Class Schedules

This course introduces students to the intellectual roots and contemporary applications of cultural studies, including critical media studies, focusing on the theoretical bases for analyses of power and meaning in production, texts, and reception. It includes primary readings in anti-racist, feminist, modern, postmodern, and queer cultural and social theory, and compares them to traditional approaches to the humanities. Designed as preparation for intermediate and advanced work grounded in cultural studies, the course is writing intensive, with special emphasis on developing skills in critical thinking and scholarly argumentation and documentation. Completion of or enrollment in MCST 110 is the prerequisite for majoring in media and cultural studies.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

The concept of freedom both lies at the heart of human rights discourse and provides the spark that ignites any number of musical movements. Intended for students with strong interests in the intersection between the performing arts and humanities, this course serves as an introduction both to the concept of freedom as it developed in Western societies since the late eighteenth century and to the history of music in the cultures that have fostered such ideals. It intends to introduce students to the study of music (and, by association, arts in general) from social, cultural, and critical perspectives, using the framework of freedom as a common theme. It also aims to contextualize the discourse of human rights within the history of arts and ideas, providing students with a a sense of the term's changing meanings and emphases over time and across space. We will explore traditions in both Western art music (also known as "classical music") and the American popular (recorded) music in a search for ways in which music has served social-political ideologies - overtly through the aims of its composers and performers, and unintentionally through the conditions of its reception. Historical readings on the concept of freedom from a variety of disciplinary perspectives (history, philosophy, political science, critical theory) will introduce students to several of the most influential thinkers on the subject and the central concerns and questions that animate the discourse on freedom. No prior background in music is required for the course, although it is assumed that students will have a true interest not only in popular music of the twentieth century but also other traditions and genres, such as opera and symphonic music. "Freedom" signifies a number of ideals, which operate in real-political and abstract-aesthetic realms. Music can represent, convey, and "mean" freedom in infinite ways, and it is the intention of this course to introduce students to this diversity.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

What does it mean to theorize "the political"? How does one undertake such an inquiry? What is the relationship between the political, the economic, the social, and the cultural? This course is designed to help students answer these questions and introduce them to the field of Political Theory. We will explore the work of some the most influential thinkers in the history of political thought – namely, Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Marx, and Arendt. We will also engage contemporary scholarship in the discipline and try to understand where Political Theory is headed today. Significantly, this course will move beyond the scope of a traditional introductory survey and consider the ways in which Political Theory has historically ignored questions of racism, sexism, and colonialism. In an attempt to decolonize the canon, we will consider the ways in which these issues have been ignored despite the fact that they have lurked in the background of some of the most important texts in the history of political thought.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Well, some of them. Terms like socialism, feminism, (neo)liberalism, radical, queer, globalization, colonialism, trans. People from all walks of life, across a range of experiences and understanding, use them out of fear, pride, love, a little or a lot of knowledge, and curiosity. This course will be our collective exploration of how the terms show up in the past and present; we might even speculate how they will appear in the future. The goal is to empower you to speak about, and use, the terms in all kinds of communities. From Goldman to Federici, from Truth to Yousafzai, from Rich to Daly, from Rivera to Puar, and a host of others, the course will also include music, storytelling, video, and film to make the terms more...or less...scary. Acquaintance with feminist, queer, and trans knowledges and experiences is great but not required. An enthusiasm to know more is a requisite.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

For Marx, "private capital" is an oxymoron - a contradiction in terms, since by its very nature capital is social. And "philosophy" is really not a thing, at least not the way it's always been defined, since the world of ideas has no existence independent of the material conditions of human existence. In this course, we will try to recover the revolutionary force of these arguments with a focus on what they show us about the illusory or fantastic character of modern life. From the early critique of alienation to the late analysis of surplus value, Marx showed over and again how the so-called rational world is not as rational as it seems: specters, fetishes, deceptive appearances, "false consciousness" are just some of the features of life under capital that Marx exposes and that continue to haunt our world (just think of how we appeal to the "magic of the market," its "invisible hand" or to "creative destruction"). We will read selections from Marx's early writings on religion and alienation through the theory of ideology, of commodity fetishism, and of primitive accumulation to his late programmatic texts in tandem with texts by 20th-century thinkers who critiqued and further developed Marx's thought (Lukacs, Gramsci, Lefort, Derrida).

