Related Courses, Fall 2024
Advanced Topics in Italian Renaissance Art
EMST 744/HSAR 764
This seminar explores recent scholarship on Italian visual culture and architecture, c. 1400–1600. Potential themes include the relationship between art and the environment; transmedial approaches that exceed conventional definitions of painting, sculpture, and architecture; artistic production, patronage, and reception in relation to dynamics of gender, race, labor, and class; the movement of artists and materials; and expanding notions of artistic geography both within and beyond the peninsula. While sessions focus on secondary literature from recent decades, they also put newer scholarship in dialogue with longer historiographic traditions and primary sources. The course is a chance for graduate students not only to inform themselves about trends in the field but also to debate and situate their own voices in relation to them.
Professor: Morgan Ng
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: F 1:30pm-3:20pm
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
After the War, Novels after 1945, French and German
FREN 241/GMAN 301/LITR 397
How to write, how to narrate after war? In this course we read alternatingly some of the greatest novels and novellas after 1945 (until ca. 1968) from German speaking countries and from France. This can but does not necessarily mean novels about fascism and democracy, aggression and resistance (Sartre, Grass). It also means negotiating radical break and reorientation, politically and ideologically (German “Zero Hour”, the absurd, existentialism in France); and the attempt to reinvent literary writing in general (‘nouveau roman’ in France, Handke and Bernard in Austria). Further authors include Camus, Duras, Robbe-Grillet, Le Clezio, Koeppen, Wolf, Handke, Bachmann.
Professor: Rudiger Campe
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: Th 3:30pm-5:20pm
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Agrarian Societies: Culture, Society, History, and Development
ANTH 541
An interdisciplinary examination of agrarian societies, contemporary and historical, Western and non-Western. Major analytical perspectives from anthropology, economics, history, political science, and environmental studies are used to develop a meaning-centered and historically grounded account of the transformations of rural society. Team-taught.
Professor: Jonathan Wyrtzen
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: W 1:30pm-3:20pm
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Methodology
Anthropological Perspectives on Science and Technology
ANTH 615/HSHM 755
The course focuses on ethnographic work on scientific and technical topics, ranging from laboratory studies to everyday technologies. Selected texts include canonical books as well as newer work from early scholars and the most recent work of established scholars. Divided into four units, this seminar explores the theme of “boundaries,” a perennial topic in anthropology of science that deals with the possibility and limits of demarcation. Each week, different kinds of boundaries are examined, and students learn to see their social constructedness as well as the power they carry. We begin by exploring where science is and isn’t, followed by the boundary between ourselves and technology, which is a specific example of the third boundary we examine: the one artificially drawn between nature and culture. We end with readings on geopolitics and the technologies of delineating nation from nation as well as thinking about postnational scientific states. Class discussion guides each session. One or two students each week are responsible for precirculating a book review on the week’s reading, and a third student begins class by reacting to both the texts and the review. The final assignment is a research paper or a review essay.
Professor: Lisa Messeri
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: W 1:30pm-3:20pm
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Applied Methods of Analysis
This course is an introduction to statistics and their application in public policy and global affairs research. It consists of two weekly class sessions in addition to a discussion section. The discussion section is used to cover problems encountered in the lectures and written assignments, as well as to develop statistical computing skills. Throughout the term we cover issues related to data collection (including surveys, sampling, and weighted data), data description (graphical and numerical techniques for summarizing data), probability and probability distributions, confidence intervals, hypothesis testing, measures of association, and regression analysis. The course assumes no prior knowledge of statistics and no mathematical knowledge beyond calculus. Graded only, sat/unsat option is not permissible.
Professor: Justin Thomas
Term: Fall 2023
Day/Time: MW 1pm-2:15pm
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Methodology
Approaching Sacred Space: Places, Buildings, and Bodies in Ancient Italy
CLSS 846/HSAR 639
This graduate-level seminar approaches sacred space in ancient Italy (ca. 500 BCE–100 CE) from several evidential and methodological perspectives. The class probes how different kinds of sacred artifacts (places, buildings, and bodies) textured ritual space, forming its recognizable character then and now. While assessing the available evidence (material, literary, epigraphic) for each of these categories, we devote time to untangling the ways that modern scholars and Roman authors have written about ancient holy places. The emphasis on “approach” also provides an avenue to begin to reconstruct the lived experiences of sacred space, moving from the realia of locations, structures, and objects to the possible responses of ancient people.
Professor: Alexander Ekserdijan
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: Th 9:25am-11:15am
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Archaeological Ceramics
ANTH 385/ARCG 385/ANTH 785/ARCG 785
Archaeological methods for analyzing and interpreting ceramics, arguably the most common type of object found in ancient sites. Focus on what different aspects of ceramic vessels reveal about the people who made them and used them.
Professor: Anne Underhill
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: Th 1:30pm-3:20pm
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Archaeological Research Design and Proposal Development
ANTH 743
An effective proposal requires close consideration of all steps of research design, from statement of the problem to data analysis. The course is designed to provide an introduction to the principles by which archaeological research projects are devised and proposed. Students receive intensive training in the preparation of a research proposal with the expectation that the final proposal will be submitted to national and international granting agencies for consideration. The course is structured around the creation of research questions; hypothesis development and statement of expectations; and the explicit linking of expectations to material patterning, field methods, and data analysis. Students review and critique examples of funded and nonfunded research proposals and comment extensively on each other’s proposals. In addition to developing one’s own research, learning to constructively critique the work of colleagues is imperative for becoming a responsible anthropological archaeologist.
