PHIL 503: PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE: THEORY,
SCIENCE AND THE UNOBSERVABLE
[ZINKIN, R 4:30-7:30]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course will use the model of the natural
sciences to understand and evaluate various arguments for what constitutes
a good scientific theory. We will ask to what extent scientific method
is value-free in obtaining knowledge about the natural world. Of particular
interest will be the question of whether it is possible or even desirable
to make truth claims about the nature of what is unobservable. The
course will end with a comparison of the natural to the human sciences
and students will be encouraged to extend the model of the natural
science to the unobservable facts which are investigated by the sciences
of law and history.
FORMAT: To be determined.
BOOKS: Readings to include Schlick, Bridgman, Hempel, Putnam, Boyd,
Fine, Kuhn, van Frassen, Foucault, Gallison, Bordeau, Feyerabend
PHIL 550E: WILLIAM JAMES
[WEISS, TR 10:05-11:30]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Philosopher, physician, psychologist, and religious
apologist, William James is perhaps the most radically challenging
of all American thinkers. In this course, we will read his most famous
works, including The Will to Believe, Pragmatism, and Varieties
of Religious Experience.
FORMAT: Three or four papers. No exams.
BOOKS: See above.
PHIL 550K: HEGEL'S AESTHETICS
[GOLDSTEIN, TR 10:05-11:30]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: a detailed examination of the text of Hegel's
Aesthetics, with special attention to the application of Hegel's
dialectical method to the study of the arts.
FORMAT: Course grade to be based on class discussion, perhaps one
or two seminar papers and a term paper.
BOOKS: Hegel's, Aesthetics (translated by Knox).
PHIL 601S/COLI 691D: DESIROUS WRITING:
TRANSCOLONIAL AND FEMINIST RISKS AND VOLATILITIES
[ALLEN, M 3:30-6:30]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Risks and volatilities of transcolonial and feminist
writingCthe activity of writing, as well as discussions of writing
and what is writtenCwill be the focus of the class. Abundantly desirous
writing, how might it be attentive to instabilities, uncertainties,
and surprising heaps of concepts? Might volatilities pierce and thereby
reposition a horizontal narrowness of europologic certainty? Currently,
is desirous writing at risk? The class will emphasize recent transdisciplinary
and mixed genre writing, artistic productions, and activist practices.
Undergraduates may register only with permission of the instructor.
FORMAT: Requirements include class attendance with completion of all
assigned readings and written assignments, active participation in
class discussions and presentations, short exercises, and two projects.
Projects (if written, 10 pages each) may include writing, artwork,
etc.
BOOKS: To be determined.
PHIL 608A/COLI 691A/SOC 690Q: CRITICAL
THEORIES OF RACE
[TESSMAN, W 3:30-6:30]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course focuses on recent scholarship that
critically analyzes the concept of race, with an emphasis on how race
and racism operate in the United States. We will begin with some background
reading of sociological work on the construction of race and racial
identities, as well as historical work on racial politics in the United
States. Then, we will move to a consideration of some of the widely
different approaches taken by critical theorists of race, covering
topics such as: the status of race as real or illusory; the politics
of difference and the conservation of racialized identities;
the RACIAL CONTRACT and its connection to white supremacy;
the dominance of the black-white paradigm in the United States; the
relation of race to sexuality, gender, ethnicity, and class; the mixed-race
movement; existential aspects of race and racism; critical white studies,
the strategies of resistance tied to different conceptions of race
and racism.
FORMAT: To be determined.
BOOKS: To be determined.
PHIL 643A: WAR
[BAR ON, R 1:15-4:15]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Classically, and this includes the modern period,
Western poetic, historical, as well as philosophical histories of
war have been the site of multiple reflections about, among others,
human nature, socio-political organization, and the relationships
among states. Since World War I, some attention has also been given
to the phenomenological experience of war and with that to the formative
force exerted by war which has been studied even more carefully since
Vietnam. More recently, and in some relation to the previous developments,
stories of war have become the site of theorizing about collective
identity. We will follow this trajectory of development in the course.
