Dec 05, 2024  
2014-2015 Undergraduate Catalog 
    
2014-2015 Undergraduate Catalog [Not Current Academic Year. Consult with Your Academic Advisor for Your Catalog Year]

World Cultures and Literatures, B.A.


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The B.A. degree in World Cultures and Literatures is an interdisciplinary major in the department of Modern & Classical Languages. Students acquire expertise in a foreign language and cross-cultural communication skills through advanced coursework in foreign languages and world or area literary and cultural studies.

In addition to the other requirements for the Bachelor of Arts, students will complete 27 semester hours in the specific track they select. Required courses for each track are specified below.

The Bachelor of Arts in World Cultures and Literatures offers the following tracks:

  1. Ancient Studies
  2. German Studies
  3. Global Cinema Studies
  4. Francophone Cultures Studies
  5. Middle Eastern Studies
  6. Studies in Global Modernity

Majors are required to complete the sophomore level of a second foreign language (freshman level plus 2301 of a classical language for Ancient Studies track).

Majors must earn at least a 2.50 cumulative grade point average in all courses counting toward the major track requirements.

Ancient Studies Track:


  1. LATN 2302  or GREK 2302 
  2. WCL 2351 World Cultures Through Literature and the Art 
  3. 3 hours in either ARTH 3311  or ARTH 3313 
  4. 3 hours in either CLAS 4381  or CLAS 4305 
  5. WCL 4353 Frames of Modernity III: Classics and Modernity 
  6. 12 hours chosen according to the student’s declared program emphasis (with approval of WCL undergraduate director), selected from:

ARTH 2381: Classical Art

ARTH 2382: Medieval Art

ARTH 3311: Greek Art

ARTH 3313: Roman Art

CLAS 2366: Who owns Antiquity? The Battle over our Cultural Heritage

CLAS 3307: Greek and Roman Myths of Heroes

CLAS 3308: Myths and Cult of the Greek Gods

CLAS 3345: Myth and Performance in Greek Tragedy

CLAS 3366: Greek Art and Archaeology

CLAS 3371: Ancient Comedy and Its Influence

CLAS 3374: Women in the Ancient World

CLAS 3375: Roman, Jew, and Christian: The Politics and Sociology of Religion in the First Century A.D.

CLAS 3380: Epic Masculinity: Ideologies of Manhood in Ancient Epic and Modern Film

CLAS 3381: From Homer to Hollywood: Ancient Greek Themes in the Modern Cinema

CLAS 4350: Age of Augustus

CLAS 4370: Comparative Epic

CLAS 4374: Sex and Gender in Antiquity

CLAS 4375: Gender and Race in Greek Myths

ENGL 2301: Western World Literature

ENGL 2360: Western World Literature - Honors

ENGL 3300: Ancient and Classical Literature

ENGL 3302: Medieval Literature

ENGL 3309: Renaissance Drama

ENGL 3323: History of Literacy Criticism

ENGL 4360: Bible as Literature

ENGL 4366: Introduction to Folklore

ENGL 4370: Folktale

HIST 2351: Western Civilization to 1450

HIST 3379: World Civilization to c.e. 1500

WCL 3355: Women East and West: Global Representations of Female Divinities

German Studies Track:


  1. GERM 3333 , GERM 3330 , and GERM 3334 
  2. Six semester hours selected from GERM 3362 , 3363 , 3364 , 3380 , 3381 , 3382 , 3384 , 3385 , 3386 , WCL 4364  , WCL 3369, or HIST 3357 , or HIST 3358 , POLS 3324 
  3. Three semester hours selected from GERM 3331 , GERM 3332 , GERM 3397 , GERM 3329 
  4. Six semester hours of 4000-level GERM courses (taught in German), selected from:

GERM 4329: Advanced Translation

GERM 4351: German Poetry

GERM 4353: German Novella and Short Prose Forms

GERM 4354: Goethe and Schiller

GERM 4356: Romanticism

GERM 4357: German Literature 1890-1945

GERM 4358: German Literature Since 1945

GERM 4359: Germany since Reunification

GERM 4361: Advanced Writing and Reading Across Disciplines

GERM 4373: German Cultural History I: From the Beginnings to World War I

GERM 4374: German Cultural History II: The Twentieth Century

GERM 4397: Selected Topics in German Language and Literature

GERM 4370: Vienna 1900 - The Birth of the Modern

    5. WCL 4351 Frames of Modernity I 

Global Cinema Studies Track:


  1. WCL 2351 World Cultures Through Literature and Art  and WCL 2352 World Cinema 
  2. Three hours in a 4000-level capstone course, Frames of Modernity I or II (WCL 4351  or 4352 )
  3. Six hours at the 3000-level taught in a foreign language
  4. Nine hours of film courses selected from the following list:

CHNS 3350: Chinese Culture Through Films

FREN 3319: History of French Cinema

FREN 3322: Francophone African Cinema

GERM 3380: German Women Film Directors

GERM 3381: German Cinema

GERM 3382: History of German Cinema

GERM 3384: Fascism and German Cinema

GERM 3385: East German Cinema

GERM 3386: Films of Fassbinder

GERM 3387: Films of Herzog

GERM 3388: Films of Wenders

GERM 3395: Topics in German Cinema

HIST 3397: Pictures and Words: Palestine-Israel Conflict Through Film

ITAL 3306: Italian Culture Through Films

RUSS 3307: Soviet and Post-Soviet Cinema: Collapse of the Soviet Realm and Revival of National Identity

WCL 3364: World TV

WCL 3366: Latin American and Latino Film Studies

WCL 3367: National Cinema in a Global Perspective

WCL 3371: Cities in Film and the Arts

WCL 3372: Indian Film: Bollywood and Beyond

WCL 3373: Gender and Sexuality in World Film

WCL 4356: Film & Film Theory

WCL 4365: World Documentary Film

   5. Three hours selected from the following list:

COMM 2370 Introduction to Motion Pictures 

COMM 3370 History of Cinema 

SOC 3340 Sociology of Film 

ENGL 4373 Film, Text, and Politics 

ARTH 3396 Selected Topics in Critical Studies in Film and Video 

Francophone Cultures Studies Track:


  1. FREN 3313  plus additional 3 hours at the 3000-level (taught in French)
  2. WCL 2351 World Cultures Through Literature and the Arts 
  3. Three hours in a 4000-level capstone course, Frames of Modernity I or II (WCL 4351  or 4352  )
  4. Nine hours from the following list:

FREN 3362: Paris Berlin

FREN 3319: History of French Cinema

FREN 3322: Francophone African Cinema

FREN 3364: Writing Holocausts: The Literatures of Genocide

WCL 4367: Voices from Exile and Diaspora

  5. Six hours from the following list:

HIST 3336: Europe in the Age of Chivalry: The High Middle Ages 1050-1350

HIST 3352: Modern France Since 1879

HIST 3356: France and Europe, 1750-1815: Enlightenment, Revolution, and Napoleon

HIST 4338: Enlightenment Stories: The Thought and Literature of the Enlightenment

HIST 4327: Europe 1930-1945

POLS 3338: French Politics

Middle Eastern Studies Track:


  1. WCL 2351 World Cultures Through Literature and Art 
  2. Three hours in a 4000-level capstone course, Frames of Modernity I or II (WCL 4351  or 4352 )
  3. ARAB 2302  or TURK 2302 
  4. Eighteen hours selected from the following list:

ARAB 3301: Advanced Modern Standard Arabic I

ARAB 3302: Advanced Modern Standard Arabic II

ARAB 3305 or ARAB 3306: Introduction to Arabic Culture, Language, and Islam

ARAB 3312: Introduction to Arabic Literature in Translation

ARAB 3313: Qu’ran as Literature

ARAB 3314: Women and Gender in Arabic Literature

ARTH 3313: Ancient Near Eastern Art

ENGL 3365: Postcolonial Literature

FREN 3322: Francophone African Cinema

HIST 3377: The Middle Eastern from 1300 to the Present

HIST 3378: Modern Middle East

HIST 3390: Middle East: Pictures & Words

POLS 3326: Government and Politics in the Middle East

POLS 4333: Islam and Democracy

POLS 4348: Contemporary Islamic Political Thought

RELS 2330: Judaism

RELS 3350: Islam

RELS 3360: Muslim-Christian Relations

TURK 3350: Turkish and Middle Eastern Culture in Literature and Film

WCL 2380: Introduction to Jewish Studies

WCL 3340: Modernity and Rationalism in Islamic Tradition

WCL 3341: Early Islamic Society: Literature and Thought

WCL 3376: Visual Stories - Local and the Global

WCL 3377: The Modern Middle East: Literature, Politics, and Ideas

Studies in Global Modernity Track:


  1. WCL 2351 World Cultures Through Literature and Art  and WCL 2352 World Cinema 
  2. Six hours at the 3000-level in a foreign language
  3. Three hours in a 4000-level capstone course, Frames of Modernity I or II (WCL 4351  or WCL 4352 )
  4. Twelve hours courses selected from the following list:

CHNS 3350: Chinese Culture Through Films

CHNS 3352: Chinese Culture and Society Through Modern Literature

CHNS 3360: A Look into Modern China

ENGL 3365: Postcolonial Literature

FREN 3319: History of French Cinema

FREN 3322: Francophone African Cinema

FREN 3362: Paris and Berlin

GERM 3350: Understanding the 20th Century through German Culture

GERM 3362: Paris and Berlin

GERM 3364: Writing Holocausts

GERM 3380: German Women Film Directors

GERM 3382: History of German Cinema

GERM 3384: Fascism and German Cinema

GERM 3385: East German Cinema

GERM 3386: Films of Fassbinder

GERM 3387: Films of Herzog

GERM 3388: Films of Wenders

ITAL 3306: Italian Culture Through Films

ITAL 3309: Women Writers and Filmmakers in Modern Italy

ITAL 3308: Italian Heritage

ITAL 4304: Italian Culture in English Translation

RUSS 3307: Soviet and Post-Soviet Cinema: Collapse of the Soviet Realm and Revival of National Identity

VIET 3300: The Global Vietnamese Diaspora

WCL 3365: World Fiction & Reportage

WCL 3368: Pop Cultures & World Media

WCL 3369: World War I in Literature, Visual Arts, and Film

WCL 3371: Cities in Film and the Arts

WCL 3373: Gender and Sexuality in World Film

WCL 3376: Visual Stories - Local and the Global

WCL 3377: The Modern Middle East: Literature, Politics, and Ideas

WCL 3381: Global Representations of HIV/AIDS

WCL 3382: Global Queer Culture

WCL 4367: Voices from Exile and Diaspora

WCL 4378: Cultures of Dissent: A Global Perspective

WCL 4379: Critical Theory and Globalization

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