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Taught in English; there is an optional German component for those who want to have the course count toward their German-taught courses. In this case, students must do the reading and writing assignments and some of their oral presentations in German.What does the internationally (mis)used word "kafkaesque" actually mean? This course approaches Kafka's work both as a case for literary analysis and as one that offers insights into modernism. In one way or another, Kafka sheds light on massive industrialization, bureaucratization, the commodification of art, the destabilization of patriarchy, and the development of technology and media, as well as on the question: what is literature itself. In addition to a selection of Kafka's fiction, we shall read Crumb and Mairowitz's graphic version of Kafka's life and work, allowing students to produce their own graphic group project.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Wealth has held an allure for many modern thinkers; the creation of a wealthy society often associated with "civilization" itself. The relationships among work, wealth and well-being are a perennial concern and have been central to the study of political economy, since its inception in the mid- to late-18th century. How does work produce wealth for the individual and for society? How, or when, does individual and social wealth translate into individual and/or social well-being? And, how does the character of work affect individual well-being or happiness? This course will examine the answers given to these questions (and myriad corollary questions) by writers within the political economy tradition.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course is designed to engage students with the most sophisticated and useful schools of thought available in the social science disciplines. The course raises a number of questions: How can we best understand the complexities of self and society? Are these units of analysis useful in and of themselves? Are they contained in an essential body or polity that we can identify as some unitary entity called Jenny and John Doe, American, French, Arab/Jew, black/white, modern/primitive, developed/underdeveloped, Oriental/ Occidental, homo/heterosexual, male/female? Or are they socially produced units that have no essence in-of-themselves, produced and made real only through performance with the "Other"? Furthermore, is there something unique about modernity that has fundamentally transformed the notions of our selves, bodies, polities, races, and civilizations? If the answer to the last question is in the affirmative, how and why did this come to be the case, and what consequences does it hold for our understanding of the past and of the future? These are the kinds of questions that great figures in sociology have been asking since the nineteenth-century, including classic theorists like Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Karl Marx, as well as more recent writers such as Ervin Goffman, Michel Foucault, Immanuel Wallerstein, and Edward Said.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

All readings and class taught in English; no pre-knowledge required. Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) has been called the "savage anomaly" of the Enlightenment because his philosophy enables an alternative or 'hidden' modernity based on the interdependence of beings rather than their hierarchy. Ever more political theorists, environmentalists, and ecologists are turning to Spinoza's vision of a nonhierarchical union of nature and society that rejects anthropocentrism as the promise for a more equitable and sustainable life. In this course we shall focus on the foundation of Spinoza's unconventional thesis: his intertwined conceptions of the human being as part of nature-as opposed to the prevailing notion of the human as an autonomous "imperium" in, yet above, nature-and of society as a continuation of nature-as opposed to the dominant theories of the "social contract" that ground society on its break with, or repression of, nature (Grotius, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant). We shall examine Spinoza's entailed radical revision in understanding both the "political" and the "environment." Beyond Spinoza's Ethics and his Theologico-Political and Political treatises, we shall read major commentators on Spinoza's ethical and political theory and on his role in environmental ethics and Deep Ecology.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

All readings and class taught in English; no pre-knowledge required. Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) has been called the "savage anomaly" of the Enlightenment because his philosophy enables an alternative or 'hidden' modernity based on the interdependence of beings rather than their hierarchy. Ever more political theorists, environmentalists, and ecologists are turning to Spinoza's vision of a nonhierarchical union of nature and society that rejects anthropocentrism as the promise for a more equitable and sustainable life. In this course we shall focus on the foundation of Spinoza's unconventional thesis: his intertwined conceptions of the human being as part of nature-as opposed to the prevailing notion of the human as an autonomous "imperium" in, yet above, nature-and of society as a continuation of nature-as opposed to the dominant theories of the "social contract" that ground society on its break with, or repression of, nature (Grotius, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant). We shall examine Spinoza's entailed radical revision in understanding both the "political" and the "environment." Beyond Spinoza's Ethics and his Theologico-Political and Political treatises, we shall read major commentators on Spinoza's ethical and political theory and on his role in environmental ethics and Deep Ecology.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

