in which they were produced, but also how they themselves shaped the course of European history.

Cinema and hospitality in a broad sense: how do films embody the art of welcoming, of hosting, of including and caring? Three months after his election in 2013, Pope Francis visited the Island of Lampedusa (Italy), one of the world’s deadliest forefronts of the humanitarian catastrophe often referred to as the global “refugee crisis.” He denounced the “globalization of indifference” in which no one wants to take responsibility for “our brothers and sisters” migrants who suffer and die. Ten years later, while the Pope is again addressing the “crisis” in Marseilles, in the month of August 2023 alone, 2,095 “migrants” have lost their lives in their attempts to cross the Mediterranean Ocean. Through a general concept of “hospitality,” our class will offer a holistic, cinematic approach to a world scene in which an unprecedented number of individuals are forced to flee their homes. We will focus on the (extremely) old notion of hospitality (a decisively matrixial one) and analyze films that put this concept at their core both formally and narratively. One critical goal will be to explore the various cultural understandings and practices that forge the highly cultural, both idiosyncratic and universal art of inviting, including, unconditionally hosting, and caring for the guest, the stranger, the child, the unknown. An ideal of protection, empathy, and compassion without which there is no responsibility, no ethics, all concepts that are the cornerstone of a feminist ethics that will nourish our research. This class will, in most parts, consist of seminar discussions and lectures. Two written assignments, group work, oral presentations as well as active participation in our class will constitute the basic requirements.

This class introduces students to the history of Catholicism since the French Revolution, focusing primarily on Europe. It examines how Catholics confronted the challenges of modernity - from liberal democracy and nationalism; to capitalism and modern science; to new political ideologies such as fascism and communism. We will explore not only how these encounters transformed the Church, but also how Catholicism itself has shaped modern politics and culture. The first part of the course begins with the nineteenth-century - culture wars - between Catholics and anticlerical forces, focusing in particular on popular devotions like the Lourdes pilgrimage and the perceived "feminization" of religion. The second part of the course shifts to the twentieth century and examines the relationship between the Catholic Church and modern political ideologies such as nationalism, fascism, communism, and democracy. The third part of the course explores modern Catholic art, literature, and film. Finally, we close by examining the more recent history of Catholicism since the transformative changes of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. Readings are drawn from a range of primary sources - including novels, speeches, Church documents, works of art, and films - as well as secondary sources by historians.

Beret, baguette, Marcel Marceau, Edith Piaf are images and icons that one associates with the French identity. But what does it mean to be French? What does it mean to be Francophone? What is this French "je ne sais quoi" ?This course will focus on the multi-faceted question of French identity in France and in the Francophone world, but also in America. French is intrinsically linked to the history of America and its people, but how? Why is there such an important French presence in the US and what does it mean from an identity standpoint? This course is taught in English, but students counting it towards the French major or minor will complete a portion of the assignments in French.

The course outlines cultural, historical and social factors have contributed to the development of fashion in Italy. After a short introduction about the birth of modern fashion in Europe, the focus is on the development of Italian fashion from 1950 up to the 2000 in comparison with other western fashion styles in France, the United Kingdom, and in the U.S.A. The historical and analytical framework will enable students to acquire a sophisticated understanding of the diachronic and synchronic developments of fashion and the key reasons why fashion is now recognized as an integral part of cultural history all over the world.

From country pastor to cathedral villain, from merciful bishop to weaselly lecher, the image of the Roman Catholic priest in French culture is nothing if not versatile. But what purpose does that versatility serve? Is the image of the priest simply all things to all people as a matter of utility, an easy target - for good or for ill - that provides to authors, artists, or directors a shortcut to a good laugh or to a character that their audience will love to hate? This course will explore the image of the priest in France from the Middle Ages to the present day in its varied manifestations in literature, film, and art. We will examine what the broad spectrum of representations reveals about the state of the French Church at any given moment in history, about the theology of the priesthood, or about clericalism and anticlericalism in a political or social context. In a moment when the meaning of the priesthood in the Catholic Church and beyond continues to be contested, a study of the French context will yield a deeper understanding of the priest and his role as an embodiment of the Church and its authority. Taught in English, with course materials available both in English and the original French.

This course will examine the period of the Second World War known as the Vichy regime (1940-1944). We will explore France's complex history through sources of the period as well as through representations of the Vichy regime in contemporary cultural productions; course materials will be drawn from primary sources such as testimonies, novels, memoires, newspapers, documentaries, paintings, German and Vichy propaganda. The course will address the myth of "la France résistante" (a resisting France); the relationship of France to its empire in the colonies (de Gaulle and the Free French Forces); anti-Jewish legislation and the deportation of Jews; as well as the memory of the period from amnesia and negationism to the "devoir de mémoire" (the duty to remember). We will conclude the course by exploring the contemporary legacies of such figures as the Général de Gaulle and the Maréchal Pétain in French politics. Taught in French.

What does it mean to be a successor state to the Nazis? Can one live in hope, and yet still take honest account of a genocidal past? How might cinema be deployed to bring about the elusive Communist utopia, a true democracy; or, conversely, how could it figure as a means to protest an authoritarian government or decry oppressive social conditions? These are questions posed not only by postwar Germans--in the East and West--but by people the world over. Yet the particular "German" contexts of the two Cold War states and now of the Berlin Republic are unmistakable and continue to exert a particular fascination for filmmakers from around the world. This course will treat a dozen great films that attempt to record history, make history, and sometimes even defy history. We will treat film not merely as a reflection of politics, but as a potential intervention that may still be relevant to contemporaries. Directors include: Wim Wenders, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Margarethe von Trotta, Volker Schlöndorff, Billy Wilder, and others. Fulfills major requirements for FTT (including the International Cinema requirement), as well as those of German Studies.

