College Bulletin 2022-2023 
    
    Apr 25, 2024  
College Bulletin 2022-2023 [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

Course Search


 

Chinese

  
  • CHIN 006A. Beginning and Intermediate Supplementary Chinese Reading


    This course is designed for students to improve their Chinese reading skills as well as to enjoy reading. It offers an opportunity for students to develop a taste for reading and to read from a selection of books collected by the Chinese Section (e.g. idioms and their stories, folktales, modern fiction, etc.). Multi-level texts allow students at various ability levels to engage in reading books according to their own individual interests. Students will develop their confidence and motivation, which will enhance their reading skills and their ability to use Chinese effectively. The instructor will offer guidance depending on the individual student’s strengths and needs. Students at the CHIN 002-004 levels and higher are welcome to enroll.
    .5 credit.
    Spring 2023. Li, X.
    Spring 2024. Staff.
    Spring 2025. Staff.
    Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: Chinese  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/chinese


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • CHIN 007. Chinese/Japanese Calligraphy


    (Cross-listed as JPNS 007 )
    Calligraphy is the art of beautiful handwriting. This course will introduce students to the importance of calligraphy in East Asian Culture. In addition to being a valuable cultural skill, calligraphy is also a process of self-cultivation and self-expression, which reflects the mind-set of the writer. Thus, students will have the opportunity to learn Chinese/Japanese characters not only as linguistic symbols but also as cultural emblems and as an art form. Course objectives include learning to appreciate the beauty of Chinese/Japanese calligraphy, experiencing calligraphy by writing with a brush and ink, and studying various philosophies of calligraphy. In addition to learning several different calligraphic scripts, students will be introduced to the origin, evolution, and aesthetic principles of the Chinese and Japanese writing systems, as well as calligraphy’s close connections with painting and poetry. Persistent hands-on practice will be required of all students; course work will include in-class practice, individual/group instruction, reading assignments, and take-home assignments. This class is open to all students and has no language requirement. Due to the course’s practicum component, enrollment will be limited by lottery to 10 students.
    The course can be repeated for credit.
    0.5 credit.
    Fall 2023. Jo.
    Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: Chinese  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/chinese


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  
  
  
  • CHIN 011A. Third-Year Chinese Conversation


    This course meets once a week for 75 minutes and concentrates on the further development of skills in speaking and listening through multimedia materials (including selected movies and clips). Students are required to read chosen texts (including Internet materials and short stories) and prepare assignments for the purpose of generating discussion in class. Moreover, students will write out skits or reports for oral presentation in Chinese before they present them in class. The class is conducted entirely in Chinese.
    Prerequisite: CHIN 004  or equivalent language skills.
    0.5 credit.
    Eligible for ASIA
    Fall 2022. Wen.
    Fall 2023. Wen.
    Fall 2024. Wen.
    Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: Chinese  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/chinese


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  
  • CHIN 012A. Advanced Chinese Conversation


    This 0.5-credit course meets once a week for 75 minutes and concentrates on the further development of skills in speaking and listening through multimedia materials (including movies and clips). Students are required to read chosen texts (including Internet materials and short stories) and prepare assignments for the purpose of generating discussion in class. Moreover, students will write out skits or reports for oral presentation in Chinese before they present them in class. The class is conducted entirely in Chinese.
    Prerequisite: CHIN 011  and/or CHIN 011A  or equivalent language skills.
    0.5 credit.
    Eligible for ASIA
    Spring 2023. Wen.
    Spring 2024. Wen.
    Spring 2025. Staff.
    Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: Chinese  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/chinese


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • CHIN 015. Intro to East Asian Humanities


    (Cross-listed as ASIA 015 , LITR 015CH )
    This course is a survey of East Asian literatures and cultural histories from antiquity to around 1800. The primary purpose is to provide students with a basic literacy in East Asian cultures and literatures with substantive emphasis on topics common across East Asia, such as the classical traditions and cosmology, the Chinese script, Buddhism, the civil service examination, folklore, theater, literature, and medicine. This course is a colloquium designed to meet the needs of students just beginning their study of China, Japan and Korea, who would like to explore the region broadly; and those who have already done substantial study of China or Japan and welcome the chance to situate it within the larger context of traditional East Asia. This course will provide students with information and approaches to analyze primary sources in translation through assigned postings and short writing assignments.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for GLBL-Paired
    Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: Chinese  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/chinese


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • CHIN 016. Substance, Shadow, and Spirit in Chinese Literature and Culture


    (Cross-listed as LITR 016CH )
    This course will explore the literary and intellectual world of traditional Chinese culture through original writings in English translation, including both poetry and prose. Topics to be discussed include Taoism, Confucianism, and the contouring of Chinese culture; immortality, wine, and allaying the mundane; and the religious dimension, disengagement, and the appreciation of the natural world. The course also will address cultural and literary formulations of conduct and persona, and the expression of individualism in an authoritarian society.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ASIA
    Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: Chinese  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/chinese


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  
  
  
  
  • CHIN 022. Representing Colonial Taiwan: City and Public Space in Print


    Cross-listed as LITR 022  
    This course introduces students to a variety of methods for approaching the visual images and literary
    work produced to represent the lived experience of people in colonial Taiwan. Acknowledging the role
    that print capital has played in the rise of modernization and its momentum to forge a new identity, the
    class will read in detail the maps, postcards, photos, and literary works available to the growing number
    of common readers in colonial Taiwan. Through analysis of various representations of public space, the
    course discloses how people perceived their world, and how representations of public space were
    articulated in relation to the colonial agenda and particular struggles to reconfigure the power relations
    among different communities.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ASIA. CPLT
    Fall 2022. Li.
    Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: Chinese  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/chinese

     


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • CHIN 023. Modern Chinese Literature: A New Novelistic Discourse (1918-1948)


    (Cross-listed as LITR 023CH )
    Modern Chinese literary texts created between 1918 and 1948, presenting a series of political, social, cultural, and ideological dilemmas underlying 20th-century Chinese history. The class will discuss fundamental issues of modernity and new literary developments under the impact of the May Fourth Movement. All texts are in English translation, and the class is conducted in English.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ASIA
    Fall 2024. Kong.
    Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: Chinese  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/chinese


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • CHIN 024. Advanced Business Chinese