The course will begin with samples of classical readings, specifically
selections from Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War,
Machiavelli's The Art of War, and Clausewitz's On War,
in order to get a sense of the discursive field that they partake
in and contribute to. As an excursus we will read Michel Foucault's
essay "Society must be Defended.". We will then move to World War
I and look at the turn to the phenomenological experience of war with
Pat Barker's Regeneration, which is the first volume of her
trilogy about World War I. We will spend the rest of the course with
readings that address the relationship of war and collective identity.
They will include Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth,
Jill Lepore's The Name of War, and selections from The Women
War and Reader, which was edited by Lois Loretnzen and Jennifer
Turpin.
FORMAT: To be determined.
BOOKS: See above.
PHIL 650E: CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHY
[DILLON, TR 2:50-4:15]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Survey of major writings of Husserl, Heidegger,
Sartre, Merleau- Ponty, Derrida.
FORMAT: Seminar format. Requirements include seminar presentation,
15-page term paper, final exam.
BOOKS: (list subject to change) Husserl, Cartesian Meditations;
Heidegger, Basic Writings; Sartre, Being and Nothingness;
Merleau-Ponty, The Primacy of Perception; Derrida, Margins
of Philosophy; recommended: Dillon, Semiological Reductionism.
ARTH 573B: CITIES/NATIONS/SPACES/CULTURES
[KING, M 5:20 - 8:20]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: At the dawn of the new millenium, what is the
state of knowledge about key issues in the social, political and cultural
life of the contemporary city and nation? Are cities displacing nations
as sites of identity formation? Is transnationalism undermining the
future of the nation-state? How does architecture and urban space
help to construct ideas of race, gender, and ethnicity? What role
do capital cities play in the production and dissemination of national
cultures? How are such issues being addressed in the literature on
so-called "world cities"? This interdisciplinary course will provide
participants with an opportunity to learn what leading scholars of
cities, space and the nation are thinking and writing about these
and other issues at the close of the twentieth century: about de-centering
notions of the "modern" and "postmodern"; interrogating spaces of
national culture (museums, monuments, myths); social polarisation
and the politics of place; constructions of transnational space; social
theory and urban theory; public art/public space; the impact of tourism
on the forms and spaces of the city; aestheticisation and the cultural
politics of difference; fantasy, imagination, and memory in ideas
of urban representation. Readings will be chosen in relation to particular
cities in different world regions and participants will have the opportunity
to formulate their own themes/projects and develop them during the
course. The seminar is open to graduate students from all departments
as well as those in the History and Theory of Art and Architecture
Graduate Program.
FORMAT: Weekly seminar of a participatory nature with assigned readings,
and reports on readings, to be completed for each class. Grade allocated
on the basis of oral and written reports, participation, attendance.
Instructor's introduction to each seminar with outline of major issues.
SOC 623: THE SOCIAL DYNAMICS OF PUNISHMENT
[RAMOS-DIAZ, T 7:00 - 10:00]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Notions of criminality used during the past 200
years to criminalize the behavior of sectors of society deemed to
be dangerous to the social order; institutions created to conrol such
behavior (e.g., police forces, public executions, slavery, jails,
prisons, reformatories, etc.); differences and similarities in types
of punishment applied to men, women and children of different nationalities,
races, ages, social classes and sexual orientations; the notion of
state crimes and their impact on the social structure.
COLI 531M: MODERNITY AND GESCHLECHT
[BRINKER-GABLER, T 1:15 - 4:15]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This seminar will explore configurations of Modernity
and Geschlecht focusing on the rich connotations of the German
term Geschlecht--sex, the feminine, species, descent, blood,
family, race. We will chart the landscapes of Ageschlecht@ and relating
them to the problems of modernity in series of constellations such
as Nietzsche, Andreas-Salome on Arenaming the human@, Simmel, Adorno/Horkeimer
on Athe utopian feminine,@ Freud, Weininger, Andreas-Salome on masochism
and narcissism, Kirchner, Nolde, Benn, Lasker-Schueler on primitivism/racism,
Dix and Grosz on the AGreat War@ and Lustmord, Benjamin, Kracauer,
Ch. Wolff on flanerie and the public space.
