Islam Beyond the Human: Spirits, Demons, Devils, and Ghosts
This seminar explores the diverse spiritual and sentient lifeforms within Islamic cosmology that exist beyond the human—from jinn, angels, and ghosts to demons and devils. We will focus on theological, scientific, philosophical, anthropological, and historical accounts of these creatures across a variety of texts, as well as their literary and filmic afterlives in contemporary cultural representations. In so doing, we consider the various religious, social, and cultural inflections that shape local cosmological imaginaries. We ask how reflecting on the nonhuman world puts the human itself in question, including such concerns as sexuality and sexual difference, the boundaries of the body, reason and madness, as well as the limits of knowledge. PQ: Enrollment by Consent Only (for both grads and undergrads). Students should send the instructors a paragraph explaining their interest and prior preparation or familiarity with the themes in the course.
Money and Morality
In this course we will study anthropological perspectives on economic behaviors and the moral ideas that guide them. We will ask how material conditions and specific cultural contexts shape religious and moral attitudes towards the exchange of various things (e.g., human body parts, heirlooms, and commodity goods). This course will be of benefit to students interested in bringing the theoretical tools of economic anthropology to bear on the study of religious practice and ideology, as well as those more broadly interested in critical perspectives on capitalism and social theories of gift and commodity exchange. Students are expected to be adept at reading and applying social theory. PQ: Enrollment by Consent Only. Students must email the professor one to two paragraphs explaining how their academic interests and research relate to the course, and their level of preparedness to read and apply anthropological theory. Course Note: Undergraduates must petition to enroll.
Darwinism & Literature
Scientific and Humanistic Contributions to Knowledge Formation
In this course, we will explore whether the sciences and the humanities can make complementary
contributions to the formation of knowledge, thus leading to the integration and unification of human
knowledge. In the first part of the course we will take a historical approach to the issue; we will discuss
how art and science were considered complementary for much of the 18th and 19th century (for example,
in the views and work of Wolfgang Goethe), how they became separate (‘the two cultures’) in the
middle of the 20th century with the compartmentalization of academic disciplines, and how some
attempts have recently been made at a reunification under the concept of ‘consilience’. In the second
part of the course, we will focus on conceptual issues such as the cognitive value of literature, the role of
ideas in knowledge formation in science and literature, the role of creativity in scientific and literary
production, and how scientific and philosophical ideas have been incorporated into literary fiction in the
genre known as ‘the novel of ideas’. As an example of the latter, we will read the novel ‘One, No One,
and 100,000’ (1926) by Luigi Pirandello and discuss how this author elaborated and articulated a view
of the human persona (including issues of identity and personality) from French philosophers and
psychologists such as Henri Bergson and Alfred Binet.
Science, Governance and the Crisis of Liberalism
In the era of "post-truth" it has become common to link a crisis of scientific authority with a crisis of liberalism. Democracies around the world are under threat, this reasoning goes, in part because of an attack on scientific truth. But what does liberalism - as political culture and as a form of governance - need (or want) from science? Depending where you look, the answer might appear to be facts, truth, a model 'public sphere,' an ethic of objectivity, tactics for managing risk and uncertainty, or technologies of population management (to name a few). In addition to exploring the complex historical relationship between science and liberalism in the modern era, this course will critically assess how the history of science and the history of political thought have theorized truth and governance. We will examine what models of "coproduction" and "social construction" - nearly ubiquitous in the historiography of modern science - fail to capture about the histories of science and state power. We will also think about how political and intellectual historians' theories of truth and mendacity in politics might be enriched by more attention to scientific knowledge in both its technical and epistemological forms. This course focuses on 19th- and 20th-century Europe and the United States in global perspective, and readings will draw from political theory, history, economic thought, the natural and human sciences, and critical theory. Advanced undergraduates are very welcome with instructor's permission. This course fulfills the elective requirement for the MAPSS concentration on the Formation of Knowledge
Technologies of the Body
From models and measures to imaging technologies and genomic sequencing, technologies have profoundly shaped how we know and understand human bodies, health, and disease. Drawing on foundational and contemporary science and technology studies scholarship, this class will interrogate technologies of the body: how they are made, the ways in which they have changed understandings of the human condition, their impact on individual and collective identities, and the interests and values built into their very design. Course readings will examine how technologies render bodies knowable and also construct them in particular ways. We will also focus on how technologies incorporate, and reinforce, ideas about human difference. Students will conduct an independent, quarter-long research project analyzing a biomedical technology of their choice. By the end of this course, students will be able to identify and explain the social, political and economic factors that shape the design and production of biomedical technologies, as well as the impact of these technologies on biomedicine and the social world more broadly. This course provides students with an opportunity to conduct a quarter-long research project, using a biomedical technology as a case study. Students will be introduced to foundational and cutting-edge scholarship in science and technology studies, and will use this scholarship to conduct their independent research.
