LAMEM Courses Offered This Semester

English

ENGL 3122 Shakespeare 1
Thursdays, 11 a.m.-12:15 p.m., Professor Tanya Pollard
English 2120, Overview of Literary Study 1
A literature survey to 1800
Mondays and Wednesdays, 9:30-10:45 a.m., Professor Karl Steel
Dream, Vision, and Imagination in Medieval English Literature
ENGL 3111 (Medieval English Literature)
Professor Nicola Masciandaro
“For never sith [since] that I was born, / Ne no man elles me beforn, / Mette [dreamed], I trowe steadfastly, / So wonderful a drem as I” (Chaucer, House of Fame). This poetic boast points up the important and conspicuous relation between dreaming and authorship in the medieval English literary tradition. From the oldest English poem Caedmon’s Hymn, a creation-song composed by an illiterate cowherd who learns the art of poetry in a dream, to the melancholic and self-conscious dream-visions of Chaucer’s fifteenth-century imitators (e.g. Lydgate and Hoccleve), medieval English literature seems to prove true the stereotype of the English as dreamers. As the French monk Peter of Celle explained in a letter to an English friend in 1178, this dreaminess was thought has a geographic and climatological cause: “Your island is surrounded by water, and not unnaturally its inhabitants are affected by the nature of the element in which they live. Unsubstantial fantasies slide easily into their minds. They think their dreams to be visions, and their visions to be divine. We cannot blame them, for such is the nature of their land.” This course will accordingly focus on the dream-vision genre as a ‘climate’ of medieval English literature, a poetic weather system transversing its cultural spheres. You will learn about medieval theories of vision and imagination, the social functions of the author as dreamer and visionary, the connections between dream-visions and other literary genres (e.g. dialogue, allegory, frame narrative), and how medieval English writers both navigated philosophical and religious traditions of illumination and foreshadowed modern speculative fiction. Works to be read (in whole or part) include: Augustine, On Genesis; Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy; Macrobius, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio; Dream of the Rood; The Romance of the Rose; Dante, Purgatorio; Pearl; Geoffrey Chaucer, Book of the Duchess, Legend of Good Women, Parliament of Fowls, and House of Fame; John Gower, Vox Clamantis and Confessio Amantis; William Langland, Piers Plowman; Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love; Wynnere and Wastoure; The Parlement of the Thre Ages; Lydgate, Temple of Glas; The Assembly of Gods; Thomas Hoccleve, Regiment of Princes and The Series.
Gaming, Play, Literature: From Adventure to Apocalypse
ENGL 3192/CMLT 3629 (Special Topics in Literature)
Professor Nicola Masciandaro
“Culture arises in the form of play . . . it is played from the very beginning” (Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens). Leaping into the playground between gaming and literature, this course will explore the boundaries and intersections between these two cultural forms through a sustained examination of the nature of play. If literature is a game, what does it mean to play it? If playing games has meaning, how do we read them? What is gaming in the mirror of literature? What is literature in the mirror of gaming? We will approach these questions both theoretically and practically by studying the historical and structural links between literature and gaming, reflecting on the nature and significance of literary texts and games through the prism of play, and experimenting with interpreting games and playing with literary texts. Three literary works will provide the doorways onto three important and interrelated landscapes of contemporary game culture: fantasy, science-fiction, and (post)apocalypse. First, we will read the late medieval Arthurian romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in connection with such gaming-themes as quest, role-playing, adventure/exploration, history, myth, and heroism. Second, we will read Ursula K. LeGuin’s 1974 political theory sci-fi novel The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia in connection with world-building, speculative realities, (trans/post)humanism, simulation, strategy/diplomacy, and feminism. Third, we will read Cormac McCarthy’s 2006 post-apocalyptic novel The Road in connection with survival horror, zombies, slavery, consumerism, ecological collapse, and war. For each module we will research specific games (e.g. Death Stranding) as well as study relevant works in cultural game theory, game studies, and game criticism, such as Roger Caillois’s Man, Play, and Games (1961), Marie-Laure Ryan’s Narrative as