BOOKS and chapters from the following books among others, Neitzsche,
Beyond Good and Evil, Genealogy of Morals; Andreas-Salome,
Nietzsche; selected essays, Fenitschka and Deviation;
Simmel, selected essays, Adorno/Horkeimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment;
Freud, selected essays, Weininger, Sex and Character, Benn,
Ronne stories, poetry, Lasker-Schuler, poetry, Hebrew ballads, Benjamin,
Baudelaire, Arcade Project, Kracauer, Mass Ornament,
Wolff, Hindsight; selected drawings and paintings by Kirchner,
Nolde, Dix and Grosz.
FORMAT: The course will be conducted as a seminar. Required work,
participation, oral presentations and one substantial final paper.
COLI 535M: MAGICAL REALISM/SOCIAL REALISM
IN LATIN AMERICA
[LEVINSON, T 1:15 - 4:15]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course will examine the development of Latin
American magical realism from out of the social realist novel of the
early part of the 20th-century. We will study the historical, political,
and aesthetic motives behind the shift. We will be particularly interested
in the question: Why magical realism in Latin America? Texts to be
read include Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude;
Cortazar (stories); Fuentes, Aura; Azuela, The Underdogs;
Arguedas, Deep Rivers; Icaza, Huasipungo; Vargas Llosa,
The Storyteller; Carpentier, The Kingdom of this World,
Castellanos, The Nine Guardians; Asturias, Men of Maize;
Rulfo, Pedro Paramo; Bombal, "The Tree," "Mist"; Piglia, Artificial
Respiration
COLI 541S: SARTRE AND DE BEAUVOIR
[GADDIS ROSE, M 1:15-4:15]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Existentialist Belles-Lettres. Approaching
the contribution of Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-80) and Simone de Beauvoir
(1908-86) through their autobiographies, fiction, drama, and popular
essays. Nonetheless, there will be repeated references to L'Etre
et le Neant (Being and Nothingness) and Le Deuxieme Sexe (The
Second Sex). Only a familiarity with Huis Clos (No Exit)
and La Nausee (Nausea) is assumed. Group readings will depend
upon the availability of translations in the language of seminar participants.
(Participants are encouraged to read in French, and participants may
use reliable translations in languages other than English.)
COLI 574A/THEA 586L: THE MEDIA-SPECIFIC
ARGUMENT IN LITERARY, DRAMA AND FILM THEORY
[KOHLER, W 1:15 - 4:15]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: In this seminar we examine a persistent tendency
in much influential aesthetic theory to claim that certain aspects
or effects of representation in different communicative means or "media,"
be it live performance or imitation, film or language. Montage, for
instance, is treated by thinkers like Lev Kuleshov as the essence
of cinematic representation; New Critics like John Crowe Ranson held
up a small set of linguistic potentials in the service of similar
"ontological" claims about the expressive possibilities of poetry.
Among other theoretical perspectives, we examine such arguments in
classical and auteurist film theory, in the New Criticism, and in
post-Romantic European theories of the theater. Readings include Rudolf
Arnheim, Anton Artaud, Roland Barthes, Andre Bazin, Cleanth Brooks,
Kenneth Burke, Noel Carroll, Stanley Cavell, Sergei Eisenstein, Martin
Heidegger, Laura Mulvey, and Richard Wagner. During the course of
the semester, we will also screen and discuss a new number of seminal
films.
