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Course Criteria
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3.00 Credits
Political Legitimacy [C,E] Spring 2009. Three credits. Pierre Rosanvallon In a democracy, the legitimacy of government officials derives from elections. Democratic power is regarded as arising naturally from the conditions of its establishment. Still, politicians and elected officials are frequently accused of partisan politicking and compromising the public interest. Nonelectoral democratic institutions and procedures as alternative means for establishing political legitimacy have emerged out of this tension. This course traces the history of these nonelectoral manifestations of the popular will from the nineteenth century to the present. Two main topics are discussed. First we explore the establishment of "institutions of generality" in democratic regimes (independent authorities and constitutional courts as elements of indirect democracy). We then discuss the qualities of government officials that give them legitimacy in the eyes of citizens.
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3.00 Credits
Foundations of Sociology I: Social Theory [Core/ Methods, E] Fall 2008. Three credits. Andrew Arato This graduate seminar is a broad introduction to the central ideas and key works of Alexis de Tocqueville, Karl Marx, émile Durkheim, and Max Weber, whose concepts and questions continue to animate theoretical and empirical research in sociology. We will focus primarily on what unites-and secondarily on what divides-these theorists and theircontributions to the canon of sociological knowledge: the confrontation with the dualism of subject and object, criticism of utilitarian thought and normative political philosophy, the epistemological break with primary experience, theories of power and solidarity, and the sociological discourse of modernity.
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3.00 Credits
Foundations of Sociology II [Core/Methods, E] Spring 2009. Three credits. Eiko Ikegami This course is an introduction to the emergence of social history as a reaction to the dominant political history and historicism of the 19th century and its crystallization in different national variants: the French Annales, the British Marxist historians and "history from below," andthe German and Italian schools of social history. Following a discussion of the interdisciplinary dialogues and debates between social history and the social sciences, particularly historical sociology, the course traces trends in the development of European historiography from historicism to postmodernism. Special attention will be paid to 20th-century European historiography and to different methods of doing historical research and writing history. The course concludes with a review of recent trends: the crisis of social history, postmodern and poststructuralist challenges, the revival of narrative and the fragmentation of the nation, and the new dialogues of history and sociology with anthropology, literature, and cultural studies.
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3.00 Credits
Fundamentals of the Sociology of Culture Spring 2009. Three credits. Vera Zolberg This course considers a broad range of activities and objects, ranging from the rarified to the ordinary, the prestigious to the everyday, critically analyzing the ways in which the term culture is used by social scientists and other scholars. Culture is studied in relation to certain groups' power and authority in constructing and maintaining-or contesting and transforming-the symbols and legitimacy of art, science, popular culture, and the shared meanings of life. Among the culture forms examined are social status, gender, and race. Theorists studied include: Weber, Durkheim, Marx, Bourdieu, R. Williams, Geertz, Goffman, the Frankfurt School and the American production of culture approach.
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3.00 Credits
The Sociology of Erving Goffman Fall 2008. Three credits. Jeffrey Goldfarb In this course the major works of Erving Goffman will be read and discussed. The focus of the investigation will be to appraise Goffman's contribution to ongoing research and the development of sociological theory. Students will be required to closely read and interpret a selection of his works, and apply them to more recent developments in sociology, ideally including the application of his work to their own original research projects.
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3.00 Credits
Carl Schmitt: Theories of Dictatorship and Constitution [E] Fall 2008. Three credits. Andrew Arato The seminar will involve an intensive reading and analysis of Schmitt's Constitutional Theory, published in 2008 in English. In particular, we will examine the link between the idea of sovereign dictatorship to his conception of constituent power. Registered students (auditors will be permitted if they come to all sessions) will be asked to prepare in-class presentations, and a final paper on the relationship of one or two of the following to constitutional theory: 1. The classical doctrines of either Machiavelli, Bodin, Hobbes, Rousseau, Sieyes, Condorcet, Madison, or Jefferson 2. The contemporary works of Jellinek, Carre de Malberg, Hauriou, Heller, or Kelsen 3. Schmitt's own works: Roman Catholicism and Political Form, Die Diktatur ( available in Spanish, French, and Italian translations), Political Theology, Concept of the Political, Legality or Legitimacy, or The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy 4. Theorists influenced by Schmitt: Arendt, Ackerman, Mouffe, Agamben, Negri, Derrida, or Lindahl 5. Schmitt's American interpreters: Schwab, Bendersky, Kennedy, Scheuerman, Kalyvas et.al. The class schedule is organized according to student presentations, with the first five sessions focusing on the book Die Diktatur ( that will be made available through four languages and secondary treatments). Crosslisted with Political Science.
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3.00 Credits
Outsider Art Fall 2008. Three credits. Vera Zolberg It is a cliché of current cultural criticism that traditional boundaries-between high and low art, art and politics, art and life itself-have become hopelessly blurred. When piles of bricks are placed in museums, when music is composed for performance underwater, when a few minutes of silence is called "music," the boundaries become so fluid that conventionalunderstandings of art are strained. This is manifest in the difficulties that arise among art historians, aestheticians, social scientists, and policymakers when they try to delineate what is art, what it should include or exclude, whether and how it should be evaluated, what importance to assign to art, and whether or not to support the artistic community with public funds. This class strives to understand these changes in the meaning of art in two ways. First, recent sociological theories of art are surveyed from texts by Becker, Bourdieu, Geertz, and others. These theories are then examined to illuminate a concrete empirical phenomenon, "outsider art"-that is, workcreated by "pure" amateurs (be they folk artists, madmen, hobbyists, orhomeless people), putatively unsullied by academic or commercial pressures. Our larger goal is to explore myths and realities of the socially marginal and the aesthetically pure by analyzing the role each myth plays in the ongoing transvaluation of contemporary culture.
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3.00 Credits
Media and American Modernity [F] Spring 2009. Three credits. Jaeho Kang This course serves to continue and further develop courses such as Foundations of Media Theory and Media and Social Theory. Students learn the broader applications of media theory into various, yet distinct, dimensions of American society with a particular focus on culture and politics. It also helps students elaborate theoretical topics for master's theses and prepare for an advanced seminar such as Media and Critical Theory. The course explores the impact of various forms of media (newspapers, radio, TV, the Internet) on the transformation of American modernity via critical perspectives of philosophers, anthropologists, literary critics, and media theorists. The course will provide students an introduction to the key contributions of a number of writers to the understanding of the complex interplay between a particular medium and distinct forms of American experience. During the course, we will reexamine some of the issues in social theories (such as hyperreality, network society, mediated public space, urban spectacle, etc) as applied to American media, including, newspapers and the origin of American democracy; radio and propaganda; televised sports events and social identity; the Internet and mediated politics; and online games and everyday life.
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3.00 Credits
The Social Construction of Memory [A] Fall 2008. Three credits. 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, and its durability and dynamics. We compare 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
Televisuality [F] Fall 2008. Three credits. Paolo Carpignano By reading major authors and discussing key topics in the field of television criticism students learn about the state of television theory. Issues concerning video language, programming flow, "live" transmission, televisiongenres, audience participation, interactivity, etc. are examined in order to understand what makes television different from other forms of mass media. Particular attention is given to televsion's transition between spectatorship and hypertext, between analogical narrative and digital interactivity, and to the role that television has had in transforming the notion of visuality in the last half century. Cross-listed as NMDS 5216.
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