Current
Expos 20: More Than a Game
"Shut up and dribble,” snarled a broadcaster when basketball star LeBron James voiced concerns about the competence of President Trump in 2018. The message was clear: sports and politics don’t mix. In fact, as this course explores across various media, few things in the past century have been as closely intertwined. At the same time, the relationship often appears lopsided. Politicians show little hesitation to wade into issues pertaining to athletics, but athletes—like LeBron James himself—are discouraged from airing anything resembling an opinion on matters with a wider societal bearing. Through units navigating the NFL’s suppression of concussion science, the complex relationship of race to American sports culture, and the political dynamics of consequential events within the sporting world, we will consider the following questions: what makes the world of sports such a significant setting for political activism? What authority lies in the manipulation of athletic culture by politicians? In what ways do athletes become avatars of their cultural moment, and can they ever really exist “above the fray”?
ENGL E-270: Tragic Art and the Human Experience
Why is suffering central to so much entertainment? This is a question that great artists, writers, and filmmakers have inspired their audiences to ask throughout history. In this course, we undertake a unique survey of tragic art spanning the ancient and contemporary worlds to explore the work of classic tragedians like Euripides and Henrik Ibsen, as well as their more recent counterparts in Claire Keegan, Lars von Trier, and Francis Ford Coppola. We begin from the (in)famous guidelines for tragedy demanded by Aristotle, and then move to challenge and expand them as we engage with drama, novels, and film—and their receptions—throughout the semester. During the course we consider the unique use of tragedy in service of diverse political, religious, and aesthetic agendas, while simultaneously grappling with a deceptively simple question: why can't humans bear to be happy?
