The seminar explores concepts and representations of melancholy in ancient and pre-modern medicine, medieval theology, psychiatry and psychoanalysis, European art since the Romantic era (painting, literature, and film), critical theory, social media, and ethnography. Course material has been chosen both for contextualization of melancholic (or depressive) condition in the history of European culture and for variety of interpretive approaches. Among major issues to be considered are the human experience of loss and the situation of the person in society.
