PAST COURSES OFFERED BY THE CENTER FOR DISCIPLINARY INNOVATION
2024-25
Adaptation Laboratory: Staging Berlin at Court Theatre 
David Levin (Germanic Studies, Theater & Performance Studies, and Cinema & Media Studies) and Mickle Maher (Theater & Performance Studies)
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Black Game Theory 
Patrick Jagoda (Cinema & Media Studies, English Language & Literature ) and Ashlyn Sparrow (Weston Game Lab)
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Zionism and Culture, 1881 to the Present 
Na’ama Rokem (Middle Eastern Studies, Comparative Literature) and Kenneth Moss (History)
2023-24
Insect Media
Chelsea Foxwell (Art History) and Thomas Lamarre (Cinema & Media Studies)
​
New Perspectives on Language Emergence
Diane Brentari (Linguistics) and Terra Edwards (Anthropology)
2022-23
Creations: The Popol Vuh and Paradise Lost
Timothy Harrison (English Language & Literature) and Edgar Garcia (English Language & Literature)​
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Opera Without Borders
Martha Feldman (Music) and Judith Zeitlin (East Asian Languages & Civilizations)
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Politics and Cinema Under Authority
Maria Belodubrovskaya (Cinema & Media Studies) and Monika Nalepa (Political Science)
Postcolonial and Decolonial History and Theory
Rochona Majumdar (South Asian Languages & Civilizations) and Lisa Wedeen (Political Science)
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(Re)Orienting Performance Studies: East Asia as Method
Ariel Fox (East Asian Languages & Civilizations) and Melissa Van Wyk (East Asian Languages & Civilizations)
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Virtual Ethnography: Encounters in Mediation
Thomas Lamarre (Cinema & Media Studies) and Michael Fisch (Anthropology)
2021-22
Ekphrasis: Description and Imagination in Art and Religion
Françoise Meltzer (Comparative Literature) and JaÅ› Elsner (Divinity)
Medical Knowledge in Early Modern Japan and China: History/Literature
Judith Zeitlin (East Asian Languages & Civilizations) and Susan Burns (History)
2020-21
Collapse: The End of the Soviet Empire
Leah Feldman (Comparative Literature
) and Faith Hillis (History)
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The Return of Migration: Mobility and the New Empiricism
James Osborne (Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations) and Catherine Kearns (Classics)
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The Sacred Gaze: Beholding as a Spiritual Exercise in the European
Artistic Traditions
Jaś Elsner (Divinity) and Richard Neer (Art History)​​
2019-20
Cinema Without an Archive
offered by Allyson Nadia Field (Cinema & Media Studies) and Ghenwa Hayek (Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations)
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Journeys Real and Virtual. Travel in the Pre-modern Mediterranean
offered by Niall Atkinson (Art History) and Karin Krause (Divinity School)
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Politics of Media: From the Culture Industry to Google Brain
offered by Patrick Jagoda (Cinema & Media Studies) and Kristen Schilt (Sociology)
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Practices of Classicism in the French Seventeenth Century
offered by Larry Norman (Romance Languages & Literatures) and Richard Neer (Art History and Cinema & Media Studies)
Violence, Trauma, Repair
offered by Sonali Thakkar (English Language & Literature) and Natacha Nsabimana (Anthropology)
2018-19
The Global Plantation
offered by Christopher Taylor (English Language & Literature) and Adom Getachew (Political Science)
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Opera and Film: China / Europe
offered by Martha Feldman (Music) and Judith Zeitlin (East Asian Languages & Civilizations)
​
Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung in Performance: Siegfried
offered by David Levin (Germanic Studies) and Steven Rings (Music)
2017-18
The Art of Healing: Medical Aesthetics in Russia & the U.S.