    This course is aimed to enhance students’ language skills in a business context and to promote their understanding about business environment and culture in contemporary China. The text is developed from real business cases from real multinational companies that have successfully embarked on the Chinese market. Class will be conducted in Chinese. In addition to the course textbook, students will learn to read business news in Chinese selected from various sources including Wall Street Journal. 
    Prerequisite: CHIN 012  

    CHIN 012A  

    Equivalent language skills.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Spring 2023. Wen.
    Spring 2024. Wen.
    Spring 2025. Wen.
    Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: Chinese  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/chinese


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • CHIN 024. History of Chinese Literature: Fiction and Drama


    (Cross-listed as LITR 024CH )
    This course surveys major narrative and genres, forms and works from the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368) through the early twentieth century with an emphasis on fiction and drama. Readings consist of both primary texts in English translation and secondary critical works. Issues to be emphasized include print history and format (including illustration), performance context, the relationship between oral and written, vernacular and classical storytelling, the invention of Chinese literary history as a discipline in the Republican period.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ASIA
    Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: Chinese  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/chinese


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • CHIN 025. Contemporary Chinese Fiction: Mirror of Social Change (1949-2005)


    (Cross-listed as LITR 025CH )
    The purpose of this course is to introduce to students some fundamental questions underlying contemporary Chinese history through examining literary narratives created from Mainland, Taiwan, and Hong Kong since 1949, mainly those written between the mid-1980s and the 1990s.  The selected stories and novels, the most representative and provocative, articulate the historical specificity of ideological dilemma and cultural dynamics, in the imaginary process of dealing with love, politics, sex, morality, economic reform, and feminist issues.  Through our textual analysis and discussion, the students will have a better understanding of contemporary Chinese society as well as new developments in literature. All lectures and discussions will be conducted in English, and all readings are in English translation, and no previous preparation in Chinese is required.  
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ASIA
    Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: Chinese  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/chinese


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  
  • CHIN 033. Introduction to Classical Chinese


    (Cross-listed as LING 033 )
    This is an introductory course on reading one of the world’s great classical languages. Classical Chinese includes both the language of China’s classical literature as well as the literary language used for writing in China for well over 2 millennia until earlier this century. Complemented with readings in English about Chinese characters and classical Chinese, this course imparts the principal structures of the classical language through an analytical presentation of the rudiments of the language and close reading of original texts. It is not a lecture course and requires active, regular participation on the part of the student, with precise translation into English an integral component. The course is conducted in English. The course is open to all interested students and has no prerequisites; no previous preparation in Chinese is required.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ASIA, MDST
    Spring 2023. Ridgway.
    Spring 2025. Ridgway.
    Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: Chinese  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/chinese


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • CHIN 034. Appreciation of Tang-Song Poetry in Chinese


    This course will lead students to learn how to read, comprehend, and analyze classical Chinese poetry from the Tang (618-907) and Song (960-1279) dynasties in its original language. Our goals will be to discuss and write about some of the landmark works of classical Chinese literature in modern Chinese and to become familiar with English language scholarship on major themes in middle-period literary history. We will explore two key genres of poetry (shi poetry and ci or song lyrics) and the major writers who have had an enduring impact on the Chinese cultural tradition. Students will learn how to read closely and intensively and how to analyze each work in terms of its formal conventions, it cultural and historical context, and its relation to other forms or to other individual pieces. Regular assignments include short papers and presentations in modern Mandarin about classical Chinese poetry, translations of classical Chinese into English, and a final presentation/paper that synthesizes knowledge of a classical Chinese genre, poet, or theme with the English/Chinese language scholarship on that topic.
    Prerequisite: Four years of Chinese or the equivalent.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Fall 2022. Ridgway.
    Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: Chinese  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/chinese


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • CHIN 036. Women’s Literature in Premodern China


    (Cross-listed as LITR 036CH )
    Contrary to our stereotypes about the silent, invisible woman of premodern China, women actually wrote and published their work in unprecedented numbers from the late 16th century to the early 20th century. This course will explore the literary and historical significance of this output, which mainly took the form of poetry and prefaces to poetry collections, letters, some drama, and novels in verse, and which was produced primarily by gentry women (e.g. women from elite families), courtesans, and nuns. A central theme will be the place and problem of women’s poetry in a male-dominated literary tradition and society. Topics to be addressed include the social function of poetry and women’s literary networks, women’s relationship to the publishing market as writers, editors, and readers, the forces driving male interest in women’s writing at certain historical moments, and the changing ideas about what kinds of styles of past poets should be offered to boudoir poets as a repertoire of available choices to read and imitate.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ASIA, GSST
    Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: Chinese  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/chinese

     


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  
  • CHIN 037. Text and Image: Classical Chinese Poetry and Painting


    (Cross-listed as LITR 037CH )
    Combining some of the greatest works of Chinese poetry with approaches and visual materials from the history of Chinese landscape painting, in this course we will examine the changing use of landscape as a medium to express different philosophical and social meanings by competing social groups across historical periods from early times to the 13th century.  In the first half of this course, we will see how natural landscape in poetry became a medium for conveying a range different ideals and problems: official service and reclusion in the countryside, Daoist liberation and Buddhist enlightenment, the sorrows of war on the frontier or travel into exile.  In the second half of this course, we then apply our knowledge of Chinese poetry to interpreting a series of paintings from the Song dynasty (960-1279).  This period is the golden age of Chinese landscape painting.  It saw the emergence of literati-painters who, much like the great painters of the Renaissance, argued that painting possessed the same expressive power as poetry.  We will explore the ways they employed painting to comment on an unprecedented range of issues, including government affairs, the role of women in society, the relation of private to public life, as well as the experience of dynastic collapse and war.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for MDST, ASIA
    Spring 2025. Ridgway.
    Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: Chinese  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/chinese


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  
  • CHIN 055. Contemporary Chinese Cinema: The New Waves (1984-2005)


    (Cross-listed as LITR 055CH )
    Cinema has become a special form of cultural mirror representing social dynamics and drastic changes in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan since the mid-1980s. The course will develop a better understanding of changing Chinese culture by analyzing cinematic texts and the new wave in the era of globalization. All films are English subtitled, and the class is conducted in English.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ASIA, CPLT, ASAM, FMST
    Fall 2023. Kong.
    Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: Chinese  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/chinese


