Course Descriptions
PIC
280A - SUFISM, ORIENTAL MYSTICISM, NEW SPIRITUALITY
Majid Mohammadi
The course provides general topics and core readings in Sufism and
oriental mysticism, including some items that form the historical and
theoretical bases of oriental spirituality. This course is to explore
one of the areas that it is not publicly well known in the U.S.
compared to political Islam, Islamic jurisprudence, and Islamic
philosophy. Hallaj, Ibn-e `Arabi, Rumi, Hafez, Ghazzali, Ruzbihan Baqli
and Sohravardi are the main figures that we will discuss but the focus
will be on Rumi and his heritage. The interaction of Islamic
jurisprudence and Islamic philosophy on the one hand and Sufism on the
other will be studied. The terms and concepts of Sufi discourse, its
specific interpretation of Islamic texts, forms and methods used for
observations, practices, disciplines and organizations, and
dissemination of mystical ideas and ceremonies will be investigated. We
will also chart the evolution of Sufism from personal spiritual
practice and experience to the establishment of mystical brotherhoods
that are one of the prominent forms of Islamic communities all around
the world..
PIC 280B - INTRO IRAN'S HISTORY AND
CULTURE
Majid Mohammadi
Iran
has played a vital role in the development of the cultures of
Mediterranean Sea and the greater Middle East or, in other words, the
Near East and North Africa. In the north, while fighting the Greeks,
Persia contributed to the rise of a number of intellectuals in the
region of present-day southwestern Turkey. In the south, for over 200
years Persia expanded Egyptian trade as far as India. In the center,
Persia empowered the Phoenicians to control the Mediterranean Sea
routes all the way to Gibraltar. Iranians contributed in establishing
Shi`ite Islam when Arabs conquered Persian Empire. This course in its
first weeks studies these developments in the context of the growth of
the empires of the Achaemenians and the Sassanians. As an introduction
to Iran's history and culture, this course will examine Iran's history
and culture for the last 25 centuries, with reflection on the
determinative ideas in Iranian society and culture, her internal
dynamics, the role of Iranians in the rise of Islamic civilization, the
exchanges between Iran and the West, and more. We will also discuss
briefly how Iran has affected the broader Middle East.
PIC 280C - FEMINISM GONE WILD: RACE, GENDER, SEX, BODY
Nontsasa Nako
From the ditzy world of Ally McBeal, the "sexual revolution" of Sex and
the City, to the "raunch culture" of Girls Gone Wild, it would seem
that women's liberation, at least in the U.S. context, pivots around
bodily displays, sexual voracity and conspicuous consumption. In this
configuration, what determines identity and social mobility is the
market, and to think that it¿s gender, race, location, class
and sexuality is outdated. If these three aforementioned "cultural
moments" are anything to go by, how a woman clothes, controls, uses her
body, is strictly her prerogative, and capital, in this
über-individualistic context is the only criterion in social
categorization. However, third world immigration to the U.S., and U.S.
intervention in other nations, particularly the Middle East, troubles
this view and leads us to ask what gets left out of these popular
cultural representations. This course will use various texts, from
transnational feminism, sexual and identity politics to analyze the
racial, heteronormative and sexual hegemony that undergirds U.S.
popular cultural representations. We will examine a variety of texts
(i.e., books, films, television clips, adverts, newspapers, music and
the like) to chart the way popular culture joins hegemonic discourse to
continue gender, racial and sexual stereotyping of those that are
considered outside the mainstream. We will discuss a wide range of
issues from cultural dress codes, body modification ¿
augmentation, scarification, piercing, etc. ¿ and any other
cultural representations that students want to raise, to investigate
the way race and gender, and particularly the body, is read and
interpreted in the U.S. and how these interpretations tie in with
political discourses and overall State actions.
Fall 2007
PIC 280D - EXISTENTIAL EASE AND DISEASE
Cecile Lawrence
Comparing ideas and beliefs about health, illness and healing within
and across selected geographical areas around the world, we will focus
on how people make meaning out of these experiences. We will look at
non-Western approaches to medicine in conjunction with Western
approaches. Trying to understand the reason for the relatively rapid
rise and dominance of Western medicine, we will use a pluralistic
perspective in thinking about the human body emphasizing the person
with that body and its ailments. Looking at the sites of gender and
race will be necessary. We will look at critical essays, fiction,
poetry, visual art and film in the process of investigating the human
experience with illness across cultures..
Fall 2007
PIC 280E - INTRO TO AFRICANA PHILOSOPHY
Adeolu Ademoyo
The Africana philosophy and intellectual traditions are basically
humanistic, which privilege the human subject in society as the central
focus of philosophical engagement. With a focus on African, Caribbean
and black American philosophers this course introduces students to key
ideas in Africana philosophy (Africa, Caribbean and black America) that
respond to our contemporary world. These ideas center on the Africana
conception of person, society, community, epistemology, metaphysics,
gender relations, beauty and the art. They raise the following sorts of
questions: what is the nature of the human subject and the community?