Professor: William Honeychurch
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: F 9:25am-11:15am
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Archaia Seminar: Law and Society in China and Rome
ANTH 531/CLSS 815/EALL 773/HIST 502/HSAR 564/JDST 653/NELC 533/RLST 803
An introduction to the legal systems of the Roman and post-Roman states and Han- and Tang-dynasty China. Emphasis on developing collaborative partnerships that foster comparative history research. Readings in surviving law codes (in the original or English translation) and secondary studies on topics including slavery, trade, crime, and family. This course serves as an Archaia Core Seminar. It is connected with Archaia’s Ancient Societies Workshop (ASW), which runs a series of events throughout the academic year related to the theme of the seminar. Students enrolled in the seminar must attend all ASW events during the semester in which the seminar is offered.
Professor: Valerie Hansen
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: M 1:30pm-3:20pm
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Art and Myth in Greek Antiquity
HSAR 247/ARCG 161/CLCV 161
Visual exploration of Greek mythology through the study of ancient Greek art and architecture. Greek gods, heroes, and mythological scenes foundational to Western culture; the complex nature of Greek mythology; how art and architecture rendered myths ever present in ancient Greek daily experience; ways in which visual representations can articulate stories. Use of collections in the Yale University Art Gallery.
Professor: Milette Gaifman
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: MW 10:30am-11:20am
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Art and Resistance in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine
RSEE 313/LITR 210/SLAV 313/THST 314
This interdisciplinary seminar is devoted to the study of protest art as part of the struggle of society against authoritarianism and totalitarianism. It focuses on the example of the Soviet and post-Soviet transformation of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. The period under discussion begins after the death of Stalin in 1953 and ends with the art of protest against the modern post-Soviet dictatorships of Alexander Lukashenka in Belarus and Vladimir Putin in Russia, the protest art of the Ukrainian Maidan and the anti-war movement of artists against the Russian-Ukrainian war. The course begins by looking at the influence of the “Khrushchev Thaw” on literature and cinema, which opened the way for protest art to a wide Soviet audience. We explore different approaches to protest art in conditions of political unfreedom: “nonconformism,” “dissidence,” “mimicry,” “rebellion.” The course investigates the existential conflict of artistic freedom and the political machine of authoritarianism. These themes are explored at different levels through specific examples from the works and biographies of artists. Students immerse themselves in works of different genres: films, songs, performances, plays and literary works.
Professor: Andrei Kureichik
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: T 1:30pm-3:20pm
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Area Studies
British Cinema
CPLT 933/ENGL 928/FILM 751/FILM 461/ENGL 384/LITR 364/THST 416
Key films and topics in British cinema. Special attention to the provincial origins of British cinema; overlaps between filmic, literary, and visual modernism; attempts to build on the British literary and dramatic tradition; cinema’s role in the war effort and in redefining national identity; postwar auteur and experimental filmmaking; “heritage” films and alternative approaches to tradition. Accompanying readings in British film theorists, film sociology (including Mass Observation), and cultural studies accounts of film spectatorship and memories. Films by Mitchell and Kenyon, Maurice Elvey, Anthony Asquith, Len Lye, John Grierson, Alfred Hitchcock, Alberto Cavalcanti, Humphrey Jennings, Michael Powell, Carol Reed, David Lean, Karel Reisz, Lindsay Anderson, Richard Lester, Peter Watkins, Stanley Kubrick, Laura Mulvey, Ken Loach, Mike Leigh, Terence Davies, Terry Gilliam, Peter Greenaway, Michael Winterbottom, Patrick Keiller, Steve McQueen.
Professor: Katie Trumpener
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: M 7pm-10pm / T 1:30pm-3:20pm
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Central Banking
GLBL 308/ECON 424
Introduction to the different roles and responsibilities of modern central banks, including the operation of payments systems, monetary policy, supervision and regulation, and financial stability. Discussion of different ways to structure central banks to best manage their responsibilities.
Professor: William English
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: MW 1pm-2:15pm
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Climate and Society: Perspectives from the Social Sciences and Humanities
GLBL 394/EVST 422/ANTH 409/ER&M 394/F&ES 422
Discussion of the major currents of thought regarding climate and climate change; focusing on equity, collapse, folk knowledge, historic and contemporary visions, western and non-western perspectives, drawing on the social sciences and humanities.
Professor: Michael Dove
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: Th 1:30pm-3:20pm
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Climate, Environment, and Ancient History
CLSS 847/HIST 508
An overview of recent work in paleoclimatology with an emphasis on new climate proxy records and how they are or can be used in historical analysis. We examine in detail several recent case studies at the nexus of climate and history. Attention is paid to critiques of recent work as well as trends in the field.
