Electives 2009/10
AUTUMN TERM
Arts and Aesthetics Concentration Seminar I
AR231 Representation
Geoff Lehman
Credits: 5
Distribution: Concepts
The starting point for this course is the fundamental interest human beings take in art, or in other words, an acknowledgement of the claim on our attention commanded by works of art. The course asks us to reflect on this basic interest by foregrounding questions about how art transforms ordinary experience through representation. Art-works (primarily works of visual art) will be studied thematically by selecting themes or concepts that identify simultaneously categories of ordinary experience and central themes in art. Examples for themes that could be treated in this course include Nudity, Gesture and Character, Space and Time, Perspective, Colour and Shape, Individuality (portraiture), Nature, The Sacred, Pain and Violence, Narrative, Morals, Figure and Ground, Gender, Mood.
The course is prescribed for BA students who have chosen Art and Aesthetics as one of their concentrations. If space permits, the course is open to AY and PY students also.
Ethics and Political Theory Concentration Seminar I
PT221 Fundamental Problems in 20th Century Ethics and Political Theory
Thomas Nørgaard
Credits: 5
Distribution: N/A
This course functions as an introduction to contemporary moral and political thought. It is organized around some of the fundamental moral and political concerns and questions that have occupied and formed the western world in the 20th century. Topics include, for instance, moral and political disagreement, pluralism, justice, freedom, democracy and responsibility. The syllabus is dedicated to short texts by some of the authors who shaped the 20th century moral and political discussion most profoundly. We will concentrate on the German and Anglo-American traditions.
The course is prescribed for BA students who have chosen Ethics and Political Theory as one of their concentrations. If space permits, the course is open to AY and PY students also.
Literature and Rhetoric Concentration Seminar I
LT231 Origins of the Novel
Catherine Toal
Credits: 5
Distribution: Genres/Styles
One of the most significant debates in literary studies concerns the question of the origins and characteristics of perhaps the most well-known and widely-read contemporary literary form, the novel. Unlike the genres of Classical literature which it supplanted, the novel seems to lack consistently defining features or parameters: it remains very difficult to say what makes a novel a novel-and yet it is the principal manifestation of the 'literary' in our culture.
At the period of its origin, the cultural value of the novel was greatly disputed. Critics condemned its pleasures as physically and intellectually enervating, even morally corrupting, much in the way that later generations would worry about the impact of television or other technologies. With the advent of twentieth-century Modernist experiments, the novel became decisively identified with 'high culture,' a development also fostered by the establishment of literary studies, which absorbed the popular novelistic entertainments of the past (the magazine-serialized works of Charles Dickens, for example) into a revered 'canon'.
A further ambiguity in the status of the novel stems from its original role as a mechanism for the transmission of common values to an increasingly hegemonic middle class. The early novel shared its rhetorical and dramatic strategies with other kinds of writing designed for such a public: 'conduct books', sermons, collections of polite letters. This legacy charged the novel-even at the height of Modernism-with the question of whether, and in what way, it should fulfill social, moral and political responsibilities.
The seminar concentrates on a pivotal text in the emergence of the novel form, unusual for its extensive influence on British, American, French and German literature. The work of a an English printer and publisher, Samuel Richardson, Clarissa (1748) achieved extraordinarily wide popularity, and was celebrated by leading figures of the French enlightenment (Diderot and Rousseau, among others) for showing the novel's capacity to rival the ethical force of tragedy and revolutionize the representation of human feeling. English commentators also lauded Clarissa's originality ("the first book in the world for the knowledge it displays of the human heart") and praised Richardson for elaborating a "system of ethics." German literary culture paid its tribute to his heroine through the emergence of the tragic protagonist of the epistolary novel typified by Goethe's Werther.
