Course Descriptions

PIC 645C/PHIL 480K/AFST 480A/COLI 574I/WOMN 480K: POROSITY: Transcolonial Implosions
[JEFFNER ALLEN M 3:30-6:30]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Minute openings, space of small interstice admits passage or absorption, or expels. No absolute inside or outside, permeable, elastic, irregular, uneven interlacing fibers, encrusting, boring, ropes, balls, tubes. Pores: the effulgent emptiness, absent excess of the spacings--effacing blotting out permeable--of codes which mutate in post-, neo-, trans-colonial circulations. Passages through membranes; membranes also render closure.
How to unsettle the bundles of relations that constitute transcolonial and feminist narratives by unpredictable practices, volatile and, perhaps, intimate movements across, between, and among? If permeable, then, too, these narratives are malleable, interactive strings of relational clusters, skin(s), vinyl plasticities that scratch, oscillate, forward flare with backscrape, loop, backspin, collide: incommensurable sites.
Amid non-insular circulations and the complex diversity of interpretative pulse--a pulsing with the word, a pulsing that may take a breath if solid certainty comes to a pause, and then, still pulsing . . .. The course will begin from within these conversations.
The class will emphasize recent transcolonial transdisciplinary and mixed genre writing, artistic productions, and activist practices.

PIC 634A/ARTH 540F: Gender and Performativity
[KAREN BARZMAN W 1:10-4:10]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This seminar examines the institutions, systems of thought, and patterns of speech and behavior within which subjects negotiated gendered identity in the early modern era. "Early modern" is defined broadly, ranging from the 14th through the early 19th century. The geographic focus is also broad, including (but not necessarily limited to) Europe and the Americas. After several weeks of assigned readings and discussion, students may pursue individual areas of research or participate in a collaborative research project. Providing a common ground will be questions concerning the constitution or consolidation of the gendered subject, and the historically and culturally specific practices and institutions (e.g., familial, civic, religious, cultural) within which this process took place.

PIC 550I/COLI 574P : Reading Benjamin's Arcade's Project
[GISELA BRINKER-GABLER M 4:15-7:15]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: The rise of the metropolis may represent civilized discontent or unlimited opportunity or both. Many writers, among them Poe, Baudelaire, Joyce, Doeblin, and Barnes attempted to write their version of the metropolis. Among these writings Benjamin's Arcades Project, which has been called the urban equivalent of Freud's Interpretation of Dreams has a unique place. In it, Benjamin deciphers the 19th century "capital of the world" through what he considers its paradigmatic architectural form: the glass-vaulted, enclosed shopping passages that riddle the cityscape between the Opera and the Marais. The "hero" of the book is the French poet Baudelaire, who, according to Benjamin was the first poet to write about the city as other poets had written about nature. The Arcades is a portrait of the city that owes much to Surrealist spectacles and Proust's memory. Benjamin transforms the network of interior streets, packed with goods from "the world" into a labyrinth of subconscious desire. We will enter the "maze" of the Arcades prepared by Benjamin, his studies on surrealism and Proust.
BOOKS: Arcades Project, Harvard UP paperback; Selected Writings, vol. 2, Harvard UP.

PIC 550G/PHIL 409/550J: Nietzsche Seminar
[M.C.DILLON T R 2:50-4:15]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: The course covers major works by Nietzsche taken in historical sequence with special emphasis on themes of truth, ontology, and art. Enrollment in PHIL 409 is limited to students who have completed at least two courses in philosophy, including PHIL 202 and either PHIL 107 or PHIL 116.
Format: Lecture/discussion. Midterm exam (Phil 409 only) (1 hour), seminar presentation (Phil 550J only), final exam (2 hours), term paper (10-15 pages). Books. (Tentative, subject to revision. Nietzsche, Philosophy and Truth (ed. & trans. Breazeale), Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche (ed. Kaufmann), Nietzsche, Basic Writings of Nietzsche (ed. Kaufmann), Nietzsche, The Will to Power (trans. Kaufmann & Hollingdale).

PIC 636B/ENG 511B: Medieval Colonialisms
[MARYILYNN DESMOND]
COURSE DESCRIPTION:

PIC 604E/COLI 574G: Art and Origins
[CHRISTOPHER FYNSK W 4:40-7:40]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Still in development, this seminar will take up a traditional question in the philosophy of art concerning the origins of art and the "originary" character of art. For the latter question, the work of authors such as Benjamin, Heidegger, and Bataille (who wrote an important volume on the cave paintings at Lascaux) will be important. Freud's interest in art and archaeology will also be examined in this context. Finally, I will try to account for my particular interest in the force of some ancient works and address the question of art and "usage."