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  
  
  
  • CHIN 065. Peking Opera and Globalization


    (Cross-listed as LITR 065CH )
    By using cultural globalization as an explanatory framework built on the foundation of historical studies, this course enables students to conduct critical and interdisciplinary analysis of Peking opera, a living theatrical tradition commonly considered to be the “national theater” of China. The central question we ask is: How have the cultural dimensions of globalization-transnational flows of technology, media, and popular culture-intensified Peking opera’s connection to urban culture, archival digitalization, visual arts, politics of style, Chinese nationalist ideology and intercultural influences in America? Students not only engage with scholarly literature that cuts across different disciplines and genres  (including theater anthropology, cultural history, cinema, music, literature, and art history), but also are introduced to a rich body of sources, ranging from photographs to opera films and documentaries. They have the opportunity to learn some basics of singing and movement and conduct field trips to study with Peking opera troupes in the Chinese community in Philadelphia.

    No previous knowledge of Chinese literature or culture is required. All texts are provided in English translation.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ASIA, GLBL-Paired
    Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: Chinese  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/chinese


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  
  • CHIN 069. The Art of Living: Taste and Aesthetics in Chinese Cultural Traditions


    (Cross-listed as LITR 069CH )
    This course will explore various dimensions of taste and aesthetics in traditional Chinese culture-from the earliest times into the recent past. Broader aspects of the course will include concept, form, and substance in classical literary, and philosophical formulations; ritual practice and ceremonial performance; and continuities and disjunctures in private vs. public and individual vs. societal taste. More focused readings and discussions will concern food, alcohol, tea, and the culinary arts; appreciation, aesthetics, and poetics in music, painting, calligraphy, literature, sculpture, and theater; the harmony of the human body and the evaluation of beauty and suitability in men and women; landscape appreciation and visions of the natural world; leisure and the passa tempo pursuits of Go, flower and tree arrangement, and elegant gatherings. 
    All readings in English.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ASIA
    Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: Chinese  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/chinese


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  
  • CHIN 086. Chinese Food Culture and Farming: Traditions and Transitions


    (Cross-listed as LITR 086CG ENVS 052 
    While the challenging problem of feeding one fifth of the world’s population with only seven percent of the world’s arable land remains a priority in Chinese agricultural policy, extensive environmental degradation and innumerable food scandals have shifted the primary concern of food supply to issues of food safety, from quantity to quality. The class will focus on the challenges and successes of such a turn to a more ecologically friendly agricultural production and food processing industry. In addition, rapid changes in food preferences displace more traditional diets and redirect agricultural production, especially towards production of meat, bringing in foreign private equity firms like KKR and US food conglomerates like Tyson Foods. These changes also affect traditional regional food cultures. This interdisciplinary class (Environmental Studies, Economics, Sociology, Biology, humanities and Chinese Studies) will explore the following key topics:

    • From food security to food safety - the ecological turn in China’s agriculture
    • Organic farming in China - challenges and successes of state and private organic farm initiatives
    • Ministry plans and China’s new farmers
    • Regional food traditions
    • The role of restaurants in Chinese culture

    Recommended: some knowledge of Chinese culture or language
    Prerequisite: The course has no prerequisite; some knowledge of Chinese culture or language is preferred but not required.
    Humanities
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ASIA, ENVS
    Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: Chinese  

     
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/chinese


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  
  • CHIN 087. Water Policies, Water Issues: China/Taiwan and the U.S.


    (Cross-listed as POLS 087 , ENVS 037 
    Access to fresh water is an acute issue for the 21st century, and yet civilizations have designed a wide range of inventive projects for accessing and controlling water supplies over the centuries. Fresh water resource allocation generates issues between upstream and downstream users, between a country and its neighbors, between urban and rural residents, and between states and regions. This course examines a range of fresh water issues, comparing China and the U.S. Topics include dams and large-scale water projects (e.g., rerouting rivers); water pollution; groundwater depletion; industrial water use (e.g., for hydrofracking); impact of agricultural practices; urban storm water management; wetlands conservation; desertification; desalination. What role do governments, transnational organizations, corporations, NGOs and grassroots citizens’ movements play in these water decisions? Guest lectures will emphasize science and engineering perspectives on water management. Chinese language ability desirable but not required.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ASIA, ENVS
    Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: Chinese  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/chinese


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  
  • CHIN 088. Governance and Environmental Issues in China


    (Cross-listed as POLS 088A )
    This course examines China’s environmental challenges and the range of governmental policies and institutions that have an impact on those challenges. Topics include air pollution, food supply, energy consumption, urbanization, and environmental activism. Special attention will be given to the transformation of Beijing and other major cities, to China’s policy-making process, and the role of environmental NGOs and global institutions in shaping domestic policy outcomes. Literary works (Chinese novels and short stories) and feature films/documentary films reflecting environmental issues will be combined with readings from social science and environmental science to provide an interdisciplinary perspective
    All required readings/screenings are in English or English translation/subtitled. Chinese language ability is preferred, but not required.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ENVS
    Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: Chinese  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/chinese


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  
  • CHIN 089. Tea in China: Cultural and Environmental Perspectives.


    Tea is a longstanding and vital constituent of Chinese culture, and also has had a marked and pervasive presence in other parts of the world. This course will focus on “Tea in China” through three major aspects: the cultural, social, and historical; tea cultivation and the natural environment; and the economies of tea. Literary writings and films will be combined with other relevant readings and audio-visual materials for the class. Tea experts and professionals will offer guest lectures to enhance our understanding of tea from bio-ecological and botanical perspectives. As a component of this interdisciplinary cultural course, students will have the chance to participate in”sipping culture,” and will taste major kinds of tea from Mainland China and Taiwan during the semester. 
    All required readings/screenings are in English or English translation/subtitled. Chinese language ability will be an asset, but it is not required.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ENVS
    Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: Chinese  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/chinese


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  
  • CHIN 090. Practicum in Bridging Swarthmore and Local Chinese Communities