The seminar focuses on Clarissa to provide an introduction to the modes of representation inaugurated by the novel genre, its relation to prior and future genres (epic, tragedy, the significance of the 'epistolary' framework), its reliance on recurring trends and motifs (youth, marriage). Most importantly, it considers the way in which these formal elements contribute to the construction of a central conflict of values, replayed throughout the history of the novel, in which hero is pitted against 'world,' a conflict which challenges the reader to consider the ethical demands-and dangers-of interpretation itself.
Core Text: Samuel Richardson, Clarissa
Brief extracts from the following works: Auerbach, Mimesis; Lukacs, Theory of the Novel; Girard, Deceit, Desire and the Novel; Moretti, The Way of the World; Hegel, Aesthetics; Michael McKeown, The Dialectical Origins of the Novel
The course is prescribed for BA students who have chosen Literature and Rhetoric as one of their concentrations. If space permits, the course is open to AY and PY students also.
FM201 Introduction to Film Studies
Matthias Hurst
Credits: 5
Distribution: Disciplines/Methods
Concentration: Art and Aesthetics
Film is a language. Like any other language it has diverse elements of organisation and design, different accents and different levels of meaning, and it underwent structural and lexical development since its invention in the late 19th century. Understanding the language of film implies the awareness of film history and aesthetics and the ability to recognize and analyze structures of filmic narration.
The ECLA film course is an introduction to Film Studies and provides an insight into the basic knowledge of film history and theory, film aesthetics and cinematic language. Central topics are modes and styles of filmic presentation, film analysis and different ways of film interpretation. Students will talk about classical films, popular film genres and film directors, explore and discuss the meaning of film as an art form of the modern age, the elements of narration in fiction film and the representative function of film in our modern world and society, i.e. the ability of film to address important social and/or philosophical issues.
The course consists of both lectures/seminars and film screenings.
LT221 The King James Bible
Catherine Toal
Credits: 5
Distribution: Books and Authors
Concentration: Literature and Rhetoric, Ethics and Political Theory
The King James Bible (1611), conceived to establish a Bible for Protestant worship which was based on translation of original texts and respected the structure and ritual practice of the Church of England, is, after that of Shakespeare, the work with the greatest influence on English and American literature. This course provides an opportunity to read the books of the Old Testament in the Authorized Version up to the Book of Job. It offers an introduction to the usages of seventeenth-century English, and to the stories and themes which shaped the preoccupations and form of major texts in the English and American tradition. We will also consult scholarly accounts of the narrative characteristics, historical placing and interpretation of each book, as well as noting the literary and visual-art works which draw inspiration from them, for future study.
Texts: The King James Bible
The Literary Guide to the Bible ed. Alter and Kermode
AR221 PIETER BRUEGEL
Geoff Lehman
Credits: 5
Concentration: Art and Aesthetics
This course will focus on the paintings and prints of Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Bruegel's pictures pose exceptional problems for interpretation, and in light of this, we will consider issues such as:
realism, allegory, and absurdity; iconography and counter-iconography; pictorial irony; human experience and the natural world; perspective and the depiction of the infinite. Bruegel's role in the development of landscape painting as a genre will be examined, as well as his connection to humanist ideas of the time. We will also look at Bruegel's work in the larger context of northern and Italian Renaissance art, with the spring term core course on Renaissance Florence in mind.
HI231 Political Pedagogues: German Intellectual Culture Around 1800
Ryan Plumley
Credits: 5
German philosopher J.G. Fichte claimed that philosophers should guide mankind toward their destiny as free beings. His contemporary Friedrich Schiller argued that art should educate mankind. And Friedrich Schlegel claimed that philosophy and art must be merged by the collective effort of an educated elite. These are just three positions in the urgent debate about modern intellectual culture that emerged out of the explosion of cultural activity-including philosophy, literature, theater, painting, and music-that took place in Germany in the final decades of the eighteenth century. Because of the pervasive sense that older forms of social, cultural, and political life were being eroded by an emerging "modern" world, German thinkers and artists tried to re-imagine and re-invent their role in society and the role of their work in transforming their communities and cultures. We will engage with their work as an entree into some of the most important problems facing the intellectual culture of the modern West.
