Social Thought Program

Professor

Course Description

Jeff Nealon

Professor of English

English 583:  Foucault
Spring 2010
Jeff Nealon

This course will attempt to map some piece (however small) of the territory known as "genealogy" in Michel Foucault's work.  We'll begin by looking at 1966's The Order of Things and the overview of his early work presented in 1969's The Archaeology of Knowledge (trying especially to get some sense of the differences--if there are any--between Foucaultian “archaeology” and "genealogy”). We'll then backtrack to Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals, reading it alongside Foucault's “genealogical turn” in the 1971 essays "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History" and "The Order(ing) of Discourse."  We'll then turn to Discipline and Punish (1975), some lecture courses from 1970s, and the 1976 first volume of The History of Sexuality (as figures of genealogy in action).  And we’ll end by (re)considering the late Foucault’s relation to “critique” or the Enlightenment project in general.  To put it elliptically, we’ll be performing a genealogy of “genealogy” in Foucault’s work. 
                  As if that weren't enough, the course will also take up what others have to say about Foucault, and what they do with his work. If, as Foucault insisted, his work is a kind of “toolbox” (a series of statements/provocations directed at response and reinscription rather than “interpretation”), then tracing the transformations of “Foucault” within such secondary works remains just as important as getting a handle on the primary texts.  To that end, there will be weekly student reports on books and articles that work with Foucault in specific domains (feminism, queer theory, historical studies, literature, film, etc.).  Requirements:  a report to the class, and an essay-length final project. 

John Christman

Assoc. Prof. of Philosophy, Political Science, and Women's Studies

PlSc 583
Modern Political and Social Theory
W: 6-9 p.m.
305 Boucke

Global (Gender) Justice

Increasingly, political theory that involves conceptions of justice, equality, domination, and the like has been extended to apply beyond the traditionally defined borders of the nation state.  Both responding to and taking account of the complex conditions of globalization, political theorists have come to realize the trans-national nature of social interaction.  Such extensions have been further complicated, in turn, by considerations of gender, family structures and social sexual roles, and the conditions of women as a unique component of the overall picture of global justice.

This course will examine recent and classical approaches to justice (and related concepts such as liberation and oppression) as applied to trans-national settings.  In particular we will look at considerations of global justice and domination regarding gender and the condition of women.  After considering general conceptions of justice in international and trans-national contexts, we will examine issues involving and specifically affecting women and girls (and gender relations more generally).  Such issues involve women and poverty, family structure, culture and social hierarchy, human sexual trafficking, women’s rights as human rights, and gender-related aspects of development and socio-economic inequality.  Thinkers to be discussed will likely include: Iris Marion Young, Amartya Sen, Martha Nussbaum, Gloria Anzaldua, Wendy Brown, Thomas Pogge, John Rawls, Catherine MacKinnon, and others.

Daniel Purdy

Associate Professor, Department of German & Slavic Languages & Literatures

MW 2:30-3:45
Burrowes 402
Cosmopolitanism and Weltliteratur
Daniel Purdy

This course will examine the history and interdependence of these two key critical terms.  In addition to Goethe's founding remarks on Weltliteratur, we will read works by Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottfried Herder, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel defining Cosmopolitanism in the Enlightenment commitment to universal human rights, anti-colonialism, the autonomy of indigenous peoples and cultures.  The second half of the course will consider the contemporary iterations both in terms of political theory and transnational literature written in German.  We will consider how these terms first reemerge within post-war German political debates about the Nazis and then how they find aesthetic forms in contemporary experimental literature written by Yoko Tawada, Emine Özdamar and Zafer Senocak.  Political theory will include those by Jürgen Habermas, Bruce Robbins, Kwame Appiah , Franco Moretti, Pascale Casanova, Slavoj Zizek. Dipesh Chakrabarty, Seyla Benhabib, Leslie Adelson.