All readings and class taught in English; no pre-knowledge required. Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) has been called the "savage anomaly" of the Enlightenment because his philosophy enables an alternative or 'hidden' modernity based on the interdependence of beings rather than their hierarchy. Ever more political theorists, environmentalists, and ecologists are turning to Spinoza's vision of a nonhierarchical union of nature and society that rejects anthropocentrism as the promise for a more equitable and sustainable life. In this course we shall focus on the foundation of Spinoza's unconventional thesis: his intertwined conceptions of the human being as part of nature-as opposed to the prevailing notion of the human as an autonomous "imperium" in, yet above, nature-and of society as a continuation of nature-as opposed to the dominant theories of the "social contract" that ground society on its break with, or repression of, nature (Grotius, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant). We shall examine Spinoza's entailed radical revision in understanding both the "political" and the "environment." Beyond Spinoza's Ethics and his Theologico-Political and Political treatises, we shall read major commentators on Spinoza's ethical and political theory and on his role in environmental ethics and Deep Ecology.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

We are living through another wave of popular interest in “cults” and “cultists,” manifesting in true crime podcasts (Escaping NXIVM, Heaven’s Gate), television documentaries (Wild Wild Country, The Deep End), fictional horror or thriller stories (Midsommar, The Idol, Martha Marcy May Marlene), and historical dramatizations (Waco, The Master). These cultural works use the “cult” designation (with all its connotations and associated narratives) to label and make sense of a range of religious, political, economic, and social practices, ideas, and organizations, both contemporary and historical. This course aims to look critically at these media texts and the larger popular fascination with “cults.” In analyzing these narratives about religion, power, charisma, and commitment, we will not primarily focus on the so-called “cultists” being represented, but on the audiences that consume and interpret the stories and the cultural contexts that give rise to them. Looking closely at these images and narratives can reveal popular anxieties and ways of thinking about power and agency, identity and subjectivity, spirituality and secularism, and individuality and collectivity, for instance. Importantly, many of these historical and contemporary treatments also act as powerful sites for working out ideas about race, gender, and sexuality. Our approach will be theoretical and analytical as we examine key historical case studies from the second half of the 20th century (including media engagements with People’s Temple, the Black liberation group MOVE, and the Branch Davidians) and more contemporary examples (including MLM and crypto groups, NXIVM, and Teal Swan).

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

We are living through another wave of popular interest in “cults” and “cultists,” manifesting in true crime podcasts (Escaping NXIVM, Heaven’s Gate), television documentaries (Wild Wild Country, The Deep End), fictional horror or thriller stories (Midsommar, The Idol, Martha Marcy May Marlene), and historical dramatizations (Waco, The Master). These cultural works use the “cult” designation (with all its connotations and associated narratives) to label and make sense of a range of religious, political, economic, and social practices, ideas, and organizations, both contemporary and historical. This course aims to look critically at these media texts and the larger popular fascination with “cults.” In analyzing these narratives about religion, power, charisma, and commitment, we will not primarily focus on the so-called “cultists” being represented, but on the audiences that consume and interpret the stories and the cultural contexts that give rise to them. Looking closely at these images and narratives can reveal popular anxieties and ways of thinking about power and agency, identity and subjectivity, spirituality and secularism, and individuality and collectivity, for instance. Importantly, many of these historical and contemporary treatments also act as powerful sites for working out ideas about race, gender, and sexuality. Our approach will be theoretical and analytical as we examine key historical case studies from the second half of the 20th century (including media engagements with People’s Temple, the Black liberation group MOVE, and the Branch Davidians) and more contemporary examples (including MLM and crypto groups, NXIVM, and Teal Swan).

