Syllabus

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Course Meeting Times

Lectures/Recitations: 2 sessions / week, 1.5 hours / session
Occasional evening film screenings

Classroom sessions are a mix of lectures for the entire class and smaller section discussions led by each course instructor.

Overview

This class examines the supernatural in belief and practice, and its reflection in literature and music.

The semester is divided into three sections concerned with:

1. Witchcraft beliefs and witch hunting. Special attention to the great European witch hunt of the 15th through 18th centuries: Shakespeare's Macbeth; Purcell's Dido and Aeneas; Verdi's Macbeth; Kurosawa's Throne of Blood

2. Wizards and sorcery. Necromancy, astrology, and other medieval and Renaissance magic: Goethe's Faust; Liszt's Faust Symphony; Gounod's Faust; Murnau's Faust

3. Ghosts and Spirit Contact. Spiritualism and ghosts in 19th-century America: H. James's The Turn of the Screw; Britten's The Turn of the Screw

Emphasis falls on weekly listening and reading assignments, to be completed by the class for which they are listed in the syllabus. There will be live performances by staff members, other faculty, and outside musicians and actors. Film adaptations and opera videos will be screened in the evenings: students who cannot attend a particular screening must view the material on their own using videos to be provided.

Requirements

Class Participation

Students are required to attend lectures and recitations and to participate actively as part of the CI requirement of this class. At least one hour per week will be devoted to discussion.

Essay Writing

Students will write a total of 20 pages divided among three papers (one with required revision and expansion).

Oral Presentations

At the end of the semester, several class sessions will be devoted to preparing and delivering oral presentations on aspects of the works considered in the last third of the course.

There is no final exam.

Enrollment

21M.013J / 21A.113J is both a HASS-D and CI-H subject. This means that each recitation can accept a maximum of 18 students. Priority is given to students who are registered in the class through the HASS-D lottery, but these students must attend the first two recitation meetings to keep their place in the class. Students may not change their preassigned recitation. Additional students may enter the class, so long as there are open slots, through the second week of classes.

Required Texts

Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Macbeth Oxford World's Classics Edition. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1998. ISBN: 9780192834171.

Goethe, Johan Wolfgang von. Faust: Part I. New York, NY: Penguin Classics, 2005. ISBN: 9780140449013.

James, Henry. The Turn of the Screw. New York, NY: Penguin Classics, 2003. ISBN: 9780141439907. [Download a version of this work from Project Gutenberg]

Additional required readings are assigned for each class session.

Paper Assignments

Students are required to write three papers, plus a substantial revision and expansion of the first paper. Successful writing in this course will largely depend on the organization of each essay, the strength of the reasoning, and competence with the fundamentals (spelling, punctuation, grammar, and syntax).

Attendance

Attendance is required. Because there is no final exam, students who miss class for any reason will be required to write a two-page summary of the material covered that day.

Course Grade

The individual recitation instructors give the grades in this class, adhering to the following approximate percentages:

Schedule

Key
L = Lecture
S = Section
F = Film screening