We will read works from Kant, Goethe, Schiller, Fichte, Schleiermacher, Schlegel, Novalis, and E.T.A. Hoffmann, spend some time with music and visual art, and work with relevant secondary literature.
HI227 Not Yet in the Now: Waiting for the Apocalypse
Judith Tonning
Credits: 5
People have always waited for the End of the World. This is a seminar in the intellectual and cultural history of that expectation in the West. We will begin by reading some foundational texts in Second Temple Jewish and early Christian tradition, and discussing the major strands of their interpretation in the Middle Ages, as either timeless allegories or historical prophecies. Next, we will analyse the role of apocalyptic expectation in the German, Dutch, and English Reformation, and in the settlement of the New World. We will follow the 'deconstruction' of apocalyptic expectation by European philosophy from Kant to Derrida, and the contrasting continuation of apocalyptic fervour in popular European culture, reaching a climax at the time of the First and Second World Wars.
Throughout, we will pay particular attention to the following subjects and questions:
Apocalypticism and epistemological scepticism: Outbursts of apocalyptic fervour have typically coincided historically with wide-ranging 'crises of scepticism' occasioned by intellectual, political and social upheaval. What is the relationship between current developments such as globalization and the information explosion and the renewed popularity of apocalyptic narratives such as those of Christian Zionism on the one side and militant Islam on the other?
Apocalypse and theatricality: Historically, the Book of Revelation has often been described as a drama-either a drama which those living must (proactively) stage, or one in which all are assigned a role. How is this relationship between the theatre and the apocalypse expressed in drama from Shakespeare's King Lear to Beckett's Endgame, and in political spectacles such as those put on by James I and the Nazis?
Eschatology and political ideology: The Apocalypse promises a new political and social order. Is it the responsibility of political movements to attempt to bring about a 'Messianic' kingdom of peace, or is the idea of a 'heaven on earth' impossible or even self-undermining?
Partial Bibliography: Readings from foundational Jewish and Christian apocalyptic texts (Daniel, 2 Enoch, Revelation, Tiburtine Sibyl, etc.); Augustine, The City of God [selections] (early 5th century); Joachim of Fiore, Expositio in Apocalypsim (c. 1200); Christopher Columbus, Book of Prophecies (c. 1500); Thomas Müntzer, 'Sermon to the Princes' (1524); Richard Bernard, A key of knowledge for the opening of the secret mysteries of St Johns mysticall Revelation (1617); Immanuel Kant, 'The End of All Things' (1794);
PL237 Theology and Phenomenology
Judith Tonning
Credits: 5
Distribution: Disciplines/Methods
Phenomenology, in philosophical anthropology, is the study of human existence as it appears to us from within. For the fathers of phenomenology, Husserl and Heidegger, this means that phenomenology can never give an account of Christian faith, as this self-confessedly relies on a radical intervention from without: divine grace. By contrast, some more peripheral figures in early phenomenology, and again some recent French phenomenologists, have insisted that any full account of human experience includes religious experience. This perspective takes its cue from classical Christian sources-Augustine's "The human heart is restless until it rests in thee," and Aquinas' "'Man by his nature is ordained to beatitude as his end," for example-and culminates in claims such as Henri de Lubac's that there is no such thing as a merely 'natural' human nature.
This seminar will follow the history of the philosophical question whether human nature/existence can be described without reference to God, with particular attention to Augustine and Aquinas, as well as to Descartes and Kant's epistemological arguments for the necessity of God's existence for any human knowledge. We will then consider the development of Heidegger's phenomenology from a theological to a methodically a-theistic philosophical method, and the attempts of his contemporaries Max Scheler, Edith Stein and Adolf Reinach to formulate a Christian phenomenology. Finally, we will study the 'theological turn' in recent French phenomenology, and compare its results with approaches to human nature in the contemporary analytical tradition. The ultimate objective of the seminar, however, is not historical but systematic: To help students think through the questions raised by these philosophers for themselves, and develop, if not their own answers, then a sense of the wide-ranging implications of the competing claims about human nature staked in theological and a-theological accounts.