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

What is language and what is it for? What makes a series of sounds into a meaningful sentence? What makes a sentence true? Why is language always changing? This course will introduce students to ways in which twentieth century philosophers have attempted to provide answers to such questions. Since the philosophy of language has been so crucial to contemporary philosophy, this course also serves as an introduction to philosophical thought from the beginning of twentieth century to the present. Topics will range from more technical problems (theories of meaning, reference and truth; synonymy and analyticity; universals and natural kinds; private languages) to broader issues examining the relationship between language and culture (language games; radical interpretation; social change). Readings typically include writings by Ludwig Wittgenstein, W.V. Quine, John Searle, Donald Davidson, Richard Rorty, Michel Foucault, and bell hooks. Prerequisite(s): PHIL 201, or permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

The word "ritual" is used in many contexts to refer to types of practice that are considered centrally important, as well as formalistic and repetitive. This seminar-style course concentrates on the concept of ritual as a central component of social practice, within and without religious groupings. Focusing on developing the concept of ritual, we will focus on ritual across traditions. This requires students to 'work with' concepts - forming a conception of what they mean by ritual, and be willing to change that conception when faced with contradictory evidence.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

For Marx, "private capital" is an oxymoron - a contradiction in terms, since by its very nature capital is social. And "philosophy" is really not a thing, at least not the way it's always been defined, since the world of ideas has no existence independent of the material conditions of human existence. In this course, we will try to recover the revolutionary force of these arguments with a focus on what they show us about the illusory or fantastic character of modern life. From the early critique of alienation to the late analysis of surplus value, Marx showed over and again how the so-called rational world is not as rational as it seems: specters, fetishes, deceptive appearances, "false consciousness" are just some of the features of life under capital that Marx exposes and that continue to haunt our world (just think of how we appeal to the "magic of the market," its "invisible hand" or to "creative destruction"). We will read selections from Marx's early writings on religion and alienation through the theory of ideology, of commodity fetishism, and of primitive accumulation to his late programmatic texts in tandem with texts by 20th-century thinkers who critiqued and further developed Marx's thought (Lukacs, Gramsci, Lefort, Derrida).

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Traces the evolution of (global) political economy as a peculiarly modern way of understanding and organizing (global) social life. Particular attention will be paid to how the distinction between the political and the economic is drawn and implemented in interconnected ways within nation-states and in international society. Course includes a detailed study of one of the key components of the international political economy: international trade, international finance, technological processes, etc. Prerequisite(s): Sophomore-standing or permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Taught in English; there is an optional German component for those who want to have the course count toward their German-taught courses. In this case, students must do the reading and writing assignments and some of their oral presentations in German.What does the internationally (mis)used word "kafkaesque" actually mean? This course approaches Kafka's work both as a case for literary analysis and as one that offers insights into modernism. In one way or another, Kafka sheds light on massive industrialization, bureaucratization, the commodification of art, the destabilization of patriarchy, and the development of technology and media, as well as on the question: what is literature itself. In addition to a selection of Kafka's fiction, we shall read Crumb and Mairowitz's graphic version of Kafka's life and work, allowing students to produce their own graphic group project.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course introduces students to the intellectual roots and contemporary applications of cultural studies, including critical media studies, focusing on the theoretical bases for analyses of power and meaning in production, texts, and reception. It includes primary readings in anti-racist, feminist, modern, postmodern, and queer cultural and social theory, and compares them to traditional approaches to the humanities. Designed as preparation for intermediate and advanced work grounded in cultural studies, the course is writing intensive, with special emphasis on developing skills in critical thinking and scholarly argumentation and documentation. Completion of or enrollment in MCST 110 is the prerequisite for majoring in media and cultural studies.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course introduces students to the intellectual roots and contemporary applications of cultural studies, including critical media studies, focusing on the theoretical bases for analyses of power and meaning in production, texts, and reception. It includes primary readings in anti-racist, feminist, modern, postmodern, and queer cultural and social theory, and compares them to traditional approaches to the humanities. Designed as preparation for intermediate and advanced work grounded in cultural studies, the course is writing intensive, with special emphasis on developing skills in critical thinking and scholarly argumentation and documentation. Completion of or enrollment in MCST 110 is the prerequisite for majoring in media and cultural studies.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