In what ways does the Africana conception of freedom and
responsibility, human person respond to the prevailing social
pessimism, alienation, evil, racism and terror in our contemporary
political, social and cultural life? How does the Africana conception
of person, history and culture help explain globalization and perhaps
resist it? In what ways do African, Africana womanism answer to or fail
to answer questions of gender equity, and bring back the family in our
contemporary cultural life? Readings will be drawn from the history and
contemporary Africana philosophy, and will include the works of Cheikh
Anta Diop, Nawal El Sadaawi, Bell Hooks, Wiredu, Pamela Yaa Asantewaa
Reed, Nzegwu, Hallen, Oyeronke Oyewumi, Gyekye, Soyinka, Lewis Gordon,
Du Bois, Anthony Bogues, and others. The course encourages students to
formulate their own ideas, and to think critically about their own
ideas, experiences, environment and society.
PIC 280F -
INSTITUTIONALIZED MEMORY
Susanna Drbal
Comparing ideas and beliefs about health, illness and healing within
and across selected geographical areas around the world, we will focus
on how people make meaning out of these experiences. We will look at
non-Western approaches to medicine in conjunction with Western
approaches. Trying to understand the reason for the relatively rapid
rise and dominance of Western medicine, we will use a pluralistic
perspective in thinking about the human body emphasizing the person
with that body and its ailments. Looking at the sites of gender and
race will be necessary. We will look at critical essays, fiction,
poetry, visual art and film in the process of investigating the human
experience with illness across cultures..
PIC
280G - RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CULTURE AND POLITICS
What is the nature of the relationship between
culture and politics? Some philosophers believe that violence is an
inevitable part of the "Human Condition," and that cultures should
reflect that condition, while others believe that artists should strive
to provide more than merely catharsis or entertainment and should
strive to reflect the political issues of a given time. This
introductory course will serve to allow students the chance to
understand the various possibilities of how art and culture exists
within the nexus of politics.
PIC 504
- ART, INTERPRETATION, CULTURE
Stephen David Ross
A course concerned with art in relation to lived experience and its
surroundings, especially with (1) possibilities of developing a general
understanding of art and the limits of any such understanding; (2)
ethical political issues pertaining to art and aesthetics; (3)
relations between art and truth, art and nature, art and philosophy,
aesthetics, ethics, and politics; (4) images, figures, sounds, stories,
gestures, performances in human experience: the cacophony of the world
as aesthetic phenomenon; (5) the world as image, the expressivity of
things, the irrepressibility of mimêsis, poiêsis,
aisthêsis, catachrêsis. The course will trace
important historical and contemporary European writings, supplemented
by materials from other traditions, together with recent discussions
that confront the tradition in the names of feminism, postmodernism,
poststructuralism, multiculturalism, postcolonialism, environmental
aesthetics, and quantum aesthetics. Students are responsible for 15
minute presentations initiating small group discussions, raising
questions rather than supporting theses. At least one such presentation
is required at each discussion. Students are also responsible for
30-minute presentations at a class miniconference at the end of the
semester. Each presentation is to employ and present images from the
following sensory or expressive modalities and media: sight, hearing,
touch, taste, smell; painting, sculpture, music, drama, dance, film,
photography, dress, body ornamentation; images, sounds, aromas,
textures; etc..
PIC
550C - COMMUNIST ONTOLOGY
William Haver
This seminar seeks to elaborate a single
question: what is at stake in Marx's concept of production and labor?
Let us accept as a provocation that the stakes are nothing less than
something we might nickname communist ontology, in which a thought of
the common requires a radical philosophical and political revision of
the concept of being. We pursue this provocation through a reading of
Nishida Kitaro's specifically philosophical engagement with Marx in
essays written in the 1930s and 1940s on active intuition (koiteki
chokkan), human being (ningenteki sonzai), the philosophy of praxis
(jissen tetsugaku), and poiesis and praxis (poieshisu to purakushisu).
Translations will be provided.
PIC 606T - THE LITERARY ABSOLUTE
Gisela Brinkergabler
A study of the emergence of Romantic
philosophy and the modern concept of literature around 1800, and its
connection with modern literary theory and some leading issues in
current critical theory. The focus will be (1) on distinguishing
Romantic philosophy from classical German idealism by Investigating
Kant and post-Kantian philosophy, (2) on examining the Jena Romantics
"fragmentary," allegorical and reflexive model of literature
(literature as the production of its own theory), (3) on a critique of
the aesthetic and epistemological consequences of romantic thought,
with special attention to irony. The analysis of key works of the
period will be combined with a study of Lacoue-Labarthe's/Nancy's and
others more recent inquiries into the relations between this early
conception of modern philosophy and literature and current
literary-critical and theoretical practices. Included will be texts by
Kant, Fichte, Schelling, F. Schlegel, Novalis, Hölderlin,
Coleridge, Wordsworth.