    This is a service-learning course. Students are required to provide community service to our neighboring immigrant community-Philadelphia’s Chinatown-through an internship with a NPO in order to gain a deeper understanding of the Asian American diaspora and their social issues in the context of contemporary global migration. Besides the mandatory community-based service (a minimum of 3 hours per week, excluding transportation time), students will also read academic literature, keep an internship journal and write reflection papers to integrate their learning experience both inside and outside the classroom. The outcome project for this course is to build a digital archive to document the community, individual immigrants and residents, social activities and changes around Philadelphia’s Chinatown. The working language in the local NPO office is English, but knowledge of Mandarin or regional dialects is a plus for working with the Chinese American community.
    Graded CR/NC.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ASIA
    Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: Chinese  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/chinese


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  
  
  
  
  
  • LITR 016CH. Substance, Shadow, and Spirit in Chinese Literature and Culture


    (Cross-listed as CHIN 016 )
    This course will explore the literary and intellectual world of traditional Chinese culture, through original writings in English translation, including both poetry and prose. Topics to be discussed include Taoism, Confucianism, and the contouring of Chinese culture; immortality, wine, and allaying the mundane; and the religious dimension, disengagement, and the appreciation of the natural world. The course also will address cultural and literary formulations of conduct and persona and the expression of individualism in an authoritarian society.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: Literatures in Translation  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/modern-languages-literatures


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  
  
  
  • LITR 025CH. Contemporary Chinese Fiction: Mirror of Social Change (1949-2004)


    (Cross-listed CHIN 025 )
    The purpose of this course is to introduce to students some fundamental questions underlying contemporary Chinese history through examining literary narratives created from Mainland, Taiwan, and Hong Kong since 1949, mainly those written between the mid-1980s and the 1990s.  The selected stories and novels, the most representative and provocative, articulate the historical specificity of ideological dilemma and cultural dynamics, in the imaginary process of dealing with love, politics, sex, morality, economic reform, and feminist issues.  Through our textual analysis and discussion, the students will have a better understanding of contemporary Chinese society as well as new developments in literature. All lectures and discussions will be conducted in English, and all readings are in English translation, and no previous preparation in Chinese is required.  
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ASIA
    Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: Chinese  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/chinese


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  
  • LITR 036CH. Women’s Literature in Premodern China


    (Cross-listed as CHIN 036 )
    Contrary to our stereotypes about the silent, invisible woman of premodern China, women actually wrote and published their work in unprecedented numbers from the late 16th century to the early 20th century. This course will explore the literary and historical significance of this output, which mainly took the form of poetry and prefaces to poetry collections, letters, some drama, and novels in verse, and which was produced primarily by gentry women (e.g. women from elite families), courtesans, and nuns. A central theme will be the place and problem of women’s poetry in a male-dominated literary tradition and society. Topics to be addressed include the social function of poetry and women’s literary networks, women’s relationship to the publishing market as writers, editors, and readers, the forces driving male interest in women’s writing at certain historical moments, and the changing ideas about what kinds of styles of past poets should be offered to boudoir poets as a repertoire of available choices to read and imitate.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ASIA
    Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: Literatures in Translation  

     
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/modern-languages-literatures

     


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  
  
  • LITR 065CH. Peking Opera and Globalization


    (Cross-listed as CHIN 065 )
    By using cultural globalization as an explanatory framework built on the foundation of historical studies, this course enables students to conduct critical and interdisciplinary analysis of Peking opera, a living theatrical tradition commonly considered to be the “national theater” of China. The central question we ask is: How have the cultural dimensions of globalization-transnational flows of technology, media, and popular culture-intensified Peking opera’s connection to urban culture, archival digitalization, visual arts, politics of style, Chinese nationalist ideology and intercultural influences in America? Students not only engage with scholarly literature that cuts across different disciplines and genres  (including theater anthropology, cultural history, cinema, music, literature, and art history), but also are introduced to a rich body of sources, ranging from photographs to opera films and documentaries. They have the opportunity to learn some basics of singing and movement and conduct field trips to study with Peking opera troupes in the Chinese community in Philadelphia.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: Literatures in Translation  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/modern-languages-literatures


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • LITR 069CH. Taste and Aesthetics in Chinese Cultural Traditions


    (Cross-listed as CHIN 069 )
    This course will explore various dimensions of taste and aesthetics in traditional Chinese culture, from the earliest times into the recent past. Broader aspects of the course will include concept, form, and substance in classical literary, and philosophical formulations; ritual practice and ceremonial performance; and continuities and disjunctures in private vs. public and individual vs. societal taste. More focused readings and discussions will concern food, alcohol, tea, and the culinary arts; appreciation, aesthetics, and poetics in music, painting, calligraphy, literature, sculpture, and theater; the harmony of the human body and the evaluation of beauty and suitability in men and women; landscape appreciation and visions of the natural world; leisure and the passa tempo pursuits of Go, flower and tree arrangement and elegant gatherings.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ASIA
    Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: Literatures in Translation  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/modern-languages-literatures


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  
  • LITR 086CG. Chinese Food Culture and Farming: Traditions and Transitions


    (Cross-listed as CHIN 086 , ENVS 052 )
    While the challenging problem of feeding one fifth of the world’s population with only seven percent of the world’s arable land remains a priority in Chinese agricultural policy, extensive environmental degradation and innumerous food scandals have shifted the primary concern of food supply to issues of food safety, from quantity to quality. The class will focus on the challenges and successes of such a turn to a more ecologically friendly agricultural production and food processing industry. In addition, rapid changes in food preferences displace more traditional diets and redirect agricultural production, especially towards production of meat, bringing in foreign private equity firms like KKR and US food conglomerates like Tyson Foods. These changes also affect traditional regional food cultures. This interdisciplinary class (Environmental Studies, Economics, Sociology, Biology, humanities and Chinese Studies) will explore the following key topics:

    • From food security to food safety - the ecological turn in China’s agriculture
    • Organic farming in China - challenges and successes of state and private organic farm initiatives
    • Ministry plans and China’s new farmers
    • Regional food traditions
    • The role of restaurants in Chinese culture

    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ASIA, ENVS
    Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: Literatures in Translation  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/modern-languages-literatures