Professor: Joseph Manning
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: T 9:25am-11:15am
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Cultures of Western Medicine
HIST 244/HSHM 321
A survey of Western medicine and its global encounters, encompassing medical theory, practice, institutions, and healers from antiquity to the present. Changing concepts of health, disease, and the body in Europe and America explored in their social, cultural, economic, scientific, technological, and ethical contexts.
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: W 7pm-7:50pm
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Decolonizing the Mind
HSHM 429
This seminar explores the effects of colonialism and post-colonial power relations on the production of scientific, medical, and embodied knowledge about psychiatry. First, we read debates over the geographies of power and distrust in medicine. How have colonialism and post-colonial power relations defined the tasks of non-European psychiatry? What does it mean to decolonize psychiatric practice or culture? Second, we examine the nature of rationality. Is reason singular, plural, or culturally bound or universal? To what extent is spirit possession a rational experience? Third, we explore the relationship between scientific representations, social practices, and local culture. What relationship exists between social practices and culturally shared categories of knowledge? Is psychiatry universalizable? Students learn to analyze and debate these questions by drawing on films, letters, photography, and monographs produced in and about Algeria, Argentina, Brazil, China, Cuba, Indonesia, and Vietnam.
Professor: Nana Osei Quarshie
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: M 1:30pm-3:20pm
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Engaging Anthropology: Histories, Theories, and Practices
ANTH 621
This is the first course of a yearlong sequence for doctoral students in Anthropology and combined programs. Students are introduced to the discipline through theoretical, historical, and experimental approaches. In addition to gaining an expansive view of the field, students have the opportunity to hone foundational scholarly skills.
Professor: Lisa Messeri
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: W 9:25am-11:15am
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Epic in the European Literary Tradition
ENGL 130/HUMS 132/LITR 169
The epic tradition traced from its foundations in ancient Greece and Rome to the modern novel. The creation of cultural values and identities; exile and homecoming; the heroic in times of war and of peace; the role of the individual within society; memory and history; politics of gender, race, and religion. Works include Homer’s Odyssey, Vergil’s Aeneid, Dante’s Inferno, Cervantes’s Don Quixote, and Joyce’s Ulysses. Focus on textual analysis and on developing the craft of persuasive argument through writing.
Professor: Anastasia Eccles
Term: Fall 2024
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Ethnography and Social Theory
ANTH 530
This seminar for first- and second-year Ph.D. students in Anthropology runs in tandem with the department’s reinvigorated EST Colloquium. The colloquium consists of public presentations by cutting-edge speakers—four or five each term—selected and invited by students enrolled in the seminar. In the seminar, students and the instructor discuss selected works (generally no longer than article-length) related to the topics presented by the colloquium speakers and engage in planning activities associated with organizing the EST Colloquium, including but not limited to developing readings lists, creating a viable calendar, curating the list of speakers, securing co-sponsorships, writing invitations, and introducing and hosting the speakers.
Professor: Erik Harms
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: M 3:30pm-5:20pm
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Feminism without Women: Modernist and Postcolonial Textual Experiments
ITAL 337/ER&M 236/LITR 395/WGSS 364
Antifeminist critics charge the feminist movement with having forgotten “real women” in favor of inaccessible theories rejecting the supposedly incontrovertible fact that there are only two sexes and genders. This seminar turns the charge on its head by exploring a theoretical and literary canon that - by questioning the ontological status of the male/female binary - has transformed feminism into a capacious, radically inclusive, revolutionary 21st Century movement. The texts and the theories that we discuss put pressure on the very category of “woman” as they strive to rethink feminism as a non-identitarian world-making project. The class focuses on two movements that employ art and literature to push back against the idea of “women” as the monolithic subject of feminism: Italian vanguard modernism and Italophone literary postcolonialism. We discuss modernist and postcolonial novels, poems, essays, and performative art pieces together with classics of feminist, queer and postcolonial theory. We push our own political imagination further by asking ever more sophisticated questions about gender, sexuality, ethnicity, race, and the way these intersecting social formations mediate the way we see, experience, and represent our material and social reality. The course is taught entirely in English.
Professor: Serena Bassi
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: HTBA
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Feminist Anthropology
ANTH 753
This seminar explores the impact of feminist theory on anthropology and interdisciplinary ethnography, charting its influence from the decline of structural functionalism to the embrace of poststructuralist and post-colonial perspectives. It engages feminist contributions on pivotal debates over the universality of women’s subordination, the denaturalization of kinship, and the reframing of gender and sexuality as performative, highlighting the intersection of the “sex/gender system” with other analytical categories on a global scale. Through the feminist reevaluation of kinship studies, once the bedrock of anthropology, the course takes up how traditional analyses of biological, social, and societal reproduction that treat politics, economy, kinship, and religion as distinct cultural domains naturalize power and inequality. This paradigm shift inspired empirically informed interdisciplinary analyses across the social sciences and humanities—including in women’s studies, Black and Latina studies, queer studies, masculinity studies, affect theory, and science and technology studies. As such, the seminar is also an invitation to participate in both hopeful and skeptical new visions of anthropology—to dream of an “otherwise” future for our and other fields.