Partial Bibliography: Readings from the New Testament; Augustine, Confessions (397-8); Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae [selections] (mid-13th century); René Descartes, Meditations [selections] (1641); Immanuel Kant, The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God (1763); Adolf Reinach, Sämtliche Werke [translated selections] (1917); Max Scheler, Vom Ewigen im Menschen [translated selections] (1921); Martin Heidegger, Supplements : From the Earliest Essays to Being and Time (selections written 1916-19); ----, The Phenomenology of Religious Life (1921); ----, 'Phenomenology and Theology' (1927); Edith Stein, 'Husserls Phänomenologie und die Philosophie des Hl. Thomas von Aquino' [translated] (1929); ----, Infinite and Finite Being (1937); Henri de Lubac, The Mystery of the Supernatural (1946); Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord [selections] (1961-9)
----, Theo-Drama [selections] (1971-83); Emmanuel Levinas, Beyond Essence: or, Otherwise than Being (1974); Jean-Luc Marion, God Without Being (1982); ----, Being Given (1997); Jean-Yves Lacoste, Experience and the Absolute (1989)
PL204 Continental Aesthetics
Tracy Colony
Credits: 5
Concentration: Art and Aesthetics
Distribution: Concepts
In this elective we read some of the central texts in the history of European philosophical reflection on art. Beginning with Immanuel Kant's Critique of Judgment and ending with the recent work of Jean-Luc Nancy, this elective presents the basic concepts and approaches which have shaped the way in which Continental philosophers have understood the nature of art.
LT210 Dante's Divine Comedy
Tracy Colony
Credits: 5
Concentration: Literature and Rhetoric
Distribution: Books/Authors
Written in the early years of the 14th century, the Divine Comedy gives expression to many currents in medieval philosophy, theology and political thought. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this course will focus on the Inferno and Purgatorio and trace the way in which these currents, and the status of poetry itself, are related to the ultimate metaphysical context of Dante's poem. All texts for this course will be read in translation.
TH232 Installation
David Levine
Credits: 5
Concentration: Art and Aesthetics
This is a studio art class. Participants acquire the means to manipulate sound, light, space and video by creating a series of room-based installations during the trimester. Participants are assigned a new studio with each unit, to accustom them to working with different kinds of space.
This is a single elective (5 credits) with 6 hours of in-class/studio time.
WINTER TERM
Art and Aesthetics Concentration Seminar II
PL248 Key Concepts in the Philosophy of Art
Julia Peters
Credits: 5
In this class, we will discuss some central concepts in the philosophy of art - Beauty, Expression, Fiction, Depiction, Truth - and questions associated with them, such as: Is beauty subjective or objective? Why do we respond emotionally to fictional events and characters? How can music express emotions or other contents? What is the difference between seeing an object and seeing a depiction of the object? Can artworks be truthful? We will address these issues by reading texts and considering works of the following authors and artists: Kant, Hegel, Wittgenstein, Proust, Wollheim, Beethoven, Rembrandt, Lessing, Lukacz and others.
The course is prescribed for BA students who have chosen Art and Aesthetics as one of their concentrations. If space permits, the course is open to AY and PY students also.
Ethics and Political Theory Concentration Seminar II
PT234 Classical Texts in Ethics and Political Theory
Katalin Makkai
Credits: 5
Distribution: Books/Authors, Concepts
With the humanism of the Enlightenment in the western tradition, the ideal of autonomy and the spectre of alienation became central motifs in thinking about moral, social and political life. This course examines some of the central conceptions of autonomy and of alienation-and of the conditions of the actualization of each-guiding classic modern works in ethics and political theory. We focus on the following theorists and topics: Locke on political autonomy and the social contract; Rousseau on the social basis of individual autonomy; Kant on reason and the autonomous individual; Feuerbach on religious alienation; Marx on the economic roots of alienation; Nietzsche on alienation as guilt and moral conscience; Freud on the question of whether rational autonomy is illusory; and de Beauvoir on gendered alienation.
