Philosophy

At Sarah Lawrence College, the study of philosophy retains a centrality that helps students synthesize their educational experience with the discipline’s many connections to other humanities and to social science. Through conference work, students also find numerous ways to connect the study of philosophy with their interests in the arts and natural sciences. Stressing the great tradition of classical and contemporary philosophy, the College offers three types of philosophy courses: those organized around thematic topics, such as Philosophy of Science, Aesthetics, and Philosophy and Literature; those organized historically, such as Moral Philosophy, Political Philosophy, and 20th-Century Philosophy; and those that study the “systems” of philosophers such as Kant, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein.

Philosophy faculty use the latest technology in their teaching, including web boards for posting course material and promoting discussion. Yearlong courses make extensive textual work possible, enabling students to establish in-depth relationships with the thoughts of the great philosophers and to “do philosophy” to some degree—particularly valuable to students preparing for graduate work in philosophy. Conference work often consists of students thinking through and writing on single philosophic and literary works, ranging from Greek tragedy, comedy, or epic to Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Machiavelli, Descartes, Shakespeare, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, or Heidegger.

Philosophy 2023-2024 Courses

Philosophy and the Founding of the Modern World

Open, Small Lecture—Year | 10 credits

Where does the modern world come from? In large part, it is the product of philosophy that took on a political role it had never had before: the role of founding a new social order organized around science and technology and which, it was hoped, would tame the religious conflicts of the 16th and 17th centuries. We will begin by reading Francis Bacon’s Preface and Proemium to the Grand Instauration, as well as parts of his Advancement of Learning, in which he sets out the plan for the new science and technology and seeks to make it politically and religiously acceptable, and his New Atlantis, a sketch of the new scientific-technological order. Then, we shall go on to read Descartes’ Discourse on Method, in which he combines the plan for a new physics and a new technological order with a new metaphysics of God and the soul and a new ethics of self-determination—different from the ethics of the ancient Stoics and Skeptics on which it draws, as well as from the ethics of Aristotle, Plato, and Epicurus and from Christian conceptions of virtue and vice. We shall then study Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise, which is at once a scientific study of religion and a proposal for a new social order, in which religion will serve simply to support morality and obedience to the law while not interfering with science and philosophy. In group conference, we will study the ancient philosophy from which the moderns take their departure: selections from Plato, Aristotle, Lucretius, and Seneca. In the spring semester, we will turn to modern reactions to the earlier modern attempts to remake the world. We will begin with Shaftesbury, who seeks to save Plato’s defense of moral teleology from both Christian rejection of the world and the attacks of Descartes, Hobbes, and Spinoza by appealing to comedy and the sense of the beautiful. We will then turn to Hume, who seeks to invent a new common sense based on custom and feeling. Finally, we will consider Rousseau’s attack on the arts and sciences and his attempt to reconstruct the doctrine of political right without appealing to the natural order. In group conference, we will continue reading the ancients, especially Plato and Lucretius, to consider how those authors draw on them and react against them.

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Introduction to Social Theory: Philosophical Tools for Critical Social Analysis

Open, Small Lecture—Year | 10 credits

How can social order be explained in modern societies that are too large, fluid, and complex to rely on tradition or self-conscious political regulation alone? Social theory is a distinctly modern tradition of discourse centered on answering this question and focused on a series of theorists and texts whose works gave rise to the modern social sciences, overlap with some of the most influential modern philosophy, and provide powerful tools for critical understanding of contemporary social life. The theorists whose works form the backbone of this course explore the sources of social order in structures, many of which work “behind the backs” of the awareness and intentions of those whose interaction they integrate and regulate. The market economy, the legal and administrative state, the firm and the professions, highly differentiated political and civil cultures, racial and gender order, a variety of disciplinary techniques inscribed in diverse mundane practices—one by one, these theorists labored to unmask the often hidden sources of social order in the modern world. Moreover, this understanding of social order has evolved side-by-side with evaluations that run the gambit from those that view Western modernity as achieving the apex of human freedom and individuality to those that see it as insinuating a uniquely thorough and invidious system of domination. This class will introduce many of the foundational texts and authors in social theory, the social sciences, and social philosophy, including Thomas Hobbes, Adam Smith, Alexis de Tocqueville, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Sigmund Freud, Michel Foucault, and Jürgen Habermas. In this way, it will also cover various schools of social explanation, including: Marxism, structuralism, poststructuralism, and (in group conferences) critical race theory, postcolonial studies, and feminism. The thread connecting these disparate authors and approaches will be the issue of the worth or legitimacy of Western modernity, the historical process that produced capitalism, representative democracy, religious pluralism, the modern sciences, ethical individualism, secularism, fascism, communism, new forms of racism and sexism, and many “new social movements.” Which of the institutions and practices that structured the process of modernization are worth defending or reforming? Which should be rejected outright? Or should we reject them all and embrace a new, postmodern social epoch? In addressing these questions, we will grapple both with classical texts and with the contemporary implications of different approaches to social analysis.

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Philosophy Through Film

Open, Lecture—Fall | 5 credits

You care about movies (I presume). Why do you care about movies? Because they entertain you? Because they are beautiful? Because they are informative? Because they make you feel things? The guiding thought of this class is that we care about movies, because they participate in the practice of philosophy (or at least they have that potential). Of course, this also presumes that we care about philosophy (a claim that will take some time to defend). To test that hypothesis—that films have the potential to participate in the practice of philosophy—we first need to consider what the practice of philosophy is. Then, we will need to say something about what film is. And then, we can examine whether film can do philosophy. In the first part of the course, we will analyze the medium of film in order to clarify the characteristics of film that would allow it to be philosophical. In the second part of the class, we will explore how those characteristics of film contribute to how we think philosophically about our lives. In particular, we will explore problems pertaining to subjectivity (What it is to be a human being?) and to ethics (How do I know the right thing to do?). Each week we will watch a film (including Jeanne Dielman, Psycho, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Get Out, and Spring Breakers) and read a philosophical text (including Aristotle, Cavell, Merleau-Ponty, Parfit, and Adorno) with the aim of placing the two in conversation.

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Philosophy and/as/of Literature

Open, Seminar—Year | 10 credits

One of the principal activities that distinguishes us as the kinds of beings we are is that we strive to make sense of our reality: ourselves, others, the world, and perhaps even what lies beyond. Two ways that we do this are through philosophy and literature. Fairy tales, fables, myths, short stories, and novels not only fascinate and entertain but also teach us how to be in the world, present us with puzzles that deepen our understanding, and both implicitly and explicitly communicate moral lessons. Philosophy, although it assumes various forms—dialogues, meditations, phenomenologies, genealogies, pseudonymous works, aphorisms, and, of course, essays and books—aspires to offer a conceptual analysis of some of the most trenchant questions of existence: What is truth? How should we be moral? Are we free or determined in our actions? This class will investigate the intersections between these two forms of reflection. As we proceed in this investigation, we will reflect on (i) the possibility that philosophy and literature are complementary pursuits of the same end, (ii) a philosophical investigation of literature, and (iii) a consideration of philosophy itself as literature. Some topics that we will discuss are the truths communicated by ancient and modern tragedies, the various satisfactions that we derive from different forms of narrative, the structure of metaphor, the relation of a fictitious work to its author, and the ethical significance of art. We will read literary works from Sophocles, Shakespeare, Virginia Woolf, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ralph Ellison, Ursula K. Le Guin, J. M. Coetzee, W. G. Sebald, Octavia Butler, Rachel Cusk, and Maggie Nelson. Philosophical works will include Plato, Aristotle, René Descartes, G. W. F. Hegel, Søren Kierkegaard, Jean-Paul Sartre, Iris Murdoch, Stanley Cavell, Jacques Derrida, and Cora Diamond. (Please note: this course will be reading intensive; we will always be reading a work of fiction, and each session will have a philosophical text assigned.)

