History-Philosophy
Advisors: (History) Professors: C. Neel, T. Ragan, B. Rommel-Ruiz; Assistant Professors: D. Sanchez, J. Smith. (Philosophy) Professor: J. Lee; Associate Professor: D. McEnnerney
The Departments of History and Philosophy offer a combined major. Admission to the major is by application and must be accomplished by the end of the first semester of the junior year. Each student develops an integrated program of historical and philosophical inquiry in conjunction with two advisors, one from each of the sponsoring departments. Students may develop a program that focuses on a period (e.g., the Middle Ages, the 19th Century), an area (e.g., East Asia, the Mediterranean), or an issue (e.g., the environment, feminism).
Major Requirements
The major requires up to 15 units, distributed as follows:
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Thematic Coursework (eight blocks): These courses must be pre-approved by two faculty advisors, one from each department, to ensure that a coherent field-of-inquiry is being addressed. 1. A minimum of three blocks in each department. 2. A minimum one 300-level course in each department. 3. One course may come from outside History or Philosophy. |
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This course, co-taught at the 300-level by a Historian and a Philosopher, will focus on how the two disciplines think about a particular theme. It may be taken more than once, if taught on a different topic, and with approval from the student’s advisors may be used to satisfy the 300-level course requirements listed above under “Thematic Coursework.” |
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Senior Thesis (two blocks): 1. HY425 History–Philosophy Thesis; AND 2. PH425 History–Philosophy Thesis. The thesis is due by the last day of Block 6 in the senior year. The thesis will be co-supervised by two current tenured or tenure-track professors, one from each of the two departments. |
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Foreign Language (up to four blocks): The language must be appropriate to the field of study and approved by the two advisors. Proficiency through the end of intermediate language instruction must be demonstrated, either through coursework or advanced placement (or some combination of the two). |
Courses
History
An introductory survey of human culture and society through the comparison of Europe and one other major area of the world from ancient to the modern period, focusing on fundamental topics in the development of world civilizations, including material culture, political organization, and aesthetics. The course will emphasize critical moments in historical development, thematic connections, and primary textual and visual sources. May meet either the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures or Social Inequality requirement. Meets the Writing in the Discipline requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Western civilization from ancient to modern times. Cultural, social, and political developments that shaped the modern world. The department offers this course in sections designated Europe or Atlantic World. Atlantic World includes the study of the heritage of Western civilization in the Western hemisphere. (Not offered 2024-25).
This course examines not only the military, economic, and political significance of Africa in the Second World War, but also the harsh realities of oppressive living conditions in “Free France,” the limitations of the Atlantic Charter, and the experiences of black soldiers in German internment camps. Ultimately, this course seeks to reinterpret the Second World War by exploring lived experiences, social movements, cultural expression, and political activism in Africa. (Not offered 2024-25).
As the German-Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin noted, the march of progress is like a storm that leaves only ruins in its wake – ruined environments, ruined cultures, ruined bodies. Whereas some have sought refuge from these storms of progress in nostalgic attempt to retrieve – and, in some cases, return to – lost times, others have eschewed such romantic pursuits, seeking instead to forge alternative ways of being in the world, some modicum of a right life in the wrong one. After examining the destructive dynamics associated with capitalist modernity, this course will turn its attention to the oppositional milieus and defiant voices that have flourished in modernity’s ruins. Although the course makes occasional forays into global history, the primary focus will be on 19th- and 20th-century Europe. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
East Asian civilization from ancient to modern times. Cultural, social and political developments that shaped East Asian nations and their place in the modern world. Introduces basics of historical method: contextualization, analysis, and critical evaluation of primary sources and their significance. May meet either the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures or Social Inequality requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
An introduction to history through the study of a special subject in depth. Emphasis on the ways in which historians find and interpret the materials of the past. For students who do not complete the West in Time requirement in the History Department, a gateway to the History major. Topics designated according to the specialties of the faculty.
As a burgeoning turn-of-the-century metropolis, the capital of Imperial Germany, an early epicenter of queer culture in the 1920s, the administrative center of the Nazi genocide, a frontline city in the Cold War, a hotbed of leftist activism in the 1960s, and a symbolic capital of post-Cold War Europe, the city of Berlin has played an outsized role in twentieth-century history. Using a wide array of primary documents (ranging from experimental films and mass-market novels to political manifestos and architectural plans), this course explores the history of Berlin from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first century. In so doing, it both familiarizes students with some of the central events of twentieth-century European history and serves as an example for how to employ the tools of cultural and urban history. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement. Meets the Equity and Power: EPG requirement.