The course is prescribed for BA students who have chosen Ethics and Political Theory as one of their concentrations. If space permits, the course is open to AY and PY students also.
Literature and Rhetoric Concentration Seminar II
LT238 The Age of World Literature
Bruno Macaes
Credits: 5
The ways in which literature has profited from and influenced the contemporary movement towards a cosmopolitan society are a notably important field of study for those who are interested in the relation between literature and social reality. Was there a time when literature was a national art, both expressing particular forms of character and language and depending on social and economic processes defined at the national level? Some have defended the existence of strict formal analogies between the novel and the nation state. Can these analogies be reconstructed at a higher level? With prophetic gifts, Goethe spoke of the end of an age, the inevitable rise of what he called world literature. How should we think about this concept? Where should we look for the cosmopolitan or international elements in modern fiction? Does a novelist write differently if his audience is no longer a national one? What would a global novel look like, were one to attempt such a project?
The seminar will discuss the main views on world literature, as presented in recently published books by Franco Moretti and David Damrosch, but also in essays and books by novelists Orhan Pamuk, Salman Rushdie, Chinua Achebe or the consummate world citizen V. S. Naipaul. In the last two weeks, we turn to Naomi, the novel by Junichiro Tanizaki where the meeting of two distant civilizations becomes a problem for literature itself.
The course is prescribed for BA students who have chosen Literature and Rhetoric as one of their concentrations. If space permits, the course is open to AY and PY students also.
LT234 Saint Paul and Philosophy
Catherine Toal
Credits: 5
Distribution: Books/Authors, Periods/Places, Concepts, Genres/Styles
Concentration: Literature and Rhetoric, Ethics and Political Theory
Recent continental philosophy has shown a marked interest in the works of Saint Paul, identifying him as the progenitor of central concepts and positions in modern thought more usually accorded a 'secular' origin and significance. In the Christian theological tradition, Paul is considered the 'second founder' of Christianity, or the first author of a Christian theology. Through a reading of the Acts of the Apostles and the New Testament Epistles attributed to Paul, we consider what kind of ethics Paul's writings formulate, as well as the reasons for their contemporary revival. The course includes two introductory lectures on Paul's rhetoric and on his historical context.
Core Texts:
Acts of the Apostles, Epistles of Paul (New Revised Standard Version)
Alain Badiou: Saint Paul and the Foundations of Universalism
Giorgio Agamben, The Time that Remains: A Commentary on the Letter to the Romans
Slavoj Zizek, The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity
LT236 Flaubert and Realism
Catherine Toal
Credits: 5
Distribution: Books/Authors, Genres/Styles
Concentration: Literature and Rhetoric
Perhaps more than any other author, the work of Gustave Flaubert has shaped the delicately descriptive 'realism' observable in current literary fiction: a careful attention to material objects, the omission of moral commentary, an unsentimental detachment which creates ironic forms of poignancy. Flaubert's own oeuvre was extremely diverse, encompassing highly-wrought, aestheticized historicist and mystical narratives, and undergoing the break-up of description itself into catalogue and unfinished fragment. The course examines the technique and ethic of Flaubert's realism, as well as asking why it coexists with seemingly contrasting or antithetical narrative modes. We consider what sort of political and cultural diagnosis Flaubertian aesthetics is based on, or the connection between politics and style.