Professor: Eda Pepi
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: W 1:30pm-3:20pm
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Globalization and Domestic Politics
GLBL 203/PLSC 186
Examination of the political and institutional conditions that explain why some politicians and interest groups (e.g. lobbies, unions, voters, NGOs) prevail over others in crafting foreign policy. Consideration of traditional global economic exchange (trade, monetary policy and finance) as well as new topics in the international political economy (IPE), such as migration and environmental policy.
Professor: Didac Queralt
Term: Fall 2024
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Graeco-Roman Medicine
CLSS 811/HIST 523/HSHM 758
This course offers a graduate-level introduction to the history and study of ancient Greek and Graeco-Roman medicine, beginning with the development of “Hippocratic” medical texts in Classical Greece; these writings are set in dialogue with earlier Babylonian and Egyptian medical traditions. In addition to Hellenistic Alexandria, where anatomical research on the human body flourished, the seminar examines the works of the doctor and philosopher Galen of Pergamon. We conclude in Late Antique Alexandria, where traditions of Graeco-Roman medicine, repackaged as “Galenism,” begin a multi-century, cross-cultural journey into the medieval world. Throughout the course we consider: medical theories of human difference, regimen, gynecology and reproductive labor, pulse science, temple medicine and healing cults, anatomy and dissection, zoology, theories of contagion and epidemic, and natural philosophy. Classics students enrolled in the course are asked to read some texts in ancient Greek. However, knowledge of ancient Greek is not required for enrollment, and we welcome and encourage students with interests in the history of medicine and science beyond the Graeco-Roman world.
Professor: Jessica Lamont
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: M 3:30pm-5:20pm
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Greek Prose: An Introduction
GREK 131
Close reading of selections from classical Greek prose with review of grammar.
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: Monday, Wednesday & Friday, 9:25am-10:15am
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
History and Holocaust Testimony
HIST 269J
The history and memoirs of Holocaust testimony. How victims’ experiences are narrated and assessed by historians. Questions regarding memory and history.
Professor: Carolyn J. Dean
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: T 1:30pm-3:20pm
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
History of Greek Literature I
CLSS 896
A comprehensive treatment of Greek literature from Homer to the imperial period, with an emphasis on archaic and Hellenistic poetry. The course prepares for the comprehensive oral qualifying examinations. The student is expected to read extensively in the original language, working toward familiarity with the range and variety of the literature.
Professor: Egbert Bakker
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: TTh 2:30pm-3:45pm
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Introduction to Archaeological Laboratory Sciences
ANTH 316L/ARCG 316L/ANTH 716L/ARCG 716L
Introduction to techniques of archaeological laboratory analysis, with quantitative data styles and statistics appropriate to each. Topics include dating of artifacts, sourcing of ancient materials, remote sensing, and microscopic and biochemical analysis. Specific techniques covered vary from year to year.
Professor: Ellery Frahm
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: W 1:30pm-4:30pm
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Introduction to Ethnicity, Race, and Migration
ER&M 200
Historical roots of contemporary ethnic and racial formations and competing theories of ethnicity, race, and migration. Cultural constructions and social practices of race, ethnicity, and migration in the United States and around the world.
Professor: Alicia Camacho
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: TTh 1pm-2:15pm
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Introduction to Italian Literature: From the Duecento to the Renaissance
ITAL 162
Professor: Simona Lorenzini
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: MW 2:30pm-3:45pm
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Introduction to Methods in Quantitative Sociology
SOCY 580
Introduction to methods in quantitative sociological research. Covers data description; graphical approaches; elementary probability theory; bivariate and multivariate linear regression; regression diagnostics. Includes hands-on data analysis using Stata.
Professor: Daniel Karell
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: TTh 2:30pm-3:45pm
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Methodology
Introduction to Modern Central Asia
HIST 398J/RUSS 329/MMES 300/RSEE 329
An overview of the history of modern Central Asia—modern-day Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China. This course shows Central Asia to be a pivotal participant in some of the major global issues of the 20th and 21st centuries, from environmental degradation and Cold War, to women’s emancipation and postcolonial nation-building, to religion and the rise of mass society. It also includes an overview of the region’s longer history, of the conquests by the Russian and Chinese empires, the rise of Islamic modernist reform movements, the Bolshevik victory, World War II, the perestroika, and the projects of post-Soviet nation-building. Readings in history are supplemented by such primary sources as novels and poetry, films and songs, government decrees, travelogues, courtly chronicles, and the periodical press. All readings and discussions in English.
Professor: Claire Roosien
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: MW 1pm-2:15pm
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Introduction to the Study of Politics
PLSC 510
The course introduces students to some of the major controversies in political science. We focus on the five substantive themes that make up the Yale Initiative: Order, Conflict, and Violence; Representation and Popular Rule; Crafting and Operating Institutions; Identities, Affiliations, and Allegiances; and Distributive Politics. We divide our time between discussing readings on these subjects and conversations with different members of the faculty who specialize in them. There is also some attention to methodological controversies within the discipline. Requirements: an annotated bibliography of one of the substantive themes and a take-home final exam.
Professor: Jennifer Gandhi
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: T 1:30 - 3:20 pm
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Methodology
Introduction to Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Introduction to women’s, gender, and sexuality studies as a field of knowledge and to the interdiscipline’s structuring questions and tensions. The course genealogizes feminist and queer knowledge production, and the institutionalization of WGSS, by examining several of our key terms.