An examination of the evolution of influential political concepts and theories from ancient cultures to the present day, by those writing in/from/to the West. Introduction through textual analysis to historical and contemporary understandings of key terms such as authority, legitimacy, liberty, republicanism, democracy, revolution and "the good." Additionally, the course provides an introduction to political theory methods of analysis and critique, through the development of skills in reading, critical thinking, and writing.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

The first decades of the 20th century produced some of the most innovative works in literary history, permanently transforming how we see, hear, and otherwise perceive the world around us. More than any aesthetic movement before or since, modernists including Virginia Woolf, Ezra Pound, Franz Kafka, Rainer Maria Rilke, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Gertrude Stein, and Marcel Proust were keenly aware of both the limits of language and the inevitability of their transgression. They used words in ways that stretch sense to the point where it breaks, but with the aim of revealing a richer domain of finer-grained perception that is obscured by our everyday linguistic and intellectual habits. Over the course of the semester, we will read literary and theoretical accounts that both thematize and perform their own linguistic (in)capacities: to represent, to translate, to obscure, to estrange, to reveal. We will also examine some instances of modernist music, painting, and film. Our aim is to arrive at a nuanced understanding of how words work, contrasting linguistic phenomena with other forms of expressive media, and inquiring into the potential of language to articulate non-linguistic modes of experience. All readings in English. The course has no prerequisites and is open to first years.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

The first decades of the 20th century produced some of the most innovative works in literary history, permanently transforming how we see, hear, and otherwise perceive the world around us. More than any aesthetic movement before or since, modernists including Virginia Woolf, Ezra Pound, Franz Kafka, Rainer Maria Rilke, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Gertrude Stein, and Marcel Proust were keenly aware of both the limits of language and the inevitability of their transgression. They used words in ways that stretch sense to the point where it breaks, but with the aim of revealing a richer domain of finer-grained perception that is obscured by our everyday linguistic and intellectual habits. Over the course of the semester, we will read literary and theoretical accounts that both thematize and perform their own linguistic (in)capacities: to represent, to translate, to obscure, to estrange, to reveal. We will also examine some instances of modernist music, painting, and film. Our aim is to arrive at a nuanced understanding of how words work, contrasting linguistic phenomena with other forms of expressive media, and inquiring into the potential of language to articulate non-linguistic modes of experience. All readings in English. The course has no prerequisites and is open to first years.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course will examine the developments of contemporary art beyond traditional centers of gravity in Europe and the United States. Using a series of case studies, it will examine how globalization impacts artistic production in different parts of the world, including Asia, Africa, India, Latin America, Russia, Eastern Europe, Russia, and the Middle East. While analyzing a diverse range of artistic practices in these regions, the course will critically explore key discourses around the topic of globalization, including hybridity and diaspora, from post-modern and post-colonial perspectives. No background in art history necessary.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

This course will examine the developments of contemporary art beyond traditional centers of gravity in Europe and the United States. Using a series of case studies, it will examine how globalization impacts artistic production in different parts of the world, including Asia, Africa, India, Latin America, Russia, Eastern Europe, Russia, and the Middle East. While analyzing a diverse range of artistic practices in these regions, the course will critically explore key discourses around the topic of globalization, including hybridity and diaspora, from post-modern and post-colonial perspectives. No background in art history necessary.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

The course is an introduction to some of the important theoretical and methodological work conducted by scholars in various disciplines who hope to better define and understand religious phenomena. This seminar begins with some of the early twentieth century texts that are often cited and discussed by contemporary scholars of religion (e.g., Durkheim, Weber, Freud) and then turns to a number of investigations stemming from engagement with earlier theorists or refracting new concerns. The course inquires into the problems of defining and analyzing religious cultures, and the researcher's position or positions in this analysis, as this has been approached from anthropological, sociological, and religious studies perspectives.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WC