COLI 574D: READING MARX
[LEVINSON, W 4:30 - 7:30]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This class will be conducted as a reading group
dedicated to the study of the Grundisse, as well as to sections
of Capital, plus some earlier works such as the German Ideology
and Eighteenth Brumaire.
COLI 691C/HIST 501E: EXIGENCY
[FYNSK/HAVER, W 4:30-7:30]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This seminar is organized around the campus visits
of several distinguished speakers, all of whose work concerns the
history, sociality (and sometimes sociology) of what counts as "science."
The list of speakers is not yet final, but we have invited Peter Galison,
Isabelle Stengers, and Steven Epstein, among others. We will read
their published work in preparation for their visits, keeping always
in mind questions concerning the exigencies that provoke knowledge
characterized as "scientific"; thus, we will also be concerned with
the relation of the "hard" sciences to the so-called social and human
sciences.
FORMAT: Seminar. A substantial and substantive seminar paper is required.
BOOKS: TBA.
TRIP 572/COLI 572: TRANSLATION WORKSHOP:
LITERARY
[GADDIS ROSE, TR 11:40 - 1:05]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Group meetings and tutorials on weekly individual
projects.
TRIP 573/COLI 573: TRANSLATION WORKSHOP:
NON-LITERARY
[GADDIS ROSE, TR 11:40 - 1:05]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Semi-weekly 1 l/2 hour sessions. Translation practice
based on fields and topics dependent upon translation.
HIST 532S: RACE AND SEXUAL POLITICS IN
THE U.S.
[SHAH, T 2:50-5:50]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course will explore how the assumption that
race is a natural and inevitable category of social organization became
entangled with the fascination with sex and sexuality in the 19th
and 20th century United States. We will examine how marital heterosexuality
and reproduction become constitutive of the perpetuation of race and
how sexual practices alternative to marital heterosexuality are seen
as a perversion, betrayal and distortion of "the race" and of racially
defined communities. The course will draw upon the perspectives of
feminist history, critical race theory, colonial studies and cultural
studies. The course will focus on the experiences and representations
of Asian Americans, African, Latinos and European Americans.
FORMAT: Seminar with discussion. BOOKS: D'Emilio and Freedman, Intimate
Matters: A History of Sexuality in America; Foucault, History
of Sexuality, Vol. 1; Morrison, Beloved; Bederman, Manliness
and Civilization; Stoler, Race and the Education of Desire;
Mumford, Interzones; Hodes, Sex, Love, Race: Crossing Boundaries
in North American History; Leonard, Making Ethnic Choices:
California's Punjabi-Mexican Americans; Baldwin, Another Country.
HISTORY 560G: CENTRAL EUROPE 1517-1989
[QUATAERT, W 7:00-10:00]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course is a general introduction to "German"
history and historiography, from the Reformation to (roughly) the
present. It is primarily designed for graduate students interested
in specializing in German history for the Ph.D. or developing the
field as a minor in your graduate studies. It has a dual purpose.
The first is to explore the shifting historiographical camps and traditions
that are such an important part of the German past. You need to understand
the way the past exercises such a forceful hold on German identity
and imagination in the second half of the Twentieth Century. This
takes us into various debates over history and memory in the post-1945
era. It is not possible to formulate a viable dissertation topic without
a thorough grounding in the historiography of the last half century.
Second, the course also explores a number of innovative and challenging
approaches to Germany history, broadly conceived. It offers new linkages
between the reformation, state and society; examines the changing
nature of community organization and identity; and favors those works
that move beyond traditional categories and periodization in analysing
industrial transformation, work and family life, leisure time as well
as popular and radical protest movements. It also addresses new ways
of looking at war, nationalism and gender. Finally, the course examines
the debates over the socalled German path to modernity. What is at
stake in this contentious debate over modernity in German history?
BOOKS: TBA.
