Course Description: Prerequisite(s): ENGL 1302. This course introduces students to the canon of Chinese literature, and traces the social-political and cultural transformation of Chinese societies and the global Chinese diaspora through literature.

Course Description: Prerequisite(s): ENGL 1302. Through discussing contemporary film, music, TV drama, dance, performance, fashion, art and internet culture, this course explores the changing role of socialist politics, the rise of consumerism, and China's global cultural significance in the contemporary world. Taught in English.

Course Description: History of German films within their historical, cultural, thematic, and aesthetic context. Taught in English. Core: Creative Arts.

Course Description: East German films within their historical, cultural, thematic, and aesthetic context. Taught in English. Core: Creative Arts.

Course Description: Course introduces students to major medieval texts about the legend of King Arthur and his Roundtable Knights. Course compares medieval texts to cinematic medievalism by comparing major episodes in the Arthurian legend to their adaptations in films and television series. Course teaches close reading of literary texts AND film texts by analyzing how major filmmakers (John Boorman, Joshua Logan, Guy Ritchie, David Lowery) adapt King Arthur’s medieval legend for contemporary audiences through movies and TV.

Course Description: Using texts that feature characters that illustrate a permeable boundary between the human and the non-human, the course engages with the question of what defines a human (as opposed to a monster). “Premodern” encompasses both the medieval through early modern periods. Human/monsters to be considered include Beowulf’s Grendel and his mother, the Green Knight from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Marie de France’s werewolf story Bisclavret, Mucedorus’s Wild Man Bremo, Shakespeare’s Caliban from The Tempest, and others. Wherever possible, film adaptations of these human monster narratives (Beowulf, SGGK, Tempest, etc. )will be compared to the original texts to interrogate whether film adaptations humanize the monster or monster-ize the human.

Course Description: Critical analysis of use of photographs and other images in contemporary society, from mass media to social media to interpersonal communication.

Course Description: Contemporary theories on how knowledge and culture affect the construction of social reality.