The core of the major consists of six courses that will examine a significant portion of European civilization through a variety of disciplines. Comparative literary studies, interdisciplinary work in history, sociology, philosophy, political science or economics involving one or more European countries are possible approaches to the major. The student will select the six core courses in consultation with the Chair and an appropriate advisory subcommittee of the Program, a committee of three. Of these six courses, two will be independent research and writing during the senior year, leading to the presentation of a thesis in the final semester. For further information on European Studies courses and specific offerings for 1996-1997 see the Course Descriptions.

Save in exceptional circumstances a major will spend at least one semester of the junior year pursuing an approved course of study in Europe. During this time the major will be asked to reflect upon certain questions relating to his or her experience. Upon return, the student will ordinarily elect, in consultation with his or her advisory committee of three, at least one course that helps integrate the European experience into the European Studies major. During the second semester of the senior year the major will give an oral presentation to faculty and students in the Program of his or her independent research and writing in progress.

The comprehensive requirement is fulfilled during the senior year when the major will be asked to participate in a series of colloquia on a variety of European themes.

A major is expected to be able to read creative and scholarly literature in at least one foreign language appropriate to his or her program.

When designing the course schedule, a major should consult regularly with his or her advisory committee of three and should give careful study to the offerings of humanities and social science departments at Amherst and the other Valley colleges/university.

The faculty advisory committee of three is drawn from departments with offerings in European areas, such as, Classics, Economics, English, Fine Arts, German, History, Music, Philosophy, Political Science, Religion, Romance Languages, Russian, Theater and Dance, and Women's and Gender Studies and can be selected from among faculty in the five colleges. Some of these departments have Home Pages and others are in the process of creating them.

Course Descriptions and Offerings for 1996-1997

11s. The Self in the World. To understand the world, one must first know the "self": this idea has informed much European art and literature. This course studies fiction and poetry where the identity of the protagonist is a major theme; non-fictional first-person narrative (that is, "autobiography"); and self-portraiture in painting and sculpture. The purpose is to understand the role that identity--the sense of a distinct self--has played in European thought and art. We will study a wide range of authors and works, including Montaigne, Rousseau, Wordsworth, Joyce, and Stein, as well as such artists as Durer, Rembrandt, van Gogh, and Picasso. Two class meetings per week. Second semester. Professor Rosbottom. (French Department)

21. Readings in the European Tradition I. Readings and discussion of a series of related texts from Homer and Genesis to Dante: Homer's Odyssey, readings in Sophocles and Plato, Vergil's Aeneid, readings in the Bible, Augustine's Confessions, some medieval epics and romances and Dante's Divine Comedy. Emphasis on active student discussion. Three class meetings per week. Required for European Studies majors. First semester. Professor Doran. (Religion Department)

22. Readings in the European Tradition II. Reading and discussion of works of literature that have contributed in important ways to the definition of the European imagination: Machiavelli's The Prince, Cervantes' Don Quixote, two plays of Shakespeare, Racine's Phaedra, Moliere's Tartuffe, Descartes' Discourse on Method, Milton's Paradise Lost, Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Rousseau's Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, Voltaire's Candide, Goethe's Faust I, selected poems of Wordsworth, Marx's Communist Manifesto, J.S. Mill's On Liberty, Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Tolstoy's War and Peace, Freud's Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, and Thomas Mann's Death in Venice. Two class meetings per week. Required for European Studies majors. Second semester. Professor Emeritus Kennick. (Philosophy Department)

24f. Poetic Translation. This is a workshop in translating poetry into English from another European language, preferably but not necessarily a Germanic or Romance language (including Latin), whose aim is to produce good poems in English. Students will present first and subsequent drafts to the entire class for regular analysis, which will be fed by reference to readings in translation theory and contemporary translations from European languages. Two class meetings per week. First semester. Professor Maraniss. (Spanish Department)

25. Jewish Literature. A survey of Jewish fiction from around the world in English translation. Special attention will be given to Yiddish writers from the nineteenth century (Mendele Mokher Sforim, Sholem Aleichem), Eastern European and Russian masters (Isaac Babel, Bruno Schulz, Danilo Kis), as well as contemporary American, Israeli, and Latin American authors. Themes to be discussed: Memory and exile, orthodoxy and secularism, nationalism and isolation. First semester. Professor Stavans (Spanish Department)

26. The Myth of Europe. The course will trace the origins and development of the ideal of a united Europe, from the Roman Empire to the present day. We will begin by examining important expressions of the European ideal in Antiquity and the Christian Middle Ages, and how Christian Europeans strove to distinguish themselves from the Muslims and the Jews. We will follow the many variants of the concept through the Humanist Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and Romanticism, as the holy society was succeeded by the sacralization of the individual. The nineteenth and twentieth centures will show how the goal of unity came into increasingly severe conflict with the rise of modern nationalism, and how it was crippled and painfully resuscitated in the aftermath of the two World Wars. In the final portion of the course we will focus on the most recent efforts to shape a unified Europe. Our study will be cross- disciplinary in approach, exploring the notion of unity through soundings in the literature, the arts, and the ideologies that Europe has produced. Three hours of discussion per week with occasional writing assignments and in-class presentations. Omitted 1996-1997.

28. Political and Cultural Crises of Modern Europe. Modern European history since the French Revolution is, on the one hand, a story of national grandeur, economic development, progressive politics, and cultural dynamism. But it is also a record of great wars, of national and class egoism, religious and racial intolerance, and infamy--Imperialism, Colonialism, Totalitarianism and the Holocaust.

How have modern Europe's political theorists and intellectuals explained such dualities of thought and action? Are there lessons of universal value in what Europeans did and said? Or was modern Europe, once the center of the world system, unique? Do Europe's old demons still, even in the age of European integration, threaten the continent's development?

The course will draw on an eclectic menu of modern and contemporary European sources, including Tocqueville, Marx, Michelet and Ernest Renan; J.A. Hobson, Lenin, Heine, Heinrich and Thomas Mann; Hitler, Simone Weil, Hannah Arendt, de Gaulle, Churchill, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean Monnet, Fanon, Sartre, Luigi Barzini, Solzhenitzn, the Kundera-Brodsky debate, Margaret Thatcher, Vaclav Havel, and others. A few films will also be shown. Two class meetings per week. Second semester. Professor Tiersky. (Political Science Department) (See Course Syllabus)