PIC
608U - COLONIAL GENDER AND SEXUALITY
Maria Lugones
PIC
608Z - URBAN SPACE AND SOCIETY
Thomas McDonough
This seminar relates
the spaces of the modern city to its social life, exploring six
conditions of urban space: the positive aspects of density; live public
space; the distinction between borders and boundaries; perversions of
security; monotony and cloning; and complexity and mixed use. Each of
these physical conditions involves sociological analyses and debates
about crowding, impersonality and community, segregation, the
operations of power, networks and personal freedom in the city.
PIC
612B - TRANSLATION WORKSHOP: LITERARY
Rosemary Arrojo
Specialized workshop
training students to translate literary works from foreign language to
English. Workshop is geared to graduate students; undergraduates may be
admitted with consent of instructor.
PIC
612C - TRANSLATION WORKSHOP (NON-LIT)
Rosemary Arrojo
Specialized workshop
training students to translate from fields dependent on translation
(e.g., cross-cultural scholarship, international affairs, world trade)
from foreign language to English. Students interested in German should
register under the TRIP rubric.
PIC 612D - TRANSLATION
THEORY
Rosemary Arrojo
Diachronic presentation and assessment of major approaches in current
translation studies. Designed for translators, although other students
interested in translation as a practice and phenomenon are welcome.
PIC 620B - BLACK AUTOBIOGRAPHY: AFRICAN,
AFRICAN AMERICAN, CARIBBEAN
Isidore Okpewho
This course seeks to understand the nature of autobiography by
examining various kinds of autobiographies written in Africa and the
African diaspora. Although it acknowledges the genre of autobiography
as a convention with a respectable history in the literate traditions
of Europe and elsewhere, the course is built on two premises: First, it
identifies the presence of autobiographical literature even within oral
culture, using African oral texts as an illustration. Next, the course
examines a variety of autobiographical texts from societies that have
experienced various forms of domination slavery, colonialism and
post-colonialism ¿ to see what marks the experience has left
on their writers. This course therefore looks at autobiography writing
from two perspectives: literary and political. Open to juniors, seniors
and graduate seniors only.
PIC 646B - WHAT BODIES
CAN DO
Stephen David Ross
This course is organized around Spinoza's suggestion that we do not
know what bodies can do, and perhaps may never know. Bodies, human and
other, that protrude, extrude, touch each other; bodies that break
apart and come together, in motion and rest; bodies that act, and feel,
that move, strike other bodies and are struck; bodies that war and
wound other bodies, that caress and care for other bodies; sexual,
erotic, engendered bodies, human and other; productive and reproductive
bodies; bodies in the flesh; wrinkled, colored, rainbow bodies;
desiring, pleasurable, fascinated and fascinating bodies; solid,
corporeal, gossamer, airy bodies; bodies that ooze, excrete, vomit,
throw up, throw out; bodies that think, imagine, dream, that mean and
sign; bodies of work, bodies of knowledge, textual bodies, bodies of
law, political bodies and bodies politic; material surfaces, grids,
planes, folds, assemblages of inscription; corporeal forces, linkages,
energies, mechanics; bodies that live and die, fight and resist, that
suffer disease and pain, inspire and expire; all that bodies can be and
do, perhaps including whatever humans, and animals, and other creatures
and things can be and do. And more. Throughout, issues of materiality
will be examined in ethical and political terms, pursuing the
possibility of another understanding of ethics and politics in relation
to corporeality. A recurrent theme of the course will be to explore
ecological issues, especially relations between human beings and the
earth, in corporeal terms. Approximately one third of the semester will
be devoted to a small number of historical texts defining the European
tradition's understanding of human, animal, and material embodiment,
including some quite non traditional texts and readings. The rest of
the course will be devoted to contemporary attempts to think of
corporeality in different ways. Half the course will examine
contemporary feminist writings approaching bodies in terms of issues of
gender, race, culture, their interrelations and intersections. Students
are responsible for 15 minute presentations initiating small-group
discussions, raising questions rather than supporting theses. At least
one such presentation is required at each discussion. Students are also
responsible for 30 minute presentations at a class miniconference at
the end of the semester. Each presentation is to employ and present
images from the following sensory or expressive modalities and media:
sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell; painting, sculpture, music, drama,
dance, film, photography, dress, body ornamentation; images, sounds,
aromas, textures; etc.
Other Semester Offerings