Catholicism and Politics poses the question, both simple and complex: How ought Catholics to think about the political order and political issues within it? The first part of the course will survey major responses to this question drawn from Church history: the early church, the medieval church, and the modern church. The second part applies these models to contemporary issues ranging among war, intervention, globalization, abortion, the death penalty, religious freedom, gender issues, and economic development. The course culminates in "Vatican III," where teams of students, representing church factions, gather to discover church teachings on selected controversial political issues.

By reading works that range from St. Francis of Assisi’s canticle of creatures to the existential meditations of Giacomo Leopardi, this course explores how nature—and by extension, the natural order—was conceived and imagined within the Italian peninsula, from the Middle Ages to the Romantic period. We will trace the continuities and evolution of nature as a literary, philosophical, and theological idea and ask how past perspectives can inform our thinking about nature and its associated problems today. Questions to be pursued include: what is nature to begin with, and what parts of reality does it encompass? To what extent does it ground human ethics and craft? What trials and perils do humans face in their efforts to know, to master, and to care for, all things that move and grow? Do natural disasters and other forms of cosmic disarray threaten our belief in the order and goodness of the natural realm? And how do our representations of nature and its inhabitants shape our understanding of them and ultimately, of ourselves?

We tend to think about marriage as uniting two persons who love each other — but how did love and marriage combine before “love marriages” were a thing? In this course, taught in French, you will read and learn about some of the masterpieces of French literature from before 1800 to answer this question. By analyzing and contextualizing some key literary works, you will learn how love and marriage were often viewed as incompatible; what it took to combine the two; how jealous husbands dealt with open relationships; how faking one’s death, cross-dressing, or hiding in a religious house might have been the best way to escape an unwanted marriage; and how people in love strove to get married to consecrate their union. By the end of the course, you will walk away with a strengthened sense of the French literary canon and you will be ready to take advanced French literature and culture courses. Students are encouraged though not required to have taken ROFR 30310 “Between the Lines” prior to or during this course. Taught in French.

What do we mean by the word Love? Is it passion? Madness? Is it friendship? Can it exist only among human beings? Love shapes communities, can promote war or peace, and raises fundamental questions about life. In the pre-modern world, love was conceived as a force that moved the individual and governed not only the body but the entire universe. Love was God and the quest for the Absolute. Love was also desire and the cause of many problems. By reading literature from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (from early lyric to Dante's universal love, Petrarch's exploration of the self, Boccaccio's legitimation of female desire, Michelangelo's homoerotic poetry, Machiavelli's comic impulses, Vittoria Colonna's spiritual rhymes), along with philosophical, religious, and rhetorical texts on love (from Plato and Augustine to Andrea Cappellanus, Richard of St. Victor, and Marsilio Ficino), we will see what has changed and what has persisted, and ultimately come to understand what we mean when we talk about Love. Taught in Italian.

From mythical creatures to demonic bodies and surprisingly bestial humans, this course explores the animals of medieval Italian literature. Why is the horse lascivious? How can a wolf be tamed? Which monsters from Antiquity lurk in the imagination of the Medieval world? To answer these questions and more, students will read extracts from classics of world literature – including Dante’s Divine Comedy, Boccaccio’s Decameron, and Petrarch’s Canzoniere – alongside lesser-studied poems, treatises, and short stories from the heart of the lyric tradition to the soul of medieval monasticism. As well as a strong grounding in the logic and development of the medieval “Bestiary” tradition, students will discover medieval transformations of classical myths and explore the role of non-humans in medieval depictions of the human condition itself, from love to sin and salvation. This course is taught in Italian. Students will have the chance to study selected traditions from visual art, including manuscript illuminations and wall paintings.

This course explores the rich traditions of travel writing about Italy, covering the Renaissance through contemporary times. Through readings of major authors—including Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), Lord Byron (1788-1824), Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851), Stendhal (1783-1842), Mark Twain (1835-1910), Henry James (1843-1916), Edith Wharton (1862-1937), D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930), Mary McCarthy (1912-1989), and contemporary travel writers—students will explore how Italy has been imagined, experienced, and portrayed. Topics include cultural encounters in Rome, Florence, Venice, Naples, and Milan, the artistic inspirations drawn from Italy's immense architectural and artistic heritage, the Grand Tour, the evolution of travel to Italy as a literary genre, and cinematic interpretations of the journey to Italy theme ("Journey to Italy" [1954], directed by Roberto Rossellini; "Roman Holiday" [1953], directed by William Wyler, etc.). The course combines historical perspectives with close textual analysis, investigating how the journey to Italy has influenced European and global literary and cultural traditions. Taught in English.

Renowned for its rich past but full of contradictions that persist to the present day, Italy has one of the most fascinating histories and abundant cultures in the modern world. This course provides a unique perspective onto Italian modernity by exploring the wealth of Italy’s modern and contemporary cultural production. We will focus on key issues that unveil the unique “spirit” of modern Italy, such as the weight of the past, the tension between political realism and idealism, the recurrence of social and political crises, immigration, revolution, and youth culture. We will investigate how issues of gender, class, race, identity, and faith have shaped Italian literature, film, and theatre in the modern age. Through the study of texts, films, and other media, the course seeks to understand the development of modern Italy and its future trajectory. Authors studied will include Dario Fo, Natalia Ginzburg, Eugenio Montale, Elsa Morante, Anna Maria Ortese, Luigi Pirandello, Igiaba Scego, and Elio Vittorini. Taught in Italian. Pre-requisite: ROIT 20202 or 20215 or equivalent.

This course offers a deep dive into the remarkable, yet frequently marginalized, works of women authors in Italian literature from the nineteenth century to contemporary times. How have these writers influenced discourses surrounding women’s emancipation and pressing social issues? What do their contributions reveal about women’s struggle to establish their voices, and claim their identity and power? Through our exploration of novels, poems, and short stories, we will uncover the unique perspectives and influences of these authors, highlighting how they have actively shaped the cultural landscape. The course will be conducted entirely in Italian, providing an immersive experience as we study works that have redefined the Italian literary canon.