Virtual Reality 2 (2015), and Edmund Y. Chang and Timothy J. Welsh’s Video Games, Literature, and Close Playing (2026). Topics and areas to be covered include: video games as art, fictional games, ludology and narratology, embodiment and perspective, transformative play, gamification, playbour, ergodic literature, gender and identity in gaming cultures, gaming/literature as performance, interactivity and immersion, cinematic dimensions of gaming and literature, ethics in gaming, et al. This playground will thus provide space for students to bring their knowledge and experience of gaming to bear on the study of literary texts and vice-versa—a place to question and maybe turn the tables on our assumptions about what play is in the first place. The play’s the thing!
Heaven on Earth: The Poetics of Pleasure in Medieval Literature (M.A. course)
ENGL 7103 (Medieval Literature). Fall 2026
Professor Nicola Masciandaro
From the lost happiness of Eden to the eternal bliss of Heaven, from the edible utopias of peasant fantasy lands to the sweet, wasting suffering of courtly lovers, pleasure holds a crucial place in medieval theories and representations of life, nature, and the universe. Where pleasure in the modern world seems to be conceived primarily in terms of the satisfying aesthetic or sensual experience of desirous subjects, medieval writers and thinkers approached pleasure through a spectrum of distinctions that both separated and joined the pleasures of body, mind, and soul across the boundaries of nature and culture, life and death, time and eternity. Medieval pleasure is no less physical than metaphysical, no less a feeling than a fundamental property of everything. Throughout the genres of medieval literature we find not only the expected discourses on the dangers of illicit/inordinate pleasure and proportional representations of hoped-for delights, but a more vital sense of pleasure as something that, as Aristotle taught, “perfects operation” (Ethics) and expands the horizons of beings. “Man’s affection is expanded by pleasure,” writes Thomas Aquinas, citing the derivations of delectatio (delight) and laetitia (gladness) from dilatatio (expansion, dilation). This sense of pleasure as something that increases the scope of life was given impetus by the cultural developments of the 12th and 13th centuries which the historian Jacques Le Goff called the “descent of values from heaven to earth.” Starting with an overview of this ‘descent’ and in particular the influential role played in it by the reception of Aristotle’s Ethics, this course will focus on how medieval authors navigated pleasure’s earthly-heavenly gravity and how questions of pleasure are vital to their poetics. As pleasure is an inescapable principle of all culture or the ways life grows and transforms itself, so does it belong more specifically to the marvelous sharing of understanding and experience that takes place within the external and internal spaces of human memory, otherwise known as the arts and sciences. As Geoffrey of Vinsauf states in his Poetria Nova, “the little cell that remembers is a cell of delight, and it craves what is delightful, not what is boring.” We will accordingly read both for what medieval works say about pleasure and how they produce it, how pleasure in its multiple dimensions and colors may be grasped as the activity of literary meaning, just as Dante, in the final canto of the Commedia, confirms the truth of his poetic vision by appealing to the very enjoyment of expressing it: “I believe [what] I saw, because in telling this I feel my joy increase.” We will also ponder the similarities and differences between medieval and modern concepts of pleasure. Some topics to be discussed are: philosophies of friendship, visions of paradise, non-human pleasures, the relation between use and enjoyment, sin and heresy, ethics of work and play, sexuality and eros, health and disease in medieval medicine, theories of beauty, action and contemplation, lyric joy, displeasure and the rhetoric of complaint. Works to be read (in whole or part) include: Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy; Augustine, Confessions; Ibn Tufayl, Hayy ibn Yaqzan; Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermons on the Song of Songs; Aelred of Rievaulx, Spiritual Friendship; Richard of St. Victor, The Four Degrees of Violent Love; Chrétien de Troyes, Erec and Enide; The Romance of the Rose; Dante, The Convivio and Divine Comedy; Boccaccio, The Decameron; Chaucer, Parliament of Fowls, Miller’s Tale, Wife of Bath’s Tale and Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale; Pearl; Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love; William Langland, Piers Plowman; and Thomas à Kempis, Saint Lydwine of Schiedam.

