Course Descriptions

HIST 501B: POLITICS, HISTORY, AND LOCATION
[ABOU-EL-HAJ & HAVER M 3:30-6:30]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: The knowledges of the social and human sciences are largely organized and determined by a politics of location that "area studies" have always served. Beyond the mere invocation of interdisciplinarity or globality, this seminar attempts to critically inquire into the historical, historiographical, and epistemological constitution of such studies in their phenomenological, epistemological, and practical essence.
FORMAT: Seminar. We will discuss common readings in the first third of the course; subsequent readings, discussions, and presentations will be determined by the research interests of the participants. A major seminar paper is required. Required reading prior to first class meeting: check with either Haver or Abou-El-Haj.
BOOKS: Harootunian, History's Disquiet; Dirlik, History after the Three Worlds: Post-Eurocentric Historiographies

COLI 691C/LA&C 591: FEMINISM AND RACE
[LUGONES M 4:30-7:30]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Contact the Comparative Literature Department.

ARTH 552A/AFST 484A/PHIL 640J: ISSUES IN MODERN AFRICAN ART
[NZEGWU R 2:50-5:50]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Introduction to recent debates on representation and imperialist hegemony, culture and nationalism, gender, modernity, and post-apartheid politics in modern African art. The focus of the course is on the importance of these issues in rethinking theories, methodologies, curatorial practice, and institutional parameters.

COLI 691G/PHIL 640H/AFST 481C: FELA, AFROBEAT & CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY
[NZEGWU T 1:15-4:15]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Class issues and class tensions have powerfully shaped the contemporary African experience. This course undertakes an examination of the concepts of power, military rule, gender, and class by way of Fela Anikulapo's Afrobeat lyrics. First, we shall listen to the songs and the music (in CDs and tapes), watch documentary videos (if possible), and read historical materials (both books and essays on the Internet) that trace the historical development of Fela's political consciousness and Afrobeat music. Next, we will engage in a sustained examination of the nature and dynamics of contemporary existential philosophy in the context of capitalist globalization in a particular region of the Third World. The goal is to explore the intersection and, engagement of philosophy with, the prevailing social and political issues of our times.
FORMAT: There will be one midterm and one final examination: each is a take-home paper of at least 10 pages in length.

PHIL 504/PHIL 480M/COLI 574E/ENG 674E/ARTH 504: ART, INTERPRETATION, CULTURE
[ROSS MW 1:10-3:20]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: A course concerned with the nature of art and aesthetics 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 to aesthetics and art; (3) relations between art and truth, art and philosophy, art and nature; (4) images, figures, sounds, stories, gestures, performances (whatever may be meant by mimesis, aisthesis, poiesis, techne) in human experience: the cacophony of the world as aesthetic phenomenon. Readings will be drawn primarily from the Western tradition, ancient to contemporary, but a large part of the course will address recent discussions that confront the tradition in the names of feminism, postmodernism, poststructuralism, multiculturalism, postcolonialism, and environmental philosophy.
FORMAT: Each week: one hour lecture each week to all students, graduate and undergraduate; one hour lecture discussion meeting with all students; one hour discussions with undergraduate and graduate students separately. Students are responsible for 10-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 presenting ten-page papers at a class miniconference at the end of the semester. The course will be based on my anthology, Art and Its Significance, 3rd edition, State University of New York Press; plus supplementary materials available for copying.

PHIL 456M/608E/COLI 691F/SOC 380U: ETHICS AND GENOCIDE
[BAR ON T 3:00-6:00]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: For me, the central question for this course is whether genocide creates a crisis for modern/postmodern ethico-politics, and as a result suggests aneed for a rethinking of both ethical and political theory. We will investigate this question by looking first at the issue of frameworks for the understanding/judging of genocide and investigate it by focusing on voice. Because genocide seems to escape an ordinary valuation in terms of right and wrong, we will look next at the issue of evil and the extent to which/how it is produced. We will follow that with an investigation of issues of guilt and forgiveness. We will end by just opening into the possibility that one of the ethico-political ways to position oneself with respect to genocide is to remember but memory, especially in the case of genocide is tricky so it is far from obvious how remembrance is to work ethico-politically.