As one of Europe's main frontiers, Medieval Iberia was a space characterized by constant contacts, encounters, and exchanges between ‘East' and ‘West', and between different political, national, cultural, linguistic, and religious identities. Long after the Spanish Reconquista was officially completed in 1492, and the actual frontier had disappeared, however, the notion of inhabiting a liminal space that emerged from the reality, as well as the idea, of being Europe's frontier continued to shape not only the Iberian imagination, but also the way in which different Iberian communities constructed and codified their collective identities. This course is devoted to exploring the legacy, both visible and invisible, of the Iberian past and how the notion of being a ‘frontier' has shaped, and continues to shape not only Spain's identity as a nation, but also other Iberian and Mediterranean national identities. Class materials will focus on Medieval, Modern, and Contemporary Iberian literatures and cultures, but will also include readings and/or films that explore the notion of ‘frontier' as a theoretical framework by comparing Iberia with other ‘frontiers', both Medieval and Contemporary. Taught in Spanish.

Primo Levi has been called “a major, universally recognized, icon in Holocaust literature” (Geerts), indeed “the witness-writer par excellence,” because “his narrative, poetry and essays about his time in Auschwitz are among the most widely read and most widely lauded of all writings on the Holocaust” (Gordon). Levi was this and more: witness and storyteller, scientist and writer, he was among the greatest authors and moral authorities of the twentieth century. In this course, taught in Italian, we will read Levi’s first and most famous work, Se questo è un uomo (If This is a Man, 1947), a masterpiece and milestone in the Italian tradition, in which Levi recounts his internment in Auschwitz. With Levi, we will ask what it means to live, what it means to be human, in and after the Nazi death camps. With Levi, too, we will broaden our exploration to address vital questions of faith, identity, meaning, truth, responsibility, love, friendship, freedom, diversity, survival, science, and salvation as we read selections from such fundamental works as La tregua (The Truce, 1963); Il sistema periodico (The Periodic Table, 1975); Lilìt e altri racconti (Moments of Reprieve, 1978); and I sommersi e i salvati (The Drowned and the Saved, 1986). Throughout the course we will also make use of materials from the Primo Levi Collection of Notre Dame’s Hesburgh Library, one of the world’s foremost collections dedicated to the study of Primo Levi. Taught in Italian; LIT - Univ. Req. Literature. Ways of Knowing Core designations: Advanced Language and Culture; Fine Arts and Literature.

As the story often goes, much of human history was consumed by brutal religious conflict. This changed only during the Enlightenment, when Europeans began to embrace the virtue of tolerance, first of other Christians, and then of all religions and none. Though this sweeping narrative does capture a significant shift in the values upheld by the West, it smooths over the practical aspects of religious coexistence. Long before the rise of tolerance, communities have struggled to find ways to live with the religious other in their midst. Moreover, as modern history has proven time and again, even the highest ideals of tolerance do not nullify the friction created by contact between different faiths and creeds. This course, therefore, considers the long history of toleration, both as it existed prior to the modern era, and how it has changed since the days of Spinoza, Locke, and Voltaire. Though our primary focus will be on Christianity, we will also discuss other models of coexistence practiced in the Americas, Africa, and Asia, as well as how these systems collided in the age of European colonialism. As we approach the present day, we will examine how toleration intersects with issues of racism, secularism, and fundamentalism, and ask whether historical experiences of coexistence have anything to teach us about how to live in peace with neighbors whose beliefs differ from our own.

This is the lab (film screenings) for EURO 30357.

Lab section for EURO 30649.

The foundational seminar in European Studies brings together the breadth and depth of European ideas, themes, and scholarship and seeks to understand them through an interdisciplinary lense. This writing intensive seminar gives students a firm foundation in the areas of research comprising European Studies (with a particular emphasis on the humanities) upon which they can draw from as they move through the remainder of the Minor in European Studies. This is the core course in the Nanovic Institute's Minor in European Studies. Interested students who are not enrolled in the Minor in European Studies should contact the Institute's DUS to request approval to enroll.

The foundational seminar in European Studies brings together the breadth and depth of European ideas, themes, and scholarship and seeks to understand them through an interdisciplinary lens. This seminar gives students a firm foundation in the areas of research comprising European Studies (with a particular emphasis on policy and the social sciences) from which they can draw as they move through the remainder of the Minor in European Studies. This is the core course in the Nanovic Institute's Minor in European Studies. Interested students who are not enrolled in the Minor in European Studies should contact the Institute's DUS to request approval to enroll.

A multi-disciplinary, team-taught seminar focused on a selection of the most pressing challenges facing the European-American relationship today. The seminar includes a required week-long class residency in Washington DC during fall break to bring students into dialogue with experts in contemporary European and global affairs. Though the bulk of the course takes place during fall break, there will be weekly 1 hour class meetings before and after the break. Counts toward the Transnational European Studies concentration in the Global Affairs (suppl.) major and toward the Minor in European Studies. Open to students from all years and majors.

This seminar is required for all students who have been accepted into and will be participating in the Serving (in) Europe program over an eight-week period in June and July 2025. Students will prepare for their service internships by engaging with relevant literature on social justice and humanitarian issues in Europe, as well as meeting regularly with their Caritas (or other faith-based) host organization(s). The proposed locations include cities in Bulgaria, Croatia, Italy, Malta, Northern Ireland, Poland, and Slovakia. This course will meet once each week with the goal of preparing students for their service programs. Topics covered will include the principles of Catholic Social Teaching, situational problem solving, and meaningful cross-cultural exchange.

An introduction to the ways in which the Holocaust has been remembered and examined through literature, from early survivor narratives to second-generation works and the recent culture wars in the wake of the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. Contingent upon funding, the course will include a study tour to Berlin and to Auschwitz, where we will visit memorials and documentation sites, speak to representatives of Jewish organizations, and get a better sense for the continuities of Jewish life in Central Europe throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. All expenses for this study tour will be covered by the University, and students must be able to commit to the entirety of the trip. Students interested in the course should submit a paragraph to Tobias Boes (tboes@nd.edu) stating the reasons for wishing to take the course and must also fill out the following form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScxxY1dgFgdKWO2VwYuBAX_LgP8U-E9UxGGu7FTZ2mv3f-slw/viewform?usp=header Authors covered might include Primo Levi, Elie Wiesel, Ruth Klüger, Art Spiegelman and Helen Epstein, while theorists covered could include Hannah Arendt, Raoul Hilberg, Shoshana Felman, Marianne Hirsch, and Michael Rothberg.