Professor: Joseph Fischel
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: Monday 1:30 - 3:20 pm
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Methodology
Karl Marx's Capital
ANTH 237/GMAN 233/HUMS 225/LITR 242/PHIL 219/ANTH 553/CPLT 503/GMAN 553/SOCY 661
A careful reading of Karl Marx’s classic critique of capitalism, Capital volume 1, a work of philosophy, political economy, and critical social theory that has had a significant global readership for over 150 years. Selected readings also from Capital volumes 2 and 3.
Professor: Paul North
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: MW 11:35am-12:25pm
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Making European Culture Jewish: Five Media, 1780-1930
HIST 249/JDST 346
This course studies the ways in which Jewish writers and artists turned European culture into Jewish culture, that is, how a minority group fashioned its own version of the majority culture. As European Jews encountered European culture and society, they had to grapple with a host of fundamental questions. What was Judaism and who were the Jews: a religion, a history, a culture, a nation? We examine the way in which writers and artists struggled with these issues in five media: memoir, theology, history, fiction, and painting, thereby creating Jewish versions first of Enlightenment, Romanticism, and realism (1780-1870) and then of nationalism, positivism, and modernism (1870-1930).
Professor: David Sorkin
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: MW 2:30pm-3:20pm
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Margins of the Enlightenment
EMST 661/FREN 861
This course proposes a critical examination of the French Enlightenment, with a focus on issues of progress, universalism, empire, and race. We confront these notions with approaches that have emerged in the postcolonial field of studies as well as gender and sexuality studies. Canonical authors are reinterpreted in that light along with lesser-known works. We are assisted by contemporary historians and critics of the Enlightenment, principally Michel Foucault, Lynn Hunt, and Robert Darnton. Readings by Mme. de Graffigny, Mme. de Stael, Mme. de Duras, Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau, Raynal and Cugoano. Conducted in French.
Professor: Pierre Saint-Amand
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: W 1:30pm-3:20pm
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Meaning and Materiality
ANTH 401/ANTH 601
The interaction of meaning and materiality. Relations among significance, selection, sieving, and serendipity explored through classic work in biosemiosis, technocognition, and sociogenesis. Sources from sociocultural and linguistic anthropology, philosophy, and cognitive sciences such as psychology.
Professor: Paul Kockelman
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: W 9:25am-11:15am
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Methodology
Nineteenth-Century French Art
HSAR 315
European art produced between the French Revolution and the beginning of the twentieth century. Focus on French painting, with additional discussion of Spanish, English, and German art. Some attention to developments in photography, printmaking, and sculpture.
Professor: Carol Armstrong
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: TTh 10:30am-11:20am
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Observing and Measuring Behavior, Part II: Data Analyses and Reporting
ANTH 377/EVST 379
This is the second course in a spring-fall sequence. The course is primarily for students who have recently conducted research and are in the process of analyses and writing up the results of the research. In this course students learn how to analyze the data they have collected, strategies for interpreting and presenting results, including considerations of study design issues and a priori statistical protocols; predictive and/or explanatory power and interpretation of statistical significance, scientific inference and research relevance. Students practice writing and oral skills associated with how to write communicating the results of their study.
Professor: Eduardo Fernandez-Duque
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: W 1:30pm-3:20pm
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Politics of Memory
ANTH 324/ANTH 824/EAST 324
This course explores the role of memory as a social, cultural, and political force in contemporary society. How societies remember difficult pasts has become a contested site for negotiating the present. Through the lens of memory, we examine complex roles that our relationships to difficult pasts play in navigating issues we face today. This course explores this politics of memory that takes place in the realm of popular culture and public space. The class asks such questions as: How do you represent difficult and contested pasts? What does it mean to enable long-silenced victims’ voices to be heard? What are the consequences of re-narrating the past by highlighting past injuries and trauma? Does memory work heal or open wounds of a society and a nation? Through examples drawn from the Holocaust, the atomic bombing in Hiroshima, the Vietnam War, genocide in Indonesia and massacres in Lebanon, to debates on confederacy statues, slavery, and lynching in the US, this course approaches these questions through an anthropological exploration of concepts such as memory, trauma, mourning, silence, voice, testimony, and victimhood.
Professor: Yukiko Koga
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: T 1:30pm-3:20pm
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
ANTH 324/ANTH 824/EAST 324
This course explores the role of memory as a social, cultural, and political force in contemporary society. How societies remember difficult pasts has become a contested site for negotiating the present. Through the lens of memory, we examine complex roles that our relationships to difficult pasts play in navigating issues we face today. This course explores this politics of memory that takes place in the realm of popular culture and public space. The class asks such questions as: How do you represent difficult and contested pasts? What does it mean to enable long-silenced victims’ voices to be heard? What are the consequences of re-narrating the past by highlighting past injuries and trauma? Does memory work heal or open wounds of a society and a nation? Through examples drawn from the Holocaust, the atomic bombing in Hiroshima, the Vietnam War, genocide in Indonesia and massacres in Lebanon, to debates on confederacy statues, slavery, and lynching in the US, this course approaches these questions through an anthropological exploration of concepts such as memory, trauma, mourning, silence, voice, testimony, and victimhood.