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course brings together discourses that have remained somewhat parallel and unrelated--Whiteness Studies and Postcolonial Studies. Before and during the pandemic, these intertwine in similar but also radically different ways. The course is based on the premise that “Whiteness,” as an academic/social framework, stems from and is intertwined with social and political identity-based movements (feminist, critical race, indigenous, etc.). This course explores where and how the notion of 'whiteness' converges and diverges from post-colonialism. The goals are to learn how “Whiteness” is a category to define identity and to analyze experiences in literature and in our lives, to understand what “Post/Colonialism” is as a historical experience for so many of us and as a field of study, to intersect the two and interpret literature and culture, and to move towards decolonial knowledge and praxis by reflecting on the ways in which we are positioned at the intersection of these histories. Literature by James Baldwin, Frantz Fanon, Gordimer, Zadie Smith; music by Pete Seeger and Macklemore, critiques of White nationalisms, and films by Hector Babenco and James Cameron are included.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

All readings and class taught in English; no pre-knowledge required. A widespread tendency in contemporary Western societies is to associate metaphysics with religion, if not with what is often dismissively called the "irrational." This course will dismantle this myth by reading closely European philosophy and political theory, mostly since the seventeenth century, in their relation to theology and their reception by twentieth-century critical theory. This will allow us to examine the ways in which secular thought emerges not as an alternative to metaphysics-something which thought cannot supersede anyway-but rather as a different way of dealing with the very same metaphysical questions and issues that concern religion, from the meaning of life to the imminence of death, and from (actual or imagined) guilt to the hope for redemption. We shall endeavor to identify the similarities and differences between the 'secular' and the 'religious' ways, including their respective relations to rationality and their functions in ideology. Readings may include: Aristotle, Talal Asad, George Bataille, Walter Benjamin, Kenneth Burke, Richard Dienst, Emile Durkheim, Michel Foucault, Sigmund Freud, Peter Harrison, Jacques Lacan, Karl Marx, Marcel Mauss, Carl Schmitt, Baruch Spinoza, Alberto Toscano, Max Weber, Slavoj Zizek.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

All readings and class taught in English; no pre-knowledge required. A widespread tendency in contemporary Western societies is to associate metaphysics with religion, if not with what is often dismissively called the "irrational." This course will dismantle this myth by reading closely European philosophy and political theory, mostly since the seventeenth century, in their relation to theology and their reception by twentieth-century critical theory. This will allow us to examine the ways in which secular thought emerges not as an alternative to metaphysics-something which thought cannot supersede anyway-but rather as a different way of dealing with the very same metaphysical questions and issues that concern religion, from the meaning of life to the imminence of death, and from (actual or imagined) guilt to the hope for redemption. We shall endeavor to identify the similarities and differences between the 'secular' and the 'religious' ways, including their respective relations to rationality and their functions in ideology. Readings may include: Aristotle, Talal Asad, George Bataille, Walter Benjamin, Kenneth Burke, Richard Dienst, Emile Durkheim, Michel Foucault, Sigmund Freud, Peter Harrison, Jacques Lacan, Karl Marx, Marcel Mauss, Carl Schmitt, Baruch Spinoza, Alberto Toscano, Max Weber, Slavoj Zizek.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

All readings and class taught in English; no pre-knowledge required. A widespread tendency in contemporary Western societies is to associate metaphysics with religion, if not with what is often dismissively called the "irrational." This course will dismantle this myth by reading closely European philosophy and political theory, mostly since the seventeenth century, in their relation to theology and their reception by twentieth-century critical theory. This will allow us to examine the ways in which secular thought emerges not as an alternative to metaphysics-something which thought cannot supersede anyway-but rather as a different way of dealing with the very same metaphysical questions and issues that concern religion, from the meaning of life to the imminence of death, and from (actual or imagined) guilt to the hope for redemption. We shall endeavor to identify the similarities and differences between the 'secular' and the 'religious' ways, including their respective relations to rationality and their functions in ideology. Readings may include: Aristotle, Talal Asad, George Bataille, Walter Benjamin, Kenneth Burke, Richard Dienst, Emile Durkheim, Michel Foucault, Sigmund Freud, Peter Harrison, Jacques Lacan, Karl Marx, Marcel Mauss, Carl Schmitt, Baruch Spinoza, Alberto Toscano, Max Weber, Slavoj Zizek.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