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  

Chinese - Seminars

  
  • CHIN 103. Lu Xun and His Legacy in 20th- Century China


    This seminar is focused on topics concerning modernity, political/social change, gender, and morality through close examination of intellectuals’ responses to the chaotic era reflected in their literature writings in 20th-century China. Literary forms, styles, and changing aesthetic principles are also included for discussion. Literary texts, chosen from Lu Xun to Gao Xingjian, will be analyzed in a social and historical context. All texts are in English translation, and the seminar is conducted in English.
    Humanities.
    2 credits.
    Eligible for ASIA
    Spring 2023. Kong.
    Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: Chinese  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/chinese


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • CHIN 104. Chinese Poetry


    This seminar will explore Chinese poetry throughout ancient and imperial China. We will read and discuss a good many of the most renowned poems and poets, and trace the immutable role of poetry in Chinese traditional culture. We will learn how to read a Chinese poem, investigate predominant styles and genres, and trace texts and writers in context. And we will follow the development and significance of themes and imagery, examine the formulation of a literary aesthetics, and savor the telling of stories and the expression of feeling and philosophy through the medium of poetry. Readings will be in English, with many poems also explicated through the original Chinese. No knowledge of Chinese is required, but previous background in some aspect of Chinese literature, history, and culture will be helpful.
    Humanities.
    2 credits.
    Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: Chinese  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/chinese


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • CHIN 105. Chinese Theater Seminar


    This seminar introduces history of Chinese theater from its emergence as a full-fledged art form in the 10th-11th centuries (the Northern Song) up through its incorporation into modern urban life and nationalist discourse in the first decades of the 20th century (the Republican period). In addition to reading selections from masterpieces of Chinese dramatic literature, we will pay particular attention to the different types of venues, occasions, and performance practices at different moments in time. A central theme will be the cultural meaning associated with acting. All texts to be read in English translation, but students with reading knowledge of Chinese are encouraged to read items in the original. (*At least one special workshop training students in traditional performing art will be arranged.)
    Humanities.
    2 credits.
    Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: Chinese  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/chinese


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • CHIN 108. The Remaking of Cinematic China: Zhang Yimou, Wong Kar-wai, and Ang Lee


    The seminar focuses on three leading filmmakers, Zhang Yimou, Wong Kar-wai, and Ang Lee, and their cinematic products, which have not only won international praises but also fundamentally reconstructed the national/regional cinemas and tremendously challenged the international film industry. Through Zhang’s magic lens, Wong’s avant-garde imagination, and Lee’s transnational vision, their bold cinematic reconfigurations have been speeding up the transformation of Chinese cinema, and at the same time China itself has been represented in a new light on the world stage. The seminar will explore their impact on the formation of the new wave of Chinese-language films after the mid-1980s and its recent new developments. More importantly, we will cultivate our critical thinking skills and research abilities; and train our eyes to able to read cinematic messages and decode cinematographic patterns.

     All discussions will be conducted in English, and all films have English subtitles and readings are in English. Knowledge of China and basic film theory are preferred, but not required.
    Humanities.
    2 credits.
    Eligible for ASIA, FMST, ASAM
    Fall 2022. Kong.
    Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: Chinese  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/chinese


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • CHIN 137. Senior Seminar: Love & Illusion in Dream of the Red Chamber


    CHIN137: Love and Illusion
    in Dream of the Red Chamber

    Spring 2023
    Professor Ridgway

    Time: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2:40-3:55 pm; Location: Kohlberg Hall 114

    The Dream of the Red Chamber (Honglou meng), also known as The Story of the Stone (Shitou ji), is generally considered to be the
    greatest masterpiece of traditional Chinese vernacular fiction. Conceived and substantially completed by Cao Xueqin (early 18th c.)
    the Dream’s scope includes characters from virtually every class and profession. It represents practically all genres of literary
    performance in its pages and abounds in descriptions of social practice and daily life in late imperial China-such as, of clothing and
    rules of etiquette, buildings, gardens, plays, poetic games, culinary delicacies, medical prescriptions, fortune telling, festivals, and
    liturgical rites. Paradoxically, it is the concrete experience of a richly materialistic world that grounds the novel’s dreamlike quality
    and the Buddhist allegory that passion, thought, and life itself are all illusory This is the setting in which Jia Baoyu, the scion to the
    powerful Jia family, comes to maturity, forms close bonds of sentiment with his female cousins and servants, and rebels against the
    expectations of the Confucian patriarchal system. In this course we will explore the world of The Dream of the Red Chamber through
    the novel’s entire 120 chapters along with two major modern television adaptations by China’s CCTV first aired in 1987 and in 2007.
    This course will focus in particular on the issues of literary dreams and traditional Chinese dream theory, the incorporation of
    multiple genres (poetic, narrative, dramatic) in the novel, and gender and the role of women in the novel.
     
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Spring 2023. Ridgway.
    Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: Chinese  
    Department website: https://swarthmore.edu/chinese


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  

Classical Studies

  
  • ANCH 006B. The Talmud


    (Cross-listed as RELG 006B )
    This course introduces students to the academic study of the  Babylonian Talmud (Bavli) - and through it, the academic study of Judaism. Through close, critical, and engaged readings of both brief selections and more lengthy pasages, the course not only explores the vast seas of the Bavli but also considers the Bavli’s foundational place within Judaism and its importance to Jewish tradition. We begin by reading selections of the Talmud that both seek to situate the material in its immediate historical-literary contexts and to explore current points of relevance. We proceed to a close reading of one sugya (passage) and then spread out to examine some specific topics, focusing on rabbinic constructions of gender and rabbinic theology. The close readings of texts are supplemented by contemporary scholarship on the Talmud and the rabbis of antiquity. Finally, we read two contemporary mediations on Judaism that use the Talmud as their “anchor,” their point of reference.
    Humanities.
    Writing course.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ANCH, CLST, GSST, RELG
    Fall 2023. Kessler.
    Catalog chapter: Classics  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/classics