Professor: Yukiko Koga
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: T 1:30 - 3:20 pm
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Methodology
Production Seminar: Theater in Education
THST 361/EDST 361
Centering on the creation of a new production of Aurand Harris’s Arkansaw Bear, this studio course will explore foundational Theatre in Education (TIE) theories and methods to bring performance and enrichment materials to New Haven area school children. Open to all majors, with opportunities for students to engage as performers (actors, acrobats, musicians) and designers, and to explore dramaturgy and production logistics through a small-scale educational tour, in conversation with regional leaders in the field.
Instructors:
Nathan Roberts
Deborah Margolin
Professor: Nathan Roberts
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: MW 1:30pm-3:20pm
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Readings in Anthropology
ANTH 471
For students who wish to investigate an area of anthropology not covered by regular departmental offerings. The project must terminate with at least a term paper or its equivalent. No student may take more than two terms for credit. To apply for admission, a student should present a prospectus and bibliography to the director of undergraduate studies no later than the third week of the term. Written approval from the faculty member who will direct the student’s reading and writing must accompany the prospectus.
Professor: William Honeychurch
Term: Fall 2024
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Readings in Race and Racism in Medicine, Science, and Healthcare
AFAM 709/HIST 709/HSHM 763
This graduate reading seminar invites students to study historical and contemporary texts related to race and racism in medicine, science, and healthcare. Our primary focus is anti-Black racism, and we study connections between the period of slavery and present-day issues in healthcare, biomedical research, reproductive justice, and medical and nursing education and practice. Students from any department and discipline are welcome to join this small seminar, which privileges deep listening, close reading, community, and care.
Professor: Carolyn Roberts
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: F 9:25am-11:15am
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Renaissance Architecture: A Global History
ARCH 302/HSAR 286
The period known as the Renaissance (1400–1600) witnessed the rise and spread of ambitious new forms of architecture. During this era, builders pushed an earlier tradition of gothic design toward unprecedented heights of structural daring and ornamental expression. At the same time, they found inspiration in ancient pagan and non-European monuments, which offered alternative models of technical virtuosity, material splendor, and magnificence. Engineers invented fortifications of colossal scale to combat powerful gunpowder weapons, while new media such as print transmitted architectural designs across the globe. This course explores such developments across Europe and its cultural and colonial networks in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. It surveys a wide range of Renaissance building types, from palaces and gardens to churches, civic buildings, and urban infrastructure. Lectures consider how buildings and cities were reshaped by urban elites, absolutist monarchs, religious warfare, paper and print, and global expansion. Along the way, the course equips students with critical visual-technical skills and language to describe and interpret the built environment.
Professor: Morgan Ng
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: TTh 10:30am-11:20am
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Renaissance Literature, Philosophy, and Art
ITAL 234
Self-representations of radical novelty in Renaissance texts of literary, philosophical, and visual culture. Outlines of the path to modernity in works by Petrarch, Alberti, Leonardo, Machiavelli, Castiglione, Ariosto, Michelangelo, Aretino, Veronica Franco, Tasso, Cellini, Artemisia Gentileschi, Moderata Fonte, Bruno, Campanella, Galileo, and Vico.
Professor: Alejandro Cuadrado
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: TTh 11:35am-12:50pm
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Representing the Holocaust
ITAL 384/FREN 384/FILM 362/JDST 289/LITR 338
The Holocaust as it has been depicted in books and films, and as written and recorded by survivors in different languages including French and Italian. Questions of aesthetics and authority, language and its limits, ethical engagement, metaphors and memory, and narrative adequacy to record historical truth. Interactive discussions about films (Life Is Beautiful, Schindler’s List, Shoah), novels, memoirs (Primo Levi, Charlotte Delbo, Art Spiegelman), commentaries, theoretical writings, and testimonies from Yale’s Fortunoff Video Archive.
Professor: Maurice Samuels, Professor: Millicent Marcus
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: TTh 2:30pm-3:45pm
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Research in Sociocultural Anthropology: Design and Methods
ANTH 502
The course offers critical evaluation of the nature of ethnographic research. Research design includes the rethinking of site, voice, and ethnographic authority.
Professor: Marcia Inhorn
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: W 1:30pm-3:20pm
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E&RS Requirement Option:
Russia in the Age of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, 1850-1905
HIST 221J/RSEE 231
Russian politics, culture, and society ca. 1850 to 1905. Tsars’ personalities and ruling styles, political culture under autocracy. Reform from above and revolutionary terror. Serfdom and its abolition, problem of “traditional” Russian culture. Growth of industrial and financial capitalism, middle-class culture, and daily life. Foreign policy and imperial conquest, including the Caucasus and the Crimean War (1853-56). Readings combine key scholarly articles, book chapters, and representative primary sources. All readings and discussions in English.
Professor: Sergei Antonov
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: W 3:30pm-5:20pm
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E&RS Requirement Option:
Methodology
Satires and Dialogues of Lucian
GREK 467
Close reading of selected satirical works and dialogues by Lucian of Samosata. Focus on grammar, syntax, and translation. Some attention to the teachings of competing philosophical schools, the culture of the Second Sophistic movement, and the nature of satire, rhetoric, and conversational dialogue. A bridge course between intermediate and advanced courses.