Core Texts: Flaubert, Sentimental Education, Flaubert, Salammb , Flaubert, Bouvard et Pécuchet, Beaumont ed., A Friendship in Letters, Flaubert and Turgenev, McKensie ed., The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters
PT232 Wittgenstein on Culture and Value
Bruno Macaes
Credits: 5
Distribution: Books/Authors
Concentration: Ethics and Political Theory, Art and Aesthetics
Wittgenstein on art, music, language, culture, ethics, and religion. Readings include selections from his notebooks. Many of the short texts discussed can stand on their own, but together they will help us prepare the ground for a general understanding of his late philosophy. Wittgenstein emphasized the fundamental importance of the notion of value for meaningful thought, claiming that both ethics and aesthetics are in some sense at the limits of experience. What is value? What forms does it take? How does something acquire value? How can value be known?
TH234 Introduction to Acting and Directing
David Levine
Credits: 5
Concentration: Art and Aesthetics
Through careful examination of a Chekhov play, participants gain a practical understanding of both scene analysis and the principles of stage naturalism. The course focuses on actual scene-work and staging, supplemented by reading from Stanislavski's An Actor Prepares. (This course meets 6 hours a week, but is still considered a single elective.)
PL242 Virtue Ethics
Sophia Vasalou
Credits: 5
Distribution: Concepts
Concentration: Ethics and Political Theory
"An untrustworthy friend", "a fair teacher", "a reckless thrill-seeker", "a fickle and lazy good-for-nothing". We often describe people in terms that praise or blame them for qualities we take to be respectively strengths or weaknesses, excellences or failings. These kinds of descriptions have been the topic of a long philosophical tradition which began with the ancient Greeks, and especially with the work of Aristotle, and which has been revived in recent moral philosophy in what has come to be known as "virtue ethics". So what are the virtues? Long tradition has focused on moral traits such as courage, justice, temperance or wisdom, but what determines whether a given trait is taken to constitute a virtue or a vice? Is compassion a virtue? What about humility, or chastity? And what about creativity - or love? Traditional accounts have answered such questions by focusing on the notion of the good life or human "flourishing". What is the relationship between the virtues and the good life? Is there a single notion of human flourishing? And finally, once we acknowledge certain traits to be virtues which yield an attractive moral ideal - an ideal about the kind of persons we would like to be - how can these virtues be acquired and learnt? We will consider these questions by focusing mostly, though not exclusively, on recent philosophical work on virtue ethics.
PL238 Bioethics
Jens Reich
Credits: 5
Distribution: Disciplines/Methods
Concentration: Ethics and Political Theory
The recent development in molecular and cell biology, embryology and neurobiology mark a new era in which Homo sapiens dares to cross the divide from the planned reconstruction of and mastery over external Nature to the redesign of his own inner constitution. This creates a challenge to our self-perception as autonomous beings with a free will that are able to make rational decisions about morality and good life. The unity of the human genus is endangered when the new generation comes into life by design rather than by procreation.
We will discuss the future impact of the new biology and its biomedical consequences on our own life. To this end we have to study the empirical basis of the new bioethics ("What are the new facts?") and will re-interprete ("What does it mean?") old philosophical problems in the light of the materialistic turn.
TH332 Advanced Studio Course
David Levine
Credits: 5
Concentration: Art and Aesthetics
This course builds on the skills developed in the Installation course, while allowing participants more freedom in terms of scheduling and use of materials.
Participants will be required to make and show 3 pieces over the course of the term, at a time of their choosing. Classes will meet once-weekly for 4 hours, and will consist variously of a) discussions of assigned critical texts and artists' writings; b) student presentations on contemporary artists; c) Visits by Berlin-based artists, or visits to their studios, and d) presentations and discussions of student work. The course aims to further students' artistic development by encouraging a more in-depth studio practice, in combination with a deeper sense of institutional, art-historical, and contemporary context.ENROLLMENT: The course is open to all graduates of the installation course, and by special permission of the professor. As it is offered as an 'overload' course, permission of the registrar is required.
SPRING TERM
Art and Aesthetics Concentration Seminar III
AR223 What is Art?