Fairy tales are a staple of popular culture with roots in the folklore tradition. In this course we will investigate the enduring transnational popularity of the fairy tale and the extent to which they reflect child-rearing, political or social norms across cultures. We will read and analyze classic European fairy tales in their historical and cultural context, as well as discuss the theoretical function and meaning of fairy tales. Taught in English.

As soon as Europeans began exploring and colonizing the so-called New World, Germans were there. Germans came to the Americas as conquistadors, settlers, refugees, missionaries, and merchants. The German colony in Venezuela was disastrously short-lived, but Germans came to play a significant role in the colonization of North America through the settlement of Pennsylvania. This course introduces students to the varieties of German presence in the Americas from the 16th to the 18th centuries. Topics may include the colonization and conquest of South America, German interactions with Indigenous communities, German missionaries to the enslaved peoples in the Caribbean, the role of German immigrants in early anti-slavery and pacifist movements, and the origin and afterlife of the language called Pennsylvania Dutch. This course will be taught in English.

In 1987, the Soviet Union was the largest political entity on the planet. Four years later, it had vanished from the map entirely. In this interdisciplinary course, you will learn about the ‘new Russia’ that has emerged in the three decades since this stunning collapse. Drawing on an array of resources in English translation, you will explore the politics, media, and culture of the post-Soviet period: from the lawless years of the “wild 90s” under Boris Yeltsin to the return of totalitarianism under Vladimir Putin and his brutal invasion of Ukraine. In so doing, your study of contemporary Russia will lead us to discuss some of the most pressing questions in global politics today. What is the nature of truth and power in Putin’s dystopian propaganda state? Should the current leadership in Russia be described as a fascist regime or neo-Soviet? And, perhaps most importantly, how did Russia’s democratic experiment ultimately end with the launch of the largest war in Europe since 1945—and what lessons might this failure hold for America and the rest of the world?

Armenia, one of the oldest countries on the Silk Road and the first nation to adopt Christianity as a state religion, possesses a rich literary and cultural heritage in which one finds localized variants of devices, themes, and, broadly speaking, cross-cultural tropes. Armenia’s geographic location has also posed a hindrance to its self-determination: Arab, Persian, Ottoman, and Russian empires have shaped, reformulated, and at times suppressed literary and cultural traditions. Like the best writers of any nation, the Armenian greats have concentrated their efforts on universal themes and concepts such as suffering and strength, death and determination, sadness and joy, proving again and again that literature, like the human self it often takes as its subject, is not sui generis. In this course, we will examine Armenian literary works in their historical, intercultural, and colonial contexts, tracing these patterns through prose and verse. In this course, students will cultivate skills in close reading, critical thinking, and writing through various assignments that target these areas of growth. The written assignments in this course will help students exercise their ability to advance an argument based on textual evidence in writing and become astute interpreters of ideas presented in the assigned texts. Course discussions, in-class workshops meant to improve argumentative writing, and critical essays (expository, creative, and research) will familiarize students with literary theory and critical tools useful for the analysis of literary works and cultural elements. Moreover, specific assignments in this course will allow students to approach the topics at hand less conventionally and more creatively through art, music, or other media, approaching each text comparatively and interdisciplinarily to broaden students’ horizons in order to understand other cultures in a wider context.

In this interdisciplinary course, students will trace the development of Christian theology and culture in Eastern Europe—from the baptism of Rus in 988 to the classic novels of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, and from the liturgical theology of Alexander Schmemann to the religious cinema of Putin’s Russia. Throughout the course, students will grapple with the “accursed questions” that have long defined Russian religious thought, while also examining the diverse and divergent images of Christ put forward by Russia’s greatest theologians, artists, philosophers, and writers.

With a focus on Germany, this course treats contemporary European responses to the influx of migrants and refugees. It includes a weeklong residential stay in Berlin during spring break (departing campus March 6, returning March 15, 2026). Enrollment only via competitive essay to the Nanovic Institute. Applications are due on November 11, 2025. Application available at: https://nanovicnd.submittable.com/submit/339123/europe-confronts-the-refugee-challenge-spring-2026

This course explores the historical relationship between the Catholic Church and the rise and fall of European overseas empires since the sixteenth century. We will consider how Catholic missionaries both reinforced and resisted colonial power structures; how the Church made sense of racial, religious, and cultural differences in its efforts to evangelize colonial subjects; how African, Asian, and Latin American Catholics developed their own distinctive spiritual practices; and how Catholics in both Europe and its former colonies grappled with the challenge of decolonization and how to undo the legacies of colonialism within the Church itself. Readings will be drawn from a range of sources, including missionary diaries and manuals, memoirs, artwork, papal encyclicals, films, novels, works of theology, and historical scholarship.

Welcome to The Reformation. In this class, we will focus on the history of Christianity in the late medieval and early modern periods, focusing especially on the divisive movements that have come to be known as “The Reformation.” We will begin by investigating the origins of reforming impulses in the late medieval church, leading up to the watershed moment in 1517, when Martin Luther famously challenged the Church’s authority by posting the Ninety-Five Theses. We will then trace the fallout of Luther’s proclamation across Europe and, indeed, the globe.