Philosophy

PHIL 3111: Ancient Philosophy
Mondays and Wednesdays 11 a.m.-12:40 p.m., Professor Angelica Nuzzo

Classics

CLAS 1110 Tyranny, Democracy, Empire
Mondays and Wednesdays, 12:50-2:05 p.m., Professor Brian Sowers
CLAS 3200 Heroes, Gods, and Monsters
Mondays and Wednesdays, 9:30-10:45 a.m., Professor Kevin Noble
RELG 3003 Questions of Text and Truth
Mondays and Wednesdays 12:50-2:05 p.m., Professor TBA
Tuesdays and Thursdays 11 a.m.-12:15 p.m., Professor Westemayer
Various Latin and Greek classes

Judaic Studies

JUST 3036/HIST 3102 Mystics, Pietists, and Heretics: Topics in Early Modern Jewish History (Capstone)
(42101) Mondays and Wednesdays, 3:40– 4:55 p.m.
Explores aspects of the intellectual and cultural history of the Jews from the expulsion of Spanish Jewry in 1492 to the French Revolution in 1789. This course particularly emphasizes Jewish-Christian interaction, the Marrano Diaspora, Messianism, and the influence of such larger cultural trends as the Renaissance, Reformation, and absolutism upon the development of Jewish culture. This course is the same as History 3102.
JUST 3038 Messianic Ideas and Movements in Jewish History (Capstone)
(40607) Tuesdays and Thursdays, 6:30–7:45 p.m. (Online, Synchronous)
Major Jewish messianic trends and movements emerging from Bible up until present. Miracle worker? Apocalyptic warrior? Revealer of secrets? Or savvy politician? Explore the colorful careers of numerous messianic figures and pretenders, such as Jesus, Shabbtai Zevi, Ramhal and the Lubavitcher rebbe; intellectual and historical roots of these movements, ranging from mystical yearnings to Christian and Muslim influences; its popularization among various contemporary Hasidic and political groups.
JUST. 4027 – Mishnah (Capstone)
(40602) Tuesdays and Thursdays, 11 a.m.–12:15 p.m.
Reading and analysis of select passages from the Mishnah, the first code of Rabbinic Jewish law, dating to the 2nd to 3rd centuries CE, out of which all subsequent Rabbinic law developed. The Mishnah reflects major concerns of Judaism in antiquity including agricultural, marital, and business law, rules regarding the sabbath and holidays, sacrifices, purity, and impurity. Training in Rabbinic dialects of Hebrew. Texts will be read in the original Hebrew. Students may take this class for credit multiple times but may not repeat topics. This course is the same as HEBR 4027.Prerequisite: None, but the student should speak with the instructor or chairperson to assess that the course is at the right level for the student.
JUST 1145 Classical Jewish Texts: Moving Toward Modernity (Pathways: World Cultures | Not Capstone)
(40596) Mondays and Wednesdays, 2:15–3:30 p.m.
Have you ever wished you had more familiarity with the classical Jewish canon? A deeper knowledge of its key works, their historical context, and their role in traditional Judaism? This course will address these issues by exploring the masterpieces of Jewish literature that have profoundly influenced world religions, culture, and philosophy. It will begin by analyzing a range of genres of early Jewish sources, from the Bible to Maimonides. Subsequently, students will disentangle the layers and intertextuality of modern Jewish texts and films, which often riff on earlier classics, including thought-provoking works from Shalom Aleichem to the Coen brothers.
JUST. 2510 Introduction to the Bible [Old Testament/Tanakh] (Pathways: World Cultures Global Issues)
(40611) Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2:15–3:30 p.m.
Broad survey of the Bible from Genesis through Chronicles, from creation through the Persian period. Introduces students to the Patriarchal narratives, historical kingdoms of Israel and Judah, laws of ancient Israel, poetry, and wisdom literature that have had an outsized impact on culture the world over. Starting Fall 2024 Satisfies Pathways Flexible Core World Cultures and Global Issues requirement.