Aya Soika
Credits: 5
Distribution: Concepts
In this class, the study of different theories of art will be combined with and applied to the study of individual art works. Most of the texts which we will read were written in the first half of the twentieth century, and reflect the necessity of redefining the notion of Art, e.g. through a world affected by social changes and modernity, or through the emergence of photography and avantgarde ideals. Other texts engage with issues such as kitsch, mass media or ideas related to "postmodernism" as well concepts of museology. Texts and theories will be applied to selected art works. What is gained and what is lost through different approaches? What does this tell us about the meaning of art, about ways of seeing and approaching art works?
Ethics and Political Theory Concentration Seminar III
PT237 Passion and Politics
Ewa Atanassow
Credits: 5
Distribution: Concepts
What is the nature of political attachment? What motivates individuals and groups to civic dedication, and do these motives differ according to political orders and ethical views? Are political loyalties shaped by rational arguments, or by sentiments and passions; by reasons of the mind, or reasons of the heart? And can we meaningfully distinguish between the two? What, in short, is the psychology, or psychologies behind different civic and moral ideals? In this seminar we shall pursue these questions and their implications for the theoretical study of politics by engaging with select readings in the tradition of ethical and political thought, both ancient and modern, that highlight the centrality of passions in political life.The course is prescribed for BA students who have chosen Ethics and Political Theory as one of their concentrations. If space permits, the course is open to AY and PY students who have taken Ethics and Political Theory Concentration Seminars I and II in the autumn and winter terms, respectively.
Literature and Rhetoric Concentration Seminar III
LT239 Philosophy and Poetry
Tracy Colony
Credits: 5
In this concentration seminar we will explore the close relation and essential divergences between philosophy and poetry. We will read philosophical accounts of poetry and also examine works of philosophical poetry. In addition to reading philosophy and poetry from their mutually illuminating perspectives this seminar will also host visits from contemporary poets and philosophers in order to further this ongoing dialogue.
This course is prescribed for BA students who have chosen Literature and Rhetoric as one of their concentrations. If space permits, the course is open to AY and PY students also.
PT233 The Crisis of Democracy
Bruno Macaes
Credits: 5
Distribution: Concepts
Concentration: Ethics and Political Theory
For all its successes and the universal scope of its rule, democracy remains persistently linked to the idea of crisis. It seems that democracy is always in danger, that being under threat is proper to the democratic regime. Can it survive the demands of a capitalist economy, the rise of globalization or the facts of politics and war? Does democratic rule promote mediocrity, conformity and passivity? Is there a fundamental problem with democracy and can this problem be solved with the resources of democratic politics? The course will examine the main political and philosophical works of the last hundred years in which this question is specifically addressed.
PT235 Evolution
Bruno Macaes
Credits: 5
Distribution: Disciplines/Methods
Concentration: Ethics and Political Theory
Evolution through natural selection has been called the greatest idea ever to occur to a human mind. In recent decades this idea has progressively expanded its empire to every domain of the natural and human sciences, so much so that for many thinkers it offers the only real hope for a unified approach to human knowledge. The course starts with a study of the original idea, as defended and explained by Darwin. We proceed to examine how the logic of evolutionary thinking has been applied to ethics, culture, and political science. Particular attention will be devoted to the evolution of morality, altruism, and cooperation. The course concludes with a discussion of the possibility of deliberately influencing the course of evolution to give us increased mental and physical powers.
PT223 Patriotism and Its Other
Ewa Atanassow
Credits: 5
Distribution: Concepts
Concentration: Ethics and Political Theory
Is patriotism a virtue? And what does it mean to be a citizen of the world? Starting with the contemporary debates on the moral status of love of country, in this seminar we shall examine the ideals of patriotism and cosmopolitanism as they have been invoked at critical junctures in the history of Western political thought.
The readings will feature, among others: Arendt, Habermas, McIntyre, Plato, Thucydides, Cicero, Augustine, Machiavelli, Rousseau, Kant, Burke, Marx, Tocqueville.