Was the Soviet Union a "workers' paradise" or an "evil empire?" Nearly three decades after this country transformed into what we now call "post-Soviet space," the legacy of the USSR looms large in international politics and culture. This course will offer students an introduction to Soviet history through film, which Lenin famously called "the most important of the arts," and literature, which Soviet writers used to "engineer human souls." Since the 1917 Revolution, art has had a close relationship to the Soviet state. At the same time, writers and filmmakers with individualistic and even rebellious tendencies have created some of the twentieth century's greatest masterpieces, including Dziga Vertov's Man With a Movie Camera and Mikhail Bulgakov's Master and Margarita. In this class we will explore how this tense relationship between art and the state developed in the first half of the twentieth century. Since cultural context is an important lens for our analysis, each artistic work will be accompanied by historical readings about the period in which it was produced, as well as artistic manifestos and contemporary reviews, when relevant. All films will be shown with subtitles and all readings offered in English. Students of the Russian language have the option of discussing the course material in Russian once a week with the instructor in a group for an additional course credit.

The International Business Fellows is being offered for the third time as a course affiliated with and organized by the Business Ethics and Society Program at the Mendoza College of Business. This course recognizes a select number of undergraduate students who are interested in global affairs, want to explore the nature of honorable business within our globalized world, and who seek to explore the ethical and professional challenges and opportunities for pursuing business as a force for good in the international context(s). International Business Fellows will be encouraged to participate in the activities of the Business Ethics and Society program beyond the Colloquium. In addition, International Business Fellows are expected to enroll each semester in the 1.5 credit International Business Fellows Colloquium, which meets once weekly and provides an opportunity for small-group discussion, close interaction with distinguished faculty and/or business leaders, as well as dinner. As a conclusion to the last two offerings of this course, the participants of the Colloquium were given the opportunity to participate in an international immersion experience to Poland. The trip made possible for students to interact with business leaders and politicians, and explore the challenges and opportunities of business in one of Europe’s fastest growing economies, as well as exploring business in a post-communist free market economy within the context of Catholic Social Thought and the influence of Pope St. John Paul II. While there is no guarantee that participants of this colloquium would be able to once again travel for such an experience, we are actively exploring this possibility and hope to offer it as an option as details emerge. The immersion experience will be contingent upon funding.

This writing intensive course explores jihadism across Europe.

This class is designed to bring together groups of undergraduate students from Durham University and the University of Notre Dame's London Undergraduate Program, to develop their leadership skills around the topic of local responses to the UN's Sustainable Development Goals, in a trial integration between two partner institutions. Drawing on the research work being carried out in both institutions, students will explore two of the seventeen goals in more detail, before working in groups on consultancy case-studies with real-world relevance. The consultancy case-studies will provide an opportunity to strengthen consultancy, advocacy, research, and leadership skills, in the context of working in intercultural teams, and multinational contexts: a scenario with ever-increasing relevance in an increasingly mobile and global working environment.

The module aims to familiarize students with aspects of Polish history, culture, and society. The module comprises a series of lectures delivered in Polish and English. Each lecture is followed by a seminar during which students discuss issues raised in the lecture and in the required/suggested reading. Students may be required to read texts in advance of the weekly seminar. Furthermore, students will be asked to submit short written assignments (e.g. a summary of an assigned text, a critical response to a lecture or assigned text, or a brief analysis of a secondary source) to enhance their compositional skills.

This module will investigate the ways in which the 'witch' became a culturally significant figure in continental Europe between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries, the object of intense legal, religious, political and cultural scrutiny and debate. Drawing on material from Germany, France, Italy and England the course will explain how and why the early modern period witnessed a 'witchcraze', a period of unprecedented persecution. It will ask how ideas about witchcraft and magic were shaped by the religious, social and political upheavals of the period. Throughout, it will draw on a wide variety of primary source material, both textual and visual.

This course is an approach to the art and architecture of Spain from Antiquity to today. For this, the matter is structured in chronological units and style, and within them the most characteristic aspects of each period are emphasized, in relation to architecture, painting and sculpture always within its historical context. The theoretical classes are completed with three visits to the city of Toledo that reinforce the elements learned in class.

The aim of the course is to combine a survey of major trends in European literature with an in-depth analysis of some representative texts (all available in English). In this approach literature is seen as a cultural subsystem which reflects and contributes to the evolution of the intellectual, social and artistic consciousness in Europe.

This course is intended for those students who have received approval from the Nanovic Institute for European Studies to complete a directed reading with an approved faculty member. This course satisfies one of the minor 'gateway' course requirements. Approval to register must be obtained by the Nanovic Institute DUS.

In this course, taught in French, you will examine how love and gender were debated in French and Occitan literatures from before 1500. Debates appear everywhere and they often convey the idea that arguing is intellectually, socially, and emotionally beneficial to those involved. So in this class, we will ask ourselves: How might arguing be good for you? Through the lens of debates on love and gender, we will survey some of the most important works of medieval French literature and unpack a range of thought-provoking texts. Questions that we will examine include: What does a woman know that a man doesn’t? Is it better for a man to be faithful while being cheated on or should he be promiscuous? What are the limits of mansplaining? Can a man convince a woman to love him through reasoning? Is the best type of man brave or wise, pushy or patient, braggy or humble? What are the terms of an open relationship? Where does happiness fit in with love and marriage?

Dante’s Comedy is one of the masterpieces of Western literature. It is also a comprehensive synthesis of the cultural tradition up to its time (from antiquity to the late Middle Ages), a daring experiment in language, poetics and poetic technique, and a profound exploration of Christian spirituality. Dante I and Dante II (ROIT 40115 and 40116) are a close, discussion-based study over two semesters of the entire Comedy, in its cultural (historical, literary, political, philosophical) context. Dante I explores the works that precede the Comedy, and the Inferno. Dante II focuses on the Purgatorio and Paradiso, along with the Monarchia. These are separate courses and can be taken individually, or in either order, although they do form an integrated sequence. Lectures and discussion are in English; the text will be read in a facing-page translation, so we can refer to the Italian (but knowledge of Italian is not necessary). Counts as an Italian Studies course. Students with Italian have the option of also enrolling in a one-credit pass/fail Languages Across the Curriculum section, which will meet one hour per week to read and discuss selected passages or cantos in Italian. Taught in English. LIT - Univ. Req. Literature. Cross-listed with LLRO 40116, MI 40553, ROIT 63116, MI 60553. Ways of Knowing Core designations: Catholicism and the Disciplines; Advanced Language and Culture; Fine Arts and Literature.