Latin American history from pre-Columbian times to the present. Emphasis on colonial Mexico and Peru, the centers of Spanish power in the New World, and the political and social development of post-independence Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico. Introduces historiography and the basics of historical method: contextualization, analysis and critical evaluation of primary sources and their significance. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Aegean and Greek archeological, historical, literary, and philosophical texts, with emphasis on those ideas formative in shaping Western culture. The development and transformations of these ideas as reflected in selected texts from the early Christian era, the Enlightenment or the Modern Age. The rise of individualism and its conflicts with community, ritual relationships to nature vs. separation and exploitation, the relation of theology to the ordering of experience, and how psyche both forms and is formed by its relationships to community, nature, and god(s). Meets the Critical Learning: AIM requirement. Meets the Equity and Power: EPG requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Two block course that introduces the full sweep of American History from its pre-contact, 'New World' beginnings to the recent past. Students will experience how history is made, understood, revised, and debated. Themes include cultural encounters and adaptation complexities of ethnicity and immigration; movement; the success and failures of republican ideology, capitalism, individualism and community; and the formation of American cultures. (Not offered 2024-25).
Examines large-scale social structures and the question of 'ordinary' men and women from the seventh century C.E. to the present. Through a range of historical approaches-cultural, intellectual, political and social-and an emphasis on close reading of primary materials, students explore in what ways the histories of Islamic Civilization, Western Civilization, African Civilization, and Central Asian Civilization were connected histories and how people in the Middle East have critiqued their own societies and those of their contemporaries. May meet either the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures or Social Inequality requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
This course examines art and cultural history in Europe from Antiquity through to the twentieth century. Taking an interdisciplinary perspective, one which seeks to bring art history and history in critical dialogue with one another, the students and professors will interrogate the meta-narrative of “progress” across time. In many ways, succeeding periods engaged in conversations with their pasts to make claims of domination through pictorial and cultural production. But it is important, too, to examine counter-narratives made by subaltern groups of the various eras, along the critical axes of gender, sexuality, class, ethnicity, race and other markers of identity. Students will be called upon to think systematically about “who” they themselves are in order to engage with the past and explore human similarities, as well as differences, across a long period of time. Thinking systematically about the notion of “critical bias” and the need to analyze the past in its own terms, as well as in ours, will open up avenues to thinking about the present in new ways. We will examine the most important eras of European history, in particular, Ancient Greece and Rome, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the early modern period, and the more recent past. (Not offered 2024-25).
Selected topics in the study of history. Specific content and emphasis to be determined by the instructor.
Emerging in the 1920s as a radical, right-wing fringe group seeking to rejuvenate Germany following its catastrophic defeat in the First World War, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party would go on to become one of the most destructive forces of the Twentieth Century. After first examining the Nazi rise to power in the wake of the Great Depression and the subsequent brutality of its reign, the course will delve into the manifold, and often contradictory, efforts to reconstitute European society after the war. In so doing, it will pay particularly close attention to the multiple 'afterlives' of fascism including the resurgence of neo-Nazi political movements, the subcultural appropriation of fascist imagery, and the multifaceted attempts to memorialize and to “come to terms with” the manifold traumas of the Nazi years. Meets the Critical Learning: AIM requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Born amidst the crucible of the First World War, the Soviet Union sought to realize a progressive, socialist vision, a utopia on earth in which all people would be equal, nature would be conquered, and society would be freed from the destructive dynamics of capitalism. From the outset, however, the implementation of these utopian blueprints was coupled with astonishing acts of violence – the dreamworlds of socialism were constantly shadowed by their opposite. Taking seriously both the utopian and the dystopian aspects of the soviet experiment, this course traces the violent emergence, the piecemeal realization, and the protracted decline of the Soviet Union. Relying heavily on literature, art, and film from the era, the course takes an explicitly cultural historical approach to soviet history. Meets the Critical Learning: AIM requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement.
Broad approach to the history of American traditions and institutions from Anglo-American settlement to the outbreak of the Civil War, addressing Native American-Anglo American encounters; colonization and development of Anglo-American culture and society; African Slave Trade and the Plantation Economy; American Revolution; Jeffersonian Ideology and Westward Expansion; Jacksonian Democracy and the Industrial Revolution; the Politics of Slavery and Secession. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Broad approach to the history of the United States since the Civil War, focusing on multiple meanings of American freedom and the rise of the modern United States as a global power, including attention to Emancipation and Reconstruction; Industrialization, Migration, and Immigration; Civil Rights Movements and Protest Politics; the Great Depression, New Deal and WWII; American Foreign Policy and the Cold War; the Great Society, Vietnam, and the Challenge to the New Deal Order. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: SHB requirement. Meets the Equity and Power: EPUS requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Detailed study of a period (such as the end of the Roman Republic or Periclean Athens) or a theme (such as slavery or the rise and fall of the middle class) in Greek and/or Roman history.
