Week 1 (8/28): No Public Lecture

Week 2 (9/4): German Idealism, Helga Varden (Philosophy)

1. Hobbes, Thomas: Excerpts from Leviathan (ed. Richard Tuck, Cambridge University Press, 1996)

  • Ch.13: "Of the Natural Condition of Mankind, as concerning their Felicity, and Misery," pp. 86-90
  • Ch. 14 (excerpt): "Of the first and second Natural Lawes, and of Contracts," pp. 91-92
  • Ch. 17: "Of Commonwealth," pp. 117-121.

2. Locke, John: Excerpt from Two Treatises of Government (ed. Peter Laslett, Cambridge University Press, 1988)

  • Ch. 2 "Of the State of Nature," p. 269-278.

3. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques: Excerpt from The Social Contract and Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men, in Basic Political Writings (ed. Donald A. Cress, Hackett Publishing Company, 2012).

  • Discourse, Part 2, app. 69-75
  • The Social Contract: ch. 1-7, 156-165 

4. Kant, Immanuel: "An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?" WE 8: 33-42. (In Practical Philosophy, transl./ed. Mary Gregor, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996: pp. 17-22.)

5. Kant, Immanuel: Excerpts from The Metaphysics of Morals

  • paragraphs 1-5 (pp. 401-403/6: 245-249)
  • paragraph 10 (pp. 411-413/6: 258-260)
  • paragraph 41-5 (pp.450-457/6:305-314)

Week 3 (9/11): Structuralism, Jeff Martin (Anthropology)

Readings:

1. Saussure, Ferdinand. 1916 Course in General Linguistics (selections)

2. Levi-Strauss, Claude. 1966. The Savage Mind. Chs. 1 & 2 “Science of the Concrete,” and “The Logic of Totemic Classifications,” (pp.1-74)

Recommended:

1.Ortner, Sherry. 1974. “Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture” in M. Z. Rosaldo and L. Lamphere (eds), Woman, Culture, and Society. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, pp. 68-87

2. Gleick, James. 2011. The Information A History, a Theory, a Flood NY: Vintage (especially Chs 7 & 8, pp. 204-268)

3. Wilcken, Patrick. 2010. Claude Levi-Strauss: The Father of Modern Anthropology. NY: Penguin (Especially Chs 4 & 5, pp. 115-201)

Week 4 (9/18): Psychoanalysis, Rob Rushing (French & Italian)

1. Freud, Sigmund. “Fetishism.”

2. Freud, Sigmund. Selections from “The Uncanny.”

3. Freud, Sigmund. “Some Psychological Consequences of the Anatomical Distinction between the Sexes.”

4. Lacan, Jacques. “The Mirror Stage.” In Écrits: A Selection, translated by Alan Sheridan, Routledge, 2001, pp. 1-6.

5. Žižek, Slavoj. “Courtly love or woman as thing.” In The Žižek Reader, edited by Elisabeth Wright and Edmond Wright, Blackwell, 1989, pp. 148-173.

Week 5 (9/25): Marx and Marxism, Brian Jefferson (Geography)

Readings:

1. Gilmore, Ruth Wilson. “Fatal Couplings of Power and Difference.” Professional Geographer, 54.1 (2002): 15–24.

2. Soja, Edward W. “The Socio-Spatial Dialectic.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 70.2 (1980): 207-225.

Week 6 (10/2): Deconstruction, Geoffrey Bennington (Emory)

Readings:

1. Derrida, Jacques. “Declarations of Independence.” In Negotiations: Interventions and Interviews, 1971-2001, edited and translated by Elizabeth Rottenberg, Stanford UP, 2002, pp. 46-54.

2. Derrida, Jacques. Rogues Two Essays on Reason (selections). Translated by Anne Brault Pascale and Michael Naas, Stanford UP, 2005.

Week 7 (10/9): Biopolitics, Jana Sawicki (Williams)

Readings:

1. Foucault, Michel. 1976. "Society Must Be Defended": Lectures at the College de France, 1975-76, translated by David Macey, Picador, 1997, pp. 239-263.

2. Foucault, Michel. History of Sexuality, Vol. 1:  An Introduction, translated by Robert Hurley, Vintage Press, 1978, pp. 135-39. 

3. Foucault, Michel. 1978. Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the College de France, 1977-78, translated by Graham Burchell, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, pp. 1-27.

Recommended:

1. Deutscher, Penelope. "Foucault's Children.”  In Foucault's Futures: A Critique of Reproductive Reason, Columbia University Press, 2017, pp. 71-104.

2. Stoler, Ann Laura. "A Colonial Reading of Foucault." In Biopower: Foucault and Beyond, edited by Vernon Casey and Nicolae Morar Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power, University of Cchicago Press, 2016, pp. 326-347.