Russia’s war in Ukraine has exposed a profound religious divide between the two countries. For decades, if not centuries, the world has failed to notice this rift, treating Ukrainian Christianity as a sub-species of Russian Orthodoxy. The course aims to help interested upper-level undergraduate and master’s students to understand the similarities and differences between the two religious cultures. It highlights pivotal moments in the history of the Ukrainian and Russian churches, as well as the key figures who have shaped their theology throughout the centuries, from the medieval period of Kyivan Rus to the present day. Students will become familiar with notable Ukrainian religious thinkers and ecclesiastical figures, such as Petro Mohyla, Melety Smotrytsky, Hryhory Skovoroda, Andrey Sheptytsky, and Josef Slipyj. Russian religious thought will be represented by the works of Piotr Chaadaev, Alexey Khomiakov, Vladimir Solovyov, Leo Tolstoy, Sergius Bulgakov, and Pavel Florensky, among others. Thematically, most of the course material focuses on the topics of political theology, theology of history, theology of culture, theology of ritual, and issues of Christian unity.

This course explores medieval thinking about the church: its unity, its boundaries, the diversity of cultural traditions within it, its place in the world, and the ways in which the church is organized and governed. Students will be introduced to the major texts, authors, and ideas of medieval ecclesiology from St. Augustine through the period of the Gregorian reform in the eleventh century to the age of conciliarism and the early reformers in the fifteenth century. Special attention will be given to the role of the Roman Pope on the one hand, and the Church Councils on the other. The significance of medieval ecclesiology for the modern discourse on the Church will also be addressed.

This seminar constitutes quite simply an introduction to seventeenth-century French theater. Considered the golden age for the genre in France, with the ‘Big Three’ playwrights Molière, Corneille, and Racine, this period produced the greatest tragedies and comedies in the French tradition. We will ride the highs of the tragic heroes, descend with them into the depths of their lows, and then learn to laugh at these ups and downs with our study of some of the most famous comedies in Western literature. While we will primarily approach these plays as literature––for the text is usually the star––we will also explore their embodiment as a living, breathing work of art. Taught in French.

In this course, students will make a close and critical reading of Giovanni Boccaccio’s collection of one hundred short stories, the Decameron. A founding work of Italian literature, recognized for centuries as its best example of prose writing, its author wanted it to be an ethical manual for critically understanding reality and its political, social, and religious tenets, under the appearance of a mere entertaining work. From the experience of the 1348 Black Plague to daily issues in protocapitalist Florence, from tales of magicians and enchanted gardens to tongue-in-cheek stories, from relationships between husband and wives, children and parents, to those between kings, sultans, and their subjects, Boccaccio’s stories allow us to better understand our past, while challenging our views on the self, faith, society, and the other. Taught in Italian. Pre-requisite: ROIT 20202 or 20215 or equivalent. LIT - Univ. Req. Literature. Cross-listed with MI-40564-01. Ways of Knowing Core designations: Advanced Language and Culture; University Writing Intensive Requirement.

The passage from the nineteenth to the twentieth century was a period of great hope but also of great anxiety. While nobody could predict the coming of the First World War, pre-apocalyptic restlessness dominated culture, especially in the young nation of Italy. Modernity promised ever greater improvements in living conditions, but it also laid bare its contradictions: social inequalities, political conflict and polarization, and the abyss of existential angst, which afflicted so many and so much. From fiction to poetry, from theater to visual arts, we will study how the great Italian authors of this period like Nobel Prize winner Luigi Pirandello, Gabriele d’Annunzio, Filippo T. Marinetti and the Italian Futurists bore witness to the transformations of the modern era. Some prospected a societal collapse and yearned for a rebirth accelerated by avant-garde aesthetics, while others escaped into individualistic introspection for personal and spiritual actualization. We will explore the tensions of Italian literary Modernism, which live on to this day: progressivism with reactionism, nationalism with cosmopolitanism, regionalism with immigration, capitalism with socialism, pacifism with warmongering, religion with secularization and existentialism, to see why the turn of the century left an indelible mark for the centuries to come. Taught in Italian. Italian 202 is a prerequisite for this course.

This course traces the evolution of Italian identity through a journey across its most iconic literary landscapes—from the sun-drenched ruins of aristocratic Sicily to the industrial heart of Turin, the vibrant, gritty streets of modern Naples, and the multicultural reality of post-colonial Rome. By analyzing key cultural trends such as neo-realism, postmodernism, and the rise of post-colonial voices, students will examine how Italy transformed from a fragmented 19th-century kingdom into a complex, culturally diverse European nation. Six seminal authors anchor the course, mapping the shifting “territory” of the Italian soul across the 20th and 21st centuries. Through a carefully curated selection of complete works and substantial excerpts, students will trace a path from aristocratic decline to a multicultural future. Tomasi di Lampedusa’s The Leopard captures Sicily’s fatalistic transition during the Risorgimento, while Primo Levi’s If This Is a Man offers a harrowing, scientific testimony to the Holocaust—Italy’s moral “zero point.” Natalia Ginzburg’s Lessico famigliare preserves the intimate, domestic language of anti-fascist resistance in Turin. The course then pivots to the conceptual and social transformations of the late century: Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities abstracts the modern urban experience into a postmodern kaleidoscope; Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels ground the 21st century in the raw socioeconomic and gendered struggles of Naples; and Igiaba Scego’s La mia casa è dove sono redefines contemporary italianità, mapping a postcolonial Rome that embraces migrant and diasporic identities. Readings from these literary works will be complemented by a selection of musical, artistic, and cinematic materials that deepen our understanding of modern Italy’s evolving cultural landscape. Taught in Italian

This course begins in the 1960s, when Italy stood at the center of the film world, and traces the history of Italian cinema to the present day. We will focus on the heyday of Italian auteurs – Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni, Luchino Visconti, and Pier Paolo Pasolini – examining how each brought a singular vision to the collective medium of cinema. Working against the hegemony of Hollywood, Italian filmmakers in the twentieth century created new forms of representation that inspired audiences worldwide. They continue to do so in the new millennium, building on the innovations of illustrious predecessors like Bertolucci and Pontecorvo, Wertmüller and Cavani to reveal new realities to moviegoers across the globe. We will analyze how questions of class, faith, gender, identity, and ideology intersect on screen as Italian directors seek both to expose and to recreate the illusions by which we live. With a filmography featuring both masterpieces of world cinema and cult classics, this course will investigate how pioneering Italian directors reshaped every genre of film, including action & adventure, comedy, crime, documentary, melodrama, mystery, thriller, horror, and more. The course is taught in English and all films will have English subtitles.