offered by William Nickell (Slavic Languages & Literatures) and Michael David (Medical School)
Destruction of Images, Books, and Artifacts in Europe and South Asia
offered by Olga Solovieva (Comparative Literature) and Tyler Williams (South Asian Languages & Civilizations)
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Exploratory Translation
offered by Haun Saussy (Comparative Literature) and Jennifer Scappettone (English Language & Literature)
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From Baroque to Neo-Baroque
offered by Rachel Galvin (English Language & Literature) and Miguel Martinez (Romance Languages & Literatures)
Guillotine/Barricade: Figures of History Across Media
offered by Jennifer Wild (Cinema & Media Studies) and James Leo Cahill (University of Toronto)
​​
The Mediterranean Sea in Antiquity: Imperial Connections
offered by James Osborne (Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations) and Catherine Kearns (Classics)
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Phaedras Compared: Adaptation, Gender, Tragic Form
offered by Larry Norman (Romance Languages & Literatures) and David Wray (Classics)​​
2016-17
A Global Sonic History in 30 Objects
offered by Philip Bohlman (Music) and Lars-Christian Koch (University of Berlin)
Algorithms and Aesthetics
offered by Sean Keller (IIT College of Architecture)
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The Debt Drive: Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, Neoliberalism
offered by Eric Santner (Germanic Studies) and Aaron Schuster (Sandberg Institute, Amsterdam)
The Discovery of Paganism
offered by Clifford Ando (Classics) and Claudia Brittenham (Art History)
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Reason and Religion
offered by Shadi Bartsch-Zimmer (Classics) and Robert Richards (History)
Ruins
offered by Jas’ Elsner (Divinity and Art History) and Françoise Meltzer (Comparative Literature)
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Women's Rights, Cultural Nationalism, Moral Panics: Africa and Indiaoffered by Rochona Majumdar (South Asian Languages & Civilizations) and Jennifer Cole (Comparative Human Development)
2015-16
Color & Culture in Japan & Beyond: An Interdisciplinary Approach
offered by Chelsea Foxwell (Art History) and Henry Smith (Columbia University)
​
Data Visualization: Aesthetics, Intent, and Practice
offered by Jason Salavon (Visual Arts) and Gordon Kindlmann (Computer Science)
Enslavement and Performativity in Comparative Perspective
offered by Agnes Lugo-Ortiz (Romance Languages & Literatures) and Reginald Jackson (University of Michigan)
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Nomads, Networks, and Political Complexity in the Ancient Near East
offered by Richard Payne (Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations) and Emily Hammer (Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations)
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Philology as a Way of Life: Humanism and the Classics
offered by Rocco Rubini (Romance Languages & Literatures) and Boris Maslov (Comparative Literature)
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Reproduction/Reproduction: A Context for Dante
offered by Carlo Ginzburg (UCLA) & Justin Steinberg (Romance Languages & Literatures)
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Writing Images / Picturing Words
offered by Srikanth Reddy (English) and Jessica Stockholder (Visual Arts)
2014-15
Colonial and Postcolonial Intimacies: African, Indian and European Encounters
offered by Rochona Majumdar (South Asian Languages & Civilizations) and Jennifer Cole (Comparative Human Development)
Melodrama Across Media
offered by James Chandler (English) and Martha Feldman (Music)
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Spectacle and Surveillance
offered by W.J.T. Mitchell (English) and Bernard Harcourt (Columbia University)
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Time Out of Mind: Arts and Sciences of Material Duration
offered by Timothy Campbell (English) and Matthew Hunter (McGill University)
2013-14
Anxiety
offered by Malynne Sternstein (Slavic Languages & Literatures) and Anne Flannery (Newberry Library, Digital Initiatives)
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Avarice, After All
offered by Eric Santner (Germanic Studies) and Mladen Dolar (University of Ljubljana)
Historical Semantics and Legal Interpretation: Questions and Methods
offered by Jason Merchant (Linguistics) and Alison LaCroix (Law)
​​
Network Aesthetics | Network Cultures
offered by Patrick Jagoda (English) and Eivind Røssaak (National Library of Norway)
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Network Analysis, Literary Criticism, and the Digital Humanities
offered by Hoyt Long (East Asian Languages & Civilizations) and Richard Jean So (English)
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Technologies of Visualization: Florence Then and Now
offered by Lawrence Rothfield (Comparative Literature) and Niall Atkinson (Art History​
2012-13
Do Ideas Evolve?