HISTORY 576B: IMPERIALISM IN EAST ASIA
[CHAFFEE, T 2:50-5:50]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: A study of three varieties of imperialism in East
Asia in modern times. First, Western imperialism in China: the Opium
War, unequal treaties and the treaty port in the late 19th and early
20th centuries. Second, Japanese imperialism: from its early manifestations
in Korea and Taiwan through the Second World War. Third, French and
American imperialism in Vietnam: from the growth of anti-colonialism
through the Vietnam War. The seminar will explore both the historical
events associated with these forms of imperialism and the different
methodological approaches employed by scholars in this field. The
seminar will also make use of films and novels.
FORMAT: The seminar will meet once a week and will consist primarily
of discussions with occasional slide presentations, movies and lectures
to provide historical background and to make the readings intelligible.
One 5-7 page paper will be required during the course of the semester
and a 10-15 page research paper will be due at the end of the semester.
Grades will be based upon papers and class participation. Enrollment
is restricted to seniors majoring or minoring in History or taking
the Asian Studies concentration.
BOOKS: TBA.
ENG 572S: ARENDT
[SPANOS, TR 1:15 - 2:40]
COLI 517S/ENG 655C: THE AFRICAN NOVEL
[OKPEWHO, TR 11:40-1:05]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Course will explore development of the novel in
Africa both historically and thematically. On one hand, we shall trace
formal growth of genre, beginning with its emergence from oral narrative
traditions of the continent, through its attachment to certain European
trends and techniques, to its present achievement in blending various
traditions (African and non-African) in articulation of key problems
in contemporary African sociopolitical life. On the other hand, we
shall examine some of the key concerns that have engaged one generation
of writers after another: e.g., confrontation with European presence,
critique of postcolonial leadership, Apartheid, and the place of women
in African society.
FORMAT: This course will be based partly on teaching and partly on
group presentations by students. Regular class attendance is mandatory
and will count in the overall assessment. There will be one midterm
and one final examination: each is a take-home paper of at least 10
pages in length. Graduate students taking this course will be expected
to submit a substantial, well-researched final paper on a chosen issue
from the course.
COLI 531P/ENG 655A HIST 532N: AFRICAN
AMERICAN HERITAGE IN POETRY & JAZZ
[OKPEWHO, TR 4:25-5:50]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course traces the parallel development of
two art forms that enable us to explore African American history by
way of its cultural achievements. Essentially, we shall read the poems,
hear the songs and the music (in CDs and tapes), and watch the videos
that trace the growth of Black poetry and jazz through the key moments
of Black history. The aim of the course is to understand the intersection
of artistic forms as they reflect the social and political climates
around them. Special attention will be given to the contributions
of African American women to these art forms as well as the growing
phenomenon of "jazz poetry." In this seminar course, students will
be encouraged to shape and articulate their individual as well as
group responses to the poetry and the music. Graduate students taking
the course should expect to do, as a final paper, a substantial and
well-researched treatment of a key theme as revealed in the arts of
a chosen era: e.g., through an exploration of the careers of at least
one poet and one jazz musician.
ARTH 500: THEORY AND METHODS
[BARZMAN, W 1:10-4:10]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This seminar constitutes a history of art history
(as it addresses visual and material culture, and spatial environments).
It focuses on methods of the discipline that have been codified in
museums and universities in North America and Britain, some of which
had their origins in Italy and German-speaking communities in Europe.
Each week we will cover a set of practices or a group of major figures
in the field, proceeded by a critical reading of paradigmatic texts
and by an investigation of the instistutional frames within which
these texts were produced. Authors include Vasari, Morelli, Wolfflin,
Riegl, Anal, Panofsky, Krautheimer, Lynch, Seidel, Camille, Bryson,
Tagg, Moxey, Nochlin, and Pollock.
SOC 690C: ANTI-SYSTEMIC MOVEMENTS
[MARTIN, T 1:00-4:00]
ENG 673N/COLI 691E: CHICANO AESTHETICS
AND THE NOVEL
[HAMES-GARCIA, TR 10:05-11:30]
Other Semester Offerings
