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mals@wfu.edu |
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758-4669 |
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MALS,
PO 6103
Wake
Forest University
Winston-Salem, NC 27109 |
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Summer 2004 Courses
MLS 708 The Culture & History of Vienna (Travel Course)
From Hapsburgs to Hitler to the Sound of Music and beyond, this course will explore Austrian historical and cultural developments of the modern era. Within this context, we will also explore representative works of Austrian music, art, architecture and literature as expressions of or responses to cultural-historical events. Readings and discussion will be augmented by field trips to the Schoenbrunn Palace, the Kahlenberg Mountain, the Sigmund Freud Museum, the Arnold Schoenberg Center, the Army History Museum, the historic Ring Boulevard, the Vienna Secession (Gustav Klimt), the Jewish Museum, musical performances, and of course, coffee houses. Our task will be to trace the influence and trajectory of competing facets of Austria’s historical and cultural legacy as a key to understanding and appreciating the complexities and contradictions of contemporary Austria. What made Austrian culture so great? What made Hitler to popular in the land of Mozart? Why are there so many great cafés in Vienna? Why is the Sound of Music tour the most popular tour in Austria? How is the historic Ring Boulevard like a Hollywood set? Come to Vienna for two weeks and find out!
MLS 714 Hearing the Divine Voice: Pilgrimage & The Act of Reading
An introduction to a specific contemplative practice, the lectio divina, or the reading of sacred texts practiced in Western monastic tradition. With a special focus on Spain, this course will explore how this practice developed in the Middle Ages and influenced intellectual life and non-religious literary creation up until the 20th century. The guiding thread will be the theme of pilgrimage and its power of transformation or conversion, from John Ford’s Stagecoach to Saint James of Compostela to the reading of a book, the contemplation of an altarpiece or El Greco’s paintings. The course will have a “contemplative” component. Students will practice lectio divina and discuss how this method of reading the Scriptures applies to literary reading and the visual arts. This component pays particular attention to the intimate encounter with the text, the moment when the reader experiences an awakening as a result of that encounter. In line with the overall theme of “allowing oneself to be spoken to,” the course will also identify some of the ways in which the practice of contemplation may be of practical value to contemporary readers from any tradition.
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