ENG 565G/COLI 512B: WOMEN & SOCIETY IN MEDIEVAL LITERATURE
[DESMOND T 3:00-6:00]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Many modern attitudes towards gender and sexuality are clearly traceable to medieval constructs. In this course we will investigate the relationship between gender and language in medieval texts, including those written by women as well as those written by the "standard" authors of the period (Chretien, Dante, Chaucer). We will pay particular attention to the social context that conditioned the production of these medieval texts and we will consider the extent to which modern feminist theory has to address the historical specificity of the middle ages.
FORMAT: The course will be conducted as a seminar; students will present one short paper (5 pages), one research paper (15 pages), and one oral report. In addition, the final class will be conducted as a colloquium in which each student will orally present her/his final paper.
BOOKS: Dante, Vita Nuova, the letters of Heloise; Chretien de Troyes, Eric and Enide; The Lais of Marie de France; the women troubadours; Chaucer, Troilus aned Crisyeda; The Book of Margery of Kempe; Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of the City of the Ladies and the Treasure of the City of the Ladies.

COLI 597: FRANZ ROSENZWEIG, THE STAR OF REDEMPTION
[FYNSK T 2:50-5:50] (VAR CR)
COURSE DESCRIPTION: In this short seminar, we will read Rosenzweig's seminal work, The Star of Redemption. Seminar participants should plan to familiarize themselves with the book before the seminar begins, since time will be short and we will want to move quickly to key issues involving Rosenzweig's notions of creation, revelation and redemption.
The seminar will meet 5 times between January 23rd and February 20th (Tuesdays 2:50-5:50 in LT-1506.) Students should register for this class in the Comparative Literature Department Office.

ENG 555A: RACE, LAW, AND AMERICAN LITERATURE
[HAMES-GARCIA TR 11:40-1:05]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: To what extent can a criminal/legal system that arose within a society based on social inequality and injustice be used to bring about meaningful racial equality and social justice? and How useful can literature about law, incarceration, and racial injustice be in bringing about social change? Authors may include Harper Lee, Malcolm X, Piri Thomas, Angela Davis, George Jackson, Huey Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, Miguel Piqero, Assata Shakur, William Kunstler, Oscar Acosta, Patricia Williams, Helen Prejean, and Mumia Abu-Jamal.
FORMAT: The bulk of the final grade will be based on the seminar papers.
SOC 693: ANTI-SYSTEMIC MOVEMENTS
[MARTIN W 4:00-7:00]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Not available.

SOC 692: AREA PAPER SEMINAR
[SANTIAGO-VALLES R 10:00-1:00]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Not available.

SOC 693D: COLONIALITY WORKING GROUP
[SANTIAGO-VALLES F 4:00-7:00]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Not available.

ENG 673M: GLOBALIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
[SPANOS TR 10:05-11:30]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course will address critically four fundamental and integrally related aspects of the globalizing momentum that has characterized the domestic and foreign political and cultural policies of the United States during the latter part of the twentieth century, especially since the end of the Cold War, which its intellectual deputies have represented as the end of history and the advent of the New World Order: 1)late capitalism and its relation to imperialism; 2) the globalization of (American) English; 3) the corporatizaiton of the university; 4) the globalization of American popular culture. The role of the formaiton of the American national identity in history, its "errand" in the global "wilderness," will be considered as well as their self-destruction during the Vietnam War. BOOKS: The texts for this course will likely include Arif Derlik, After the Revolution; Bill Readings, The University in Ruins; Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, Empire; W. V. Spanos, America's Shadow: An Anatomy of Empire; Francis Fukuyama, The End of History; Richard Haass, The United States After the Cold War; Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx; Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow; and Stephenson's Cryptonomicon.