PIC 615D/ARTH 573D: Writing Transnational Space
[ANTHONY KING M 5:50-8:50]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: In this course, open to art history and other graduate students, we shall examine how the spaces of transnational culture are being written, read, and critiqued as well as imagined, built and inhabited. After more than a decade of debate, what do we know about the production and consumption of "transnational" cultures and spaces in (and out of) the so-called "global city"? Have feminist, postmodernist, poststructuralist, postcolonial or other critiques undermined or enhanced the possibilities of addressing "architecture and culture in an age of globalization"? How far, and in what ways, have the fantasies and imaginings of millenial time and global space impacted the shape, form and representations of cities and public culture worldwide? What are the historical, theoretical and empirical presuppositions behind recent texts on, e.g. "World music", "cross-cultural consumption", "the novel and the globalization of culture"? Is postcolonial criticism a critique of globalization theories or part of them? Who benefits, who suffers, from the power of the global gaze? And where is it situated?. In a world of transnational cultural flows do cultural borders exist? Are questions about identity in visual, spatial and public cultures being driven by the imperatives of a global cultural tourism? Where do such cultural issues fit in a world of grossly uneven relations of power and development? Addressing various realms of public (and material) culture - architecture, museology, music, performance, film, advertising - the course will draw on readings from an interdisciplinary range of sources.
FORMAT: The course will be run as a participatory seminar requiring regular readings, and reading reports, with the opportunity of developing papers on particular topics.

PIC 666A/COLI 574B/PHIL 550U: Freud
[BRETT LEVINSON W 12:00-3:00]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This class will conduct an extensive investigation of Freud. We will commence with essays such as "Mourning and Melancholy," "On Narcissism," "Femininity," "The Unconscious." We will then study Interpretation of Dreams, Civilization and its Discontents, Moses and Monotheism, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Three Essays on Sexuality.

PIC 622C/COLI 691A/LA&C 647T: Latin American Philosophy II: Philosophy and Liberation, Latin American Subaltern Studies.
[MARIA LUGONES M 1:15-4:15]
COURSE DESCRIPTION

PIC 604D/ARTH 571A: Urban Studies and the Form of the City
[THOMAS McDONOUGH M 9:40-12:40]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course surveys classic writings on the culture of cities, with a special focus on their relation to architectural and urban design. These readings fall into five broad thematic categories: 1) the late-19th century "discovery" of the city as a particular form of culture and explorations of the autonomy of urban life in the work of historians and economists like Jakob Burckhardt and Max Weber; 2) the psychology of urban crowds and crowding in Gustave LeBon, Georg Simmel, and Walter Benjamin; 3) the Chicago School and the mapping of city space; 4) Marxist theories of the city (Manuel Castells, Henri Lefebvre, David Harvey); and 5) dramaturgical theories of urban culture which address the importance of ritual and ceremony in the city (Richard Sennett, Jane Jacobs, Joseph Rykwert). Throughout our general aim is to develop a solid grounding in urban studies while relating these theories to the architectural and urban design of cities.

PIC 620A/AFST 484B/COLI 531N/SOC 690G: Africa and Modernity
[NKIRU NZEGWU M 9:40-12:40]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course critically explores the intersection of Africa and modernity. It begins by noting that a foundational limitation of writings on the subject is that they collapse modernity and European such that they confront us with a set of foundational questions that go to the character of modernity and cross-cultural engagement. Is modernity an exclusively European product and discourse? If it is indelibly European and riddled with Eurocentric assumptions, how then do we talk about modernity in Africa without eliminating the agency, originality and creative autonomy of Africans? For instance, how does Nigeria's modernity differ from that of Europe? Would taking Europe as a reference frame not amount to embarking on a project of colonialism? In this course we will clarify the nature of the concept to highlight the centrality of time, and to investigate the legitimacy of standard theoretical conventions that treat modernity as Euromodernity.

