Spring 2009 Course Offerings

ECS 330/COM 321
Communication and the Arts:  Media and Literature
Professor Eileen Reeves
MW  11:00 am – 12:20

This course examines the multiple connections of print journalism and the novel.  Our particular focus will be the relationship of 20th-century discussions of the responsibilities, political influence, and cultural impact of the media to the various images of the bumbling journalists, self-appointed reporters, and eventual bloggers in modern and (mostly) European literature.

ECS 340/COM 340
Literature and Photography
Professor Eduardo Cadava
T 7:30 pm – 10:20

Since its advent in the nineteenth century, photography has been a privileged figure in literature’s efforts to reflect upon its own modes of representation.  This seminar will trace the history of the rapport between literature and photography by looking closely at a number of literary and theoretical texts that differently address questions central to both literature and photography:  questions about the nature of representation, reproduction, memory and forgetting, history, images, perception, and knowledge.

ECS 450/ART 450
Professor Bridget Alsdorf
M 1:30 pm – 4:20

Self and Society in 19th-century French Painting:  The 19th century saw the rise of modern “individualism,” in the arts no less than in other areas of society.  This seminar will investigate how this turn towards the self was made manifest in painting, while also attending to the ways artists resisted isolation and narcissism in their work.  Artists will include David, Boilly, Ingres, Courbet, Fantin-Latour, Manet, Degas, and others.  Topics will include self-portraiture, group portraiture, the representation of artistic communities and social networks, and the artist’s studio as a space of both individual privacy and sociability.

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Program in European Cultural Studies
Princeton University
Humanities Programs Building, Room 207, Princeton, NJ 08544
Director: Eileen Reeves (ereeves@princeton.edu)
Program Manager: Peggy Reilly (mjreilly@princeton.edu)
609-258-4713 -- fax 609-258-6866