"Free choice is the only miracle the moderns recognize” (Karol Berger). We will read texts from Aristotle to Hume, Kant, Marx, Nietzsche, Hegel, and Freud to Adorno, Arendt, Lorde, and others that question the idea of individual freedom our liberal order is based on while offering radical alternatives. Freedom turns out to be something we can neither entirely conceive of nor do without. Weekly reading responses; three mid-length papers with revisions. No prerequisites, but be prepared to work your way through some densely argued texts.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

“Free choice is the only miracle the moderns recognize” (Karol Berger). We will read texts from Aristotle to Hume, Kant, Marx, Nietzsche, Hegel, and Freud to Adorno, Arendt, Lorde, and others that question the idea of individual freedom our liberal order is based on while offering radical alternatives. Freedom turns out to be something we can neither entirely conceive of nor do without. Weekly reading responses; three mid-length papers with revisions. No prerequisites, but be prepared to work your way through some densely argued texts.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Understanding the conditions we live in through a greater awareness of systems and ideologies, both dominant and marginalized, could help us to place individuals’ and communities’ beliefs and actions in context, provide a deeper knowledge of how power works, and become aware of counterhegemonies. Antonio Gramsci, whom Mussolini incarcerated and who died in prison, offers us a modern theory of hegemony that not only addresses hierarchies but also analyzes how constructs become naturalized. Authors and creators include some among Gramsci, José Carlos Mariátegui, Walter Benjamin, Emma Goldman, Rosa Luxemburg, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Claudia Jones, Frantz Fanon, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Sylvia Wynter, Gayatri Spivak, Paolo Freire, Angela Davis, Judith Butler, Gloria Anzaldúa, bell hooks, Arundhati Roy, Chela Sandoval, Cathy Cohen, Michael Hardt, Toni Negri, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Silvia Federici, Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, Trinh Minh-ha, and others. The materials for this course includes essays, poems, fiction, film, art, and music, and will focus on intersections of feminist, postmodern, socialist, indigenous, queer, critical race, critical Whiteness, and post/neocolonial, and neo/liberal frameworks.The space-time of one semester will be insufficient to conduct a deep and careful study of all this. This course is Part 1. Part 2 will be in Spring 2025, with authors not covered in Part 1. Being familiar with theory, being able to read slowly, being willing to discuss carefully, and being patient with building knowledge collectively are highly desirable prerequisites. The space-time of one semester will be insufficient to conduct a deep and careful study of all this. This course is Part 1. Part 2 will be in Spring 2025, with authors not covered in Part 1. Being familiar with theory, being able to read slowly, being willing to discuss carefully, and being patient with building knowledge collectively are highly desirable prerequisites. The space-time of one semester will be insufficient to conduct a deep and careful study of all this. This course is Part 1. Part 2 will be in Spring 2025, with authors not covered in Part 1. Being familiar with theory, being able to read slowly, being willing to discuss carefully, and being patient with building knowledge collectively are highly desirable prerequisites. The space-time of one semester will be insufficient to conduct a deep and careful study of all this. This course is Part 1. Part 2 will be in Spring 2025, with authors not covered in Part 1. Being familiar with theory, being able to read slowly, being willing to discuss carefully, and being patient with building knowledge collectively are highly desirable prerequisites. Students may take either or both.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

This course will examine the historical origins and political contours of global capitalism through a focus on the international relations of colonialism and empire. We will analyze how concepts, institutions, and social relations such as private property, commodity production, markets, and free labor have been central to the construction of capitalist modernity. We will analyze these pillars of the global economy beyond the commonplace assumption of their emergence in Europe and examine how they have been shaped by global relations of conquest, indigenous dispossession, slavery, racialized exploitation, imperial war, and forms of social control such as policing and incarceration. We will trace the afterlives of these structures beyond formal decolonization and further explore abolitionist and anti-colonial modes of structuring political-economic life.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