3. Lemke, Thomas. Biopolitics: An Advanced Introduction. Translated by Eric Frederick Trump, New York University Press, 2011, pp. 33-52.

Week 8 (10/16): Postcolonial Theory, Shona Jackson (Texas A&M)

Readings:

1. Wynter, Sylvia. "Unparalleled Catastrophe for Our Species Or, to Give Humanness a Different Future: Conversations." In Sylvia Wynter: On Being Human as Praxis, edited by Katherine McKittrick, Duke University Press, 2015, pp. 9-89.

Week 9 (10/23): Critical Race Theory, Kathryn Sophia Belle (Penn State)

Readings:

1. Gines, Kathryn T. “Black Feminism and Intersectional Analyses: A Defense of Intersectionality.” Philosophy Today (2001): 275-84.

2. Gines, Kathryn T. Hannah Arendt and the Negro Question, Indiana University Press, 2014, chapter 5, pp. 77-92.

3.  Gines, Kathryn T. “Reflections on the Legacy and Future of the Continental Tradition with Regard to the Critical Philosophy of Race.” Southern Journal of Philosophy, 50.2 (2012): 329-44.

Week 10 (10/30): Indigenous Studies-- Nick Estes (University of New Mexico)

1. Denetdale, Jennifer Nez. “No Explanation, No Resolution, and No Answers”: Border Town Violence and Navajo Resistance to Settler Colonialism." Wicazo Sa Review, vol. 31 no. 1, 2016, pp. 111-131. Project MUSE, muse.jhu.edu/article/623736.

2. Simpson, Audra. "The State is a Man: Theresa Spence, Loretta Saunders and the Gender of Settler Sovereignty." Theory & Event, vol. 19 no. 4, 2016. Project MUSE, muse.jhu.edu/article/633280.

3. Stark, Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik. "Criminal Empire: The Making of the Savage in a Lawless Land." Theory & Event, vol. 19 no. 4, 2016. Project MUSE, muse.jhu.edu/article/633282.

4. Grande, Sandy (2013). “Accumulation of the Primitive: The Limits of Liberalism and the Politics of Occupy Wall Street,” Settler Colonial Studies, 3:3-04, 369-380, doi: 10.1080/2201473X.2013.810704.

5. Anderson, William C. and Zoé Samudzi. Chapter 2, “What Lands On US.” In As Black as Resistance, AK Press, 2018, pp 11-50.

Week 11 (11/7): Feminist Theory, Lisa Rosenthal (Art History)

Readings:

1. Scott, Joan W. “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” American Historical Review 91:5 (1986) pp. 1053-1075.                                                                

2. Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Screen 16:3 (1975) pp. 6-18.

3. Pollock, Griselda. Differencing the Canon: Feminist Desire and the Writing of Art’s Histories (Routledge, 1999) Chapter 2, pp. 23-38.

4. Lichtenstein, Jacqueline. “Making Up Representation: The Risks of Femininity,” Representations 20 (1987) pp. 77-87. 

Week 12 (11/13): Queer Theory, Ghassan Moussawi (GWS/Sociology)

Readings:

1. Cohen, Cathy. 1997. “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics?” GLQ (3): 437-485.

2. From: The GLQ Archive. 2003. “New Directions in Multi-ethnic, Racial, and Global Studies,” GLQ 10 (1). Only: Sharon Holland “The Question of Normal” (pp. 128-131) and Jose Quiroga “From Republic to Empire: The Loss of Gay Studies” (pp. 133-135).

3. Eng, David L., Jack Halberstam, and José Esteban Muñoz. 2005. “Introduction: What’s Queer about Queer Studies Now?” Social Text, 23 (3-4): 1-17.

4. Hallberstam, J. 2005. “Shame and White Gay Masculinity.” Social Text, 23 (3-4): 219-233.

Recommended:

1. Foucault, Michel. History of Sexuality: Volume 1, pp.1-15.

Fall break, November 17-25

Week 13 (11/27): Ecocriticism, Gillen Wood (English/iSEE)

Readings:

1. Garrard, Greg. Ecocriticism, Routledge, 2004, ch.1&2.

2. Chakrabarty, Dipesh. "The Climate of History: Four Theses," Critical Inquiry 35.2 (Winter 2009): 197-222.

3. LeMenager, Stephanie. Living Oil: Petroleum Culture in the American Century (Oxford, 2016), Introduction.

4. Wood, Gillen. "Foreword" to Literature and Sustainability: Concept, Text, and Culture, ed. Adeline Johns-Putra (Manchester, 2017).