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • CLST 004. Radical Jesus


    (Cross listed as RELG 004 )
    Discussion-and writing-intensive study of classical and contemporary understandings of the figure of Jesus through analytical reading, classroom dialogue, expository writing, and community engagement. It asks the questions, Who was the real historical Jesus? and, What is the relevance of Jesus for today? Introduction to wide understanding of Greco-Roman cultures and ancient texts, biblical and otherwise, including many of the extracanonical scriptures that did not make the final cut for inclusion in the commonly received New Testament. Also introduction to the Greek alphabet, lexicons, and research tools for New Testament study along with rudimentary Greek terms essential to biblical scholarship and commentary. Instruction is intellectually rigorous and responsive both to skeptical and faith-based readings of Jesus’ biography and the Bible. The ground is level in this class: believers and unbelievers, evangelicals and atheists are welcome. No prior background in religious or biblical studies is assumed or required.  The class is divided into four three-week sessions with each session devoted to one of the Gospels, and a final week-long session focusing on the Book of Acts. Each session will study the interplay between Christian scriptures along with writings and images about Jesus drawn from the Hebrew Bible, extracanonical writings, film and video, history, theology and fiction. Images of Jesus through time will be tackled: Jewish rabbi, political revolutionary, apocalyptic prophet, queer lover, desert shaman, African messiah, and Native American trickster.
    Humanities.
    Writing.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for CLST, ENVS, RELG
    Spring 2023. Wallace.
    Catalog chapter: Classics  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/classics

     


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • CLST 010. First Year Seminar: Identities in the Ancient World: Race, Gender and Ethnicity


    In this course, we will survey a wide range of literary, art historical, anthropoligical, and archeological evidence in order to investigate the construction of identities in the ancient Mediterranean world and beyond. Key issues to be discussed will include the ways in which ancient ethnic identities were forged, sustained, and elaborated through time; the intersection of gender, power, and ritual; and the diverse manners in which race was perceived and instrumentalized in different media across the cultures of the Greco-Roman, Egyptian, and ancient Near Eastern worlds. 
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Fall 2022. Mahoney.
    Catalog chapter: Classics  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/classics


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • CLST 011. First-Year Seminar: Talking Animals


    Talking animals appear in diverse storytelling traditions in virtually all periods of recorded history. Often dismissed as nothing more than a playful device of children’s literature, the granting of speech to voiceless animals is in fact a complex and potentially transgressive modification of the human-animal binary. What is it about talking animals that has proven so appealing to storytellers in such different cultural and historical contexts? Does the overt anthropomorphism of such representations preclude the possibility of serious ethical concern for real animals? This first-year seminar surveys the history and meanings of talking animals in ancient and modern storytelling traditions, from Aesop’s fables to Disney films, from the Panchatantra to the graphic novels of Art Spiegelman. And we will go to the zoo.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Catalog chapter: Classics  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/classics


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  
  • CLST 013. First-Year Seminar: Mythology


    This course examines selected myths in such major works of Greek and Latin literature as Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, Virgil’s Aeneid, and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Specific texts and images are treated both as individual stories and in relation to other texts and images that tell the same mythological tale. Primary texts are supplemented by modern theoretical readings in gender, psychology, and literary theory.
    Humanities.
    Writing course.

    1 credit.


    Catalog chapter: Classics  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/classics


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • CLST 014. First-Year Seminar: Mystery Religions and the Greek Philosophers


    What do ancient mystery religions teach us about spiritual transformation and contact with the divine? What were the secret rites of these religions? How do their mythological themes have universal value? Why are the language and themes of mystery traditions so central to the philosophical thought of Parmenides, Empedocles, and Plato? This seminar will study texts associated with Orphism, Pythagoreanism, the Eleusinian and Dionysian mystery cults, Isis and Osiris, and Presocratic and Platonic philosophy. Readings may include The Homeric Hymn to Demeter; Euripides’ Bacchae; fragments of Parmenides and Empedocles; the Derveni Papyrus; Plato’s Phaedo, Symposium, and Phaedrus; and Apuleius’ Golden Ass. Topics discussed will include cosmology, mystical knowledge/ascent; philosophical method; allegorical interpretation; immortality of the soul; archetypal figures of mother/daughter and rebirth.
    Humanities.
    Writing course.
    1 credit.
    Catalog chapter: Classics  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/classics


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • CLST 015. First-Year Seminar: Dante


    With Virgil, Beatrice, and Dante-poet as guides, we shall follow the Pilgrim on a journey of despair, hope, and redemption. We shall read the Divine Comedy in its entirety, teasing out the poem’s different levels of meaning and reconstructing Dante’s world view in the context of Medieval culture: his thought on life, death, love, art, politics, history and God.
    Humanities.
    Writing course.

    1 credit.


    Catalog chapter: Classics  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/classics


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  
  • CLST 019. First-Year Seminar: The Birth of Comedy


    This course investigates the origins of comedy and satire in classical antiquity. In addition to plays by Aristophanes, Plautus, and Terence, and satirical poetry by Archilochus, Hipponax, Horace, and Juvenal, we will also explore the very idea of the “origins of comedy” from diverse perspectives. Questions about what motivates satirists to attack the behavior of their contemporaries and speculation about the quasi-religious roots of mockery have been fertile and contested areas of inquiry for centuries. We will read numerous thinkers (ancient and modern) who have proposed theories of the origins of comedy, including Aristotle, Freud, Bakhtin, Bergson, and Francis Cornford. And we will also encounter more recent comedians’ reflections on their own birth and origins, including performers such as Richard Pryor, Howard Stern, Tina Fey, Louis CK, Sarah Silverman, Jon Stewart, and Lenny Bruce.
    Humanities.
    Writing course.
    1 credit.
    Fall 2023. Lefkowitz.
    Catalog chapter: Classics  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/classics


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • CLST 020. Plato and His Modern Readers


    (Cross-listed as PHIL 020  )
    Plato’s dialogues are complex works that require literary as well as philosophical analysis. While our primary aim will be to develop interpretations of the dialogues themselves, we will also view Plato through the lens of various modern and postmodern interpretations (e.g., Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida, Jung, Foucault, Irigaray, Rorty, Lacan, Nussbaum, Vlastos).
    Humanities.
    Writing course.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for INTP
    Spring 2023. Ledbetter.
    Fall 2023. Ledbetter.
    Spring 2025. Ledbetter.
    Catalog chapter: Classics  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/classics


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • CLST 021. Roman Society and Identity: Food and War