PHIL 663C/SOC: INTERNATIONAL POLITICS OF THE THIRD WORLD
[THOMAS W 6:00-9:00]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course has been designed to examine how changes in hegemonic structures influence the international politics of the Third World across space and time. Changing roles of Third World countries in the global division of labor. Third World conflicts before and after the Cold War. Third World challenges to Global Apartheid, moderating East-West tensions and developing diplomatic consciousness, Third World challenges to the international division of labor, globalization, identity politics and the new era of Global Apartheid. The course will examine an array of conceptual, theoretical and methodological frameworks including world system analysis, postmodernism, feminism, Africana Existentialism and Global Racial Formations, etc.
FORMAT: Lectures, films and invigorating discussions. Students are required to write review essay and seminar papers.

PHIL 457H/550H: KANT'S MORAL PHILOSOPHY
[ZINKIN R 4:30-7:30]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course will focus on Kant's two major works of moral theory, the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals and the Critique of Practical Reason. Topics include: the categorical imperative, human freedom, morality. Contemporary appropriations and critiques of Kant's practical philosophy will also be a major aspect of the course.

ARTH 441C/540H/MDVL 501H/PHIL 630D: SPECTACLE
[BARZMAN W 1:10-4:10] COURSE DESCRIPTION: This seminar asks: What order of representation is spectacle, which has been associated with modern and baroque regimes of truth? What does it look like? Where is it located? How does it operate? Whom does it address? And what does it produce? It will begin with a critical survey of the literature on spectacle--from Debord and his followers, who insist on the spectacle as the effect of capital (as well as its purpose and design) and, hence, as a feature peculiar to modernity; to Foucault and Lacan, who locate spectacle, or certain relations of looking we might associate with spectacle, in the early modern period, and relate it to the production of power and desire; to Maravall, Marin, and Buci-Glucksmann, who write about its various manifestations in the baroque, specifically in Spain and France. Students will then take up particular examples of spectacle, examining its relations of viewing and modes of address in historical periods and sites of their choosing, in an effort to establish its effects.

HISTORY 576C: CHINESE WOMEN AND THE FAMILY
[CHAFFEE T 2:50-5:50] COURSE DESCRIPTION: The history of the Chinese family from its possible matriarchal origins in neolithic times, through the imperial period with its male-dominated, family-centered ethic, to the present socialist society of the People's Republic of the capitalist society of Taiwan. Primary attention will be given to changes in the status of women, their sex roles, occupations, and power, to the history of the women's movement in the 20th century and to the debate over women's liberation and the socialist revolution. Readings will draw upon biographies and fiction as well as historical and sociological studies.
FORMAT: The seminar will be organized around discussions of readings, although occasional use will also be made of lectures, slides and videos. Grades will be based upon a 5-page book critique, a bibliography of your research project, and your research paper of 15-20 pages. Graduate students will have largely the same requirements, except that a review essay on a number of books will be required in lieu of the book critique, and will be presented in special meetings for the graduate students. Restricted to Juniors and Seniors and appropriate for History majors and minors and East Asian Studies students. No prerequisites.
BOOKS (tentative): Baker, Chinese family and kinship; chang, Wild Swans; Ebrey, The Inner Quarters: Marriage and Lives of Chinese Women in the Sung Period; Honig, Sisters and Strangers: Women in the Shanghai Cotton Mills, 1919-1949; Honig and Hershatter, Personal Voices: Chinese Women in the 1980s; Johnson, Women, the Family, and Peasant Revolution in China; Mann, Precious Records: Women in China's Long 18th Century; Pruitt, A Daughter of Han: the Autobiography of a Chinese Working Woman.