PIC 606J/AFST 483CCOLI 574T/ENG 564U: Comparative Epic Poetry
[ISIDORE OKPEWHO TR 4:25-5:50]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Reading of folk stories from various cultures that center around heroes, so as to see not only what such stories (generally called "epics") have in common, but also what they tell us about the societies they come from. Begins with texts from the better-known traditions: The Epic of Gilgamesh (Sumeria, in present-day Iraq), The Iliad (ancient Greece) and Beowulf (Anglo-Saxon Britain). Concludes with two texts Sunjata and The Ozidi Saga from African oral tradition that are gaining attention in studies of world literature. Open only to seniors. A few juniors may be admitted with consent of instructor.
Format: After a few introductory lectures on the nature of oral epic and aspects of its performance, the texts are shared out among students to lead the class in open discussion.

PIC 623C/HIST 501D: Making of the African Atlantic World
[TIFFANY PATTERSON R 6:30-9:30]
COURSE DESCRIPTION:This course is designed to introduce students to the historical literature on the formation of the African Diaspora in the Atlantic world. Briefly focusing on slavery and the slave trade as the source of the modern diaspora, the course examines the post-emancipation period to the 1960s highlighting the historical forces that continued to shape the making of an African Diaspora. The themes of defining freedom, citizenship, labor struggles, protest movements, cultural autonomy, empire, colonialism, migration, and rebellion shape the direction of the course. Further, the course will be anchored around the conceptual issues of race and racism, gender, class, and ethnicity and ideologies of Black Nationalism, pan-africanism, Black Marxism, and other political, cultural, social philosophies. Though the weight of the course will be on the United States, a comparative approach will connect the African American experience to Africa, Europe, the Americas and Asia. This course is a mere introduction to the African experience in the Atlantic world. Students are expected to focus on historical questions, methods and analytical frameworks and use this course as an opportunity to shape their own scholarly concerns.
Readings: TBA

PIC 608D/PHIL 480J/608L/COLI 608D: Giving, Betraying, Forgiving
[STEPHEN DAVID ROSS M W 1:10-3:20]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This is a course tracing ideas and practices related to gifts and giving in different places, times, and cultures. Gifts, generosity, giving, and forgiving in contrast with owning, having, possessing, exchanging, taking, and belonging. The meaning and necessity of the genitive: mine, yours, his, hers, ours, theirs. The meaning and possibility of disowning the genitive: hospitality, generosity, giving, caring. The meaning and necessity of ownership and property. Eating, consuming, stockpiling, acquiring, accumulating, storing, circulating, exchanging animate and inanimate things. Possessing rights to human beings' lives and activities (women, children, kin, slaves, servants, employees); having selves, autonomy, agency, rights; bodies, identities, worlds; possessing and exchanging animals, plants, land, territory, air, water, food; works of art, writings, ideas, artifacts, tools, institutions, technology, wealth. Capitalism, socialism, anarchism. Being as giving and for giving. The generosity of love and care. Works of art, images, aesthetics, language, poetry as gifts. Giving as extravagance, exuberance. Giving as forgiving. Forgiveness and betrayal. Trauma and forgiveness. For giving as ethics and politics. Aesthetics as for giving.
A recurrent theme of modern life and throughout Western history is how much of that life is linked with owning and having, not only properties and possessions, but knowledge, identities, selves, social relationships, rights, and duties. In contrast with and alongside such possessive economies are others: gift economies emphasizing hospitality; exchange economies emphasizing substitutability, trade, and mobility; ecological economies emphasizing sustainability; exuberant economies emphasizing extravagance and abundance. Such alternative economies have been the basis for alternative views of ethics and politics, linking social responsibilities with generosity, hospitality, and care; promoting inclusiveness in ethics, general as well as restricted economies.
Gift economies are found throughout the world in tribal, aboriginal, indigenous, kinship societies where human relationships to others and to things define personal and social identities. Throughout the world such economies have marked differences in social status, especially between men and women. Many environmental writers have promoted sustainable economies as an alternative to environmental destruction. Many contemporary writers have explored hospitality and giving as alternatives to a possessive economy, exploring their possibilities for human life, relations to others, for ethics and politics, and their implications in relation to art. Closely related to these possibilities are themes of betrayal and forgiveness in relation to different meanings of transgression and in response to memory and trauma, recurrent motifs of politics and identity.
Primary Readings: Mauss (The Gift), Rubin, Gilligan, Curtin, Nietzsche, Clément, Heidegger, Irigaray, Bataille, Hirschon, Wilmsen, Levinas (Totality and Infinity), Lyotard, Berry, Brueggemann, Derrida Given Time, The Gift of Death, Of Hospitality, Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness), Buddhism