    (Cross-listed as ANCH 021 )
    This class will examine the interconnected roles of food and war in ancient Roman society. The first part of the semester will focus on the practicalities of the Roman diet. Building on this knowledge, we will explore how food and war together shaped the Roman sense of identity. Finally, we will study how food drove Roman military and political policy. The last seven weeks of the term will involve detailed case studies considering how issues directly related to food shaped the decisions and actions that enabled Rome to expand from the Italian peninsula to a Mediterranean empire in only 100 years, and then later tear itself apart in civil wars, only to emerge as a stable empire. This class will combine social, political, and military history while looking at a variety of sources of evidence.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Catalog chapter: Classics  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/classics


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • CLST 022. Readings in Sanskrit


    This is an intermediate level course for Sanskrit. Sanskrit is the transregional, transcultural language of erudition in Ancient and Premodern South Asia. Its historical importance cannot be overstated in terms of both linguistic and cultural impact. Its systematic linguistic codification gave birth to the field of linguistics today and its rich diversity of expression led to its use as the language par excellence for the development of a wide range of fields including philosophy, grammar, art, ritual, mythology, statecraft, warfare, amorous play, prosody, aesthetics, drama, and much more. This course will be an intensive reading course diving deeply into a variety of genres of Sanskrit to enable students to be able to read different styles of Sanskrit more comfortably. It will also include a spoken component to engage with the language more naturally and to enhance students’ fluency and comfort with reading. This course plus either CLST 023 Introduction to Sanskrit or CLST 024 Sanskrit Grammar fulfills the College language requirement; the classes do not need to be taken in consecutive semesters.  
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ASIA, CPLT
    Spring 2023. Khanna.
    Spring 2024. Khanna.
    Spring 2025. Khanna.
    Catalog chapter: Classics  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/classics


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  
  • CLST 023. Introduction to Sanskrit


    A basic introduction to the pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary of Sanskrit, in preparation for reading.  No prerequisites. This course plus either CLST 022 Readings in Sanskrit or CLST 024 Sanskrit Grammar fulfills the College language requirement; the courses do not need to be taken in consecutive semesters.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ASIA
    Fall 2022. Khanna.
    Fall 2023. Khanna.
    Fall 2024. Khanna.
    Catalog chapter: Classics  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/classics 

     


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • CLST 024. Sanskrit Grammar


    LING 024  
    This course is designed to help students appreciate the grammar system of Sanskrit as codified by the great grammarian Pânini (5th century BCE), whose system has been called the “greatest monument to human intelligence” (G. Cardona). In this course, students will first be exposed to basic features of the Sanskrit language, followed by a study of the grammar system of Pânini, and, by the end of the semester, readings in Sanskrit. This course is open to all students interested in learning Sanskrit. No prior knowledge is necessary.  It is also open to students who took CLST 023 in Fall 2018, as a continuation of the first class, but following a different parallel stream of learning Sanskrit. This course, taken with CLST 023 Introduction to Sanskrit, fulfills the College language requirement; the courses do not need to be taken in consecutive semesters. 
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ASIA
    Catalog chapter: Classics  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/classics


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • CLST 025. Greek Myth in Opera and Ballet


    Greek myths have provided the subject matter for some of the most important and pivotal works in the history of opera and ballet. Just as Greek myth informs these arts, so too, opera and ballet transform these myths and the way they are viewed by modern audiences. New and daring productions of classical operas continue to transform both Greek mythology and its operatic incarnations. George Balanchine’s Neoclassicism modernized ballet radically in the 20th century by drawing largely on Greek myth and classical aesthetic structures. In this course, we will study the relevant primary classical sources for operas and ballets such as Handel’s Xerxes, Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, Berlioz’s Les Troyens, Strauss’s Electra, Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex, Balanchine’s Apollo, Agon, and Orpheus. At the same time, we will study the operas and ballets themselves in their cultural context, and in the course of their performance history, paying special attention to recent productions.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Catalog chapter: Classics  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/classics


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  
  • CLST 026. Athletics and the Competitive Spirit in Ancient Greece


    Athletic competition was born in ancient Greece, where contests were held to honor the gods, such as Zeus, Poseidon, and Apollo. This course will explore the world behind these phenomena, focusing in particular upon the wider cultural context of the Archaic and Classical Greeks, for whom athletics and an ethos of strife went hand in hand. By reading ancient sources - literary, artistic, and archaeological - students will have the opportunity to understand ancient athletics from the ground up.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Fall 2023. Mahoney.
    Catalog chapter: Classics  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/classics


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  
  • CLST 028. Origins of Indic Thought


    (Cross-listed as PHIL 038 )
    Origins of Indic Thought is designed to give students a foundation in various major philosophical schools that have emerged in the Indian subcontinent by studying their origin stories. These schools include Buddhism, Jainism, Sāṅkhya, Yoga, Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika, Vedānta, and Sikhism. Students will learn the fundamental arguments that each school makes and understand the ongoing conversation between the various schools about the nature of and relationship between the Self, the World, and God.
    Prerequisite: See PHIL 038  description; prerequisite for PHIL credit only.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ASIA
    Catalog chapter: Classics  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/classics


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • CLST 029. Mythology of India


    Stories are one of the foremost narrative tools in Indian society. Characters including gods, sages, kings, and the like are often used to present morals, virtues, and a blueprint for living a civilized life. Stories from ancient Indian texts and oral culture find their way into modern Bollywood dramas, soap operas, comic books, novels, music, and countless other Indian media. In modern Indian political discourse, these characters are often used as examples for what should and should not be done. Beyond India, Hindu gods and goddesses can be seen in art, architecture, Hollywood, TV shows, album covers, and more. At the same time, there are countless stories from the various cultures in India that are untold in popular media, with differing perspectives, deviant morals, and contrary visions of the world. 

    This course will broadly sample mythological narratives in India from Vedic times until the present. This will include dominant Hindu cultural stories, but also stories of minority cultures existing within India such as those of Dalits, Adivasis, and other religious traditions in oral, textual, visual, and performative forms. Discussion about the stories we encounter will give students the opportunity to problematize and complexify their understanding of terms like “myth,” “religion,” “culture,” and “history.”
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ASIA
    Catalog chapter: Classics  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/classics


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • CLST 030. Caste and Power


    In this course, we will critically analyze caste as a hierarchy of human beings through a study of theory, history, religion, and law in South Asia and the South Asian diaspora. We will approach caste from an intersectional perspective, understanding its relationship with other modes of oppression such as race, gender, color, and class. We will understand its religious underpinnings in Hinduism, but also how it permeates into other religious traditions in the South Asian context, which is then translated to communities in the diaspora.