offered by James Evans (Sociology) & Jacob Foster (postdoc)
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Gesture, Sign and Language
offered by Diane Brentari (Linguistics) and Susan Goldin-Meadow (Psychology)
The Literature of Empire, 1750-1900
offered by James Chandler (English) and Jennifer Pitts (Political Science)
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Love, Capital and Conjugality in Africa and Indiaoffered by Rochona Majumdar (South Asian Languages & Civilizations) and Jennifer Cole (Comparative Human Development)
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Philosophy and the Poetics of Presence in Postwar France
offered by Alison James (Romance Languages & Literatures) and Mark Payne (Classics)
Pindar: Ritual, Poetics, Monuments
offered by Richard Neer (Art History and Cinema & Media Studies) & Boris Maslov (Comparative Literature)
2011-12
Bilingualism: cognition, language, literature, and culture
offered by Anastasia Giannakidou (Linguistics) and Na'ama Rokem (Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations)
Civil War in Lucan and Flaubert: Literature, History, Theology
offered by Michele Lowrie (Classics) and Barbara Vinken (Ludwig-Maximilians-University)
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'Other-speech' and 'Visible words': Allegory, the allegorical, and allegoresis before modernity
offered by Daisy Delogu (Romance Languages & Literatures) and Aden Kumler (Art History)
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Postcolonial Intersections: The Middle East and South Asia
offered by Leela Gandhi (English) and Lisa Wedeen (Political Science)
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Suspended Between Worlds: Crisis, Displacement, and Disorientation Around 1948
offered by Deborah Nelson (English) and James Sparrow (History)
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Vision and Communism
offered by Robert Bird (Slavic Languages & Literatures) and Matthew Jesse Jackson (Art History)
2010-11
Climate and History
offered by Dipesh Chakrabarty (South Asian Languages and Civilizations & History) and Fredrik Albritton Jonsson (History)
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Improvisation as a Way of Life
offered by Arnold Davidson (Philosophy & Comparative Literature) and George Lewis (Columbia University)
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Literature, History, and Science: 1750-1900
offered by Alison Winter (History) and James Chandler (English Language and Literature)
Revolutionary Culture in Eighteenth-Century France and America
offered by Eric Slauter (English) and Paul Cheney (History)
Same-Sex Love and Desire in Indic Literatures: Problems and Approaches
offered by Leela Gandhi (English) and Ruth Vanita (University of Montana)
​Seeing Madness: Mental Illness and Visual Culture
offered by Françoise Meltzer (Romance Languages & Literatures) and W.J.T. Mitchell (English and Art History)​
2009-10
Arabesque Narrative: A Hybrid Form of the Imaginary
offered by David Wellbery (Germanic Studies) and Ralph Ubl (Visual Arts & Social Thought)
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Cultural Consequences of Colonization
offered by Salikoko Mufwene (Linguistics) and Dain Borges (History)
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Growth and institutions in the Economy of the ancient World
offered by Alain Bresson (Classics) and François Velde (Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago)
Perception and Understanding of Multimedia
offered by Berthold Hoeckner (Music) and Howard Nusbaum (Psychology)
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Race, Media, and Visual Culture
offered by W.J.T. Mitchell (English & Art History) and Darby English (Art History)
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Seeing / Writing the Everyday in 20th-Century France
offered by Alison James (Romance Languages & Literatures) and Jennifer Wild (Cinema & Media Studies)​
2008-09
Composing Humans, 1760-1840
offered by James Chandler (English) and Martha Feldman (Music)
Digitally Assisted Text Analysis
offered by Helma Dik (Classics) and Martin Mueller (Northwestern University, English & Classics)
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The Noise of the Imperial City
offered by Lars-Christian Koch (Cologne University, Ethnomusicology) and Philip Bohlman (Music)
Poems and Songs
offered by Travis Jackson (Music) and Robert von Hallberg (Comparative Literature)
Translating Theory
offered by Robert Bird (Slavic Languages & Literatures) and Loren Kruger (Comparative Literature)
2007-08
Love's Books, Love's Looks: Textual and Visual Perspectives on the Roman de la Rose
offered by Daisy Delogu (Romance Languages & Literatures) and Aden Kumler (Art History)