Introduces students to the history of native peoples primarily in North America. The course includes histories of individual native groups as well as the relationship between American Indians and a variety of Europeans from before contact until the present. Examines a variety of primary and secondary materials to see patterns in the ways that Native Americans have been affected by the process of conquest, the ways in which Anglo-Europeans have responded to Native Americans, and in the ways in which American Indians have become a part of and remained apart from 'mainstream' American culture. As a broader goal, we also look at the way 'history' is made, understood, and used by very different cultural traditions. May meet either the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures or Social Inequality requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
This course explores the ways the state, church, and the people dealt with crime and viewed justice in Renaissance, early modern, and modern Europe. Attention to topics such as heresy, the witch craze, and treason and to what ordinary and great trials reveal about changing attitudes toward criminal justice. (Not offered 2024-25).
A survey of American history from the perspective of the environment, beginning with the biological and cultural invasion of the New World in 1492 and ending with current environmental problems and their historical roots. Topics include Native American vs. Euro-American views of nature, the impact of changing economic systems on the environment, and the impact of the landscape on various American cultures. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement.
Athenian Democracy. The Greeks with Near Eastern and Indo-European background. Panhellenic epic and religion, the polis, philosophy, history, tragedy and comedy. Attention throughout to Greek and Latin literary forms, but no knowledge of ancient languages required. (Not offered 2024-25).
Focus on the development of Rome, from a small city ruled by kings, to a regional power ruled under a Republic. The course will trace Rome's expansion through Italy, its conflict with Carthage and will closely examine the end of the Republic. Individuals discussed will include the Gracchi, generals Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Caesar, and Rome's greatest politician (and author) Cicero. (Also listed as Classics 216.) (Not offered 2024-25).
The process of conquering the American continent from 1492 to the present. An examination of the variety of forms that Euro-American conquest took (exploration, religion, economic development, settlement, and military encounter), the impact of conquest on native peoples, the social and economic development of the frontiers, and the lives that people led and lead in places considered frontiers. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement. Meets the Equity and Power: EPUS requirement.
This two-block course will survey the history of the Eurasian region from Eastern Europe to the Central Asian and Pacific areas of Eurasia, with an important theme being the rise and fall of the Russian Empire, and the rise and fall of the Soviet bloc. The focus throughout will be on the ways in which religious, cultural, and ethnic identities were shaped by, accommodated to, and resisted the construction of national boundaries and identities. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
The Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and the Soviet successor states in the 20th century. Topics including the collapse of the Empire during the First World War, the attempted ‘building of socialism’ in the Soviet period, the crisis of the Soviet system, and how Soviet conceptions of the relation between ethnicity and nationality shaped political and cultural identities before and after 1991. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Focus on the development of the Roman state in the late first century B.C. under the emperor Augustus. The city, its monuments, its art, its literature, bureaucracy and territorial expansion, the role of women, and various social and minority groups will all be discussed. In particular, the course will emphasize important and influential literary figures, such as Horace, Ovid, Propertius, Virgil and Augustus himself. (Not offered 2024-25).
This course is a survey of African history from approximately 1800 to 1960. We will explore and analyze the final decades of the Atlantic slave trade, the rise of European colonialism in Africa, anti-colonial resistance, nationalism, and decolonization. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement.