Professor: John Dillon
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: MW 11:35am-12:50pm
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Socialist '80s: Aesthetics of Reform in China and the Soviet Union
RUSS 316/EALL 288/EAST 316/LITR 303/RSEE 316
This course offers an interdisciplinary introduction to the study of the complex cultural and political paradigms of late socialism from a transnational perspective by focusing on the literature, cinema, and popular culture of the Soviet Union and China in 1980s. How were intellectual and everyday life in the Soviet Union and China distinct from and similar to that of the West of the same era? How do we parse “the cultural logic of late socialism?” What can today’s America learn from it? Examining two major socialist cultures together in a global context, this course queries the ethnographic, ideological, and socio-economic constituents of late socialism. Students analyze cultural materials in the context of Soviet and Chinese history. Along the way, we explore themes of identity, nationalism, globalization, capitalism, and the Cold War. Students with knowledge of Russian and Chinese are encouraged to read in original languages. All readings are available in English.
Professor: Jinyi Chu
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: Th 1:30pm-3:20pm
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E&RS Requirement Option:
Area Studies
Society and the Supernatural in Early Modern Europe
EMST 660/HIST 560/RLST 691
Readings in primary texts from the period 1500–1700 that focus on definitions of the relationship between the natural and supernatural realms, both Catholic and Protestant. Among the topics covered: mystical ecstasy, visions, apparitions, miracles, and demonic possession. All assigned readings in English translation.
Professor: Carlos Eire
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: W 3:30pm-5:20pm
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E&RS Requirement Option:
Sociological Theory
SOCY 542
The course seeks to give students the conceptual tools for a constructive engagement with sociological theory and theorizing. We trace the genealogies of dominant theoretical approaches and explore the ways in which theorists contend with these approaches when confronting the central questions of both modernity and the discipline.
Professor: Emily Erikson
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: W 1:30pm - 3:20pm
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Methodology
Soviet Russia 1917-1991
HIST 265/RSEE 266
Overview of the rise and fall of the Soviet Union. Topics include political culture and ideology of the Bolshevik/Communist Party; social and economic changes; foreign policy and the role of WWII; major artistic and cultural movements. Paper assignments involve close readings of memoir and oral history accounts.
Professor: Sergei Antonov
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: MW 1pm-2:15pm
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E&RS Requirement Option:
Technology and War
GLBL 283/PLSC 145
A seminar on the interplay between technology and war; an examination of the impact of new technologies on strategy, doctrine, and battlefield outcomes as well as the role of conflict in promoting innovation. Focus on the importance of innovation, the difference between evolutions and revolutions in military affairs, and evaluating the future impact of emerging technologies including autonomous weapons and artificial intelligence.
Professor: David Allison
Term: Fall 2024
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E&RS Requirement Option:
The Archaeology of Trade and Exchange
ANTH 756/ARCG 756
This seminar focuses on archaeological approaches to exchange and trade. As background, we review some of the principal theories of exchange from anthropology and sociology, such as those of Mauss, Malinowski, and Polanyi. The role of trade and exchange in different kinds of societies is examined by contextualizing these transactions within specific cultural configurations and considering the nature of production and consumption as they relate to movement of goods. We consider methods and models that have been used to analyze regions of interaction at different spatial scales and the theoretical arguments about the social impact of inter-regional and intra-regional interactions involving the transfer of goods, including approaches such as world systems, unequal development, and globalization. In addition, we examine the ways that have been utilized in archaeology to identify different kinds of exchange systems, often through analogies to well-documented ethnographic and historic cases. Finally, we consider the range of techniques that have been employed in order to track the movement of goods across space. These sourcing techniques are evaluated in terms of their advantages and disadvantages from an archaeological perspective, and in terms of how the best technical analyses may vary according to the nature of natural or cultural materials under consideration (ceramics, volcanic stone, metals, etc.). The theme for this year’s seminar is obsidian; students select some aspect of obsidian research for their final paper and presentation.
Professor: Richard Burger
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: W 1:30pm-3:20pm
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
The Catholic Intellectual Tradition
ITAL 315/HIST 280/RLST 160
Introductory survey of the interaction between Catholicism and Western culture from the first century to the present, with a focus on pivotal moments and crucial developments that defined both traditions. Key beliefs, rites, and customs of the Roman Catholic Church, and the ways in which they have found expression; interaction between Catholics and the institution of the Church; Catholicism in its cultural and sociopolitical matrices. Close reading of primary sources.
Professor: Carlos Eire
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: TTh 2:30pm-3:20pm
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
The French Enlightenment and the Pursuit of Happiness
FREN 331
French Revolutionary Saint-Just famously declared: “happiness is a new idea in Europe.” It is certainly a major concern in the eighteenth century. Whether envisioned as an individual or a collective pursuit the quest for happiness increasingly moves away from the realm of theology to become secularized and democratized. This course proposes to study how the writers of the period introduced the idea of happiness in their works, both literary and philosophical. Readings in Abbé Prévost, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Giacomo Casanova, Denis Diderot, Mme de Charrière, Voltaire, and others.