    We will proceed to study the relationship between caste and race in America, challenging our own preconceived notions about racial injustice and developing a lexicon for articulating its relationship to caste injustice, as well as engaging with the meaning of allyship.

    Through this course students will learn to be more critical in their readings and articulations of their positions on power in general, particularly in the context of caste. This course aims to foster an inclusive environment in which to discuss, in as open a way, crucial issues related to caste, power, and justice.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ASAM.
    Fall 2022. Khanna.
    Fall 2024. Khanna.
    Catalog chapter: Classics  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/classics


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • CLST 031. Consciousness: Perspectives from Sanskrit and Beyond


    Who am I? The study of “consciousness” has been of interest to scientists, philosophers, and laypeople alike for millennia. Its intangible nature, however, has made consciousness difficult to define. How can we describe something that we cannot perceive with our senses? We can know what it is like to perceive, and what it is like to have consciousness, but it has proven difficult to actually pinpoint with a measure of certainty what consciousness actually is. Over time, thinkers from around the world have offered different theories of consciousness. This course will study theories that arose from the intellectual milieu of the Indian subcontinent from Vedic times to the present. What is consciousness? How can we study it? What is its relationship to our bodies? Is there a self? What is our relationship to the world? We will discuss these questions and more by reading source texts in translation and secondary literature from different ancient, medieval, pre-modern, and modern South Asian philosophical schools including Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, Sikh, and Sufi philosophies.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ASIA
    Spring 2023. Khanna.
    Spring 2025. Khanna.
    Catalog chapter: Classics  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/classics


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • CLST 032. Classical Hebrew I


    In Classical Hebrew I, students will master the Hebrew alphabet, build vocabulary, and acquire a working knowledge of Hebrew grammar and syntax. By the end of the semester, students will be able to read select passages from the Hebrew Bible aloud and provide translations. No previous knowledge of Hebrew is required.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Catalog chapter: Classics  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/classics


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • CLST 033. Classical Hebrew II


    In Classical Hebrew II, students wiill advance in their knowledge of Hebrew grammar and continue to build essential vocabulary.  A substantial amount of class time will be spent reading directly from the Hebrew Bible, with a focus on narrative texts. Students will be able to translate biblical Hebrew prose, parse verbs, and analyze syntax and orthography with the aid of lexicons, commentaries and reference grammars. 
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Catalog chapter: Classics  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/classics


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  
  
  • CLST 036. Classical Mythology


    What is a myth? How is myth different from fairy tale or fable? What is its connection to ritual and religion? What sets myth apart from history? In this survey of the mythology of Greco-Roman antiquity, we will investigate the diverse meanings of ‘myth’, its social functions, its origins, its history, and its contemporary relevance. Students will get a broad overview of Classical mythology through direct and close readings of primary sources (all in English translation), including such texts as Homer’s Odyssey, plays by all three of the major Greek tragedians (Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides), and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Our readings of ancient texts will be supplemented by study of ancient art and frequent investigations of modern responses to and theorizing of myth in diverse fields and media, including sociological, psychological, and philosophical treatises; modern poetry; visual arts; and film.
    Humanities.
    Writing course.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for INTP
    Spring 2024. Lefkowitz.
    Catalog chapter: Classics  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/classics


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • CLST 040. Visions of Rome


    This course provides an overview of cinematic responses to the idea of Rome, ancient and modern, city and empire, place and idea, from the silent era to the present day. We will spend some time comparing films set in Rome to ancient and modern representations of the eternal city in literary and other visual media. But our primary focus will be on the ways in which cinematic visions of Rome reflect evolving cultural, political, and social conditions on both sides of the Atlantic. Specific topics to be explored include the popularity of classical themes in early silent films; Rome on screen during the rise and fall of fascism; neorealism and the shifting landscape of the city; the politics of Hollywood epics; and the dialectic between conceptions of antiquity and modernity as reflected in cinema. Screenings of films by major Italian and Anglophone filmmakers, including Pastrone, DeMille, Rossellini, Visconti, Wyler, Pasolini, Fellini, Virzì, and other major directors. Readings of texts by Petronius, Juvenal, Byron, Hawthorne, Dickens, Freud, Yourcenar, Rohmer, Calvino, and Barthes.
    Humanities.
    Writing course.

    1 credit.


    Catalog chapter: Classics  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/classics


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • CLST 057. Hebrew for Text Study I


    What does the Bible really say? Have you ever noticed how radically different the Hebrew Bible seems in different translations? If you want to understand the enigma of this text, if you want to experience it through your own eyes, if you want to plumb its depths, appreciate its beauty, confront its challenges, and understand its influence, you must read it in Hebrew. In this course, you will learn the grammar and vocabulary required to experience the Hebrew Bible and ancient Hebrew commentaries in the original language. You will learn to use dictionaries, concordances, and translations to investigate word roots and to authenticate interpretations of the texts. In addition to teaching basic language skills, this course offers students the opportunity for direct encounter with primary biblical, rabbinic, and Jewish liturgical sources. No experience necessary. If you already have some Hebrew competence, contact the instructor for advice. This course plus CLST 059 Hebrew for Text Study II fulfills the language requirement.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Fall 2023. Plotkin.
    Catalog chapter: Classics  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/classics


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • CLST 059. Hebrew for Text Study II


    (Cross-listed as LING 033 )
    This course is a continuation of Hebrew for Text Study I. Students who have not completed that course will require the permission of the instructor to enroll in this course. This set of courses teaches the grammar and vocabulary required to experience the Hebrew Bible and ancient Hebrew commentaries in the original language. You will learn to use dictionaries, concordances, and translations to investigate word roots and to authenticate interpretations of the texts. In addition to teaching basic language skills, this course offers students the opportunity for direct encounter with primary biblical, rabbinic, and Jewish liturgical sources. This course plus CLST 057 Hebrew for Text Study I fulfills the language requirement.
    Prerequisite: Hebrew Text Study I
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for CLST
    Catalog chapter: Classics  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/classics


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


 

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