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Ethics of Eating in the Age of Climate Change

Open, Seminar—Fall | 5 credits

Food systems are deeply intertwined with climate change. On the one hand, industrial food production is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. On the other, environmental degradation, decreased soil fertility, and increasingly unpredictable weather patterns are among the many factors that impact food systems around the world. This course explores the ways in which climate change and food systems are interwoven and the ethical implications that emerge from this entanglement. Topics of the course will intersect with the philosophy of food, animal ethics, environmental ethics, environmental justice, and global climate justice.

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Ancient Philosophies as Ways of Living in Truth

Open, Seminar—Fall | 5 credits

Philosophy is often studied as one discipline among other academic disciplines. For most of its long history, however, philosophy was nothing of the sort. It involved a way of living; of regulating desire, grief, rage, and fear of death; and theoretical contemplation, of course, especially on the nature of truth—but theory was always embedded within a practical concern for the best life humanly possible. We explore this alternative practice of philosophy by examining Ancient Greek and Roman philosophical traditions and interrogating how those philosophers exercised a mode of thinking that inculcates an entire way of living in truth. Ancient philosophers to be discussed include Parmenides, Heraclitus, Socrates, Plato, Diogenes the Cynic, Aristotle, Epicurus, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and Sextus Empiricus. We also discuss recent historians of this tradition who try to revitalize this practice, such as Pierre Hadot, Jan Patočka, and Michel Foucault. Thus, we survey not only Ancient Greek and Roman theoretical practice but also interrogate whether this practice of doing philosophy is viable today or even worthy of revitalization and, if so, how to go about living a philosophical life in the present. 

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Descartes and Princess Elizabeth: From Metaphysics to Morals

Sophomore and Above, Seminar—Fall | 5 credits

René Descartes can be seen as the founder of modern philosophy. He carried out much of his intellectual life through correspondence, and one of his most important correspondents was Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia. A central topic of their correspondence is the “union of mind and body”; i.e., how thought is related to matter but also how the perspective of science is related to the passions and human life. This problem is posed by Descartes’ treatment of mind and body in his Meditations, which led Elizabeth to begin the correspondence. Their exchanges led Descartes to write his last book, The Passions of the Soul, on psychology, the passions, virtue, and vice. We will begin by reading the Meditations, then focus on the correspondence between Descartes and Elizabeth, and finally turn to the Passions.

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Capitalism and Schizophrenia: A Thousand Plateaus

Intermediate, Seminar—Fall | 5 credits

Prerequisite: prior course and/or conference in philosophy

This reading seminar will consist of a close study of one book, A Thousand Plateaus, which was coauthored in 1980 by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and psychoanalyst Felix Guattari.A Thousand Plateaus, the second volume of their magnum opus, Capitalism and Schizophrenia—the founding text of a movement of thought called “poststructuralism”—is among the most influential books of 20th-century philosophy. As its name suggests, the book presents a vision, or visions, of the world and of history as multilayered and multiplex rather than homogenous and linear. The book teaches us to look and to think of things and of ourselves from a variety of new and shifting angles, with the aim of providing means of resistance, empowerment, and sometimes escape against capitalism, fascism, and forces of normalization. To do this, Deleuze and Guattari draw on a broad range of philosophical, literary, and artistic texts and on modalities of experience that have traditionally been associated with madness. Their writing style is bold and dazzling, full to the brim with new terminologies (many of which have since become common tropes in the humanities and the social sciences); it is also challenging and dense. Engaging their work fruitfully requires a mind that is, like theirs, open and adventurous, willing to take risks and follow unpredictable turns. We will proceed in workshop fashion, reading 30-40 pages a week in advance of each class, writing short analyses throughout the semester, and coming to class prepared and eager to work together toward increased understanding. In addition to the prerequisite, students enrolling in this class should, more importantly, have a philosophical passion and commitment, a diligent work ethic, and a spirit of camaraderie, collaboration, and generosity.

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Human/Nature: Philosophical Perspectives

Open, Seminar—Spring | 5 credits

What is humanity? What, if anything, makes us different from other modes of being, and what kind of responsibility do we have with respect to what is considered nonhuman? To broach these questions, this seminar will offer a critical survey of the history of Western philosophy with a focus on the development of humanism and subsequent critiques of it. Specifically, we will look at different ways in which the philosophical tradition defined the human being in contradistinction from, or relation to, nature. Texts will range from ancient philosophy (the Pre-Socratics, Plato, Aristotle), to modern philosophy (Descartes, Spinoza, Rousseau, Kant, Nietzsche), to recent developments (New Materialism, Eco-Feminism, philosophy of technology). This course will fully participate in the spring 2024 Sarah Lawrence Interdisciplinary Collaborative on the Environment (SLICE) Mellon course cluster. The semester will include two interludes during which students will engage in collaborative projects across disciplines and in partnership with students from Bronx Community College. Students will have the opportunity to develop field-based conference projects

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Literature, Art, and (Environmental) Ethical Attention

Open, Seminar—Spring | 5 credits

This course explores the ways that narrative and creative expression can shape our ethical perspective on the world—particularly around ethical questions related to nature, nonhuman animals, environmental justice, and climate change. First-person narratives, novels and fiction, film, art, dance, and other creative expressions are significant for shaping the way that we understand ourselves and what it means to be in ethical relation with the world around us. Together, we will explore the ways in which these forms of expression shape ethical decision-making and ethical theory by centering values of care, reciprocity, community, and attention. This course will fully participate in the spring 2024 Sarah Lawrence Interdisciplinary Collaborative on the Environment (SLICE) Mellon course cluster, with a focus on environmental and climate justice and a strong involvement with local organizations. The semester will include two interludes during which students will engage in collaborative projects across disciplines and in partnership with students from Bronx Community College. Students will have the opportunity to develop field-based conference projects.

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Kant’s Political Philosophy

Sophomore and Above, Seminar—Spring | 5 credits

Kant’s Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone is a book about religion, but it is also a book about Enlightenment—or how to build a rational society; for this purpose, religion, in Kant’s view, is indispensable. We shall study how Kant seeks to reform Christianity to make it compatible with a rational society and what the limits are on this enterprise. The topic is of interest nowadays, when the attempt of Kant and others to make religion compatible with Enlightenment is under challenge, and religion has once again come into some tension with science and the hope for progress founded on collective rationality.

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Reflections From Damaged Life: Adorno and Critical Theory

Intermediate, Seminar—Spring | 5 credits

Prerequisite: one completed philosophy course or permission of the professor

Surveying the post-Holocaust world of late capitalism, Theodor W. Adorno writes that “Wrong life cannot be lived rightly.” We find ourselves in a world replete with strife, burdened with a disconcerting future, and so the possibility of living a good life seems not just illusive but altogether impossible. And yet, from this dire prognosis, Adorno offers a critical assessment of modern life in all of its minutiae that hints at the possibility of redemption. His analysis is boundless, ranging from a vehement takedown of astrology to a psychoanalytic reading of fascist propaganda, from reflections on the fiction of Franz Kafka to questioning our capacity to shut a door quietly. Adorno suggests that describing the ills of modern life—what he variously identifies as capitalism, fascism, consumerism, or, more pervasively, the hallowing of meaningful experience that resolves itself in loneliness and alienation—might offer the possibility to transform those stifling conditions. The seminar will begin with his diagnosis of our social reality, proceed to theorize about the metaphysical underpinnings of this reality, and conclude by considering the capacity of art to redeem our physical existence. Underlying the entirety of our investigation of Adorno’s work will be the imperative to overcome what he calls the “barbarity” of our time. Readings will be drawn from Adorno’s main works, Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944), Minima Moralia (1951), Negative Dialectics (1966), and Aesthetic Theory (1970), as well as various essays. Our ambition will be not only to understand Adorno’s assessment of the stultifying conditions of his time but also to consider how he supplies us with tools, methods, and arguments for addressing the challenges facing our own.

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Anthropology and Images

Open, Seminar—Fall

Images wavered in the sunlit trim of appliances, something always moving, a brightness flying, so much to know in the world.—Don Delillo, Libra

A few cartoons lead to cataclysmic events in Europe. A photograph printed in a newspaper moves a solitary reader. A snapshot posted on the internet leads to dreams of fanciful places. Memories of a past year haunt us like ghosts. What each of these occurrences has in common is that they all entail the force of images in our lives, whether these images are visual or acoustic in nature, made by hand or machine, circulated by word of mouth, or simply imagined. In this seminar, we will consider the role that images play in the lives of people in various settings throughout the world. In delving into terrains at once actual and virtual, we will develop an understanding of how people throughout the world create, use, circulate, and perceive images and how such efforts tie into ideas and practices of sensory perception, time, memory, affect, imagination, sociality, history, politics, and personal and collective imaginings. Through these engagements, we will reflect on the fundamental human need for images, the complicated politics and ethics of images, aesthetic and cultural sensibilities, dynamics of time and memory, the intricate play between the actual and the imagined, and the circulation of digital images in an age of globalization. Readings will include a number of writings in anthropology, art history, philosophy, psychology, cultural studies, and critical theory. Images will be drawn from photographs, paintings, sculptures, drawings, films, videos, graffiti, religion, rituals, tattoos, inscriptions, novels, poems, road signs, advertisements, dreams, fantasies, phantasms, and any number of fabulations in the worlds in which we live and imagine.

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Virtue and the Good Life: Ethics in Classical Chinese Philosophy

Open, Seminar—Spring

This course centers on the close, detailed reading of a small number of foundational texts in classical Confucianism and Taoism. Our focus will be to explore how these texts might fit “virtue ethics,” which emphasizes moral character and the pursuit of a worthwhile life. Some attention will be paid to other forms of ethics, including those that stress either the adherence to duties and obligations or the social consequences of ethical action. Our primary goal, however, will be to examine the ways in which classical Chinese philosphers regarded personal virtues and “good character” as both a prerequisite to and an explanation of appropriate action and its consequences. Among the more specific topics that we will explore are: ideal traits of virtue, the links between moral values and different understandings of human nature, the pyschological structures of virtue, practices leading to the cultivation of virtue, the roles of family and friendship in developing moral values, and what constitutes a good life.

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Artificial Intelligence and Society

Open, Seminar—Spring

In recent years, the field of artificial intelligence (AI) has made astonishing technical progress and has begun to assume an increasingly widespread and important role in society. AI systems can now (at least to some extent) drive cars; recognize human faces, speech, and gestures; diagnose diseases; control autonomous robots; converse fluently in English; instantly translate text from one language to another; beat world-champion human players at chess, Go, and other games; and perform many other amazing feats that just a few decades ago were only possible within the realm of science fiction. This progress has led to extravagant expectations, claims, hopes, and fears about the future of AI technology and its potential impact on society. In this course, we will attempt to peer beyond the hype and come to grips with both the promise and the peril of AI. We will consider AI from many angles, including historical, philosophical, ethical, and public-policy perspectives. We will also examine in detail many of the technical concepts and achievements of the field, as well as its many failures and setbacks. Throughout the course, students will be asked to read texts, write responses, do follow-up research, and participate in classroom discussions. This is not a programming course, and no background in computer programming is either expected or required.

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Yoga

Component—Spring

This yoga class is designed with the interests of dancers and theatre students in mind. Various categories of postures will be practiced, with attention to alignment, breath awareness, strength, and flexibility. The physical practice includes seated and standing poses, twists, forward bends and backbends, traditional yogic breathing practices, and short meditations. Emphasis is placed on mindfulness and presence. This approach allows the student to gain tools for reducing stress and addressing unsupportive habits to carry into other aspects of their lives. Attention will be given to the chakra system as a means and metaphor for postural, movement, and character choices. The instructor has a background in dance and object theatre, in addition to various somatically-based practices that she draws upon for designing the classes to meet the individual needs of the class members.

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First-Year Studies: The 2024 Presidential Election in Context: Inequality, the Climate Crisis, and the Global Far Right

FYS—Year

The 2024 presidential election result will have far-reaching implications for economic, social, and environmental policies. It will also be significant in terms of the future of American democracy and the power of the Far Right. In this course, we will situate current economic and political challenges in a theoretical and historical context by drawing on insights from different schools of thought in economics, as well as from other disciplines such as law, politics, sociology, and history. Some of the key questions to be addressed are as follows: How can the central debates in political economy help us understand some of the unprecedented challenges that we face, such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic; the climate crisis; and inequalities that intersect across class, race, and gender lines? Why is the study of history a central methodological concern for many economists, and why not so for others? Why do people distinguish between “regulation” and laissez-faire, and is this a false dichotomy? What is the history of industrial and social policy in the United States and other countries? How do we understand the role of political and corporate power and the “rule of law” in regard to market outcomes? These and others will be some of the questions that we will be tackling throughout the course of the year, thereby ensuring that students develop a solid understanding of the fundamental debates in economic theory and policy and see the key role of methodology in the study of political economy. Finally, the goal is to ensure that students develop the ability to critically engage scholarly work in economics. There will be weekly conferences for the first six weeks and biweekly conferences thereafter (at the discretion of the instructor).

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Food, Agriculture, Environment, and Development

Open, Lecture—Spring

Where does the food we eat come from? Why do some people have enough food to eat and others do not? Are there too many people for the world to feed? Who controls the world’s food? Will global food prices continue their recent rapid rise; and, if so, what will be the consequences? What are the environmental impacts of our food production systems? How do answers to these questions differ by place or by the person asking the question? How have they changed over time? This course will explore the following fundamental issue: the relationship between development and the environment—focusing, in particular, on agriculture and the production and consumption of food. The questions above often hinge on the contentious debate concerning population, natural resources, and the environment. Thus, we will begin by critically assessing the fundamental ideological positions and philosophical paradigms of “modernization,” as well as critical counterpoints that lie at the heart of this debate. Within this context of competing sets of philosophical assumptions concerning the population-resource debate, we will investigate the concept of “poverty” and the making of the Third World, access to food, hunger, grain production and food aid, agricultural productivity (the Green and Gene revolutions), biofuels, the role of transnational corporations (TNCs), the international division of labor, migration, globalization and global commodity chains, and the different strategies adopted by nation-states to “‘develop” natural resources and agricultural production. Through a historical investigation of environmental change and the biogeography of plant domestication and dispersal, we will look at the creation of indigenous, subsistence, peasant, plantation, collective, and commercial forms of agriculture. We will analyze the physical environment and ecology that help shape but rarely determine the organization of resource use and agriculture. Rather, through the dialectical rise of various political-economic systems such as feudalism, slavery, mercantilism, colonialism, capitalism, and socialism, we will study how humans have transformed the world’s environments. We will follow with studies of specific issues: technological change in food production; commercialization and industrialization of agriculture and the decline of the family farm; food and public health, culture, and family; land grabbing and food security; the role of markets and transnational corporations in transforming the environment; and the global environmental changes stemming from modern agriculture, dams, deforestation, grassland destruction, desertification, biodiversity loss, and the interrelationship with climate change. Case studies of particular regions and issues will be drawn from Africa, Latin America, Asia, Europe, and the United States. The final part of the course examines the restructuring of the global economy and its relation to emergent international laws and institutions regulating trade, the environment, agriculture, resource extraction treaties, the changing role of the state, and competing conceptualizations of territoriality and control. We will end with discussions of emergent local, regional, and transnational coalitions for food self-reliance and food sovereignty, alternative and community-supported agriculture, community-based resource-management systems, sustainable development, and grassroots movements for social and environmental justice. Films, multimedia materials, and distinguished guest lectures will be interspersed throughout the course. One farm/factory field trip is possible if funding/timing permits. The lecture participants may also take a leading role in a campus-wide event on “the climate crisis, food, and hunger,” tentatively planned for spring. Please mark your calendars when the dates are announced, as attendance for all of the above is required. Attendance and participation are also required at special guest lectures and film viewings in the Social Science Colloquium Series approximately once per month. The Web Board is an important part of the course. Regular required postings of short essays will be made here, as well as follow-up commentaries with your colleagues. There will be occasional short, in-class essays during the semester and a final exam at the end. Group conferences will focus on in-depth analysis of certain course topics and will include short prepared papers for debates, the debates themselves, and small-group discussions. You will prepare a poster project on a topic of your choice, related to the course, which will be presented at the end of the semester in group conference, as well as in a potential public session.

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First-Year Studies: Romantic Europe

FYS—Year

Between the 1790s and the middle of the 19th century, European culture was powerfully shaped by the broad current of thought and feeling that we know as “Romanticism.” This course will examine the rise of the Romantic sensibility in the decades between the 1760s and 1800 and survey diverse manifestations of Romanticism in thought, literature, and art during the subsequent half-century. We will pay particular attention to the complex relations between Romanticism and two of the most portentous historical developments of its era: the French Revolution and the rise of national consciousness among Germans, Italians, and other European peoples. Readings will include prose fiction by Goethe, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Sir Walter Scott, and Edgar Allen Poe; poetry by Wordsworth, Shelley, Hölderlin, and Mickiewicz; works on religion, ethics, and the philosophy of history; and political writings by the pioneers of modern conservativism, liberalism, and socialism. We will also look at Romantic painting and other forms of visual art. Students will meet individually with me every week during the fall term and every other week during the spring term. I will advise you about the conference project that you will be undertaking each semester and will offer you what help I can in navigating life at Sarah Lawrence College.

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The Disreputable 16th Century

Open, Seminar—Year

Sixteenth-century Europeans shared a variety of fundamental beliefs about the world that a secular-minded Westerner of today is likely to find “disreputable”—intellectually preposterous, morally outrageous, or both. Almost all well-educated people believed that the Earth was the unmoving center of the universe, around which the heavenly bodies revolved; that human destinies were dictated, at least to some extent, by the influence of the planets and stars; that the welfare of their communities was threatened by the maleficent activities of witches; and that rulers had a moral duty to compel their subjects to practice a particular religion. In this course, we will examine 16th-century ideas on these and other topics and see how those beliefs fit together to form a coherent picture of the world. We will also look at the writings of pioneer thinkers—Machiavelli, Montaigne, Galileo—who began the process of dismantling this world-conception and replacing it with a new one closer to our own. It is not only ideas, however, that render the 16th century “disreputable” to modern eyes. Some of history’s most notorious kings and queens ruled European states in this period—Henry VIII of England with his six wives; Mary Queen of Scots with her three husbands; Philip II of Spain, patron of the Inquisition. In the spring semester, therefore, we will look at the theory and practice of politics in 16th-century Europe. Since most European states were monarchies, we will start by examining 16th-century ideas about princes and their courts. How should princes be educated for their role? How, and to what ends, should they exercise their power? What were the qualifications of the ideal courtier? We will go on to consider the actual lives and policies of a number of European princes: the Tudor kings and queens of England; the monarchs who ruled France during the religious wars that convulsed that kingdom between 1562 and 1629. Later in the semester, we will consider what to us may appear to be the most exotic of 16th-century European states. This was not a monarchy at all but a republic: the splendid and idiosyncratic Most Serene Republic of Venice. We will examine, along with its institutions, the revolutionary developments in painting that unfolded there. Students will have great freedom in the choice of conference paper topics. Depending on their interests, they can pursue research in political or religious history, literature, philosophy, or art.

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First-Year Studies: Deconstructing the Western Idea of Nature

FYS—Year

As our societies and communities are starting to address the challenges of climate change, it is particularly important to explore the implications of the concept of “nature” in the Western and Judeo-Christian tradition that is dominant in the United States. In this class, we will look critically at this Western idea of nature by confronting it with representations of natural environments and the animal realm coming from Indigenous, African American, and Asian and Pacific Islander traditions. For example, comparing stories of world creation from Indigenous nations with narratives taken from the Bible and Greek and Roman classical texts will allow us to better grasp how language in the European tradition functions as a deep divider between humans and other living creatures. We will try to better understand how the romanticized conception of wilderness in America is in close relation to the presence of enslaved Black bodies on its land in addition to the erasure of the existence of Indigenous nations. Going in a different direction, we will analyze how contemporary feminism and gender studies provide crucially important models to invent a new way for the West to relate to nature. Animals will also be a focus of our discussions, from classical representations of animals as machines, to the use of models like the burrow imported from the animal realm by philosophers, to the possibility of shifting from a humanistic understanding of nature inherited from European Renaissance, to new forms of ecocentric expression. This class will take place in and outside the seminar classroom, as we will regularly observe nature on campus and engage in concrete projects such as growing herbs and vegetables. A few trips will allow us to explore local natural areas, including along the Hudson River. As part of this First-Year Studies class, students will be encouraged to work on personal projects that link the material seen in class to any personal interests that they have. This could be very concretely in relation to nature, plants, and wildlife on campus or as part of the work that local organizations around the College are developing on environmental issues and social justice. Other students may want to incorporate into their research elements of popular culture, such as horror movies, video games, or anime series such as Avatar. In addition to class, students will meet individually with their professor every other week. On alternating weeks, we will engage in group work related to sustainability on campus—including hands-on projects and gardening.

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Shakespeare and the Semiotics of Performance

Open, Lecture—Year

The performance of a play is a complex cultural event that involves far more than the literary text upon which it is grounded. First, there is the theatre itself—a building of a certain shape and utility within a certain neighborhood of a certain city. On stage, we have actors and their training, gesture, staging, music, dance, costumes, possibly scenery and lighting. Offstage, we have the audience, its makeup, and its reactions; the people who run the theatre and the reasons why they do it; and finally the social milieu in which the theatre exists. In this course, we study all of these elements as a system of signs that convey meaning (semiotics)—a world of meaning whose lifespan is a few hours but whose significances are ageless. The plays of Shakespeare are our texts. Reconstructing the performances of those plays in the England of Elizabeth I and James I is our starting place. Seeing how those plays have been approached and re-envisioned over the centuries is our journey. Tracing their elusive meanings—from within Shakespeare’s Wooden O to their adaptation in contemporary film—is our work.

Faculty

High Romantic Poetry: Blake to Keats

Open, Small Lecture—Fall

This course focuses on the interpretation and appreciation of the most influential poems written in English in the tumultuous decades between the French Revolution and the Reform Act of 1832. Over the course of two generations, Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats invented a new mode of autobiographical verse that largely internalized the myths they inherited from literary and religious traditions. The poet’s inward, subjective experience became the inescapable subject of the poem (a legacy that continues to this day). We will be exploring ways in which the English Romantic poets responded to the political and spiritual impasse of their historical moment and created poems out of their arguments with themselves, as well as their arguments with one another.

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Ancient Eros: Love in Classical Literature

Open, Seminar—Fall

The theme of love in classical literature is a profoundly influential topic, appearing in genres as diverse as epic and lyric poetry, tragedy, philosophy, and even the earliest novels. The attitudes toward love expressed in these texts vary considerably: Sometimes, it is personified as a beautiful and playful god; often, too, it appears as a powerful, destructive force that can lead to irrational behavior and life-changing disaster. The literary motif of love is a catalyst, as well as a resolution of many narrative and poetic arcs; its transformative nature is deeply engaged with aspects of gender, sexuality, and identity throughout the Classical era. In this course, we will read a wide-ranging selection of ancient texts, as well as look ahead to the reception of the theme of Classical Eros in later art and literature. Along with readings, assignments will include regular low-stakes writing practice, a presentation to the class, and a major conference project. Conference work may take the form of a paper or a creative writing project. The reading list will be selected from the following works in English translation, sometimes comprising the entire work and sometimes parts TBD): Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, Sappho; Euripides, Hippolytus, Euripedes; Symposium, Phaedrus, Plato; Argonautica, Apollonius of Rhodes; Idylls, Theocritus; Eclogues, Catullus, Vergil; Amores, Ovid; Golden Ass, Apuleius; Apology, Apollonius; late antique era love spells, letters, and curse tablets.

Faculty

Interrogating God: Tragedy and Divinity

Sophomore and Above, Seminar—Fall

The Greek gods attended the performances at the ancient theatre of Dionysos, which both recognized and challenged their participation in human affairs. The immediacy of divine presence enabled a civic body, the city, to enter into conversation with a cosmic one—a conversation whose subject was a shared story about the nature of experience and its possible significance: tragedy. Divinity is less congenial about playgoing in later periods but seems to have lent tragedy both a power to be reborn and a determination to address the universe even as Christianity, the Enlightenment, Romanticism, and the Industrial Age reimagine it. In this course, we shall read essential Western texts in which the constant of human suffering is confronted and the gods are called into question even as they shift their shape. Among our authors are Aeschylus, Shakespeare, Goethe, Byron, Ibsen, Beckett, Susan Glaspell, and August Wilson.

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Emersonian Quartet: Whitman, Dickinson, Frost, and Stevens

Open, Seminar—Spring

In an 1842 lecture, Emerson lamented that no American poet had yet emerged who could answer the rich legacy of European literary tradition with an originality and genius commensurate to a new civilization. Whitman would later remark that he had been “simmering, simmering, simmering” until Emerson’s injunctions brought him “to a boil.” The outcome was his sublime, democratic, discontinuous, homoerotic national epic, “Song of Myself” (the “greatest piece of wit and wisdom yet produced by an American,” Emerson immediately judged it). In unique but related ways, Dickinson, Frost, and Stevens also set out to answer Emerson’s call. Like Whitman at the end of “Song of Myself,” their most inventive poems seem always out in front of us, waiting for us to arrive. We will do our best to catch up—to conceptualize and paraphrase their rhetorical tropes, while acknowledging the inevitable failure of merely discursive language to transmit a poem. Our central task will be to interpret and appreciate the poetry we encounter through close, imaginative reading,; informed speculation, and an understanding of historical contexts.

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Global Surrealisms

Open, Large seminar—Spring

The surrealist movement emerged in France in the early 1920s, when a group of writers questioned the narrative of reason, progress, and tradition that had long defined European culture. In exploring the potential of the unconscious, the surrealists endeavored to create an avant-garde artistic and political revolution motivated by desire, madness, and dreams. The concepts and techniques developed by the French surrealists would go on to have an enormous influence on writers, artists, and filmmakers across the globe. This course will explore some of the key ideas, practices, and figures in the history of surrealism. The first portion of the semester will focus on the group’s origin in France: We will read several of its foundational texts and study many of the strategies that the surrealists invented for artistic creation. From there, we will examine the legacy of surrealism in a variety of locations—from Latin America and the Caribbean to Egypt, Japan, and the United States—in order to see how the movement’s message of revolution and nonconformity has been adopted and adapted by writers and artists up through the present day. Topics addressed will include automatic writing, dream work, mad love, the marvelous, games and chance, urban flânerie, gender and surrealism, anticapitalist and anticolonial surrealism, and reality itself. Although our first focus will be on the literature of surrealism, this will be a very interdisciplinary course: Students will see how surrealists made use of many types of media and expression (drawing, painting, collage, photography, film). For conference, students will follow the collective model of the movement and pursue small-group projects that will carry on the creative and critical legacy of surrealism.

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Wilde and Shaw

Sophomore and Above, Seminar—Spring

Toward the end of the 19th century, Oscar Wilde stated repeatedly that he was “an Irishman”—and, therefore, beyond good and evil as defined by gentlemanly codes—while George Bernard Shaw deemed nationalistic allegiances absurd and prophetically, given the wars of the 20th century, lethal. In their stances, we can begin to see how the complexities and paradoxes of Irish identity—ethnic marginalization, religious zeal (secularized), linguistic play, knowing laughter—informed their ultimate self-definition as citizens of the world and thereby enabled them to fashion distinctively challenging art. It is also no exaggeration to say that each left the English language not as he found it. Wilde’s life was short, and we shall read a good deal of his oeuvre: his fairy tales, his plays, his novel, much of his poetry, many of his essays. Shaw’s life was long, and we shall focus on his plays written before World War I, along with two brilliantly painful postwar works: Heartbreak House and Saint Joan. And, in both, we shall see how revolution can come disguised in conventional forms, as both playwrights transform drawing-room comedy into political commentary whose implications have yet to be resolved.

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Mirrors, Labyrinths, and Paradoxes: Mathematics and Jorge Luis Borges

Open, Seminar—Spring

Many of the works of Jorge Luis Borges—the highly influential, 20th-century Argentine writer and oft-cited founder of the magic realism literary genre—mirror mathematical concepts in profoundly intelligent and strikingly imaginative ways. Borges’ writings—primarily short fictions but also essays and poetry—often introduce alternate realities that warp standard notions of time, space, and even existence. Borges' works serve to uncover intriguing frictions between competing notions in the foundations of mathematics: the sensible vs. the paradoxical (logic), the infinite vs. the infinitesimal (set theory), the discrete vs. the continuous (analysis), the symmetric vs. the distorted (fractals and chaos), the convergent vs. the divergent (limits), and the likely vs. the impossible (probability). Not restricting itself to mathematics, this course will also explore themes and images in Borges’ works from philosophical, mythological, historical, scientific, psychological, and literary perspectives. Student conference work may focus upon other explorations at the intersection of literature, magic realism, mathematics, philosophy, etc. This course is intended for the student who is curious and open-minded though had never planned to study mathematics at the college level.

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Modern Mathematics: Logic, Risk, Analytics, and Optimality

Open, Seminar—Year

There is great elegance in the fact that mathematics can be both deeply theoretical and magnificently useful. This course, available to both first-year students (as an FYS) and upper-class students (as an open seminar), explores the theory of optimization and its profound applications. We will study and employ elements in the toolbox of mathematics—specifically logic, probability, game theory, and operations research—for the purpose of optimization. In various and diverse settings, our goal will be to identify the single optimal choice amidst a sea of available options to determine the optimal decision despite a cloud of incomplete information and the mystery of an uncertain future and to select the optimal mode of behavior (strategy) in situations of personal or professional conflict. Specific applications of the mathematical theory will be explored through case-study analysis in business, biology, psychology, sociology, education, politics, law, literature, and art (among others). For example: How should SLC most effectively assign courses to students during Registration Week based on students’ indicated course preferences? How should United Airlines most efficiently route its planes to meet the transportation needs of its customers? How can Rubik’s Cubes be used in mass to most accurately reproduce Leonard da Vinci’s Mona Lisa? How can jointly-owned possessions be most fairly divided in an inheritance or divorce settlement? Specific topics of study in this calculus-based course will include topics in the foundation of mathematics (logic, proof technique, set and function theory); probability theory (combinatorics, discrete and continuous random variables, conditional probability, independence, expectation, Bayes Theorem); game theory (zero-sum conflicts, cooperative solutions); and analytics (linear programming, the simplex method, sensitivity analysis, duality theory, decision theory). Students pursuing this course should have prior working knowledge of single-variable differential and integral calculus (one year of high-school study or one semester of college study). Conference work can focus on any topic relating to mathematics. Students taking the course as an FYS seminar will meet with the instructor for individual conferences and donning weekly in fall and biweekly in spring. Enrolled upper-class students will conference with the instructor biweekly across both terms.

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Punk

Open, Large Lecture—Spring

This course will examine punk rock as a musical style and as a vehicle for cultural opposition. We will investigate the musical, cultural, and political conditions that gave birth to the genre in the 1970s and trace its continuing evolution through the early 2000s—in dialogue with and opposition to other musical genres, such as progressive rock, heavy metal, ska, and reggae. We will begin with the influence of minimalism on “proto-punk” artists like the Velvet Underground and Patti Smith, which will provide a foundation for seeing how minimalism—as well as modernism, atonality, and electronic music—continue to resonate in punk and rock music. We will examine the intellectual background of early UK punk, with readings by Guy Debord and the Situationist International, and look at the theories of Gramsci and Foucault on the question of institutional power structures and the possibility of resistance to them. To deepen our understanding of punk style and the culture of opposition, there will also be readings by Theodor Adorno, Mikhail Bakhtin, Roland Barthes, Antonin Artaud, William S. Burroughs, Kathy Acker, Julia Kristeva, and others. We will trace the splintering of punk into various sub-genres and the challenges of negotiating the music industry while remaining “authentic” in a commercialized culture. Another major focus will be the Riot Grrrl bands of the 1990s as a catalyst for third-wave feminism. Given the DIY aesthetic at the heart of punk and in addition to listening to, analyzing, and reading about the music, students who want to incorporate creative work will be given the opportunity to work with musicians and write some punk songs. In light of the abundant documentary film footage relating to punk culture, the course will include a film viewing every other week.

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It’s About Time

Open, Small Lecture—Fall

This seminar will explore the topic of time from a wide variety of viewpoints—from the physical to the metaphysical to the practical. We will seek the answers to questions such as: What is time? How do we perceive time? Why does time appear to flow only in one direction? Is time travel possible? How is time relative? We will explore the perception of time across cultures and eras, break down the role of time in fundamental physics, and discuss popular science books and articles along with science-inspired works of fiction in order to make sense of this fascinating topic. Time stops for no one, but let’s take some time to appreciate its uniqueness. First-year students taking this course as their first-year studies class will have an individual conference every other week, along with the course group conferences on alternating weeks. Conference activities will focus on time management, research, reading, writing, science communication, and collaborative skills. First-year studies students are expected to enroll in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Research Seminar in the spring as a continuation of their first-year studies experience.

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First-Year Studies: Making Democracy Work: Politics, Philosophy, Reform

FYS—Year

Over the last 50 years, the reputation of the political system that we refer to as (modern representative) democracy has been on a roller-coaster ride from immense popularity to internal revolt and decay. One way to understand this deep ambivalence about “the worst form of government (except for all the others)” is that the values it enshrines—freedom, equality, autonomy, reciprocity, popular sovereignty, the rule of law, deliberation, tolerance—retain an unrivaled appeal; but the practice of democracy so seldom resembles those values that its failures generate anger, resentment, and an appetite for an alternative or, barring that, an urge to punish those who give lip service to those values while governing in ways that look, in turn, inept and self-serving. In this class, we will develop this understanding by exploring: (1) the normative foundations of modern democratic theory in 17th-, 18th-, and 19th-century philosophical texts that inspired the revolutions and institutions that continue to structure the political life of many today; (2) the multifaceted failures of the institutions, politics, and policies of self-proclaimed democracy in the 21st century (with a special, though not exclusive, focus on the United States and the discipline of political science); and (3) proposals for repairing 21st-century democracy so that it more fully realizes its potential. In the process, we will also examine some of the 21st-century social forces that challenge earlier formulations of democratic theory and practice, including new attention paid to long-buried axes of difference and domination like gender, race, class and sexual orientation, the transformation of the public sphere and communication by new media and technology, and the globalization of the economy and the new kinds of power and inequality that this has generated. This yearlong first-year studies class is designed to be accessible to all levels of students and to introduce them to college-level work, including sustained independent research (conference work) and participation in focused classroom dialogue in seminar. In addition to regular conference meetings, we will meet individually every other week for conference to discuss independent research projects and in a group conference every other week to discuss various aspects of adjusting to college work and life. No prior experience is required, but a willingness to tackle long reading assignments with care and to work together to unpack texts dense in argument and analysis certainly is.

Faculty

Introduction to Social Theory: Philosophical Tools for Critical Social Analysis

Open, Small Lecture—Year

How can social order be explained in modern societies that are too large, fluid, and complex to rely on tradition or self-conscious political regulation alone? Social theory is a distinctly modern tradition of discourse centered on answering this question and focused on a series of theorists and texts whose works gave rise to the modern social sciences; overlap with some of the most influential modern philosophy; and provide powerful tools for critical understanding of contemporary social life. The theorists whose works form the backbone of this course explore the sources of social order in structures, many of which work “behind the backs” of the awareness and intentions of those whose interaction they integrate and regulate. The market economy, the legal and administrative state, the firm and the professions, highly differentiated political and civil cultures, racial and gender order, a variety of disciplinary techniques inscribed in diverse mundane practices—one by one, these theorists labored to unmask the often hidden sources of social order in the modern world. Moreover, this understanding of social order has evolved side-by-side with evaluations that run the gambit from those that view Western modernity as achieving the apex of human freedom and individuality to those that see it as insinuating a uniquely thorough and invidious system of domination. This class will introduce many of the foundational texts and authors in social theory, the social sciences, and social philosophy, including Thomas Hobbes, Adam Smith, Alexis de Tocqueville, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Sigmund Freud, Michel Foucault, and Jürgen Habermas. In this way, it will also cover various schools of social explanation, including: Marxism, structuralism, poststructuralism, and (in group conferences) critical race theory, postcolonial studies, and feminism. The thread connecting these disparate authors and approaches will be the issue of the worth or legitimacy of Western modernity, the historical process that produced capitalism, representative democracy, religious pluralism, the modern sciences, ethical individualism, secularism, fascism, communism, new forms of racism and sexism, and many “new social movements.” Which of the institutions and practices that structured the process of modernization are worth defending or reforming? Which should be rejected outright? Or should we reject them all and embrace a new, postmodern social epoch? In addressing these questions, we will grapple both with classical texts and with the contemporary implications of different approaches to social analysis.

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Perspectives on the Creative Process

Intermediate, Seminar—Fall

The creative process is paradoxical. It involves freedom and spontaneity yet requires expertise and hard work. The creative process is self-expressive yet tends to unfold most easily when the creator forgets about self. The creative process brings joy yet is fraught with fear, frustration, and even terror.The creative process is its own reward yet depends on social support and encouragement. In this class, we look at how various thinkers conceptualize the creative process—chiefly in the arts but in other domains, as well. We see how various psychological theorists describe the process, its source, its motivation, its roots in a particular domain or skill, its cultural context, and its developmental history in the life of the individual. Among the thinkers that we will consider are Freud, Jung, Arnheim, Franklin, and Gardner. Different theorists emphasize different aspects of the process. In particular, we see how some thinkers emphasize persistent work and expert knowledge as essential features, while others emphasize the need for the psychic freedom to “let it happen” and speculate on what emerges when the creative person “lets go.” Still others identify cultural context or biological factors as critical. To concretize theoretical approaches, we look at how various ideas can contribute to understanding specific creative people and their work. In particular, we will consider works written by or about Picasso, Woolf, Welty, Darwin, and some contemporary artists and writers. Though creativity is most frequently explored in individuals, we also consider group improvisation in music and theatre. Some past conference projects have involved interviewing people engaged in creative work. Others consisted of library studies centering on the life and work of a particular creative person. And some students chose to do fieldwork at the Early Childhood Center and focus on an aspect of creative activity in young children.