SOC 690E: IDENTITY, VIOLENCE & EMPOWERMENT
[DIAZ T 7:00-10:00]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course will examine the relationship between various forms of violence and the construction of diverse identities (e.g., racial, ethnic, gender, sexual, class). It will also analyze the manner in which conceptions of the same identity change as individuals and communities seek to empower themselves. Moreover, it will analyze various ways in which the state and private institutions contribute to the construction of identities and the perpetuation of violence.

PHIL 460E/550U: FREUD
[DILLON TR 2:50-4:15]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: The course may be divided into four segments. 1. Early works and the problem of energetics v. symbolics or economy v. interpretation. Problem of dualism. 2. Middle essays from General Psychological Theory collection selected to cover a wide range of issues, but with emphasis on language, the unconscious, and the Oedipal structure. 3. Beyond the Pleasure Principle; The Ego and the Id. 4. Attempt at synthesis oriented around Oedipus complex and issues related to gender.
FORMAT: Lecture/discussion. Midterm exam (Phil 460E only) (1 hour), seminar presentation (Phil 550U only), final exam (2 hours), term paper (10-15 pages).
BOOKS: (Tentative, subject to revision.) Freud, The Interpretion of Dreams; Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex; General Psychological Theory; Sexuality and the Psychology of Love; Beyond the Pleasure Principle.
RECOMMENDED: Gay, ed., The Freud Reader

COLI 574D/ENG 674G: DECONSTRUCTION AND SUBALTERISM
[LEVINSON W 4:30-7:30]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course will examine two discourses which seem both completely joined and absolutely apart: deconstruction and subaltern studies. Works to be read might include those of Gramsci, Guha, Spivak, Arguedas, Derrida, Hall, Menchu, de Man, Kafka, Lorde, and El Sadaawi. This is a course geared for those interested in the bind between epistemological and political questions, particularly questions tied to difference.

AFST 373/COLI 517S/ENG 390N/655C: THE AFRICAN NOVEL
[OKPEWHO TR 11:40-1:05]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This 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 socio-political 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.

AFST 385E/COLI 380J/COLI 531P/ENG 390A/ENG 655A/HIST 380E/HIST 532N/WMST 380J: 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.

PHIL 456P/PHIL 608G/COLI 574F: HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF RIGHT
[PENSKY TR 10:05-11:30]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Advanced undergraduate/graduate seminar. In this seminar we read G.W.F. Hegel's chief work on social and legal philosophy, The Philosophy of Right. We examine Hegel's relation to Kant's philosophy of law, and explore Hegel's influences for contemporary social and legal theory, particularly in the "communitarian" writers such as Frank Michelman. Course requirements: regular attendance and participation, regular seminar presentations, research paper.

PHIL 456Q/PHIL 608H/COLI 574G: CRITICAL THEORY AND LAW
[PENSKY TR 1:15-2:40]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Advanced undergraduate/graduate seminar examining contemporary philosophy of law, concentrating on members of the "Frankfurt School" of critical social theory. The majority of the seminar is dedicated to a reading of Jurgen Habermas's Between Facts and Norms. We also analyze this work's relation to other currents in contemporary philosophy of law (critical legal studies, Dworkin, etc).
FORMAT: regular attendance and participation, regular seminar presentations, research paper.

COLI 541P/FREN 581B/ENG 650K: PROUST
[GADDIS ROSE M 1:15-4:15]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Marcel Proust (1871-1922) may have written A La Recherche du Temps Perdu in French, but this 7-volume masterpiece, which has garnered inspired translators, belongs to all Western literatures. This seminar provides an opportunity to read it in its entirety in an atmosphere akin to the salons it so tellingly reproduces. Discussion will involve stereoscopic reading.
BOOKS: Any edition in either French or English will be appropriate for discussion. (Readers using translations in other languages are also invited.) French readers making an initial investment may wish to purchase the Jean-Ives Tadie edition for Gallimard. Considerable leeway in final projects.

