GLI B5525 -

Institution:

The New School

Subject:

Description:

E ros, Kinship, Culture Fall 2008. Jed Perl This course considers various ways in which love, or eros, has been regarded as incompatible with, yet always born from, the context of social, civic, or political life. We read some key texts in philosophy and social theory that treat this problem, from Plato and Hegel to Freud, Levi-Strauss, Foucault, and others. We also follow as our guiding model the most significant poeticliterary treatment of the problem: the myth of Romeo and Juliet, from Ovid through Shakespeare and beyond. The story of Romeo and Juliet allows us to rethink two questions that continue to resonate at the edges of contemporary social theory: 1) What are the conditions for a desirable human attachment without the cooperation and mediation of family, society, culture, a shared language, or sense of history 2) Why should the fate of such an attachment be predominantly represented as tragic; and might it be figured-indeed, lived-in any other way GLI B 5112 Methods of Cultural Criticism Fall 2008. Melissa Monroe and Christopher Hitchens A team-taught seminar, this course focuses on the elements of a strong writing style and on how writers concerned with political and cultural issues deploy various rhetorical techniques in order to entertain and outrage, provoke and inspire. A part of the class, consisting of a close evaluation of student essays in cultural criticism under the direction of Ms. Monroe, also includes reading key texts by a variety of cultural critics, including Matthew Arnold, Mark Twain, W.E.B. DuBois, H.L. Mencken, George Orwell, Jean-Paul Sartre, Lionel Trilling, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Joan Didion, and Edward Said. In the sessions that he leads, Mr. Hitchens analyzes several exemplary cultural critics and discuss his own experience as a public intellectual. Our goal is to understand better how cultural critics make specific literary choices in order to elicit a political and cultural response from their readers.

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.newschool.edu

Phone Number:

(212) 229-5600

Regional Accreditation:

Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools

Calendar System:

Semester

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