Course descriptions
- 6000: Speaking and Writing I
- 6001: Speaking and Writing II
- 6010: Readings in History I (Interpretation)
- 6011: Readings in History II (Contemporary Applications)
- 6020: Readings in Western Literature I (Autobiography)
- 6021: Readings in Western Literature II (Utopia)
- 6030: Readings in Philosophy I (Interpretation)
- 6031: Readings in Philosophy II (Self)
- 6040: Readings in Science and Technology
- 6041: Humanities Seminar
A general and far ranging discussion of topics in language, focused
on readings in one tradition of method and theoretical orientation.
Topics discussed may include: meaning; communication; spoken and
written language; oral, written, and electronic culture; gesture;
image; instrumental, social, and political dimensions of language.
Traditions include: Saussurean linguistics, Frankfurt School
critical theory, psychoanalysis, deconstruction. Usually co-taught
by the Director of Studies and the Teaching Fellow.
Sample course description: "Words, sounds, images ... objects," instructors S. Crocker and P. Trnka. The aim of this course is to introduce students to a variety of manifestations of language (written, spoken, played, sung, painted, photographed, filmed, etc.) and to begin a theoretical study by way of an investigation of the phenomenon of objectification or reification. The premiss of the course is that language is a primary example of a human activity that has become or turned into a thing (be it an object, or a way or manner of objects - e.g., a technique or technology). To examine this premiss, we will investigate three areas of contemporary culture (dada art, situationism, and punk rock) while focusing our theoretical inquiry on the social and political study of fetishism and reification starting with Marx.
Key texts: G. Debord, The Society of the Spectacle; M. Hardt
and K. Weeks, eds., The Jameson Reader; G. Marcus,
Lipstick Traces.
An examination of oral, literate, and electronic culture; visual
culture - painting, photography, film, and video; graphology;
structure and desire in expression; formalism and materialism;
language, culture, and death.
Sample course description: "Structure, Desire and Death." What are
the origins, structures, and functions of language? How is speech
related to thought and to writing? This course will study language
by way of its formal features, both structural and literary, as
well as its social, cultural, biological, economic, and political
dimensions. The thematic focus of the course is on the question of
the relation between the structures of language, the desires they
may express and elicit, and the cancellation of desire in death.
Key texts: H. Innis, The Bias of Communication; de
Saussure, Course on General Linguistics; R. Barthes, The
Pleasure of the Text, S. Beckett, Waiting for Godot.
Through concentrated readings in a period of history - e.g., the
Greece of Herodotus and Thucydides, the French, American, and
Russian revolutions, or various wars in the 20th century - this
course serves to introduce students to the methods of the study of
history and to the problems posed by history and coming to terms
with it. Period writing is emphasized as well as theoretical texts,
such as G.W.F. Hegel, L. Strauss, W. Benjamin, and M. Oakeshott.
Sample course description: "Tyranny, empire, memory: Herodotus and
Thucydides." The idea for this course is to study ancient Greek
texts in history (Herodotus, Thucydides) as well as modern texts on
the meaning of history with an eye to analyzing the contemporary
and historical forms of political tyranny and empire. The aim of
the course is to introduce students to the study of history in a
hands-on manner as well as to illustrate the importance of history
for current social and political events. The theme of political
memory - as a goal, prerequisite, and point of contention and
struggle - unites the variety of conservative and radical political
readings of history to be covered in the course. The focus on
tyranny and empire, as extreme, violent, and world-wide political
formations, is intended to make the subject of the course both
ancient and up to date.
Key texts: Benjamin, Illuminations; Herodotus, Histories; Strauss,
The City and Man; Thucydides The History of the Peloponnesian Wars.
Historiographical questions are at the fore of this theoretical
engagement with the basis and significance of history. A major
contemporary example of the need for (or evasion of) history, is
focused on in each course. Examples may include the Holocaust, May
1968, the War on Iraq, the War on Afghanistan.
Key authors here are include: F. Nietzsche, 'On the Uses and Abuses
of History', R.J. Collingwood, Idea of History, Hegel,
'Introduction to a Philosophy of History', Marx, M. Foucault,
Benjamin, E.P. Thompson, and H. White.
An examination of various types of direct and indirect
autobiography, in literature, painting, photography, video, and
film. What are the links between autobiography, expression, and
communication?
Same course description: "Autobiography." How is writing one's
own life related to expression and fiction more generally? How is
property in one's own life conceived in autobiography? This course
will examine these and other questions through an investigation of
various modes of autobiography (written, pictoral, sculpted,
digitized).
Authors may include: Rousseau, Confessions; Abelard and
Eloise, Letters; J. Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a
Young Man; Barthes, Barthes on Barthes; Descartes,
Discourse on Method.
An examination of modes of utopia and the relation between
expression and utopia; utopian and dystopian forms in theory and
fiction; literary, pictorial, filmic utopias; politics of utopia.
Authors may include: Plato, Republic; T. More,
Utopia' A. Huxley, Brave New World; G. Orwell,
1984, Animal Farm; Hardt and A. Negri,
Empire; M. Piercey, Woman on the Edge of Time; J.G.
Ballard, Crash and Atrocity Exhibition; Beckett, End
Game, Trilogy, 2001 A Space Odyssey, M. Atwood,
A Handmaid's Tale.
An examination of traditions of interpretation and its theoretical
comprehension; the art and practice of interpretation;
hermeneutics; culture and politics; interpretation in theory,
poetry, fiction, painting, and film.
Authors may include: M. Heidegger, H G. Gadamer, Strauss, McLuhan,
Bourdieu, F. Jameson.
An inquiry into the meaning and value of the self, as seen through
various historical manifestations and interpretations of self,
person, or individual; epistemology, ontology, psychology, and
anthropology of the self; morality and politics; education of
selves; commonplace and artistic selves.
Authors may include: R. Descartes, Meditations on First
Philosophy; T. Hobbes, Leviathan; C. B. MacPherson,
The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism; Rousseau,
Emile; Flaubert, Sentimental Education; Bourdieu,
The Rules of Art.
An examination of a particular area in science and/or technology,
from historical, sociological, and philosophical points of view.
Examples include: genetics and biology; bioengineering and
biopolitics; electronic media and global communications.
Authors may include: S.J. Gould, D. Haraway, R. Levins, R. Dawkins,
I. Stengers, B. Latour.
The finishing course of the M. Phil. degree, this seminar is a
writing workshop for the journal by way of an examination of the
nature of expression in an academic, institutional context.
Students focus on the structure of their journal project and
produce a substantial new contribution to it, often by way of
introductions, conclusions, thematic bridges, etc.
Texts: B. Pascal, Pensées; Bourdieu, Pascalian
Meditations, and readings suggested by students.