Global Environmental Humanities
Hurricanes, heat waves, polar vortexes, wildfires. Climate makes the news these days. As “natural” disasters and extreme weather become more common, problems that scientists have been warning of for a generation are suddenly at the forefront of our imaginations, and perhaps our fears. And yet talking about the environment on a global scale has proven challenging. How do we as political actors, scholars, and citizens begin to understand, let alone respond to, a problem as large and complicated as worldwide climate change? Climate change, it turns out, is not just a climate problem but an everything problem.
Realism: Art or Metaphysics?
Besides its historical role as the first capital-letter avant-garde in painting and literature, Realism is making a return in many current artistic and, for that matter, cultural and journalistic contexts. But whether one examines its entanglement with reputed adversaries like Romanticism and Idealism, its origins in ancient and medieval metaphysics, or its strange side career as a label for amoral pragmatism in political theory and practice, the many-sidedness of realism makes pinning it down quite a challenge. Is there any common thread binding Plato and Courbet, Virginia Woolf and García Marquez, Catherine Opie and Ai Weiwei? Can there be a realism of dreams and desire, such as one might find in Freud? And is realism a revolutionary venture, or a consolidating surveillance of social types? What role do new technologies and forms of spectatorship, from oil painting to photography, the printed book to streaming media, play in its rise and evolution? Readings in art history, fiction, and philosophy will alternate with film screenings and gallery visits. Grad seminar, advanced undergraduates will be admitted by courtesy only Social Thought, to be cross-listed in Art History, Comp Lit, and IFK
Death Panels: Exploring Dying And Death Through Comics
What do comics add to the discourse on dying and death? What insights do comics provide about the experience of dying, death, caregiving, grieving, and memorialization? Can comics help us better understand our own wishes about the end of life? This is an interactive course designed to introduce students to the field of graphic medicine and explore how comics can be used as a mode of scholarly investigation into issues related to dying, death, and the end of life. The framework for this course intends to balance readings and discussion with creative drawing and comics-making assignments. The work will provoke personal inquiry and self-reflection and promote understanding of a range of topics relating to the end of life, including examining how we die, defining death, euthanasia, rituals around dying and death, and grieving. The readings will primarily be drawn from a wide variety of graphic memoirs and comics, but will be supplemented with materials from a variety of multimedia sources including the biomedical literature, philosophy, cinema, podcasts, and the visual arts. Guest participants in the course may include a funeral director, chaplain, hospice and palliative care specialists, cartoonists, and authors. The course will be taught by a nurse cartoonist and a physician, both of whom are active in the graphic medicine community and scholars of the health humanities.
The Crisis of Expertise
In recent years, there has been intensive talk about an unfolding "crisis of expertise" in liberal-democratic societies. Along with attacks on the credibility of scientific knowledge, technical experts are seen as detached elites whose impartiality is questionable and whose motivations can no longer be trusted. But who are experts? Whom do they represent and what are the sources of their authority? What kinds of institutions employ expertise, and how can expertise be held to democratic controls? This course examines the historical roots of our expert culture and takes a critical look at the assumptions underlying the use of expertise in policymaking. Drawing on a series of case studies - management of nuclear risk, vaccine resistance, debates over the nature of mental illness, environmental activism - we will explore the basis for claims of expertise, the reasons for expert controversies, the relations between laypeople and experts, as well as the processes that led to the erosion of public trust in professional advice.