AH223 German Art and Identity: Utopia and Despair
Aya Soika
Credits: 5
Distribution: Periods/Places
Concentration: Art and Aesthetics
This seminar introduces a range of artistic positions that are particular to German art and identity in the twentieth century, from Expressionism and Weimar Culture (1920s), to art and culture under the Nazi dictatorship and the emergence of a new "culture of remembrance" after 1945 until the current day. Students will take a look at works (painting, sculpture and architecture, as well as conceptual works) which are closely related to Germany's difficult history from 1871 (the unification of the German Reich) to 1945 (the end of the Second World War) and analyse the works in relation to their historical context.
FM203 Silence, Whispers and Cries: The Films of Ingmar Bergman
Matthias Hurst
Credits: 5
Distribution: Books/Authors
Concentration: Art and Aesthetics
Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007) was one of the world's most renowned and influential film directors, a true film auteur with his own vision and his own unique voice.
His films deal with existential questions and topics of the human condition, the meaning of life, love and passion, pursuit of happiness and suffering, disgrace, guilt and responsibility. Being a stage director and film director, he was also interested in analyzing the position and function of the artist in society. His visuals are partly stunning and beautiful, partly depressing and disturbing.
In this course we explore and discuss the work of Ingmar Bergman, the meaning and philosophical dimensions of his films, and the specific cinematic forms of his narrative style.
The course consists of both seminars and film screenings.
FM207 The Fantastic Screen
Matthias Hurst
Credits: 5
Distribution: Genres/Styles
Concentration: Art and Aesthetics
The genre of the fantastic could be divided into three subgenres: Science fiction, fantasy, and horror.
In the categories of all three subgenres numerous popular, intriguing and influential films have been produced. The success of the fantastic in cinema suggests that there is a specific attraction to that genre, the fascination of visual spectacle as well as ideas of artistic aspirations and meaningful communication. This attraction challenges both filmmakers and spectators over and over again to create and experience worlds, stories and characters that are based on reality and ordinary human life admittedly, but exceed and transcend this life and reality in imaginative and fanciful - and sometimes even bizarre - ways.
The fantastic is a means to explore issues of general interest (i.e. basic anthropological, cultural, social and political topics) in a new fictional context that provides an artistic or poetical freedom of expression, thus working like a magnifying glass and enabling us to see social and individual problems and/or solutions more clearly.
Taking a look at classic examples of all three fantastic subgenres we will discuss the aesthetics of the cinematic fantastic and its ways of interpreting the human condition and the world we are living in.
HI233 An Intellectual History of Feminist Thought
Ryan Plumley
Credits: 5
Distribution: Concepts
Concentration: Ethics and Political Theory
What makes thought "feminist"? Is feminism one important strand among the powerful discourses of liberation arising out of the Enlightenment? Or can it offer an alternative to the patriarchal and masculinist foundations of those very discourses? When and how did feminism arise as a major form of critical thought in the West? What transformations has it gone through? Is feminism still a vibrant mode of thought, or has it been supplanted by other concerns? Why?
In this seminar we will address these questions by tracing the history of feminist thought in the West from the late eighteenth century until the present. Beginning with nineteenth-century efforts to articulate a feminist agenda within Anglo-American liberalism and European marxism, we will then turn to twentieth-century efforts to radically rethink the politics of gender in French feminism and more recent scholarship. Always attentive to relevant transformations in the social, economic, political, and cultural context, we will follow the lines of intellectual transmission and contestation within feminism. While our primary goal will be to reflect on the history of this particular tradition, we will also address the ways that feminism has engaged with and challenged other major traditions: liberalism, marxism, psychoanalysis, and philosophy.
We will read both primary works and secondary scholarship. Readings will include Mary Wollstonecraft, Rosa Luxemburg, Simone de Beauvoir, Luce Irigaray, and Judith Butler, among others.