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Course Criteria
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3.00 Credits
Fascism and Theory: Latin American and European Approaches to Totalitarianism and Populism Fall 2008. Three credits. Federico Finchelstein This graduate seminar examines theories of fascism, totalitarianism and populism from a historical perspective. The approach is topical and transnational rather than national; however, it emphasizes specific European and Latin American cases (Argentina, Germany, France, Spain, Italy) as well as sources and theoretical readings that include Hannah Arendt, Georges Sorel, Gino Germani, Antonio Gramsci, Jorge Luis Borges, and Georges Bataille. In addition, the seminar addresses the most recent analytical studies on these questions. Cross-listed with GPOL 6422.
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1.00 - 6.00 Credits
Independent Study Fall 2008, Spring 2009. One to six credits. This is a student-initiated course that gives students the opportunity to pursue advanced research on a specific topic with the guidance of a faculty member. Permission of the instructor required.
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3.00 Credits
Inter-University Consortium Fall 2008, Spring 2009. Three credits. Ellen Freeberg For PhD students enrolled in courses at other universities in the NY area through a consortium arrangement.
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3.00 Credits
The Modernist Imagination Spring 2009. Robert Boyers The word modernism has come to stand for a great range of activities and ideas. Early in the 20th century it was often used to express an opposition to tradition and to conventions associated with realism and romanticism. Some influential modernists claimed that the new forms of art embodied a quasi-religious force with the capacity to redeem the chaos and nihilism of contemporary culture. Still others viewed modernism in exclusively aesthetic terms, praising its commitment to formalism, myth, and irony as an expression of "values only to be found in art" (Clement Greenberg).Modernism, however, is now widely felt to be a relic of times past. Although modernists like Joyce, Kafka, Proust, and Picasso continue to excite critical commentary, younger artists typically turn elsewhere for inspiration. What was modernism, and what precisely is the nature of its enduring value In an effort to address these questions, the course examines a variety of primary works (by writers like Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka, T.S. Eliot, and Virginia Woolf and artists like Picasso, Duchamp, and Pollock) and a smaller number of critical texts (by Octavio Paz, Clement Greenberg, Lionel Trilling, and Susan Sontag). The course also devotes attention to three seminal modernist films: Ingmar Bergman's Persona, Federico Fellini' s 8 and Jean-lucGodard's The Married Woman.
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3.00 Credits
Modernity and Its Discontents Fall 2008. Jim Miller An introduction to Liberal Studies at The New School for Social Research, this seminar brings new students together to explore a variety of themes and texts that epitomize some of the critical concerns of our age. Among the issues discussed are freedom and the problem of progress; the end of slavery and the implications of European world domination; new views of human nature; the idea of the avant-garde; and the moral implications of modern war and totalitarianism. Among the authors read are Rousseau, Kant, Goethe, Robespierre, Condorcet, Olaudauh Equiano, Hegel, Marx, Dostoevsky, Joseph Conrad, Freud, Darwin, Ernst Junger, Georg Lukacs, Marinetti, Andre Breton, Tadeusz Borowski, Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, and Michel Foucault. (Seminar, limited to 25 students.) Cross listed with Political Science.
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3.00 Credits
The Concept of Culture Fall 2008. Elzbieta Matynia The preoccupation of many social thinkers with the phenomenon of "culture" long antedates J.G. Herder's remark that "nothing is moindeterminate than this word." Still, historians, sociologists, and anthropologists have shared a preoccupation with culture ever since. This seminar addresses the history of social thought, the sociology of knowledge, and studies of culture, and it explores the main debates surrounding the idea of culture and its development. Whether discussing the Greek notion of paidea, the Romantic ideal of genius, or the historiographic essays of the Annales historians of our own day, dynamics of two contrasting approaches to culture will be traced: the broad empirical and anthropological approach, and the narrower normative and "humanistic" approach. Thereadings-some of them passionate critiques of culture-include works byPlato, Aristophanes, Vico, Rousseau, Herder, Goethe, Marx, Ferdinand de Saussure, Sigmund Freud, Fernand Braudel, J. Heuzinga, Ernst Cassirer, Mikhail Bakhtin, Kwame Anthony Appiah, and Samuel Beckett. Cross-listed with Sociology.
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3.00 Credits
The Social Construction of Memory Fall 2008. Vera Zolberg Remembering and forgetting, usually thought of as individual matters, have social dimensions as well. In this course, we analyze the theoretical foundations of memory as a collective process. Through the classic writings of Halbwachs, Benjamin, and more recent theorists, we consider how memory is constructed, its functions for social cohesion, its durability and dynamics. We confront classic approaches with recent writings that treat collective memory as multivocal and divisive, and analyze their contribution to the formation of national, ethnic, and gender identity. In addition to written texts, we consider the uses and impact of film and other media on the construction of memory and history.
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3.00 Credits
L iterature of War Fall 2008. Randy Fertel Much of literature deals with intense experience; war literature by its very nature deals with some of the most intense experience imaginable. In this course we are concerned less with what the politicians and generals did and said, and more with soldiers experiences: how war poets, memoirists, and novelists shape the raw, chaotic experience of soldiers. Interdisciplinary approaches to the material include myth (of the hero), postcolonial theory, and trauma psychology. Documentary and feature films are watched and discussed. There will be weekly short papers (of two to three pages) posted on-line and an eight to ten page integrative final paper. Philip Caputo, Jonathan Schell, and Wayne Karlin have visited the class in the past to talk about their experiences and one may join us this year.
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3.00 Credits
Mythical Journeys-Then and Now Fall 2008. Ernestine Schlant This course in world literature surveys some of the great myths that originated in the Mediterranean basin. After distinguishing between myths, epics, and fairy tales, we focus our attention on narrative journeys, beginning with Gilgamesh (third millennium B.C.E.), and proceeding to Isis and Osiris. We spend time with Homer's Odyssey and Dante' s DivineComedy. Since many of these classic narrative journeys are informed by religious or quasi-religious underpinnings, it may seem surprising that mythical journeys continue into the "secular" 19th and 20th centuries. Inthe course of our readings, we strive to create a new definition of the term "myth" and arrive, by way of comparison with the older narratives, at a morenuanced understanding of who we are today. Modern works will include Joseph Conrad, The Heart of Darkness; Alejo Carpentier, The Lost Steps; Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky; Andre Brink, The Other Side of Silence; Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses; and Franz Kafka, The Castle. Our discussions of these texts will take the form of an intellectual journey, in search of new insights into ourselves and contemporary culture.
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3.00 Credits
Fundamentals of Culture and Society Spring 2009. Vera Zolberg Critically analyzing the ways in which the term culture is used by social scientists and other scholars, we consider a broad range of activities and objects, ranging from the rarified to the ordinary, the prestigious to the everyday. We consider culture in relation to certain groups' power and authority in constructing and maintaining-or contesting and transforming-the symbols and legitimacy of art science, popular cultural forms, and the shared meanings of life. Among the forms we examine are social status, gender, race, and other social identities. The theoretical orientations on which we draw derive from Weber, Durkheim, Marx, Bourdieu, R. Williams, Geertz, Goffman, the Frankfurt School, and the American production of an approach to culture.
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