Results for: 2023-24 Winter
The Economy by Other Means: New Approaches to the Economy of the Late and Post-Ottoman Middle East
Questions around political economy and capitalism are once again gaining prominence in Ottoman and Middle East studies. Whereas these questions have been fundamental to the traditional confines of economic history and political economy, this new engagement takes its cue from a different and diverse pool of fields. As one observer recently put it, an emerging body of literature engages with “the economy by other means.” This course takes stock of these still-uncharted means by bringing together and examining a selection of recently published books treating economic themes in the late Ottoman Empire and in the post-Ottoman Middle East up to the mid-twentieth century. How do these books challenge, build on, and/or conform to the contours of economic modes of analysis? What do they contribute to our understanding of capitalism in the Middle East? What are the new archives they create for the study of economic life? How do they destabilize the conceptual repertoire of political economy? More importantly, in what ways do they change our view of the late Ottoman and modern Middle East?
Environmental Justice in Chicago
This course will examine the development of environmental justice theory and practice through social scientific and ethical literature about the subject as well as primary source accounts of environmental injustices. We will focus on environmental justice issues in Chicago including, but not limited to waste disposal, toxic air and water, the Chicago heat wave, and climate change. Particular attention will be paid to environmental racism and the often understudied role of religion in environmental justice theory and practice. Throughout the course we will explore how normative commitments are expressed in different types of literature as well as the basis for normative judgments and the types of authorities authors utilize and claim as they consider environmental justice.
Ways of Knowing
This seminar introduces students to the conditions and processes of knowledge formation that shape our understanding of truth, our theories of social life, and our projections of possible futures. It examines how claims to knowledge emerge out of disciplinary, historical, and political contexts, as well as local cultural factors, both explicit and unspoken: how do institutions, technologies, and other normative structures produce, stabilize, or disrupt knowledge? How do scientists and artists examine and represent the world differently? What makes expertise and why do we trust certain ways of knowing over others? Building upon methods and perspectives in the social sciences and humanistic social sciences, this seminar introduces problems, concepts, and analytical tools that will enable students from diverse disciplinary backgrounds to examine how we know what we know. "Ways of Knowing" is a required seminar for all students wishing to undertake the Formation of Knowledge MAPSS track. It also counts towards a required MAPSS Methods seminar.
The Aesthetics of Artificial Intelligence
With the emergence of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, DALL-E, and Midjourney, the production of computer-generated content has been made accessible to a wide range of users and use cases. Knowledge institutions are particularly challenged to find adequate responses to changing notions of authorship as the mainstreaming of ‘artificial' texts, audio-visual artifacts, and code is transforming our paradigms of communication in real-time. This course offers a survey of scholarship from the nascent field of critical AI studies to investigate the impact of AI, machine learning, and big data on knowledge production, representation, and consumption. In addition to theoretical discussions, we will conduct research-creation experiments aimed at documenting and evaluating emerging methods of AI-augmented content creation across text, image, and sound. Prospective students should demonstrate a substantial interest in media art and design and its connections to digital humanities, critical theory, and pedagogy. Experience with artistic and/or engineering practice is a plus. Permission by instructor. Students must submit a statement of interest (300 words max.) to uhl@uchicago.edu by December 22 in order to be considered for enrollment.
Truth, Half-Truth, and Post-Truth
This course examines the philosophical and ethical issues surrounding lying, truth-telling, and everything in between. Students will put classics of the Indian and Western philosophical traditions into conversation with contemporary analyses of “alternative facts” and postmodern criticisms of absolute truth. Questions to be considered include: Are half-truths just another kind of lie, or stepping-stones to a more complex understanding? Is it even possible to tell “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”? Is it morally permissible to mislead someone for their own good, or for a leader to deceive their citizens? How can we act responsibly when there are two sides to every story?
Being Human
What does it mean to be a human being – a person who fulfills individual capabilities and also contributes to a community’s well-being? What connects the individual and community to an ultimate vision, spirituality, or God? These questions and investigations can be described as an examination of and argument for constructing a theological anthropology. When one thinks intentionally about the being of a human and that human’s ties to some concern or force greater than the limited self, then transcendence and materiality involve themselves in a complex dynamic. How does one construct an individual and a community of individuals? We investigate different models of being human and engage other disciplines to help unpack “being human.” We expand texts from folktales to theory. Course Note: Undergraduates may petition to enroll.
Islam, Race, and Decoloniality
This course explores the historical and discursive practices through which the racialization of Muslims and Islamic cultures developed and remains sustained within colonial and neo-colonial contexts, modalities and relations. Particular attention to the “threat of Islam” is examined in various literary, media and ethnographic narratives. This course examines how race is constituted within contemporary imperialist practices, specifically the global war on terror’s focus on constructing Islam and Muslim cultures as uncivilized, inferior, and oppressive. Using a de-colonial framework, the course will engage the politics of pluralism, multivocality and resistance.
Magic and Divination in the Islamic World
From weather forecasts to stock market speculations, our modern world is saturated with predictions for the future. In spite of this, other divinatory methods such as astrology are often portrayed as superstitious, irrational, or unreligious. This course will introduce students to the unexpected interaction of science, magic, and religion through the exploration of divination in the Islamic world. We will ask how divination can be a part of religious practice and how methods of future-telling are said to “work” from the perspective of the philosophers and scientists who practiced them. We will also explore the arguments against divination and identify and understand religious and/or scientific objections to the practice. All readings will be in English translation.
Contagion: Ethics and the Other
This is a graduate seminar which explores the complex ways that epidemic disease has shaped and been shaped by religion, philosophy, literature, and the emerging sciences of modernity. Contagion has long been a central moral problem in theology and philosophy, the organizing terror of all human civilization because of the sudden, stochastic, and terrifying spread of visible, embodied changes. Contagion is our most intimate companion: Plague as punishment, as test, and as a sign of divine judgement have long been a topic of sacred texts, defining how societies thought about, duties, telos, meaning, and salvation. Contagious diseases raise stark ethical choices as well. The uses of quarantine as a defense, the establishment of isolation, and the fear of the stranger mark the historical responses to plagues. In this course, we will consider both the science behind the plagues that have torn across the course of human history, and the sacred and secular textual responses to them. Plagues leave behind cultural artifacts and traces of the puzzle of human behavior in response to epidemics: compliance, resistance imagination, and innovation. We will explore this theme in all its complexity, focusing on the textual and literary responses to the challenge of contagion.
Contemporary Theories of Religion
This course will explore developments in the study of religion from the Marburg Declaration of 1960 to the present. Participants will attend to the recent history of the field, intellectually and institutionally; to the analysis of select theoretical developments in this period, their prospects, accomplishments, and challenges; to the relationships between the History of Religions and work on religion in related fields of study (e.g., anthropology, sociology, history); and to the social location(s) of the study of religion in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. PQ: HREL 32900 / AASR 32900 "Classical Theories of Religion". Course Note: Undergraduates may petition to enroll.