the context of the art and intellectual writings of the Bloomsbury Group, a collective of English artists and intellectuals. Along with Woolf, special attention will be given to John Maynard Keynes and Vanessa Bell. ETLA 302 Theatre and Culture: Vaclav Havel’s Largo Desolato, Eastern Europe, and Artistic Challenges Before and After 1989 [ie] In-depth study of Vaclav Havel’s play Largo Desolato with a multidisciplinary emphasis on the relationship between social movements and artistic ideas. Discussion of European history, politics, religion, culture, and arts will establish the cultural context of the play and the major themes introduced by Havel and other Eastern European playwrights. Students will address theatre’s role in socio-political issues of concern to us today. This course satisfies the International Exploration requirement. It is identical to ETLA 372 except that it has no travel component. ETLA 303 Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952): Its Cultural and Historical Contexts An exploration of Ellison’s novel, the African American cultural traditions that shaped it, and the history of American racism from the Civil War through the 1950s as it is manifest not only in Invisible Man but also in Langston Hughes’ Selected Poems and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. ETLA 304 Pride and Prejudice in Cultural Context A study of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice as art and as historical, cultural, and ideological artifact. Contextual materials will include history, literary and film criticism/theory, film and television adaptations, and modern literary revisions of the text (chosen from among titles such as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Bridget Jones’ Diary, Mr. Darcy’s Secret, etc.) ETLA 305 Homer’s Iliad and Cities under Siege An interdisciplinary study of Homer’s epic poem and its subsequent influence on our literature, drama, film, historiography, and scientific thinking. The theoretical ramifications of sieges and their importance for framing our understanding of warfare as an irreducible element of the human experience will be considered. Works to be studied in addition to the eponymous epic include Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, Mihalis Kakogiannis’s film version of Euripides’ Trojan Women, Ismail Kidare’s The Siege, Shelby Foote’s The Siege of Vicksburg, and E. O. Wilson’s Anthill. ETLA 306 Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire and Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men – Exploring the Desert Southwest and the Beginning of Modern Environmental Writing A study of how Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire influenced a generation of nature writers and led to the creation of the Earth First political movement and Ecocriticism. Works of Larry McMurtry, Charles Bowden, Terry Tempest Williams, Cormac McCarthy, and others will be studied in the context of how this contemporary literature of the natural world was created and is still being developed. ETLA 307 Basho’s Haiku and Beyond Study of the Japanese writer Matsuo Basho (1644-1694), with an emphasis on the relationship between the haiku and ecological awareness. Some attention to the poet’s followers. Related study of philosophy, the natural world, art, and music.
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