Professor: Pierre Saint-Amand
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: TTh 11:35am-12:50pm
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E&RS Requirement Option:
The Global Scientific Revolution
HSHM 226
The material, political, cultural, and social transformations that underpinned the rise of modern science between the 14th and 18th century, considered in global context. Topics include artisanal practices and the empirical exploration of nature; global networks of knowledge and trade, and colonial science; figurative arts and the emersion of a visual language of anatomy, astronomy, and natural history.
Professor: Ivano Dalprete
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: MW 1pm-2:15pm
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E&RS Requirement Option:
The History and Structure of Ancient Greek: From Word to Text
GREK 403/GREK 703
An introduction to three essential aspects of Ancient Greek: (i) the structure of the word; (ii) the structure of sentences and clauses in the language; (iii) the structure of longer stretches of connected discourse. The first component (weeks 1-7) is a brief introduction into Into-European comparative-historical linguistics and will focus on the phonology and morphology of Greek verbs and nouns; the third component (weeks 8-13) is a systematic analysis of Greek prose, with detailed attention to the properties through which texts “cohere” (such as particles, deictics, and tenses); the second component is taught as part of each class meeting on the basis of translation-into-Greek (“composition”) exercises.
Professor: Egbert Bakker
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: TTh 11:35am-12:50pm
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
The Multicultural Middle Ages
ENGL 154/FREN 216/HUMS 134/LITR 194
Introduction to medieval English literature and culture in its European and Mediterranean context, before it became monolingual, canonical, or author-bound. Genres include travel writing, epic, dream visions, mysticism, the lyric, and autobiography, from the Crusades to the Hundred Years War, from the troubadours to Dante, from the Chanson de Roland to Chaucer. Formerly ENGL 189.
Professor: Marcel Elias, Professor: Ardis Butterfield
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: MW 10:30am-11:20am
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
The Russian Works of Vladimir Nabokov
RUSS 174
An aesthetic reading of Vladimir Nabokov’s Russian works. Nabokov as a writer who first and foremost was interested in the question of the ontological significance of art and, consequently, in various modes of the artist’s relationship to the world.
Professor: Constantine Muravnik
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: MW 1pm-2:15pm
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
The Twentieth Century: A World History
GLBL 433/HIST 433
For most people, almost everywhere, the twentieth century was a time of profound and accelerating change. Someone born in the 1890s could, if they lived a long life, have experienced two world wars, a global depression, collapse of empires, the enfranchisement of women and young people, and the rise of the United States to global power. They could have witnessed the first cars, the first planes, the first radios and TVs, and the first computers. They could have been among the first to swear allegiance to one (or several) of 130 new states, almost twice the number that existed in 1900. They would have been certain to witness massive ecological destruction, as well as unparalleled advances in medicine, science, and the arts. The twentieth century was, as one historian puts it, an age of extremes, and in this class we explore some of these aspects of the age. The class is not intended to be a complete history nor is it one that provides an integrative interpretation of historical events. The aim is rather to enable students to know enough to think for themselves about the origins of today’s world and about how historical change is created.
Professor: Arne Westad
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: TTh 11:35am-12:25pm
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Topics and Issues in Human Life History Evolution
ANTH 830
This seminar reviews our current understanding of life history traits that have been central to human evolution. Traits to be examined include patterns of growth, sexual maturation, reproduction, and aging. Emphasis is placed on the examination of the literature of forager and non-industrialized communities as well as comparative information from nonhuman animal models, particularly nonhuman primates.
Professor: Richard Bribiescas
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: W 1:30pm-3:20pm
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Tragedy in the European Literary Tradition
ENGL 129/LITR 168/THST 129/HUMS 127
The genre of tragedy from its origins in ancient Greece and Rome through the European Renaissance to the present day. Themes of justice, religion, free will, family, gender, race, and dramaturgy. Works might include Aristotle’s Poetics or Homer’s Iliad and plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Seneca, Hrotsvitha, Shakespeare, Lope de Vega, Calderon, Racine, Büchner, Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov, Wedekind, Synge, Lorca, Brecht, Beckett, Soyinka, Tarell Alvin McCraney, and Lynn Nottage. Focus on textual analysis and on developing the craft of persuasive argument through writing.
Professor: Ruth Yeazell
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: HTBA
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option:
Twentieth-Century Jewish Political History: Holocaust, Israel, American Jewry
HIST 230
This course studies Jewish political behavior in response to three key developments of the twentieth century that directly impinged upon Jews: Nazi totalitarianism resulted in the mass murder of Jews, de-colonization resulted in the Jews’ return to sovereignty with the establishment of the State of Israel, and the development America’s post-war “open” society of equality resulted in American Jewry flourishing in perhaps unprecedented ways. This course aims to study the vexed question of Jews’ political behavior in response to these twentieth-century developments. Students write essays about the three events and have the opportunity to undertake original research about one of them.
Professor: David Sorkin
Term: Fall 2024
Day/Time: TTh 2:30pm-3:20pm
More info: Yale Online Course Information
E&RS Requirement Option: