Cultures and Languages Across the Curriculum (CLAC) Classes Being offered in the spring

What is CLAC? Wesleyan University’s CLAC program is administered out of the Fries Center for Global Studies, and aims to provide students and faculty across the campus with opportunities to deepen their engagement with their subjects through the use and further development of their language and intercultural skills. CLAC courses at Wesleyan can be linked to an English-medium course or standalone, and students can earn either 0.25 or 0.5 credits depending on the nature of in-class work and of out-of-class preparation and assignments; the former are CLAC.25 and the latter are CLAC.50. Wesleyan’s CLAC program began in January of 2019 and to-date, courses have been offered in Ancient Greek, Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin), German, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Russian, and Spanish. To learn more about the CLAC Program, click here.

Time is flying and pre-registration is right around the corner! Here are some courses from our CLAC program being offered in the spring.

CGST 234/RUSS 234: Introduction to Russian and Soviet Cinema (CLAC.50) [Russian], Prof. Roman Utkin

This course provides an introduction to the history and poetics of Soviet and Russian cinema-in Russian. From the avant-garde experimentation of Lev Kuleshov, Sergei Eisenstein, and Dziga Vertov to the masterpieces of Andrei Tarkovsky, Sergei Parajanov, and Kira Muratova, the course will explore the development of Russian films as artistic medium and as national tradition. The discussion and comparative analyses of different forms and genres, including silent cinema, propaganda films, blockbusters, and auteur cinema, will be situated within the cultural, political, and aesthetic contexts of the Soviet Union and contemporary Russia. Students will learn the key works, names, events, and concepts of the Russian cinematic tradition. They will develop skills in analyzing and interpreting films and will acquire the basic critical terminology of film studies in Russian and English. They will also learn how film form and aesthetics are conditioned by technology, ideology, economics, theory, tradition, and culture. The overarching goal is to see how cinema in Russia and the Soviet Union has created and contested narratives of history and identity, how cinema has served the interest of the state, and how it has defied them. This class consists of lecture and focused discussion of films. It will be taught in Russian and is open to students who have successfully completed RUSS202, as well as to heritage and native speakers. Students can expect to practice speaking Russian and honing their writing skills.

CGST 252/CHIN 303: Chinese Calligraphy (CLAC.25)

This 0.25 CLAC course will provide students with a brief understanding of the art of Chinese calligraphy through calligraphy practice. They will learn about the characteristics of Chinese calligraphy from the “Four Treasures of the Study,” as the tools of calligraphy (writing brush, ink stick, ink stone, and paper). They will understand the development history of Chinese calligraphy from five basic scripts of Seal (zhuanshu), Clerical (lishu), Standard (kaishu), Semi-cursive (xingshu), and Cursive (caoshu). The course focuses on imitation and practice of the Standard script kaishu. Prerequisite: Current or future Chinese class students are preferred.

CGST 253/CHIN 305: East Asian Culture Through Mandopop (CLAC.50) [Chinese], Prof. Ying Jia Tan

Even after the meteoric rise of K-Pop in recent years, Mandarin Chinese language pop music, also known as Mandopop, remains a highly popular genre that influences East Asian popular culture. This course introduces students to the literary history and cultural forces that shaped Chinese popular music. The songs featured in the syllabus serve as a soundtrack to the “Introduction to History: Foundations of East Asian Cultures,” as the themes largely mirror the contents of the parent course.

CGST 333/ITAL 333: The Cosmos of Dante’s Comedy-Medieval Italian Lab (CLAC.50) [Italian], Prof. Marco Aresu

This optional lab class is dedicated to students who are taking or have taken RL&L 226 (The Cosmos of Dante’s Comedy) and want to read and discuss sections of Dante’s masterwork in Italian. The lab is designed for upper-intermediate and advanced learners of Italian, but students with reading knowledge of Italian should contact the instructor if they feel this course may be appropriate for them.

CGST 380/ARAB 380: Arabic in Translation: Arabic-English & vice versa (CLAC .50) [Arabic], Prof. Abderrahman Aissa

This course is aimed at introducing students of Arabic, who are already advanced in the Arabic language and have a decent command of it, to the art of translation–namely, translation between Arabic and English. After an overview of translation concepts and techniques, we will study and tackle samples from news media, literature, publicity announcements, novels, and a wide range of actual translation assignments. The course will be conducted in Arabic, except for the parts where English has to be used as part of the translation processes.

CGST 414/CJST 414: Israeli Cinema (CLAC 1.0) [Hebrew], Prof. Dalit Katz

This Hebrew course will be linked to the a parent film course, taught in English. This course is targeted toward students with very advanced knowledge of the Hebrew language. Students will mostly view the same films as the parent class, with special attention to the Hebrew language. We will analyze, discuss, and write on each of the films. The focus of the course will be to map the cultural and social changes in Israeli society reflected in the transformation in format and themes of Israeli films. Scholar visits will be part of the course, and students will attend cultural enrichment activities as part of the course curriculum. This course may be repeated for credit.