Mark Munn

Professor of Ancient Greek History, Greek Archaeology, and Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies

CONSTRUCTIONS OF  SOCIAL IDENTITY IN THE ANCIENT MEDITERRANEAN WORLD
A SEMINAR IN ANCIENT HISTORY (CAMS 593, Prof. Mark Munn)
M 6-9 pm
202 Ferguson
Sched no 360964

Prospectus for Spring 2010

This seminar will explore various modes of social identity in the ancient Mediterranean and near east: political, religious, ethnic, linguistic.  How does political identity (citizenship, or subserviance to a monarch or to an imperial state) develop, how is it articulated, and does it coincide or conflict with other modes of identity?  What role does religion play in defining political or social identity?  How is ethnicity articulated, and to what extent does it coincide with political entities, religious traditions, or linguistic groups?  What role does economic status play in the constructions of identity?  How do various modes of identity co-exist and interact?  How is social identity expressed in literature, art, law, or philosophy?

The foundations of this seminar will be laid in the study of cases from the archaic through Hellenistic Greek world, but a major portion of the seminar will be determined by the research interests of seminar members.  I hope to explore various methodologies in approaching these questions, and the range of geographic and temporal subjects can include themes from the perspectives of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Anatolia, the Israelite kingdoms, and on through the Roman empire, with attention to the Jewish diaspora and the formation of  Christian identity in the wider Roman world.   Non-specialists in ancient history interested in advancing a comparative and theoretical approach to the subject of identity are welcome.  Students interested in the possibility of participating in this seminar are invited to contact me to discuss their interests.

Stephen Browne

Prof. of Communication Arts and Sciennces

Communication Arts and Sciences  507
RHETORIC AND CULTURAL MEMORY
2:30-5:30 M
Spring, 2010
For several decades now the role of cultural memory in shaping the present has occupied the attention of scholars across the humanities. From Holocaust studies to architecture, literature and visual culture, colonialism and queer theory, students of the subject are seeking to explain how and to what ends we avail ourselves of the past. Among the most recent and instructive contributions to this enterprise issue from the study of rhetoric, which attends in particular to the discursive and strategic dimensions of public memory
This seminar is designed to engage students with the theoretical, historical, and critical issues associated with cultural memory. Among the issues we address: theoretical foundations for the study of memory; the rhetorical construction of the past; the politics of history; memory, rhetoric, and identity; memory, war, and trauma; counter memory; the rhetoric of commemoration; and the politics of forgetting.
Our readings include relevant works on memory by:
Paul Ricouer                                        Robert Hariman
Maurice Halwachs                              Thomas Benson
James Young                                       Barbie Zeliger
David Blight                                        Stephen Browne
John Bodnar                                        Andrea Dworkin
Carole Blair                                         Edward Casey

Contact: Stephen H. Browne

Gary Cross

Professor of History

History 597a

Comparative Consumer History Thursdays, 6-9 pm                                           

This seminar introduces graduate students in history and allied fields to the emergence of a mass consumption economy and society, primarily in the USA but with comparative perspectives.  It stresses reading and discussion of major recent monographs and highly selected primary sources from roughly 1870 to the present.

Roger Geiger

Distinguished Professor of Higher Education

Hi Ed 597A                                                                                                                                      
Research Seminar, History of American Higher Education                                             
Wed. 2:30-5:30
Instructor: Roger Geiger        
304 Rackley

Students and instructor in this course will explore aspects of the development of higher education in the Colonial and Early Republic periods. Emphasis will be on developing fresh perspectives on selected topics by examining how new knowledge, cultural norms, and social expectations affected the establishment, nature, and evolution of colleges.

Course topics will be determined by the interests of the class, the availability of materials, and the potential for incorporating fresh perspectives. Potential areas in which topics will be developed include:
Students -- prosopography, literary culture, rebellions
Faculty – incorporation of new knowledge, professionalization
Governance – public sponsorship vs. private ownership
Culture – expectations for colleges, conflicts among stakeholders
Institutions – colleges, professional education

Topics will be addressed by reading the best secondary studies (bibliography to follow) and using them as points of departure for investigation of primary sources and more specialized historical literature. Students will participate and contribute to the collective inquiries of the class and will prepare an original term paper on a subject of their choice.