From Italian Mafia dons to famous American philanthropists; from the knitting of "trauma teddies" in Helsinki to gift shopping in London; and from ceremonial exchange rings in Melanesia to the present day global refugee crisis: this course will investigate how generosity is understood and practiced in global perspective. We'll begin the semester by examining key debates surrounding reciprocity, gifts, and exchange, theories of altruism and generosity, and patron-client relations. We'll then explore the birth of the "humanitarian spirit," and the complicated ethics and politics of humanitarian intervention. We will compare diverse religious traditions' approaches to giving, including Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, and Jainism. And we'll explore contemporary debates surrounding volunteerism within sectarian and neoliberal political regimes.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

From Italian Mafia dons to famous American philanthropists; from the knitting of "trauma teddies" in Helsinki to gift shopping in London; and from ceremonial exchange rings in Melanesia to the present day global refugee crisis: this course will investigate how generosity is understood and practiced in global perspective. We'll begin the semester by examining key debates surrounding reciprocity, gifts, and exchange, theories of altruism and generosity, and patron-client relations. We'll then explore the birth of the "humanitarian spirit," and the complicated ethics and politics of humanitarian intervention. We will compare diverse religious traditions' approaches to giving, including Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, and Jainism. And we'll explore contemporary debates surrounding volunteerism within sectarian and neoliberal political regimes.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Traces the development of theoretical accounts of culture, politics and identity in Africa, South Asia, the Caribbean and related lands since the 1947-1991 decolonizations. Readings include Fanon, Said, Walcott, Ngugi and many others, and extend to gender, literature, the U.S., and the post-Soviet sphere. The course bridges cultural representational, and political theory. Prerequisite(s): Prior internationalist and/or theoretical coursework strongly recommended.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Traces the development of theoretical accounts of culture, politics and identity in Africa, South Asia, the Caribbean and related lands since the 1947-1991 decolonizations. Readings include Fanon, Said, Walcott, Ngugi and many others, and extend to gender, literature, the U.S., the post-Soviet sphere, and Europe. The course bridges cultural, representational, and political theory. Prerequisite(s): Prior internationalist and/or theoretical coursework strongly recommended.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course explores how philosophers, creative writers, artists, and filmmakers have taken everyday life as a point of departure for critical reflection and creative practice. Grounded in cultural studies and feminist approaches to knowledge production, we will examine the everyday as a lens into a wide range of topics, including power, the body, race, gender, sexuality, capitalism, and colonialism. While surveying a wide range of approaches, the course will focus on the emerging genre of Autotheory, which blends critical theory with autobiography and memoir, leading to new insights and modes of resistance. In doing so, we will derive inspiration from contemporary writers, filmmakers, and artists who break with traditional approaches to academic writing and research by using the everyday as raw material. Students will have the opportunity to carry out a creative research project in the form of a written essay, film, or other multimedia form.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course introduces students to the broad range of explanations for social and cultural phenomena used by anthropologists since the emergence of the discipline in the 19th century. The course focuses on the development of three broad theoretical approaches: The American school of cultural anthropology, British social anthropology, and the French school that emerged from the work of Durkheim and his followers. The course also examines theoretical approaches such as cultural materialism, and symbolic and interpretive approaches to the study of culture. Prerequisite(s): Junior or senior standing.  Students should have at least two courses in anthropology including ANTH 101 or ANTH 111, or the permission of the instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

In the capstone seminar, students working on an independent project in line with the theme of the seminar share their scholarship, integrating what they have learned in the major, emphasizing knowledge gained in their focus area, as well as presenting their work at a concluding mini-conference. The capstone experience involves close analysis of cultural artifacts that examine at a higher level issues first raised in the introductory course. The department plans to offer two seminars every year, at least one in media studies, enabling students to select the seminar most relevant to their intellectual development. In exceptional cases, students with sufficient preparation may take the seminar prior to their senior year. Students may take more than one MCST senior seminar as long as content varies. Recent seminar topics have included: Image/Text: Metaphor, Myth and Power; Advanced Film Analysis; Advanced Studies in War and Media; Postmodernism, Identity and the Media; Whiteness and the Media; Advanced Queer Media. Prerequisite(s): MCST 110 - Texts and Power: Foundations of Media and Cultural Studies or permission of instructor. MCST 128 - Film Analysis/Visual Culture recommended for film studies seminars. Non-majors are welcome if they have taken MCST 110 or a comparable course.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials