Philosophy

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.) Separate from the course content, we will meet biweekly as a group to discuss various topics relating to life at Sarah Lawrence. These sessions will have a particular focus on working on writing skills.

Many of us are struck by the growing irrationality of contemporary democratic politics to the point where we despair of our capacity to address problems like global climate change or pandemics that could pose existential threats to our species, to fashion constructive foreign policy as wars rage, or to face a whole range of urgent but more mundane policy issues. In this class, we will seek to understand disturbing trends like populism, polarization, disinformation, and self-injuring or -defeating politics, as well as the resurfacing of nativism, xenophobia, and racism in contemporary politics—in part on their own terms but also by asking whether they are deeply rooted in human nature, at least on our current best understandings of ourselves. More specifically, democracy seems to rely on at least a minimum degree of rationality, learning, openness to argument and difference, and self-control on the part of the citizens whose votes and opinions guide government policy. But is this reliance foolhardy in light of what recent history, psychology, evolutionary theory, philosophy, and cognitive science teach? Do aspects of our current social and technological circumstances make us less able to manifest these qualities of character today than our Enlightenment progenitors hoped in the era of democratic revolutions—the era from which many of the ideas and institutions that continue to inform our politics today emerged? In this course, we will survey aspects of the political history of recent centuries, as well as our own historical moment, to ask if they should temper confidence in the power of reason in politics. We will also examine recent research in cognitive science, psychology, and philosophy that conclude that it is hard to sustain a model of human behavior that places reason and rationality in the driver’s seat. What alternative accounts of human nature are emerging from recent research? And what are their political implications, especially for democratic societies? By bringing together political science, history, and theory with cognitive science, psychology, and philosophy, we should be able to occupy the intersection of distinct but equally relevant disciplines to ask whether the Enlightenment’s faith in democracy was misplaced. Or, instead, are there reasons to believe that democracy can maintain its claim to legitimacy, even after reason has been demoted in our understandings of human nature? To address this final question, we will also examine proposals for 21st-century democratic reforms that either seek to adjust downward the expectations on the capacity of citizens to engage in deliberative politics or to refashion political institutions to better summon the better angels of our nature.

Philosophy began with the Greeks as the pursuit of freedom of mind—as a rebellion against bondage to conventional belief. But is freedom of mind possible? And to what does it amount? This course, the first half of a yearlong sequence, focuses on the different ways the Greek philosophers and their Roman heirs understood freedom of mind. We will travel from the pre-Socratics through Plato, the Stoics, the Epicureans, and the Skeptics. Students will be expected to come to each class with a written question on the reading, which I may ask them to read aloud at the beginning of class in order to stimulate discussion. They may also be asked to participate in brief group presentations of the reading. The writing requirements for the class will have two components. The first of these will be made up of a short paragraph on the reading for each class and each group conference and should include the written question on the reading; the rest of the paragraph should either develop this question further or pose a further question or questions about the reading. At the end of the semester, you will be expected to submit a log of these short paragraphs, with your three favorites at the beginning of the document. The second writing requirement will be for a paper, or papers, outlining a portion of the reading and posing questions along the way. Through discussion, we will decide on the focus of these papers.

This course will continue the investigation undertaken in the fall course. For a description, see Freedom of Mind: Ancient Philosophy, fall semester; theme and writing requirements will be the same as for that course. Our focus will shift, however, to medieval and modern philosophy, with attention to Averroes (Ibn Rush’d), Montaigne, Descartes, and Shaftesbury. Either course may be taken independently, but students are, of course, invited to take both.

Does life have a purpose, a meaning? What does it mean “to be”? What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be a woman (or to be a man)? What does it mean to be Black (or to be white)? What makes us into who we are? What distinguishes each of us? And what, if anything, is in common to all of us? These and other questions are raised by existentialist philosophy and literature, mostly through interrogation of real-life experiences, situations, and “fundamental emotions” such as anxiety, boredom, loneliness, and shame. In the first half of this course, we will get acquainted with the core tenets of existentialist thought by reading two of its most influential figures: Jean-Paul Sartre (France, 1905-1980) and Martin Heidegger (Germany, 1889-1976). In the second half, we will analyze texts by authors who set out to expand or challenge these core tenets on the grounds of their experiences of oppression. These authors are Simone de Beauvoir, Frantz Fanon, and Jean Améry. Group conference will meet weekly and play a central role in this course. In it, we will mostly read literary texts or watch films that are relevant to the work of the above-listed authors. Conference material will include stories by Franz Kafka, Albert Camus, and Ralph Ellison and films such as The Battle of Algiers (1967) and Monsieur Klein (1977).

For the first time in history, it is not only conceivable but likely that human action will result in the extinction of our species. We transformed our planet from remarkably resilient to deeply vulnerable in a flash, whether time is measured geologically or in terms of cultural evolution. So, we struggle to determine how to cope and what to do about our newly vulnerable world. We face, especially in climate change, an impending global catastrophe beyond the ethical imaginations of all but the most recent generations. Many of the very same forces (especially capitalism and the energy-intensive technology and civilization it spreads on a global scale) that produce planetary peril tend—either directly and intentionally or simply by their further effects—to make it difficult to become more intentional about planetary stewardship at the pace and on the scale required. But just as human activity rendered our world vulnerable, only concerted human action can save it. This means that climate change and other crises of the Anthropocene can only be tamed politically; i.e., through collective action on a global scale of a kind without precedent in human history. Global political action, in turn, requires not-yet-developed ethical resources and political capacities if it is to succeed in saving our planet in ways that avoid unjust and inhumane distributions of costs and suffering. Developing the normative and imaginative resources to grasp the enormity of the advancing climate and environmental crises is an essential first step in creating the capacity for collective action required to respond. While traditional concerns with topics like distributive justice offer partial guidance as we notice, for instance, the overlap between environmental and racial injustice domestically as well as globally, many of the normative issues raised by our rapidly advancing, world-altering powers are simply unprecedented. To develop the normative resources required to navigate this new world, we need simultaneously to seek new orienting ideas while also examining Western, non-Western/indigenous, and contemporary conceptions of social justice, responsibility, relatedness, and ethics anew. Which, if any, can be adapted to incorporate global, intergenerational, and interspecies obligations? Do revisions in received understandings of risk and agency necessitate corollary changes in ideas like democracy, power, responsibility, privacy, and our relation to the natural and built worlds? To address these issues, this course divides into three main units, in turn: 1) We will examine the novel forces at work in the Anthropocene and the unprecedented questions of justice and ethics that they raise (e.g., Is it morally permissible to have a child in a world that may become rapidly uninhabitable? Should we engage in ubiquitous surveillance as the capacity for, perhaps, inadvertent mass destruction becomes more readily available to ordinary persons?). 2) We will also examine the tradition of Western philosophy to survey the resources it contains or lacks for answering these kinds of novel questions. 3) In light of the limited resources that this tradition contains, we will turn to other sources—briefly surveying recent work on non-Western traditions (especially indigenous cultures) and concentrating on contemporary political philosophy and ethics. Students should emerge with a sharper understanding of the political and ethical dimensions of the climate crisis and other environmental issues and the normative resources available to them in determining how to respond personally and politically. This course will fully participate in the spring 2025 Sarah Lawrence Interdisciplinary Collaborative on the Environment (SLICE) Mellon course cluster.

From its inception, Western philosophy has considered happiness as the ultimate purpose of human life and one of the most important goals of any political regime. This aim has persisted to today. Contemporary research reports that when people are asked what they most want from their lives, they resoundingly answer happiness. Yet, when asked to define happiness, most face difficulty providing a satisfying answer. We might be left to conclude that the one thing we genuinely want is something we can't clearly define. This course explores the intricate nature of happiness and its elusive characteristics through the political philosophies of Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant, and Mill. We will work to construct a historical narrative to explore how each of the four philosophers shaped their ideas of happiness through meaningful dialogues with others' conceptions of it. Additionally, we will learn how the differences between the conceptions of happiness result from essential differences concerning the nature of
the relationship between humans and the socialpolitical structure. Some of the questions that we will pursue include: What is the difference between happiness and pleasure? What role do others play in our ability to achieve happiness? Is there a specific political regime that will most advance human happiness? Although we may not arrive at a satisfying explanation for what happiness is, the seminar aims to help us understand how the Western ideal of happiness has been shaped in relation to political philosophy.

This course investigates the ways in which feminist philosophers have challenged traditional approaches to moral philosophy. We will look at feminist ethics not just as a branch of ethics (for instance, one addressing the concerns of women) but also as an approach to ethics as a whole that puts pressure on dominant moral philosophies— specifically, those inspired by Kant and Mill. Feminist philosophers have sought to correct the privileging of the male standpoint and question its characterization as neutral. Where traditional moral philosophy focuses on individual moral subjects, feminist interventions have illuminated the social and material conditions under which moral problems arise and moral actions occur. Over the course of the semester, we will consider how feminist ethics invite us to reconsider: (1) the way moral theories determine what counts as harmful or wrong; (2) how moral psychology construes our motivation to act and our responsibility for what we have done; and (3) individual social issues, including misogyny, abortion, and our thinking around sex. Our aim will be to appreciate how these thinkers expand the scope of moral consideration and to ask previously ignored or obscured questions. How does one’s upbringing shape their moral outlook, and should it change what one is responsible for? How does being oriented by care reframe what we take ethics to be about? What kinds of beings (and things) are eligible for moral consideration? Should this include animals? Or the environment? How does a feminist perspective allow us to notice systematic oppression on the grounds of race or sexuality? In working through these questions and others, some of the thinkers we will read include Elizabeth Anscombe, Simone de Beauvoir, Judith Butler, Claudia Card, Patricia Hill Collins, Cora Diamond, Carol Gilligan, bell hooks, Eva Kittay, Iris Murdoch, and Margaret Walker.

Nietzsche, in the Preface to The Genealogy of Morals, begins by attacking “English moralists.” By “English moralists” he means, I propose, David Hume in his An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. After reading the Preface and Part One of the Genealogy, we shall turn to Hume’s Enquiry in order to understand Nietzsche’s criticism and to see whether we think it is justified. Students will be required to bring a written question to each class and to present short sections of the reading. Writing requirements will consist of a log of the written questions, two outlines of portions of the reading that they present in class with questions and objections, and a conference paper.

Decolonial theory offers an intervention in standard familiar narratives about historical progress and social value. Decolonial theory also opens up conversations about what kind of future we can imagine. This seminar aims to delve into three interconnected concepts crucial for grasping the philosophical foundations of decolonial theory: Eurocentrism, modernity, and progress. After considering these foundations, we will be interested in how decolonial theory forces us to reflect on philosophy itself, its history, as well as its methods and practices. The course will be divided into three main parts. First, we will critically analyze Kant's and Hegel's ideas regarding historical progress to reveal the underlying Eurocentrism in their perspectives on enlightenment, rationality, freedom, and modernity. The second part will address the significance of Aníbal Quijano's statement that even though "formal colonial status has ended, coloniality has not." We will explore how this idea, embraced by many decolonial theorists, is a fundamental element of their efforts to uncover the underlying power of racism operating within the foundational structure of the "new world." In the third part of the course, we will explore how decolonial theory aims not only to “delink” from the knowledge framework imposed by the West but also to “reconstitute” new ways of living in a society where there is no universal standard to judge one's freedom and life. We will learn the fundamental ideas of Fanon, Césaire, Spivak, Lugones, Maldonado-Torres, Wynter, and Iman. These thinkers present alternative ways of existence without predetermined universal essences that all must adhere to be considered humans.

This seminar centers on the two foundational texts in the classical Taoist tradition, Lao-tzu’s Tao-te ching (Daode jing) and the Chuang-tzu (Zhuangzi). The Tao-te-ching, an anthology of poetry, asks us to contemplate the nature of the Dao and the possibility of the individual’s attainment of it; the role of the government and rulers in making the Dao prevail in the world; and a rudimentary cosmology that proposes an ideal relationship of the individual to society, nature, and the cosmos. By contrast, the Chuang-tzu defies all categorization and, instead, invites readers to probe through its layers of myth, fantasy, jokes, short stories, and philosophical argumentation. Along the way, Chuang-tzu plunges us into an examination of some of the core questions of moral philosophy and epistemology: What is being? What is the nature of human nature? What does it mean to be virtuous? What is knowledge? How does one know that one knows? And, what does it mean to attain true knowledge and the Dao? To explore those topics and answer these questions, our seminar sessions will revolve around the close, detailed reading and interpretation of the texts.

By nature, humans need something more than nature—custom or convention, or what we nowadays call “culture”—to constitute a community. What is this something more, and why do we need it? Are “cultures” completely sealed off from each other and mutually incomprehensible, or can they be understood as responding to universal human needs? Are they pure products of freedom and creativity, always subject to modulation and transformation, or are they like a kind of inescapable fate? We shall tackle this topic with the help of Plato’s Laws.

Written in 1807, G. W. F. Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit is arguably the most important book one could read to understand our modern world. The book was so pathbreaking that subsequent philosophers were compelled to contend with its claims; and it is no stretch to say that, without Hegel, there would be no Marx, Kierkegaard, Sartre, Foucault, or even feminist theory. A book about the nature of knowledge, our relation to others, what makes an action right, the influence of culture, the value of art, and the role of religion in our lives, Phenomenology of Spirit offers a comprehensive theory of what makes life meaningful. During the course of the semester, we will read significant portions of the text as we work to comprehend Hegel’s expansive philosophical thought. Central to that thought is the contention that we achieve self-knowledge not through introspection but, rather, by looking outward to the world and to the entirety of human history. Accordingly, Phenomenology of Spirit weaves a narrative through a panoply of frameworks and practices that people have inhabited in making sense of their lives (skepticism, stoicism, science, art, religion, and philosophy). This unique narrative progresses dialectically, demonstrating how the contradictions that inhere in one framework or practice generate a new framework or practice, which ultimately gives way to “Absolute Knowing.”

The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein, first published in German in 1921, consists of seven main “propositions.” The first is “1. The world is all that is the case”; the last, “7. What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.” Between the two are some 90 pages of notoriously enigmatic statements—on topics ranging from religion and mysticism to science and logic, language, subjectivity, and thinking—that have fascinated readers for more than a century. While the Tractatus has become one of the canonical texts of analytical philosophy, it is also among the most influential texts of 20th-century philosophy more generally. Its laconic brevity and oracular style make it an excellent platform for practicing close, collective, philosophical reading and conversation in the seminar setting. We will read it together, line by line, in and out of class, alongside secondary texts that exemplify its range of influence and competing interpretations from analytic to continental philosophy. We will conclude the class by looking at and reflecting on Wittgenstein’s striking change of mind and style in Philosophical Investigations—his last (and only other) book. Students participating in this course must show a philosophical passion and commitment; a diligent work ethic; and a spirit of comradery, collaboration, and generosity.

In this course, we will investigate the concept of language ideologies—beliefs and attitudes about language—and their impact on the lived experiences of racial and ethnic groups and other minoritized communities within the United States. Through a series of lectures, discussions, and hands-on projects, students will gain an understanding of how language practices reflect and reinforce social hierarchies, cultural norms, and power dynamics. Special attention will be paid to the meaning accomplished through language use and the informative role of ideologies of language and people in understanding these dynamics. We will delve into diverse language contexts, with a primary focus on the United States, examining case studies to understand how language serves as a site of struggle and resistance. Key linguistic topics will include language attitudes and linguistic discrimination, the politics of race and language, standard language ideologies, the role of language in shaping social and racial identities, language use and its social meaning, and multilingualism and multiculturalism in the United States. Specific examples will include ethnographic case studies of race and language, such as H. Samy Alim’s examination of his own experiences as a Black man or person of color under white gaze (“the white listening subject”); political persona and discourse of US presidential candidates; racialization of Asian-American, Black, and Latinx students in US classroom contexts; language revitalization efforts and identification of the Chickasaw Nation; race, gender, and sexuality performances in RuPaul’s Drag Race; identification practices and language use in indigenous communities such as the “Taino” identity in Puerto Rico. Assessments for this class will involve regular written reflections, a midterm paper, a research proposal, and a final research paper on a topic of the student’s interest related to language use, race, and identity. Core readings for our class will be drawn primarily from US-based, peer-reviewed linguistic journals and foundational texts. All readings will be provided beforehand.

How does a chronic illness affect a person’s orientation to the everyday? What are the social and political forces that underpin life in a homeless shelter? What is the experiential world of a blind person, a musician, a refugee, or a child at play? In an effort to answer these and like-minded questions, anthropologists have become increasingly interested in developing phenomenological accounts of particular lived realities in order to understand—and convey to others—the nuances and underpinnings of such realities in terms that more general social or symbolic analyses cannot achieve. In this context, phenomenology offers an analytic method that works to understand and describe in words phenomena as they appear to the consciousnesses of certain peoples. The phenomena most often in question for anthropologists include the workings of time, perception, selfhood, language, bodies, suffering, and morality as they take form in particular lives within the context of any number of social, linguistic, and political forces. In this course, we will explore phenomenological approaches in anthropology by reading and discussing some of the most significant efforts along these lines. Each student will also try their hand at developing a phenomenological account of a specific social or subjective reality through a combination of ethnographic research, participant observation, and ethnographic writing.

This course explores the profound role of technology in shaping our daily lives, cultures, and societies—with a focus on how digital media transforms communication, identity, and sense-making practices, both online and offline. Digital media has become a dominant form of communication, with tools like social media, mobile phone applications, and artificial intelligence tools profoundly influencing our sense of self and our identities, communication, social networks, information exchange, cultural and behavioral practices, social styles, and language learning. Key topics discussed in this class will include: language socialization and language practices in online communities; the construction of digital personalities, communities and social identities through language and digital “lifestyles”; language ideologies and symbols in digital spaces; language learning, multilingualism, and the evolving role of multimodal communication, including emojis and hashtags; literacy in the digital age and the rise of automated writing; and the ethics of conducting ethnographic research in digital spaces. Case studies include: a critical examination of language and discourse on Black Twitter; hashtag ethnography within the #BlackLivesMatter social movement; multilingual practices of adolescents, both in the United States and abroad, online and offline; language practices in online LGBTQ+ communities; ethical considerations in online ethnographies of dark-web communities; ethnography of data structures and algorithms; and engagement with language-learning apps like Duolingo. Students will also explore methods of online and blended ethnography, developing research skills for data collection and analysis in digital spaces. They will expand their intellectual understanding of language, culture, and communication in the context of technology, gaining insights into the potential research directions that link technology, language, and anthropology. In the conference component, students will engage in blended ethnography, utilizing both online and offline data collection methods. By studying a subject or reflecting on their own experiences, students will explore emerging digital identities and language styles, gaining deeper insights into the intersection of technology and self.

This seminar centers on the two foundational texts in the classical Taoist tradition, Lao-tzu’s Tao-te ching (Daode jing) and the Chuang-tzu (Zhuangzi). The Tao-te-ching, an anthology of poetry, asks us to contemplate the nature of the Dao and the possibility of the individual’s attainment of it; the role of the government and rulers in making the Dao prevail in the world; and a rudimentary cosmology that proposes an ideal relationship of the individual to society, nature, and the cosmos. By contrast, the Chuang-tzu defies all categorization and, instead, invites readers to probe through its layers of myth, fantasy, jokes, short stories, and philosophical argumentation. Along the way, Chuang-tzu plunges us into an examination of some of the core questions of moral philosophy and epistemology: What is being? What is the nature of human nature? What does it mean to be virtuous? What is knowledge? How does one know that one knows? And, what does it mean to attain true knowledge and the Dao? To explore those topics and answer these questions, our seminar sessions will revolve around the close, detailed reading and interpretation of the texts.

This yearlong course, based on the professor’s new book—Legal and Political Foundations of Capitalism: The End of Laissez Faire?—introduces students to the emerging Law and Political Economy tradition in economics. The course will deal with four interrelated questions: (1) What does economic regulation mean? (2) What is the relationship between institutions, legal ones in particular, and the economy? (3) How does one theoretically analyze the nature of property rights, money, corporations, and power? (4) How does rethinking the relationship between law and the economy challenge conventional ideas about the nature of economic regulation? The course will seek to understand the nature of power and its relationship to institutions, especially legal ones, by considering property rights and money, the business corporation, constitutional political economy, the links between “free markets” and authoritarianism, colonialism and race, and inequality as it intersects across class, race, and gender lines. We will deal with these questions by focusing on the insights of the Original Institutional Economics and American Legal Realists and their relationship to the classical political economy tradition (especially Adam Smith and Karl Marx). The Law and Political Economy framework will be contrasted with the insights of New Institutional Economics, with the latter’s basis in neoclassical economics. Core questions that will be addressed include: What is laissez faire, and does legal-economic history show any proof of its existence? What is assumed when dueling perspectives advocate “more” or “less” government intervention; and are these, in fact, false binaries that distract from core questions of public policy and key challenges such as climate instability, growing inequality, and threats to democracy? No prior background in economics is required.

What assumptions, methodologies, values, vision, and theoretical foundations do microeconomists incorporate and rely upon for analyzing economic behavior at the individual level? What insights, knowledge, inferences, and/or conclusions can be gleaned through examining characteristics of individual firms, agents, households, and markets in order to understand capitalist society? How do our theories of individual and business behavior inform our interpretation of distributional outcomes? Among other topics, this yearlong seminar in microeconomics will offer an inquiry into economic decision-making vis-à-vis: theories of demand and supply, the individual (agents), households, consumption (consumer choice); theories of production and costs; theories of the firm (business enterprise, corporations); theories of markets and competition; prices and pricing theory; and public policy. This course will provide a rigorous analysis of theory and policy in the neoclassical and broad critical political economy traditions. A central theoretical issue will be an engagement of the “governments versus markets” dichotomy, which is at the heart of neoclassical economics. This important theme will be addressed by investigating the rival treatments of institutions in neoclassical economics (New Institutional Economics) and the Law and Political Economy tradition. Among other topics, we will analyze how these different approaches to institutions and the economy study cost-benefit analysis, Pareto optimality, business competition, and the Coase Theorem. The spring semester will incorporate the study of business history.

As we want to engage in individual and collective efforts toward sustainable and climate-change mitigating solutions, this workshop offers an opportunity for students to explore the multiple ways in which “sustainability” can be fostered and developed at an institution like Sarah Lawrence College. Students will work in small groups on a variety of projects and produce research and educational material that can lead to concrete and actionable proposals for the College and our community to consider. Students will determine their own areas of interest and research, from energy and water-usage monitoring to composting solutions, recycling/reusing and consumer sobriety, landscaping choices, pollinators and natural diversity, food growing, natural and human history of the land, and community collaborations, to name a few. As part of their project effort, students will engage with College administrators who are actively working toward sustainable solutions, as well as student, staff, and faculty groups such as the Warren Green vegetable garden, the Sarah Lawrence Interdisciplinary Collective on the Environment (SLICE), and the Sustainability Committee. We will also explore the possibility of writing grants in coordination with other actors at the College. This workshop will meet once a week for one hour. It is offered as pass/fail based on attendance and a group project that will mostly be developed during our meeting time. It is open to all students, including first-year students. All skills and areas of expertise are welcome, from environmental science to writing and visual and studio arts—but any interest in issues of sustainability and a strong sense of dedication will suffice!

In his book, The Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama wrote this about himself: “I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views. As such, I am bound to disappoint some, if not all, of them.” In this rare moment of critical self-evaluation, Obama revealed a key to understanding celebrity culture—that our thoughts about celebrities have far less to do with the celebrity themselves and much more to do with how we project our own anxieties, joys, cultural condition, and economic position in society onto those we admire. In short, we often use celebrities to help us understand our own views on the world and how we’d prefer to move through that world. In examining the increasingly self-aware culture associated with celebrity, mass media, and Web 2.0, we will discuss the ways in which celebrity is conceived, constructed, performed, and discussed—as well as how it shapes notions of identity and has reconfigured concepts of work, class, consumption, intimacy, authenticity, and the “American dream.” A critical analysis of celebrity encompasses many aspects of culture, and we will draw connections between celebrity and a number of issues, including: scandals and yellow journalism; the erosion of privacy; aspirational fantasies of social mobility; notions of health, beauty, and success; celebrities as memes; how celebrities are used to advance political causes; and the ways in which individuals become commodities. With an emphasis on media’s relationship to celebrity, we cover a broad range of topics and modes of analysis. We will conduct a brief history of celebrity culture, from the heroes of the precinematic era and the cultivation of the larger-than-life Hollywood star to the intimate television personality and the even more personal social media microcelebrity. We will discuss the ways in which celebrity exceeds the boundaries of a given text; for example, how the viewer’s insights into a particular star may shape their interpretation or enjoyment of a text. We will analyze the ways in which social media such as X (formerly known as Twitter), YouTube, and Instagram foster new relationships between celebrities and fans and blur the boundaries between production and consumption. We will consider the social and cultural roles of gossip and scandal, as they often provide focal points around which cultures establish behavioral norms. Celebrity is also a “product” that is produced, regulated, and monetized; as such, we will address the ways in which people as images are owned and circulated in “the celebrity industry.”

In this yearlong seminar, we will begin by examining competing paradigms and approaches to understanding “development” and the “Third World.” We will set the stage by answering the question: What did the world look like 500 years ago? The purpose of this part of the course is to acquaint us with and to analyze the historical origins and evolution of a world political economy of which the "Third World" is an intrinsic component. We will thus study the transition from feudalism to capitalism, the rise of merchant and finance capital, and the colonization of the world by European powers. We will analyze case studies of colonial "development" to understand the evolving meaning of this term. These case studies will help us assess the varied legacies of colonialism apparent in the emergence of new nations through the fitful and uneven process of decolonization that followed. The next part of the course will look at the United Nations and the role that some of its associated institutions have played in the post-World War II global political economy, one marked by persistent and intensifying socioeconomic inequalities as well as frequent outbreaks of political violence across the globe. By examining the development institutions that have emerged and evolved since 1945, we will attempt to unravel the paradoxes of development in different eras. We will deconstruct the measures of development through a thematic exploration of population, resource use, poverty, access to food, the environment, agricultural productivity, and different development strategies adopted by Third World nation-states. We will then examine globalization and its relation to emergent international institutions and their policies; for example, the IMF, World Bank, AIIB, and WTO. We will then turn to contemporary development debates and controversies that increasingly find space in the headlines—widespread land grabbing by sovereign wealth funds, China, and hedge funds; the “global food crisis”; epidemics and public-health challenges; and the perils of climate change. Throughout the course, our investigations of international institutions, transnational corporations, the role of the state, and civil society will provide the backdrop for the final focus of the class: the emergence of regional coalitions for self-reliance, environmental and social justice, and sustainable development. Our analysis of development in practice will draw upon case studies primarily from Africa but also from Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the United States. Conference work will be closely integrated with the themes of the course, with a two-stage substantive research project beginning in the fall semester and completed in the spring. Project presentations will incorporate a range of formats, from traditional papers to multimedia visual productions. Smaller creative projects are also a component of the course, including podcasts, videos, art, music, and other forms. Where possible and feasible, students will be encouraged to do primary research during fall study days and winter and spring breaks. Some experience in the social sciences is desired but not required.

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.

Why this course and speaker series/community conversations now? The rise of the New Right is a critically important phenomenon of our time, shaping politics, policies, practices, and daily life for everyone. The insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, is only one egregious expression of long-term ideas and actions by a newly emboldened collective of right-wing ideologues. The violent challenges to the realities of a racially and ethnically diverse America is not a surprise. Nor is the normalization of White Power politics and ideas within mainstream politics and parties. The varied nature of the New Right’s participants—their ideologies, grievances, and goals—requires deep analysis of their historical roots, as well as their contemporary manifestations. The wide range of platforms and spaces for communicating hate, lies, and calls for violence against perceived enemies require their own responses, including the creation of platforms and spaces that offer analysis and alternatives. Seriously engaging the New Right, attempting to offer explanations for its rise, is key to challenging the authoritarian drift in our current political moment and its uncertain evolution and future. To do so requires our attention. It also requires a transdisciplinary approach, something inherent to our College and to geography as a discipline, be it political, economic, cultural, social, urban, historical, or environmental geography. The goal of this seminar, one that is accompanied by a planned facilitated speaker series and community conversations, is to build on work in geography and beyond and engage a wide array of thinkers from diverse disciplines and backgrounds, institutions, and organizations. In addition to teaching the course itself, my hope is that it can be a vehicle to engage our broader communities—at the College and in our region, as well as by reaching out to our widely dispersed, multigenerational alumni. Pairing the course with a subset of facilitated/moderated speaker series, live-streamed in collaboration with our Alumni Office, offers the chance to bring these classroom conversations and contemporary and pressing course topics, grounded in diverse readings and student engagement, to a much wider audience and multiple communities. In this class, we will seek to understand the origins and rise of the New Right in the United States and elsewhere as it has taken shape in the latter half of the 20th century to the present. We will seek to identify the origins of the New Right and what defines it, explore the varied geographies of the movement and its numerous strands, and identify the constituents of the contemporary right coalition. In addition, we will explore the actors and institutions that have played a role in the expansion of the New Right (e.g., courts, state and local governments, Tea Party, conservative think tanks, lawyers, media platforms, evangelical Christians, militias) and the issues that motivate the movement (e.g., anticommunism, immigration, environment, white supremacy/nationalism, voter suppression, neoliberal economic policies, antiglobalization, free speech). This is a reading-intensive, discussion-oriented, open, large seminar in which we will survey a broad sweep of the recent literature on the New Right. While the class focuses most specifically on the US context, conference papers based on international/comparative case studies are welcome. Students will be required to attend all associated talk and film viewings; write weekly essays and engage colleagues in conversation online the night before seminar; and write two short research papers that link the themes of the class with their own interests, creative products, research agenda, and/or political engagement. Students will also do two associated creative projects/expressions. Transdisciplinary collaborative activities across the College and community are encouraged. Film, performance, written commentary, podcasts, workshops, and other forms of action can provide additional outlets for student creative projects and engagement.

Qualified students will attend the twice-weekly group conferences for Intermediate Greek (see course description) and complete all assignments required for those conferences.

Qualified students will attend the twice-weekly seminar meetings for What Should I Do? Democracy, Justice, and Humanity in Ancient Greek Tragedy (see course description under Literature) and complete the reading assignments for that course. Students will also meet in group conference twice a week to read (in Greek) and discuss one ancient Greek tragedy selected by the group. 

Between the triumph of the Enlightenment in the mid-18th century and the rise of Romanticism in the 1790s lies a span of time, extending roughly from 1760 to 1800, populated by a variety of writers who foreshadowed the end of the Enlightenment without being truly “Romantic.” Many of the most exciting and influential works of literature and thought produced in the 18th century were products of this ambiguous period. For want of a better name, scholars have labeled some of these works “pre-Romantic.” It might be more useful to think of them as products of an “edgy Enlightenment”—a late, adventurous phase of the Enlightenment whose representatives had begun to question the Enlightenment’s own cherished beliefs and, in some cases, to discard them. In this course, we will read a number of the most famous texts produced by writers of the “edgy Enlightenment,” as well as two texts produced outside the period that are equally “edgy” in their own way. More than half of the works we are reading are narratives of travel—a genre of literature of which 18th-century Europeans were extremely fond. Three describe real journeys: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Turkish Embassy Letters, The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Alexander von Humboldt’s journal of his famous scientific expedition to the wilder parts of South America. Two other texts are accounts of imaginary journeys: Diderot’s comic novel, Jacques the Fatalist and His Master, and Goethe’s novel of an aspiring actor’s personal development, Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship. I am also assigning two plays by the great German dramatist Friedrich Schiller, some amusing verses written in a mixture of Scots and standard English by the Scottish poet Robert Burns, and a couple of philosophical essays by Immanuel Kant. Students may pursue conference projects on a wide range of topics in European history, philosophy, or literature.

Athens, London, Paris, Berlin, New York...the history of Western theatre has always been associated with cities, their politics, their customs, their geography, their audiences. This course will track the story of theatre as it originates in the Athens of the fifth-century BCE and evolves into its different expressions and practices in cities of later periods, all of them seen as “capitals” of civilization. Does theatre civilize, or is it merely a reflection of any given civilization whose cultural assumptions inform its values and shape its styles? Given that ancient Greek democracy gave birth to tragedy and comedy in civic praise of the god Dionysos—from a special coupling of the worldly and the sacred—what happens when these genres recrudesce in the unsavory precincts of Elizabethan London, the polished court of Louis XIV, the beer halls of Weimar Berlin, and the neon “palaces” of Broadway? Sometimes the genres themselves are challenged by experiments in new forms or by performances deliberately situated in unaccustomed places. By tinkering with what audiences have come to expect or where they have come to assemble, do playwrights like Euripides, Brecht, and Sarah Kane destabilize civilized norms? Grounding our work in Greek theatre, we will address such questions in a series of chronological investigations of the theatre produced in each city: Athens and London in the first semester; Paris, Berlin, and New York in the second.

Are human beings capable of self-government? What does that require? As modern authoritarian movements imperil democratic institutions, norms, and the rule of law, ancient Greek tragedies illuminate values and aspirations underpinning democracy and modern liberal ideals of justice, equality, and universal human rights. Tragedy and democracy emerged simultaneously in ancient Athens in the late 6th century BCE and flourished throughout the 5th century BCE. Ancient Greece never achieved egalitarian politics or anything close to universal human rights, but Athenian tragedies emphasize the essential equality of all human beings in our vulnerability to suffering and death. Surviving plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides dramatize the costs of tyranny, anger, vengeance, and cruelty—to perpetrators, as well as to victims. Commending honesty, generosity, and compassion, tragedies locate nobility not in genetic inheritance, group affiliation, socioeconomic status, numerical superiority, or even moral or ideological convictions but, rather, in our conduct as individuals. Tragedies expose the consequences of human words and actions, as characters make choices conducive to success or failure for themselves and their communities. State-sponsored and publicly performed, tragedies made self-reflection and self-criticism a fundamental feature of Athenian democratic politics and society. “What should I do?” encapsulates the central question of every ancient Greek tragedy and every moment of our own lives. This course is designed for anyone interested in understanding the false promise of authoritarianism and appreciating the origins, goals, and possibilities for a free, humane, equitable democratic society.

Theatre emerges from social rituals; and as a communal exercise, theatre requires people to work together toward a common purpose in shared and demarcated physical space. Yet, the very notion of “character,” first expressed in the indelibly defining mask of the ancient Greek protagonist, points paradoxically toward the spirit, attraction, and trial of individuation. And so we have been given Medea, Hamlet, and Tartuffe, among the many dramatic characters whose unique faces we recognize and who speak to us not only of their own conflicts but also of something universal and timeless. In the 19th century, however, the Industrial Revolution, aggressive capitalism, imperialism, Darwinism, socialist revolution, feminism, the new science of psychology, and the decline of religious clarity about the nature of the human soul—all of these, among other social factors—force the question as to whether individual identity has point or meaning, even existence. Henrik Ibsen, a fiercely “objective” Norwegian self-exile, and Anton Chekhov, an agnostic Russian doctor, used theatre—that most social of arts—to challenge their time, examining assumptions about identity, its troubling reliance on social construction, and the mysteries of self-consciousness that elude resolution. The test will be to see how what we learn from them equips us—or fails to do so—in a study of August Wilson, an African American autodidact of the 20th century, whose plays represent the impact, both outrageous and insidious, of American racism on “characters” denied identity by definition.

On the first night, we will look up and see the stars. By the last, we will know what makes them “shine,” how they came to be, and their ultimate fates. In between, we will survey the universe and humankind’s investigations of it—from ancient navigation to modern cosmology. In addition to the stars themselves, we will learn about solar-system objects such as planets, asteroids, moons, and comets; the comparative astronomy of different eras and cultures; the properties, lifetimes, and deaths of galaxies, quasars, and black holes; and theories and evidence concerning the origin, evolution, and fate of the universe. In addition to readings and examination of multimedia material, students will be members of teams conducting astronomical observation and experiments—at first with an astrolabe, then a simple telescope, and finally with the most powerful telescopes on and around the Earth. Emphasis will be placed on modes of scientific communication, so that each student will participate in debates, present posters, write papers, and participate in the peer-review process. In addition, students will experience famous astronomical debates through role-play. Since science is a collaborative process, group work—both small and large—will be a central feature of this course.

Many of us are struck by the growing irrationality of contemporary democratic politics to the point where we despair of our capacity to address problems like global climate change or pandemics that could pose existential threats to our species, to fashion constructive foreign policy as wars rage, or to face a whole range of urgent but more mundane policy issues. In this class, we will seek to understand disturbing trends like populism, polarization, disinformation, and self-injuring or -defeating politics, as well as the resurfacing of nativism, xenophobia, and racism in contemporary politics—in part on their own terms but also by asking whether they are deeply rooted in human nature, at least on our current best understandings of ourselves. More specifically, democracy seems to rely on at least a minimum degree of rationality, learning, openness to argument and difference, and self-control on the part of the citizens whose votes and opinions guide government policy. But is this reliance foolhardy in light of what recent history, psychology, evolutionary theory, philosophy, and cognitive science teach? Do aspects of our current social and technological circumstances make us less able to manifest these qualities of character today than our Enlightenment progenitors hoped in the era of democratic revolutions—the era from which many of the ideas and institutions that continue to inform our politics today emerged? In this course, we will survey aspects of the political history of recent centuries, as well as our own historical moment, to ask if they should temper confidence in the power of reason in politics. We will also examine recent research in cognitive science, psychology, and philosophy that conclude that it is hard to sustain a model of human behavior that places reason and rationality in the driver’s seat. What alternative accounts of human nature are emerging from recent research? And what are their political implications, especially for democratic societies? By bringing together political science, history, and theory with cognitive science, psychology, and philosophy, we should be able to occupy the intersection of distinct but equally relevant disciplines to ask whether the Enlightenment’s faith in democracy was misplaced. Or, instead, are there reasons to believe that democracy can maintain its claim to legitimacy, even after reason has been demoted in our understandings of human nature? To address this final question, we will also examine proposals for 21st-century democratic reforms that either seek to adjust downward the expectations on the capacity of citizens to engage in deliberative politics or to refashion political institutions to better summon the better angels of our nature.

For the first time in history, it is not only conceivable but likely that human action will result in the extinction of our species. We transformed our planet from remarkably resilient to deeply vulnerable in a flash, whether time is measured geologically or in terms of cultural evolution. So, we struggle to determine how to cope and what to do about our newly vulnerable world. We face, especially in climate change, an impending global catastrophe beyond the ethical imaginations of all but the most recent generations. Many of the very same forces (especially capitalism and the energy-intensive technology and civilization it spreads on a global scale) that produce planetary peril tend—either directly and intentionally or simply by their further effects—to make it difficult to become more intentional about planetary stewardship at the pace and on the scale required. But just as human activity rendered our world vulnerable, only concerted human action can save it. This means that climate change and other crises of the Anthropocene can only be tamed politically; i.e., through collective action on a global scale of a kind without precedent in human history. Global political action, in turn, requires not-yet-developed ethical resources and political capacities if it is to succeed in saving our planet in ways that avoid unjust and inhumane distributions of costs and suffering. Developing the normative and imaginative resources to grasp the enormity of the advancing climate and environmental crises is an essential first step in creating the capacity for collective action required to respond. While traditional concerns with topics like distributive justice offer partial guidance as we notice, for instance, the overlap between environmental and racial injustice domestically as well as globally, many of the normative issues raised by our rapidly advancing, world-altering powers are simply unprecedented. To develop the normative resources required to navigate this new world, we need simultaneously to seek new orienting ideas while also examining Western, non-Western/indigenous, and contemporary conceptions of social justice, responsibility, relatedness, and ethics anew. Which, if any, can be adapted to incorporate global, intergenerational, and interspecies obligations? Do revisions in received understandings of risk and agency necessitate corollary changes in ideas like democracy, power, responsibility, privacy, and our relation to the natural and built worlds? To address these issues, this course divides into three main units, in turn: 1) We will examine the novel forces at work in the Anthropocene and the unprecedented questions of justice and ethics that they raise (e.g., Is it morally permissible to have a child in a world that may become rapidly uninhabitable? Should we engage in ubiquitous surveillance as the capacity for, perhaps, inadvertent mass destruction becomes more readily available to ordinary persons?). 2) We will also examine the tradition of Western philosophy to survey the resources it contains or lacks for answering these kinds of novel questions. 3) In light of the limited resources that this tradition contains, we will turn to other sources—briefly surveying recent work on non-Western traditions (especially indigenous cultures) and concentrating on contemporary political philosophy and ethics. Students should emerge with a sharper understanding of the political and ethical dimensions of the climate crisis and other environmental issues and the normative resources available to them in determining how to respond personally and politically. This course will fully participate in the spring 2025 Sarah Lawrence Interdisciplinary Collaborative on the Environment (SLICE) Mellon course cluster.

The 21st-century political economy is often blamed for backsliding and outright decay in many of the world’s democratic societies. An increasingly global, financialized, deregulated, information-intensive, and automated economy tends to produce high levels of inequality in wealth and income, accompanied by growing resentment at the unfairness of the distribution of resources. This resentment, in turn, feeds populist politics, often with an authoritarian drift and a nativist tendency to scapegoat immigrants, minorities, and/or (liberal) elites for the growing precariousness experienced by many. At the same time, unresponsive political institutions that seem powerless to regulate economic forces produce growing disenchantment with traditional democracy and mainstream political parties, reinforcing democratic decay. This diagnosis begs the question: What does 21st-century democracy require of its political economy? Posing the question from this perspective directs attention to the reasons that many democratic theorists have viewed democratic capitalism as dilemmatic rather than oxymoronic. They have simultaneously embraced two ideas. First, a capitalist economy—in which investment decisions remain largely at the control of private owners of capital and others’ need to sell their labor to firms organized to produce profit while goods and jobs are distributed by markets and regulated by pricing mechanism—has so far proved an essential prerequisite to the successful institutionalization of modern, constitutional, representative democracy (due, for instance, to the way in which it diffuses social power, supports the emergence of a sizable middle class, democratizes via commodifying culture, and incentivizes constructive cultivation of individual capacity and social innovation). But second, this kind of economy also unleashes powerful social forces that predictably distort or undermine fuller democratization; for instance, by generating levels of social inequality incompatible with the normative requirements of equal citizenship and, more generally, by allowing one of the main social systems via which society is reproduced to operate autonomously and, therefore, often in tension with the distinct logic of democratically formed opinion and will. In this course, we will examine these issues by attempting to identify: (1) the most defensible conceptions of democracy for the 21st century, (2) the most important and politically relevant trends of the contemporary economic epoch, and (3) whether recent economic developments are contributing to contemporary democratic decay. We will then (4) ask whether capitalism’s antidemocratic drives have ever been successfully tamed in the past and (5) seek to evaluate the prospects of some current proposal for taming capitalism’s antidemocratic impulses.

Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it. —Baruch Spinoza, Ethics

What should I wear today? How should I respond to this text? Where should I apply to college? Every decision we make, big or small, is influenced by our emotions—at times without our explicit knowledge or conscious awareness of their influence. We can certainly appreciate how this might be the case in our own lived experiences, from the joys of picking a fun outfit to the anxiety of making a life-changing decision. Up until recently, however, the fields of psychology, economics, and neuroscience paid little attention to—and, in some cases, outright rejected—the empirical (evidence-based) study of how emotions affect our decisions. In this FYS seminar, we will explore the essential role that emotions play in our lives and their strong interplay with our decisions. During the fall semester, we will read and analyze works in psychology, behavioral economics, literature, philosophy, and popular media to examine how scholars in psychology and other disciplines have attempted to define and study something as subjective as emotions. Examples include works by William James, Paul Ekman, Lisa Feldman-Barrett, Daniel Kahneman, and others. We will also explore the role of emotions as the decision-making process unfolds. We will embed those processes in a variety of contexts, including personal, social, forensic, financial, and political realms. In the spring, we will revisit and build on these concepts by pinpointing the areas of the brain that are involved in generating, expressing, and regulating emotions and making decisions. No prior knowledge of psychology or neuroscience is required. This course may appeal to students who are curious about the mind and brain, as well as to those who wish to deepen their storytelling and character development in creative writing and filmmaking. Students will meet in biweekly conferences with the instructor to develop independent projects and biweekly small-group collaboratives with their peers to engage in creative group activities, applied workshops, book/journal clubs, film screenings, guest lectures, hands-on labs, and field trips.

Why is linguistic communication so important to us? Do other primates have language? How do humans understand messages from one another despite uncertainty, distraction, and ever-changing environments? In this course, we will consider central questions about language: Are we the only ones who have it? When did we learn it? What does artificial intelligence (AI) like ChatGPT actually learn? And what exactly is the point of so-called “small talk”? In this course, we will start with an introduction to comparative research with animals, allowing us to consider other forms of communication. Next, we’ll turn to our own species, examining what findings from studies with babies and children can tell us about the nature and goals of communication. Finally, we’ll confront the artificial elephant in the room: neural networks. What kind of language have they learned, and how can we study it? In class, we will discuss the advances and consequences of AI. Students should come prepared to engage with the topic of communication from multiple perspectives. Through small-group conferences each week, students will develop projects that relate the course to their collective interests, such as learning and communicating in Toki Pona (a philosophical artistic-constructed language), researching the limits of AI language models, observing and analyzing children’s communication, or designing a behavioral intervention study that implements different communication practices for their peers.

We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can and guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous to us, as we should guard against the plague. —William James, 1887, Habit

We all want happy lives filled with meaning and satisfaction. Yet, for many of us, happiness can be difficult to obtain with regularity or to sustain over a long period of time. Happiness is more than a feeling; rather, it is a state of well-being that should last a lifetime. Like exercising to improve physical health, it takes sustained cognitive effort to improve our mental health and engage in practices to promote well-being. We can look to evidence from the fields of psychology and neuroscience that tells us that we are mentally unprepared to: (1) predict what will make us happy, and (2) engage in behaviors that are known to make us happier. In this course, we will cover the psychological and brain-based factors for why happiness feels so fleeting and what we can do to build better and more effective habits that have been shown to lead to longer-term maintenance of a positive mood and well-being. Students will read foundational work in the field of positive psychology by Martin Seligman, Sonja Lyubomirsky, Edward Diener, Daniel Kahneman, and others. We will also discuss studies in neuroscience that show how behavioral interventions in positive psychology can impact the brain’s structure and function—just like building stronger muscles during exercise. Through small-group conferences, students will apply evidence-based practices, such as bringing order and organization to their daily lives, expressing gratitude, and building social bonds (i.e., “cross training” for the mind) in activities called “Rewirements.” For the final project, called “Unlearning Yourself,” students will learn to undo or replace a detrimental habit (e.g., overspending, social-media use, poor sleep hygiene, complaining, procrastinating) by establishing a plan to cultivate evidence-based practices for sustained well-being. By the end of this course, students will have gained the ability to sift through the ever-booming literature on positive psychology and neuroscience to identify the practices that work best for them, along with an appreciation for the notion that finding and keeping happiness and well-being requires intentional practice and maintenance. Students should come prepared to engage in meaningful self-work.

Why is the topic of laughter so often siloed or scorned in discussions of high art, literature, and the sciences? Why don’t we take laughter seriously as a society? How many professors does it take to teach a course on laughter? (Two more than usual...) In this lecture-seminar, students will develop a highly interdisciplinary understanding of laughter as a human behavior, cultural practice, and wide-ranging tool for creative expression. Based on the expertise of the three professors, lectures will primarily investigate laughter through the lens of psychology, film history, and visual arts. The goal of the course is to think and play across many disciplines. For class assignments, students may be asked to conduct scientific studies of audience laughter patterns, create works of art with punchlines, or write close analyses of classic cinematic gags. Over the course of the semester, we will examine the building blocks of laughter; classic devices of modern comedy; and laughter as a force of resilience, resistance, and regeneration. Topics to be discussed include the evolutionary roots of laughter as a behavior; the psychological substrates of laughter as a mode of emotional and self-regulation; humor in Dada, surrealism, performance art, and stand-up comedy; jokes and the unconscious; comic entanglements of modern bodies and machines; hysterical audiences of early cinema; and how to read funny faces, word play, spit takes, toilet humor, and sound gags.

What does it mean to live a flourishing life? This is one of the most fundamental questions of human existence, and this course explores this question through an engagement with the universal human experiences of care, aging, and death. Together, we will dig deep into the centrality of caregiving to the human experience and identify and explore normative claims around care, aging, and death. Specifically, we will explore issues of avoidance, dependence, and interdependence, as we think together about the role of care in our lives across the lifespan but especially leading up to the final stages of life. In dominant US culture, notions of individualism prevail—and caregiving is often conceptualized as a burden. But who has decided that the care of other humans is a burden, or that an unburdened life is one most worth living? Who is to say that we’d prefer or be better off to be “unburdened” from the most important relationships in our lives? Collectively, we will consider more life-affirming, meaningful, and pluralistic ideas about care and consider who is most served by current mainstream normative claims. Finally, we will look at the ways these ideas are being resisted. Guest speakers will help us explore how individuals have replied to questions about how one lives life well by discussing how they have replied to these questions with their lives for meaningful engagement. Readings in this interdisciplinary course will include Lyn Lofland, Viktor Frankl, Carol Gilligan, Martha Nussbaum, JK Gibson-Graham, and The Sage Handbook of Death and Dying in order to focus on various cultural approaches, such as the Native American, Hindu, Muslim, Japanese, Taoist, and Jewish ways of death.

The Hebrew Bible stands at the foundation of Western culture. Its stories permeate our literature, our art...indeed, our sense of identity. Its ideas inform our laws, have given birth to our revolutions and social movements, and have thereby made most of our social institutions possible (as well as the movements to remove them). What is this book? How was it written? Who wrote it? Who preserved it for us? Why has all or part of this body of literature been considered holy to the practitioners of Judaism and Christianity? Four thousand years ago, various groups from small tribe-wandering nomads would get together and tell stories. These stories were not preserved on stone tombs but, rather, in the hearts and memories of the people to whom they belonged. We will read the collection of traditions in a book called Genesis and compare these stories with other texts (written in mud and stone), such as The Epic of Gilgamesh and The Babylonian Creation Epic, which were contemporary with biblical traditions. We will read the Biblical epic of liberation, Exodus; the historical books that weave theology into a history of a nation; and the oracles of the great Hebrew Prophets of Israel—those reformers, judges, priests, mystics, and poets to whom modern culture owes its grasp of justice. We will trace the social, intellectual, and political history of the people formed by these traditions from the Late Bronze Age until the Roman Age. The conferences for this course will meet weekly until October Study Days and then biweekly for the rest of the school year.

Texts commonly seen to contain “mystical elements” have to do with the desire on the part of the reader to “know,” experience, or “be with” God, along with the author’s attempt to properly demarcate the boundaries within which these desires can be fulfilled. Christian mysticism is perhaps best thought of as erotic theology; it concerns the aspect of theology that involves the desire for God. Recognizing this, we must also be acknowledged that inherent to this theology is a profound paradox. What is desired must be conceived. It must be held in the grasp of one’s understanding in order to be attained. While this is fine for an orange or even wealth and power, it is much more problematic when the object of desire is God, the creator of the universe. Theologians in the Early Church developed a language of desire and specific sets of practices involving one’s lifestyle and prayer in order to resolve this paradox and fulfill the desire. Early Christian theologians began to ponder this paradox with a synthesis of a Biblical theology of divine revelation (i.e., the revelation of God as preserved in the Biblical canon, symbolized in both the revelation of YHWH on Mt. Sinai and in the incarnation of the Divine Logos as Jesus of Nazareth) and Platonic rhetoric with respect to the expression of a desire for the ultimate good, truth, or beauty. The mystery is informed, on the one hand, by the anthropology of desire set forth by Plato in, for example, the Symposium and the Phaedrus. Educated in the Hellenistic world, the Early Church Fathers took these ideas for granted and attempted to find common ground with their Christian inheritance. As such, we will begin our study by applying ourselves to this general background, including the phenomenon of Gnostic Christianity. We will then move on to encounter the great early Christian writers—such as Origen and Athanasius of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa, Psuedo-Dionysius, Ambrose of Milan—and conclude our study with a lengthy look at what, for Western culture, is the seminal work of Augustine of Hippo.

The Holocaust is one of the most widely discussed and studied events of the 20th century, raising vital and challenging political and philosophical questions about nationalism, the nature of the modern nation-state, the human propensity for mass violence, and the possibility of minority integration. As a result, the Holocaust has become a sort of canvas upon which a huge array of postwar and contemporary political, philosophical, and cultural figures and voices have projected their own thoughts and messages. This course will examine the way in which the Holocaust has become a symbol of human evil and destruction in contemporary cultural memory and will ask difficult questions about the use of the Holocaust as a political symbol by both Jewish and non-Jewish voices. Questions to be examined in the course include: How has the construction of World War II as the “good war” shaped contemporary American cultural identity? How do American Jews relate to the destruction of European Jewry? How has Germany reckoned with its own historical guilt through the process of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (“coping with the past”)? How have Central and Eastern European nations confronted or denied their own collaboration and complicity with the extermination of their Jewish populations? How are countries such as Poland attempting to criminalize discussions of their potential historical complicity in the Holocaust? We will discuss Zionist and anti-Zionist mobilizations of Holocaust memory in political debates, the spread of Holocaust denial, and why political movements such as protestors against COVID restrictions have compared themselves to Jews under Nazism. We will also think about how Holocaust memory has shaped contemporary Jewish identity, as well as the fraught question of what it means to live as a Jewish person after more than one-third of the Jews on Earth were exterminated. The class will include both philosophical and literary sources, as well as select films. Students will also gain a basic introduction to some key texts in memory studies and trauma studies. We will inevitably confront moral questions about guilt, culpability, and the obligation to remember; but we will only pass moral judgment after attempting to understand the diverse perspectives animating the Holocaust as a symbol of cultural memory. Though the class will begin with a brief overview of the history of the Holocaust itself, it is not primarily a course about Holocaust history but, rather, about postwar cultural constructions of Holocaust memory. As a result, some familiarity with Holocaust history will be helpful for the course, though it is not required.

In public discourse, we are bombarded with assertions of the newly “global” nature of the contemporary world. This assertion assumes that former stable categories of personhood, ideational systems, nation, identity, and space are now fragmented and transcended by intensified travel, digital technology, and cross-cultural contact. This seminar is based on the premise that people have traveled throughout history; current global moves are but the most recent manifestation of a phenomenon that has historically occurred in many forms and places. This long(er) view of mobility will allow us to rethink and reexamine not only our notions of travel but their shifting connotations and significance across time and space. We will explore how supposed stable categories—such as citizen, refugee, nation, and commodity—are constructed and consider several theoretical approaches that help us make sense of these categorizations, the processes accompanying their normalization and dissemination, and their underlying assumptions. Our questions will include: What are the political, navigational, and epistemological foundations that go into mapmaking and schemas of classification? How do nomads change into settled city dwellers or wageworkers? How does time become disciplined? How does travel change into tourism? How do commodities travel and acquire meaning? What is the relationship between legal and illicit moves? How do technologies of violence, such as weapons and drugs, circulate? What is the meaning of their circulation in different contexts? How do modern technologies enable time/space compression? What are the shifting logics of globalization? What is their relationship to our notions and constructions of authenticity, subjectivity, and identity? During the fall semester, we will begin by developing an analytical approach toward our topic (which we will continue to develop throughout the year). We will then consider the implications of classification, categorization, and mapping. For the remainder of the semester, we will follow the travel(s) of ideas, commodities, and people. In the process, we will begin to think about questions of time/space compression. In the spring, we will return to some of the themes of the fall semester but examine them in a different context and through a different lens. Among our concerns in the spring semester will be issues of fusion and hybridization in cultural practices regarding people and things (e.g., food, music, romance, families); shifting places (e.g., borders, travel, and tourism); time/space compression through new technologies of travel and communication; and drugs, terror, violence, and poverty. As our sources, we will rely primarily on interdisciplinary analytical writings but will also include travel narratives, literature, and films.

This course reexamines the notion of the void not as land ripe for building real-estate capital but as space for cultural expression. Students choose a void from infrastructural areas, parks, empty unused buildings, or land that has often transformed with histories of erasure and dispossession. We can discover the urban void in many forms, from abandoned retail spaces to empty lots. Urban planner Bernardo Secchi in 1984 described urban voids concerning industrial typologies as “urban fractures, areas with no current function or use or character,” while architect Ignasi de Sola-Morales in 1995 described them as “terrain vague,” which were abandoned “land in its potentially exploitable state.” How can we define “the void” without understanding a solid? The solid and void relationship can be observed in the Nolli Map of Rome, with a solid-void/figure-ground representation of urbanity. One can argue that this fundamental tool is also used in suburban and rural areas to record and derive data for our use to plan, build, design, and destroy more buildings and irresponsibly inhabit the land. The idea of representing a solid as private and void as public is key, given that the public has a notion of belonging to the people of society and perhaps their perception of the environment that they shape. On the other hand, private is not private. An individual or a group can own a specific property. Is this true? And if so, how can we elaborate on these relationships toward a definition of the void that transgresses this limited solid-void notion? The course will unfold, analyze, and investigate the primary case study through its history, present, and eventual future by developing research through exercises that include, but are not limited to, drawing representation, experimental collages, and photomontages using the readings at its core. Questions arise about the aspects that characterize the voids and the contextual clues related to the community and cultural sedimentation. The goal is to put forth a project to design an intervention as a response to the research and promote commoning practices, whether it be housing, economic solidarity, or a place of care. What does the context need? Who is it for, and why? Responses could interface with political, economic, and social concerns with the varying matters that exist but also with an underlying conceptual underpinning of their interconnectedness of site, land, and the collective.

Experiment and explore contemporary performance art. Through surveying a range of important artworks and movements, we will review the histories, concepts, and practices of performance art. Born from anti-art, performance art challenges the boundaries of artistic expression through implementing, as material, the concepts of space, time, and the body. Examples of artists that we will review are John Cage, Joan Jonas, Adrian Piper, Bruce Nauman, Martha Rosler, Simone Forti, Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy, Pope.L, Laurie Anderson, Joseph Beuys, Janine Antoni, Suzanne Lacy, Aki Sasamoto, and Anna Halprin, to name a few. We will review dialogues and movements introducing performance art, such as art interventions, sculpture, installation art, institutional critique, protest art, social media, video art, happenings, dada, comedy, sound art, graphic notation, scores, collaboration, and dance/movement. Students will be able to relate the form and function of performance art through research, workshopping ideas, experimentation, and improvisation—thereby developing the ability to confidently implement any method of the performance art genre.

This is a course with writing at its center and other arts—mainly, but not exclusively, visual—around it. We will read all kinds of narratives, children’s books, folk tales, fairy tales, graphic novels...and try our hand at many of them. Class reading will include everything from ancient Egyptian love poems to contemporary Latin American literature. For conference work, students have created graphic novels, animations, quilts, a scientifically accurate fantasy involving bugs, rock operas, items of clothing with text attached, nonfiction narratives, and dystopian fictions with pictures. There will be weekly assignments that involve making something. This course is especially suited to students with an interest in another art or a body of knowledge that they’d like to make accessible to nonspecialists.