PIC 606K/ENG 673D: American Novel and the Frontier
[WILLIAM SPANOS]
COURSE DESCRIPTION

PIC 666B/ARTH 451B /503C/ COLI 531T/ENG 450N: Meaning and Melancholia
[JOHN TAGG T 4:25-7:25]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: The idea of melancholia has a long history in the West, going back to Aristotelian conceptions of the humors and of black bile, and to medieval theological notions of acedia--not simply sloth, but the revelatory spiritual torpor of one who confronts the abyss between religious desire and its unattainable object. At play, therefore, from the beginning, have been not only questions of subjectivity, but also the limits of knowledge, language and meaning. It is in this same nexus that the concept of melancholy has continued to operate in more contemporary discussions. For Freud, melancholy is the failure of mourning and of the return of the subject to the institutions of normalization. For Kristeva, however, melancholy touches a relation to language and to a modification of signifying bonds whose dissociation of form is implicated in a fragmentation of the social fabric but also points to the ambivalent project of modernism. A similar emphasis on the relation of melancholy and meaning is crucial for Walter Benjamin, for whom melancholy is linked to an epochal shift in modes of representation and to the allegorical impulse characteristic of the Baroque. From here, we might be led on to Agamben's meditation on the phantasm of the unattainable and the problem of representation, to De Man's allegories of reading, to Judith Butler's demand for rights of mourning, or to Derrida's unexpected commentary on the cryptic and the crypt. The point in following such paths will not only be to trace the genealogy of an idea and what is staked around it, but to consider what, in particular historical conjunctions, may be risked by practices of representation that will not release attachment to the object, that resist the arrival of meaning and mourn a real that does not lend itself to representation. Are such practices marks of failure or of resistance? What could be served by a resistance that denies all ends? I have been exploring these questions in relation to certain practices of photography, that melancholy machinery that takes the living thing, even as it announces a death to come and commits it to a tomb of memory. The seminar, however, will invite the analysis of other practices and other concrete instances, in other domains. It will be conducted as a structured reading group whose emphasis will be on the close analysis of specific texts that will, however, be located in an unfolding argument, from week to week. No prior knowledge of the literature or terminology will be assumed, but a serious commitment to the reading program will be essential. In addition to the weekly readings and any presentations participants may be asked to make, seminar members will produce a research paper on an agreed topic closely related to the seminar, for presentation in an end of semester mini conference.

PIC 623B/AFST 445/PLSC 445: Comparative Black Political Thought
[DARRYL THOMAS T R 4:25-5:50]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Course will focus on historical and contemporary theories, antisystemic movements, and social forces in Africa and the African Diaspora that have fostered anti-systemic challenges to the legacies of slavery, colonialism, racism, sexism, and capitalism in the Black World. We will examine how a system of Global Apartheid accompanied Africa and the African Diaspora's incorporation into the capitalist world system through the instrumentality of racial capitalism. Course will compare and contrast the divergent forms that Global Apartheid has taken across space and time. Here, we examine how it became embedded into divergent models of capital accumulation ranging 'from the Atlantic slave trade,' various forms of coercive labor practices, and the plantation economies throughout the Third World. This course will critically analyze the development of Pan-Africanism, divergent forms of African and African Diaspora Marxism, feminism, nationalism, from a comparative theoretical framework. We will engage the modernist, postmodernist, poststructuralist, Marxist, neo-Marxist, feminist, womanist, and Afrocentrist perspectives.
Format: Requirements: comparative book report; two seminar papers of 12-15 pages each; one reaction paper

PIC 550H/PHIL 405/544B: Kant as Enlightenment Philosopher
[MELISSA ZINKIN W 3:30-6:30, 4:30-7:30 or 5:00-8:00]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Kant is often called the philosopher of the enlightenment. In this class, we will study how Kant was a philosopher "of his time" in terms of how he was influenced by, or responded to, the economic, political, religious situation of the late eighteenth century. We will focus on Kant's concepts of autonomy, humanity, evil, progress and enlightenment. The course will be a close reading of Kant's Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, Metaphysics of Morals, Religion within the Bounds of Reason Alone, and his writings on history. Supplementary texts from, among others, Adam Smith, Rousseau, Foucault, Wood, Korsgaard.

Other Semester Offerings