Britney Spears. Anna Nicole Smith. Janet Jackson. We thought we knew their tragic stories; we thought they only had themselves to blame. In recent years, however, we have reappraised these maligned women and the pervasive misogyny to which they were subjected in a supposedly post-feminist era. In this seminar, we will examine the gendering of celebrity in France and its former colonies over the course of the long nineteenth century, engaging with legacies of famous women from Marie Antoinette to Aïssa Maïga. Each week, we will study conflicting depictions of a public figure, seeking to understand the structures with which commentators controlled women’s narratives—and how women in turn developed their own strategies of resistance. Drawing from a range of sources including sculptures, choreographies, films, and autobiographies, we will engage with interpretive approaches that interrogate hierarchies of memory, history, and culture. Taught in French.

The nineteenth century saw the rise of print media and professional institutions. Old-fashioned whisper networks came to be viewed suspiciously as a dangerous, “feminine” pastime for those without lives of their own. Yet the enduring popularity of gossip—in society columns, romans-à-clef, communal laundry rooms, and political caricatures—meant that informal social networks thrived, fueled by a heightened interest in the private lives of famous people. The learning goals of this class extend beyond those of textual analysis and the researched argument to media literacy. Following several scandals across a variety of sources, we will study how information was transmitted via different genres, spaces, and voices in nineteenth-century France, looking at a range of texts from broadsheets to Offenbach operettas. While reinforcing social mores, gossip also provided a means of resistance to the status quo, a way for the marginalized to reframe official narratives and point to the humanity shared across classes and identities. Taught in French.

This course examines the political, social, and cultural history of Portugal from the establishment of the Estado Novo dictatorship in 1933 to the consolidation of democracy in the 1980s and beyond. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach that draws on historical documents, literature, music, and film, students will explore the mechanisms of authoritarian control, the effects of the colonial wars, the transformative Carnation Revolution of 1974, and the complex process of democratic transition and today’s current political dynamics in the country. Special emphasis will be placed on resistance movements, censorship, and the politics of memory. The course also considers how these legacies continue to shape contemporary Portuguese society and political life today. This course will be taught in English.

This course focuses on literary works in French that have received illustrious prizes, from the Nobel Prize to the Prix Goncourt, and it examines questions related to the prestige of publishing houses and the role of marketing techniques meant to package and sell books alongside questions of influence and imitation, and of possible accusations of plagiarism. The course’s tripartite emphasis on the ways in which authors and their textual creations are celebrated, circulated, and questioned is complemented by an analysis of how these award-winning attempts to decolonize literature in French constitute a contemporary quest with profound historical and intertextual resonances. We read literary works of a great variety, including novels by Nobel prizewinning authors Annie Ernaux (the first Frenchwoman ever to win this award in 2022) and Jean-Marie Le Clézio, Goncourt prizewinning authors Mohamed Mbougar Sarr (the first Sub-Saharan African to win this award in 2021) and Leïla Slimani, as well as works by other writers who are caught up in telling striking stories that involve intersecting understandings of the complexities of race, class, and gender that have too often been missing from the literary landscape in French.

This course involves the close study of novels, films, and essays that examine the evolving realities of refugees and migrants in the French-speaking world today. It explores what it means for so many individuals to leave their homeland behind and seek asylum in France, and it focuses on the stories of these global movements and their implications for identities, whether the protagonists wind up in Paris — or in another location, such as South Bend, Indiana. This is the first course of its kind to incorporate engagement with Francophone families who live near Notre Dame and who lack knowledge of the English language and American customs. Once every two weeks, students will meet with local refugees who speak French and need assistance with learning English as well as with a number of other aspects of life in the United States. Tutoring and providing information, as well as assisting in practical tasks like filling out forms will make up some of the activities that students participate in with refugees, but another crucial component of these interactions will entail becoming familiar with their stories and putting them to paper in creative form, in French. Listening to and valorizing the personal narratives of people from Francophone Africa will be an important aspect of the time spent with them, and hearing these oral accounts may give new resonance to the French-language books and films on our syllabus that constitute creative contemporary renditions of migration.

This course focuses on French-language films that transcend national boundaries, depicting movements - and individuals - that go beyond borders and allow us to understand how current cinematic creations are not limited to "Franco-French" actors and productions, but extend around the globe. We study a number of films that deal with questions of immigration and migration in the French context, recent films that reveal the current multicultural environment within the hexagonal space of France. We also examine films that come from the larger francophone world, from locations such as Algeria and Senegal. Assignments include brief written responses to each of the films under study, an oral presentation, two short papers, and a final paper. We will read two novels that are related to very recent films as well and explore the relationship between the written work and the cinematic creation. The goals of this course are not limited to increasing students' knowledge and understanding of the art (and the politics) of filmmaking; they are also are meant to enhance their appreciation of diverse cultural settings that interact and intersect with France in important ways in a contemporary world marked by postcolonial tensions and "globalized" transnational relations. Taught in French.

This course is designed for students who are completing the Supplementary Major in Global Affairs with a Concentration in Transnational European Studies and is primarily intended to achieve three objectives: (1) give students an opportunity to conduct independent research; (2) provide students with guidance and support in completing their capstone research project; and (3) bring student research into dialogue with trends in the field of Global Affairs. Although each student will work on his/her/their own project, we will move, as a group, through the normal stages of a project and contribute in meaningful ways to each other's work.

In the Italian Middle Ages, vision was more than a physical process, it was a way of understanding the world, navigating society, and expressing devotion and desire. Fascinated by mystical experience but saturated with social conventions that sought to control as well as to captivate the gaze, theories and mythologies of vision shaped social life and self-expression, illuminating the centuries traditionally known as the “Dark Ages” with a rich discourse on sight and perception. This course explores the theme of vision across texts and images from medieval Italy, investigating whose visions got to be recorded. Readings include poetic, devotional, and scientific texts and the study selected visual artifacts from illuminated manuscripts to major fresco cycles, ecclesiastical artworks, and domestic decorations. In addition to exploring how ‘seeing’ shaped the medieval mind, students will uncover how authors and artists investigated the space between what could be seen and what could only be imagined. Taught in Italian.

How are identities important in a world of frictions and connections? How do different societies deal with cultural, linguistic, religious, gendered, embodied, intergenerational, and racialized diversities (and related injustice or inequality)? How are these accommodated within (more or less) democratic regimes? How do democracies change as a result? What are the differences between multiculturalism, relativism, and pluralism? The course addresses such questions by focusing on issues including but not limited to police violence and urban riots; Arab Uprisings; Muslim-Christian-Jewish relationships (conflict and coexistence) in Egypt and Iran; gendered practices and embodied aesthetics; the experience of refugees, and the crafting of identities, in the journey between Somalia and the US. We will also use news/magazine articles, as sources of information and as artifacts to be analyzed.

Research course for the capstone essay required for the Minor in European Studies through the Nanovic Institute. May not be double-counted for thesis credit in a major field of study. Department approval required before registration.

Diplomacy is a way of doing politics: the established method of negotiating inter-state relations and of influencing the decisions and behavior of foreign governments and peoples through presence and engagement, dialogue, and negotiation. Violence and wars, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine, show both the limits and strict necessity of diplomacy as a key tool for ensuring peaceful human coexistence. Diplomats are committed to their home country, but also their host country and the bigger picture of the common good. Contributors to peace building and peacekeeping, diplomats serve political purposes through cultural engagement. In this way, they contribute to "integral human development" in the design of international relations. The Nanovic Institute invites graduate students to join our Diplomacy Scholars Program through Deep Dive into Diplomacy. This course examines diplomacy as a tool in European relations and affairs while providing students the opportunity to hone diplomatic skills such as conflict mediation, judgment and decision making, intercultural competencies, and written and oral communication. Students will learn from present and former diplomats about the diplomatic way of life and participate in a number of simulations and activities beyond the classroom.

Around the globe, communities are seeking to understand what to do with statues and memorials of figures who committed human rights abuses linked to slavery and colonialism. Is it wrong to alter statues of problematic historical figures, or is it a requirement of justice? How can we address challenging heritage in a way that brings communities together, rather than dividing them? This unique course is taught by one of the leading voices in the debates over Edward Colston in Bristol, UK, which culminated in the statue being toppled in June 2020 and dropped in the Bristol harbour. The course will focus in equal parts on the philosophy and practice of heritage-based activism, with concrete activities for students to use to explore their own history and heritage, and shape positive change for the future. This is an intensive 1-credit course that meets three times a week for the first four weeks of the semester.

In this seminar we will investigate how contemporary texts, broadly understood, written in French think (about) and problematize Europe and the EU. The initial feelings of hope have beenmet, over the course of the past three decades, with skepticism and disillusionment. We will turn to fiction, film, critical theory, and art to help us articulate and engage with questions of national identity, politics, migration and immigration, and climate change. Taught in French. Open to seniors with advanced French skills. Departmental approval is required.

In this course students will examine the complexities of historical memory in public spaces from a comparative European-American perspective with a focus on commemorative landscapes—statues, monuments, street names, etc. This course is built around case studies where commemoration and public memory has proved controversial or contested. The course will begin with a review of the principles and processes of commemoration, including the theoretical literature, as well as practical application, e.g., range of potential remedies. Students will then explore the European experience with the legacies of fascism, communism, and colonialism & slavery in public spaces. We will then apply these "lessons learned" to the current debates over the commemorative landscapes in the United States, including disputes over Confederate statues and depictions of Columbus statues, with a view to the planned rescripting of commemorative landscapes in advance of the 250th anniversary in 2026. Readings will include primary-source documents, e.g., memory & heritage protection laws, commission reports, etc.

A multi-disciplinary, team-taught seminar focused on a selection of the most pressing challenges facing the European-American relationship today. The seminar includes a required week-long class residency in Washington DC during fall break to bring students into dialogue with experts in contemporary European and global affairs. Though the bulk of the course takes place during fall break, there will be weekly 1 hour class meetings before and after the break. Counts toward the Transnational European Studies concentration in the Global Affairs (suppl.) major and toward the Minor in European Studies. Open to students from all years and majors.

Medieval books were hand-written luxury objects that were costly to produce, prestigious to read, and valuable to hold. Yet the attitudes of medieval readers and book owners could surprise us as being very “hands-on”: they kissed images of Saints, ate bits of parchment, and on occasion even erased depictions of “the bad guy” such as the devil. This seminar, which requires no familiarity with medieval literature or the history of the book, is meant to show you how medieval books were multisensory objects that appealed to the eyes, the hand, the nose, the ears, and the mouth. With a focus on manuscripts in French and in Latin, you will learn what “reading” might have felt like over 500 years ago.

With a focus on Germany, this course treats contemporary European responses to the influx of migrants and refugees. It includes a weeklong residential stay in Berlin during spring break (departing campus March 6, returning March 15, 2026). Enrollment only via competitive essay to the Nanovic Institute. Applications are due on November 11, 2025. Application available at: https://nanovicnd.submittable.com/submit/339123/europe-confronts-the-refugee-challenge-spring-2026