TRIP 572/COLI 572: TRANSLATION WORKSHOP: LITERARY
[GADDIS ROSE TR 11:40-1:05]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Special training for students to translate literary works, usually from a foreign language to English.
FORMAT: Individual tutorials, group sessions as needed.

TRIP 573/COLI 573: TRANSLATION WORKSHOP: NON-LITERARY
[GADDIS ROSE TR 11:40-1:05]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Special workshop training students to translate from fields dependent upon translation (e.g., cross-cultural scholarship, international affairs, world trade, etc.) Usually from a foreign language to English.
FORMAT: Semi-weekly 1+ hour sessions.

ARTH 500: THEORY AND METHOD
[TAGG M 1:10-4:10]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This seminar, open to all but mandatory for Master's students and some doctoral students in art history, examines the emergence of art history as a discipline from heterogeneous practices, across a period of marked historical changes in Western Europe. This emergence involved the marking of new conceptual distinctions and the articulation of new categories, the development of new conceptions of history and the coalescing of a new idea of human subjectivity. But it was not just a question of theory. The emergence of art history as a discipline and academic enterprise also depended on the articulation of new apparatuses and the solidification of new institutions, harboring new practices and techniques and mobilizing new technologies. And such institutional spaces have themselves to be placed in a landscape in which dramatic demographic shifts were taking place, geographies were being rewritten, and the horizons of the social world were being broken and recast. We are dealing, then, with situated phenomena, but the discursive world that emerges does not see itself in this way. Not untypically, it claims a universal status, even as it migrates and seeks to expand both its reach and its institutional forms across a radiating geography, along whose borders it will encounter and attempt to encompass the difference of other worlds of meaning. This is the history of art history. The seminar will follow weekly readings, with regular student presentations and a variety of research tasks designed to develop specific critical and research skills. The seminar assignment will involve the preparation of a detailed syllabus on an agreed topic, including a synopsis, structured outline, readings and full bibliography. This assignment satisfies the requirement of the Master's Comprehensive examination.

ENG 593R: LITERATURE OF THE ASIAN DIASPORA
[YUN R 3:30-6:30]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: The course entails an exploration of writings about or by peoples of the Asian diapora, living in multiple geographies such as Guyana, Trinidad, Jamaica, United States, Cuba, and elsewhere. Discussions would include an examination of cultural formation and identity as politically multivariate and at times, subject to periods of intense flux and conflict due to revolution or ethnic persecution, for example. Questions to be asked might include: what is "diawspora"? How is this is the same or different from a loose ethnic geography? What is the relation of "diaspora" to transnationalisms, constructions of "global" cultural identities, and cultural narratives as lived representations? All texts will be read in the English language and will include different genres of novels, memoirs, plays, and poetry.

ENG 674C/PHIL 501: REVISITING LOVE: FRENCH FEMINIST WRITERS
[BASHEER TR 1:15-2:40] COURSE DESCRIPTION: In this course we will examine love as a complex ethical issue in the works of three French writers, Julia Kristeva, Helene Cixous and Luce Irigaray. Love will be analyzed as myth, madness, eros, sacrifice, spirit, and gift in religious, psychoanalytic, literary and philosophical contexts. Love will also be read as a non-erotic relation of the spirit with the Divine, as well as a relation between sexed, gendered others. We will spend more time studying Irigaray's works in relation to the larger feminist context. Class discussions will focus on questions such as: a) In what ways have love been re-defined between genders? b) Are Kristeva, Cixous and Irigaray feminists? c) What is their status in international feminism as women writers and/or feminists? d) Are any of these writers post-feminists? e) How will feminist thought evolve after Irigaray? f) Should Kristeva, Cixous and Irigaray's works be read in non-academic ways?
FORMAT: The class will be conducted as a seminar. Students are required to submit a research paper towards the end of the semester. Each research paper should be for 15-20 pages, typed in double space in the MLA format. Students are also responsible for 15-minute presentations on one of the readings for class.

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