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Social Movements and Powerful Art: Aesthetics of Authority and Resistance

Open, Seminar—Spring

Using US-based artist Sarah Sze’s remark, “Great protests are great art works,” as its inspiration, this seminar explores the relationship between art, collective ideas, and social change within the context of social movements. We begin by discussing the relationship between aesthetics and the social sciences, focusing on a sociological notion of art as a collective and inherently social process. Our study includes the work of social theorists Antonio Gramsci, Pierre Bourdieu, and Theodor Adorno, whose works not only illuminate how public culture communicates collective ideas but also how the latter is imbricated with existing power structures and social hierarchies. These critical frameworks will help us investigate the modern art world, exploring how artistic institutions and movements are sites that both perpetuate and resist authoritative ideologies. In the second half of the semester, students will use these frameworks to explore the role of culture and art within collective social movements. We will investigate several questions, including: What defines a social movement and what social conditions produce social movements? How are art and aesthetics used within social movements to communicate ideas and strengthen communities? In what ways do movements deploy art as a form of social resistance or authority? Our discussions will particularly attend to grassroots movements within historically marginalized communities. Throughout the semester, students will also learn about the benefits of visual methodologies and how social scholars use them to understand collective culture and social change. For conference, students will select a specific social movement, exploring how art is deployed within the movement for collective resistance or control. Possible topics include (but are not limited to) critical analysis of an artistic institution, comparative analysis of how different contexts of resistance deploy shared artistic mediums, or the use of art within a given movement over time. While class discussions will primarily focus on the United States, students are also invited to explore the relationship between art and social movements in other social locations.

Faculty

Jewish Mystics, Rabble-Rousers, and Heretics

Open, Seminar—Spring

Does God exist? How should one read the Bible? Who should read the Bible? How can humans connect with the Divine? How does Judaism relate to social justice? How do we reconcile the dichotomy of reason and revelation? What makes one Jewish? What does it mean to live Jewishly? These questions—and still others—represent but a smattering of those with which the Jews whom we will study have grappled, both philosophically and practically, throughout history. From the Kabbalah of Isaac Luria to the musical spirituality of Debbie Friedman and with a host of radical thinkers, rule-breakers, and religious innovators in between, this class will explore the myriad ways in which Jewish luminaries have broken with convention and disrupted the status quo. These individuals provide a lens into the humanity that undergirds the Jewish thought and ritual that, on the one hand, we take for granted and that, on the other, shocks or even appalls us. Drawing from an array of historical sources—including philosophical treatises, religious texts, and literary classics—we will explore how those Jewish pathbreakers have engaged with these questions across the ages and, in turn, offer our own responses.

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Sociology of the Body

Sophomore and Above, Seminar—Fall

How are bodies produced in the contemporary world? To what degree are our bodies truly our own? Using Michel Foucault’s term “biopower” and his related work as its point of departure, this course will address the above questions as well as others related to the body in order to analyze and better understand how modern social institutions and relations regulate and attempt to control our bodies. Our examination and analysis will include the various modalities through which power is enacted at the macro level—including, for example, state surveillance, violence, and policy formation. We will also explore the relation between such forces and micro-level, everyday experiences throughout, deploying the concept of “embodiment” to understand how social power not only acts upon us but also becomes internalized within our very beings. This framework will help us better understand how social power is carried through the body and shapes our physicality, as well as the ways in which we move through the social world and interact with each other. Our analysis will enable us to examine biopower more critically with respect to constructions and interpretations of sex/gender, race, class, and sexuality at multiple social scales. For conference, students are expected to select a social context of their preference through which to examine the relationship between biopolitical forces and the embodied experiences of the individual(s). Students might also explore strategies of resistance—both individual and collective—to establish bodily autonomy and resist domination. In addition to social scientific studies, students may deploy ethnographic research, media analysis, and/or turn to personal (auto)biographies as bases of their research and analysis.

Faculty

Social Movements and Powerful Art: Aesthetics of Authority and Resistance

Open, Seminar—Spring

Using US-based artist Sarah Sze’s remark, “Great protests are great art works,” as its inspiration, this seminar explores the relationship between art, collective ideas, and social change within the context of social movements. We begin by discussing the relationship between aesthetics and the social sciences, focusing on a sociological notion of art as a collective and inherently social process. Our study includes the work of social theorists Antonio Gramsci, Pierre Bourdieu, and Theodor Adorno, whose works not only illuminate how public culture communicates collective ideas but also how the latter is imbricated with existing power structures and social hierarchies. These critical frameworks will help us investigate the modern art world, exploring how artistic institutions and movements are sites that both perpetuate and resist authoritative ideologies. In the second half of the semester, students will use these frameworks to explore the role of culture and art within collective social movements. We will investigate several questions, including: What defines a social movement and what social conditions produce social movements? How are art and aesthetics used within social movements to communicate ideas and strengthen communities? In what ways do movements deploy art as a form of social resistance or authority? Our discussions will particularly attend to grassroots movements within historically marginalized communities. Throughout the semester, students will also learn about the benefits of visual methodologies and how social scholars use them to understand collective culture and social change. For conference, students will select a specific social movement, exploring how art is deployed within the movement for collective resistance or control. Possible topics include (but are not limited to) critical analysis of an artistic institution, comparative analysis of how different contexts of resistance deploy shared artistic mediums, or the use of art within a given movement over time. While class discussions will primarily focus on the United States, students are also invited to explore the relationship between art and social movements in other social locations.

Faculty

Senior Studio

Advanced, Seminar—Year

This course is intended for seniors interested in pursuing their own art-making practice more deeply and for a prolonged period of time. Students will maintain their own studio spaces and will be expected to work independently and creatively and to challenge themselves and their peers to explore new ways of thinking and making. The course will incorporate prompts that encourage students to make art across disciplines and will culminate in a solo gallery exhibition during the spring semester, accompanied by a printed book that documents the exhibition. We will have regular critiques with visiting artists and our faculty, discuss readings and myriad artists, take trips to galleries and artist’s studios, and participate in the Visual Arts Lecture Series. Your art-making practice will be supplemented with other aspects of presenting your work—writing an artist statement, writing exhibition proposals, interviewing artists, and documenting your art—along with a series of professional-practices workshops. This is an immersive studio course meant for disciplined art students interested in making work in an interdisciplinary environment. 

Faculty

Art From Code

Open, Seminar—Fall

A “live-coding,” practice-based introduction to visual-arts programming—including color, shape, transformations, and motion—this course is designed for artists with little or no prior programming experience. We’ll meet twice weekly to code together live, working on short, in-class exercises within a larger analysis of the social, cultural, and historical nature of programming cultures. All students will be required to keep a sketchbook and participate in installation. Artists include Reas, Davis, Riley, MacDonald, and others. The class is taught using Processing software.

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New Genres: Diary Forms

Open, Seminar—Fall

In a search for form, many contemporary artists have turned to the diary. Diaries and diary forms—like to-do lists, calendars, notebooks, and so on—are a kind of ready-made structure for image making and art installation. Some diaries are based in drawing and painting, but many more are hybrid works that draw from all kinds of media, including video, computation, and photography. This semester, New Genres looks at the ways in which recent artists have flipped the diary form into works of contemporary art. Two small exercises will build into one longer conference work. Artists surveyed include Acconci, Boltanski, Breakwell, Calle, Haring, Kelley, Leeson, Pruit, Raad, and more. No prior art experience is needed for this studio.

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Painting Pop

Open, Concept—Fall

In this experimental studio class, we will explore how to digest, appropriate, reconfigure, and rewrite popular media using mostly, but not limited to, painting, drawing, and collage and open to video, animation, sculpture, and performance. We will examine how artists operate as consumers, catalysts, motors, and destroyers of TV, film, music, social media, and advertisement. Slideshows, readings, and presentations will exemplify the tight relationship between art and popular media throughout history and contemporary art and will serve as inspiration for students to create their own works. Students will be encouraged to deconstruct their own spectacles of adoration and critique and celebrate images that are impactful to them. We will promote generative group conversations, studio time, experimentation, collaboration, creativity, and improvisation.

Faculty

What Remains: Presenting Absence

Open, Concept—Spring

How do we notice the traces of what’s no longer here? How do surfaces and forms bear the lingering presence of human use? This course will consider the artistic and philosophical concept of absence in its many forms: vanishing, dematerialization, disappearance, nothingness, forgetting, loss, and grief. Through lectures, readings, and studio exercises, we will experiment with multiple artistic and conceptual frameworks for bearing witness to acts of removal, erasure, and temporality. The class will explore how these strategies can, in fact, bring more visibility to suppressed bodies, histories, and ecologies. Some of the artists whose works we will consider include Gordon Matta-Clark, Félix González-Torres, Ana Mendieta, David Hammonds, Doris Salcedo, Rachel Whiteread, Walid Raad, Do Hoh Suh, Danh Võ, Janine Antoni, and Stephanie Syujuco, among others.

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First-Year Studies: Poetry: The Human Song

FYS—Year

In this FYS class, we will study the art, the mystery, and the power of poetry. In our first semester, we will learn to pay attention. We will become intimate with the skills of the art: with the sounds of sense, the way a word feels in the mouth, the where-it-is in a sentence (diction, syntax). We will wonder: What is a line of poetry? What part does silence play in a poem? How is poetry experienced out loud—or read silently to oneself? Why use a metaphor? How important are forms? How do we know when a poem is “finished”? How do we write into what we don’t know? We will read the work of many published poets. We will read essays, watch films, take field trips, and meet in weekly poetry dates and in conferences. You will write a poem every week and bring it to class to share; then, you will revise each poem that you bring. At the end of the first semester, you will collect your revised poems into a chapbook. Expect to spend a great deal of time every week reading the poems written by other people—both dead and living. Expect to read the poems of your class community. Expect to spend time dwelling with your own writing—without preoccupations. In our second semester, we will concentrate on ecopoetry, poetry that concerns itself with the living world and the current planetary emergency. We will read ecopoems in order to come to an understanding of the possibilities. Each of you will choose a topic to learn about (an animal? a river? a forest?) and write into that knowledge, into a new understanding. At the end of the second semester, you will collect your poems into a chapbook. We will create a community together of trust and care so that every writer feels free to share work. We will delight in each other’s voices, in reading together, in wandering into the power of poetry. And we will have a wonderful time. This course will have biweekly conferences. During conferences, we will check on your well-being, go over your recent poems and revisions, review your responses to your reading of weekly poetry packets, and take a look at your weekly observations.

Faculty

First-Year Studies: Where Was It One First Heard of the Truth?

FYS—Year

In this omnibus nonfiction writing class, we will encounter and examine over the course of a year a range of literary, artistic, social, and historical phenomena—from plays by Shakespeare and poems by Whitman, to selections from autobiographies of Gandhi and Malcolm X and Virginia Woolf, to films and memoirs of identity and gender liberation, to a classic documentary about the terminal ward of a great Northeastern-seaboard hospital, to an oral history of a poor neighborhood in Mexico City, to artwork in New York museums and current art exhibits in Chelsea, to sports events and contemporaneous political conflicts, to masterworks of modernist nonfiction experimentation. In response to this range and overflowing variety of material, students will be asked to write accurately and cogently, in the tradition of various nonfiction genres, designed to capture one aspect or another of these encounters with reality. We will write impersonal work—reportage, reviews, journalistic profiles, editorials; and we will write highly personal pieces involving the life experiences of each of us in relation to what we encounter—personal essays, memoir fragments, hybrid pieces that experiment with form, that create their own genre, that allow us to fully explore our subjectivity and our unique points of view. We will work out the rhetorical and investigative techniques, whereby the truth of experience is represented on the page. We will also look at the many ways in which language can be used to distort, obscure, and evade the truth. We will think practically and will think philosophically about representing reality. We will develop our voices and our control of words, sentences, paragraphs, and larger units. Our biases will tend toward clarity of thought and beauty of expression. In this course, there will be weekly conferences for the first six weeks and biweekly conferences thereafter.

Faculty

Children’s Literature

Open, Small Lecture—Fall

Who doesn’t love Frog and Toad? Have you ever wanted to write something like it—or like Charlotte’s Web or A Snowy Day? Why do our favorites work so well and so (almost) universally? We will begin by reading books we know and books we missed and discuss what makes them so good. We will be looking at read-to books, early readers, instructional books for children, rude books, chapter books, books about friendship, and (possibly) young adult books. We may consider what good children’s history and biography might be like. We will talk about the place of the visual, the careful and conscious use of language, notions of appropriateness, and what works at various age levels. Invariably, we will talk about childhood, our own and as part of an ever-changing set of social theories. We will try our hand at writing picture books, early readers, friendship stories, collections of poems like Mother Goose. Conference work will involve making a children’s book of any kind, on any level. Classes will be in both lecture and conversational mode, and group conferences will involve looking at our writing.

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The Enemies of Fiction: A Fiction-Writing Workshop

Open, Seminar—Year

The late novelist John Hawkes said that he began writing fiction with the assumption that its “true enemies” were “plot, character, setting, and theme.” This same quartet seems to dominate the conversation in writing workshops. We like to “vote” on the plot’s efficiency, the theme’s effectiveness, the characters’ foibles. If we are not careful, our discussions can descend to the level of a corporate focus group, a highly effective forum for marketing laundry detergents but maybe not for making art. This yearlong workshop will attempt, in its own small way, to see the fiction of both published masters and participating students through a wider lens. In the first semester, we will read across a wide range of styles and aesthetics and will write in response to weekly prompts designed to encourage play. Issues of language, structure, and vision will be honored right alongside Hawkes’ imagined enemies. In the second semester—provided all goes well—each student will workshop two stories. Our reading list will include several short and unorthodox novels (possibilities include Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson, Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino, Concrete by Thomas Bernhard, and The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector) and weekly short stories by writers both well-known and ignored. These may include Robert Coover, Dawn Raffel, Etgar Keret, Julio Cortazar, Ottessa Moshfegh, Donald Barthelme, Harlan Ellison, and Carmen Maria Machado. We will also regularly read essays that challenge us to think about what art is and why anyone would want to make it. I am looking for generous students interested in fiction-as-play. The model here is counterpoint, so it may help if you have already taken a fiction-writing workshop—though the course is offered (generously) to writers of all backgrounds.

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Forms and Fictions

Open, Seminar—Spring

Whatever short form you are interested in— episode, story, reflection, memoir, essay, tale—you will find in this course, both for reading and writing. We will talk about how different forms open the door to different takes on experience and how content or change can become more or less accessible in different forms. We will write 100-word pieces each week to learn to edit ourselves and to search through our minds for what’s there. We will practice pacing, dialogue, scene, portraiture. We will discuss what our favored forms say about our lives and the people in them. We will be writing and reading short pieces all semester, then editing, redrafting, and arranging them for conference work.

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Nonfiction Laboratory

Open, Seminar—Fall

This course is for students who want to break free from the conventions of the traditional essay and memoir and discover a broader range of narrative and stylistic possibilities available to nonfiction writers. During the first half of the semester, students will read and discuss examples of formally innovative nonfiction by writers such as Claudia Rankine, Nathalie Sarraute and George W. S. Trow. These readings will serve as the inspiration for brief assignments that will be read aloud and discussed each week. During the second half of the semester, students will workshop longer pieces that they will have written in consultation with the instructor as a part of their conference work. Required texts: The Next American Essay, edited by John D’Agata, and Multiple Choice by Alejandro Zambra. All other readings are in the PDF packet.

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Creative Nonfiction

Intermediate/Advanced, Seminar—Fall

This is a course for creative writers who are interested in exploring nonfiction as an art form. We will focus on reading and interpreting outside work—essays, articles, and journalism by some of our best writers—in order to understand what good nonfiction is and how it is created. During the first part of the semester, writing will be comprised mostly of exercises and short pieces aimed at putting into practice what is being illuminated in the readings; in the second half of the semester, students will create longer, formal essays to be presented in workshop.

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