Courses

Dumplings, plov, and politics: how food tells the story of a whole region

What do a dumpling, a loaf of tandyr bread, and a bowl of tea have in common? In Central Asia, almost everything.

In this course we treat food as evidence, a source as rich as any document or artifact.

We’ll read anthropologists, historians, and archaeologists, watch films, and in a campus teaching kitchen, cook and taste dishes from the region ourselves, asking what they reveal about culture, hospitality, and identity. No prior knowledge of the region or its languages is required; just bring curiosity and a willingness to think.

Nordic Mythology explores the fascinating world of Norse gods, giants, heroes, monsters, and supernatural beings. What do stories about Odin, Thor, Loki, Freyja, the World Tree, and Ragnarök tell us about the people who told and preserved them? And how have these medieval stories become some of the most recognizable myths in contemporary culture? In this course, you will read and discuss important sources for Nordic mythology, particularly the Poetic Edda and Prose Edda, alongside other literary, historical, and cultural materials. Rather than treating mythology as a fixed collection of stories, the course asks how myths change as they are told, written down, interpreted, and reused.

From punk to hip-hop to reggae to alternative rock, this course explores the cultural complexities of music scenes and subcultures. Using interdisciplinary approaches, we will examine the formation, maintenance and cultural complexities of music communities, both big and small, local and global. Our work will cover the breadth of musical communities, focusing on the bounded interactions between artists, fans, venues, media and more. Through our critical analysis, we will unmask deeply layered meanings within musical communities and also grapple with issues of power, race, class, gender, sexuality and more. No previous knowledge of music is required or assumed.

What do Disney, Shrek, the Nutcracker, and modern romantasy fiction all have in common? Regardless of audience and form, they all draw on and reimagine the elements, structures, and characters from fairy tales told around the world. We will consider how familiar formulas are reimagined across time, cultures, and media. We will explore tales as part of larger “circles,” groups of adaptations over time, to trace how sociocultural values embedded in these stories shift over the years. We will consider intersections of gender, race, disability, sexuality, religion, nature, and the family, and explore how these depictions are shaped by the national, cultural, and personal circumstance of their tellers and re-tellers.

How do filmmakers use cinematic form to challenge social norms, expose power structures, and disrupt expectations of our place in the world? This course explores the diverse and landscape of Nordic cinema and how filmmakers from the region have pushed the boundaries of film through striking visual styles, unconventional narratives, dark humor, psychological intensity, and formal experimentation. From intimate character studies and existential dramas to social satire, feminist filmmaking, and explorations of identity and belonging, we will investigate how Nordic filmmakers represent and challenge the societies in which they work. We will consider how films engage with questions of gender, sexuality, race, class, morality, and social change, while paying close attention to the cinematic techniques.