This course focuses on major political, social, economic, and cultural transitions in African history from 1960 to the present. We will think through the rise and fall of apartheid in South Africa, the Cold War, environmental crises and activism, the struggle for gender equality and LGBTQIA+ rights, student movements, Arab Spring, the COVID-19 pandemic and other public health issues, and more. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Examines the origins of Chinese civilization, from the divination rituals of the theocratic Bronze Age Shang Dynasty to the mighty Han. Considers the great religious and philosophical traditions of China's axial age: Confucianism, Daoism, and others vying for influence in China's bloody 'Warring States' period. Students will understand the political, economic, cultural and spiritual patterns that gave shape to classical Chinese civilization. May meet either the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures or Social Inequality requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Mass culture, according to its many critics, consists of shallow forms of entertainment that commodify and erase “authentic” modes of cultural expression. Whether members of the avant-garde or the counterculture, whether on the right or on the left, critics of mass culture have ignored its creative, world-making capacities, seeking instead to build authentic, unmediated lives outside of the pop sensibilities of their times. Analyzing a variety of pop cultural artifacts alongside the political, artistic, and academic critiques of mass culture produced by both the left and the right, this course explores mass culture and its multifaceted discontents over the course of the long twentieth century. While focused mainly on twentieth-century Europe, the course will make occasional forays into global history. Meets the Critical Learning: AIM requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
This course will follow the turbulent history and politics of China from the Boxer Rebellion of 1900 through the post-Mao reforms. Using primary documents, personal accounts, and scholarly studies, students will assess China's political and cultural changes and continuities in historical context. May meet either the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures or Social Inequality requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement. Meets the Equity and Power: EPG requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
This course will trace the social, political, and cultural developments in Japan from the first Parliamentary elections in 1890 to the current fiscal crisis in the 1990s. Using a wide range of sources, students will explore major themes in Japan's empire, World War, economic miracle, and troubled role as Asian leader. Major themes will include cross-cultural contact, world systems, and women's history. May meet either the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures or Social Inequality requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Focus on how conservative Roman republican ideals were reconciled with an increasingly Hellenized empire dominated by an imperial dynasty. Following a brief survey of prior Roman history, the course will examine the development of the Roman state in the first century AD under the Julio-Claudian emperors. The course will proceed to consider the Empire’s evolution and management under subsequent Flavian and Antonine dynasties. The city, its monuments, its art, its literature, bureaucracy and territorial expansion, the role of women, various social and minority groups, and the growth of Christianity will all be discussed.
The English colonies in America, their founding and development within the British Empire. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
The movement for independence and the corollary movement to restructure politics internally, from the end of the Seven Years’ War through the Revolution and Confederation to the adoption of the U. S. Constitution. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement.
Initial development of the United States under the Constitution through the Virginia dynasty and Jacksonian democracy. Party formation; conflicts in political economy; diplomacy; expansion; social and cultural growth. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement.
The causes, strategies, and impact of the Civil War on the United Sates. Slavery, sectional controversy, political crises; civilian and military life during the war; the successes and failures of Reconstruction; the problems of race. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement. Meets the Equity and Power: EPUS requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Cultural expression, and race relations in the aftermath of WWI; changing sexual and racial relations and the anti-modernist response in the 1920s; the Harlem Renaissance; the causes and consequences of the Great Depression and FDR and the New Deal; the coming of WWII. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Domestic politics and political realignments from Truman to Nixon; McCarthyism and the beginnings of the Cold War; covert action and direct intervention in U.S. foreign policy; Civil Rights; Black Power; feminism; and controversies regarding the American family. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
American foreign policy from the 'Vietnam Syndrome' to the end of the Cold War to the invasion of Iraq; Americans and the Islamic world; transformations of the Republican and Democratic Parties and the Office of the President; negotiating race in the post-Civil Rights era; the 'New World Order' and the new immigration; religion, families, and gender and their roles in partisan politics. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: SHB requirement. Meets the Equity and Power: EPUS requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Political independence in the 1810s in La Plata and Chile. The impact of immigration, urbanization, modernization, populism, nationalism, militarism and redemocratization. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Portuguese colonization, political independence in a neo-colonial economy, the Brazilian Empire, the Republic. The emergence of modern Brazil: populism, corporation and militarism. The institution of slavery and its legacy. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures requirement.
Spanish conquest and administration in New Spain and Peru, the Catholic Church, internal and external colonial economies, the Bourbon reforms and political independence in the 1820s; class, caste and gender during the colonial period. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
The Aztec and other Indian peoples’ influence in Mexican history and thought; Spanish colonial legacy; Enlightenment, Liberal, and Conservative political philosophies; Mexico’s relationship to the United States; roles of the Church and of violence from European encounter through Revolution (1910-1921) and into Mexico’s current precarious social and political situation. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures requirement.
Emphasizes the intellectual precursors and historical development of the federal union of 1787 and of early American foreign policy. Considers America before the Civil War as a system of states and explores through debates over the American union and early foreign policy a range of theoretical issues in international relations. (Not offered 2024-25).
African cultural backgrounds, African slavery in colonial British America and the U. S. to 1860; free Black people from 1790 to 1860 and antislavery movements. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement.
S. since the Civil War. Black Reconstruction; Black urban settlement; literary and artistic movements in the 1920s; civil rights struggles; recent social and political expressions. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement.
The history of mainland and maritime Southeast Asian societies from the seventeenth to the twentieth century, with special attention to Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Burma and the Philippines. How did the social, cultural, and ecological diversity of the region impact the evolution of these societies? What role did Chinese and South Asian diasporas play in this process? How did the colonial experiences of British, French, Spanish and American rule shape their emergence as modern nations? Explores these and other questions via a variety of visual and textual sources including novels, photographs, film, and historical narrative. (Not offered 2024-25).
A thematic survey of Korean history from the earliest times to the present covering social, cultural and political developments from the Three Kingdoms period through the Silla unification, Koryo and Choson dynasties to the modern era. Special emphasis on the twentieth century. May meet either the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures or Social Inequality requirement.
This course treats gender roles and family life throughout the European past, with comparative attention to families of other historical cultures and to relationships within non-human primate communities. It emphasizes the historical agency of women and children generally elided from traditional master narratives of Western Civilization, demonstrating how feminist and ethnohistorical approaches can reveal their experience. Course materials will include historiographical and anthropological literature as well as primary documents, literary works and visual sources. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement. Meets the Equity and Power: EPG requirement.
In examining the privileged role of cities and urban history within Islamicate history, we interrogate what it has meant to speak of an 'Islamic City' and how we can understand cities as spaces that both shape and reflect social relations. To deepen our engagement with sensory and lived experiences in urban spaces over time, this course features a practice of daily mapping and visual notetaking. Students then investigate a historical or contemporary ‘Islamic City’ of their choosing. Meets the Critical Learning: CP requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement.
This course examines the intertwined histories of what we now call Islam and Science. We’ll consider moments of mutual flourishing as well as contention, with attention to exchange among Muslim and non-Muslim communities and the relation of science to Islamic and European imperialism. Working closely with primary texts, we will interrogate concepts of rationality, the natural world, and how we tell these histories. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: AIM requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement.
This is an introductory level course that explores the historical processes that have formed South Asia. Topics include British colonialism; nationalism and anti-colonialism; social and religious reform movements; independence and Partition; and the economic, political, and social issues facing the postcolonial nation-states of South Asia. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement. Meets the Equity and Power: EPG requirement.
This course explores changes in gender and sexual relations across social communities and through time in South Asia. Key topics covered in this course include the impact of colonialism, nationalism, and socio-religious reform movements; law and the postcolonial state; the cultural politics of sexuality; masculinities; and local and transnational feminisms. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement. Meets the Equity and Power: EPG requirement.
The course examines the interaction between Europeans and the natural world from the Renaissance to the present. It looks at how nature shaped the ways Europeans lived and worked and how, in turn, they thought about and behaved toward nature. In particular, it explores the impact of the Scientific Revolution, industrialization, and mass culture on the changing interplay between nature, society, and culture. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Educational institutions and their relationship to society from the Renaissance to the present. The rise of mass education and its impact on the structure and purpose of the educational system. (Not offered 2024-25).
Development of an Islamic world through formation of key institutions of Islamic urban life, the changing relationships of tribal and agrarian societies to urban society, and the differentiation of public and private space. May meet either the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures or Social Inequality requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: AIM requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Analysis of the variety of lived experiences and questions of freedom and authority in everyday life in the Middle East. Attention to the impact of modernity on gender roles and social order in the Middle East. May meet either the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures or Social Inequality requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement. Meets the Equity and Power: EPG requirement.
The pre-contact history of Anasazi and Athabascan peoples from anthropological and mythological perspectives; the causes and consequences of the Spanish entrada and attempts at missionization of the Indian peoples of New Mexico and the California coast; development of mestizo society; the arrival of the Anglo-Americans and the Mexican-American War. May meet either the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures or Social Inequality requirement.
The adaptation of Native American and Hispanic peoples to Anglo-American culture and politics; the causes and consequences of the loss of Hispanic lands; the evolution of family life and religious practices; indigenous views of modernity. Films, artistic expression, and works of fiction as well as historical sources. May meet either the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures or Social Inequality requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Explores key themes in Southern history from colonial settlement through the American Civil War. Examines the distinctiveness of the American South, and how Southern life was shaped by slavery, particularly in the ways the plantation economy informed Southern political culture, gender and race relations. Other important issues include: Anglo-American encounters with Native Americans, the Great Awakening, the American Revolution, Jeffersonian republicanism, the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, and the rise of Southern nationalism. (Not offered 2024-25).
(Not offered 2024-25).
This course provides an overview of the history of human rights. We examine different genealogies of human rights, chart the shifting meanings of “human” and “rights” over time, and explore debates in the application of rights. Key topics include the philosophical foundations of rights; capitalism, imperialism, and rights; universalism vs. cultural relativism; and the complementary discourse of humanitarianism. (Not offered 2024-25).
Exploration of Europeans’ expressions of identity and community from the close of Mediterranean antiquity to the Black Death of the fourteenth century. Consideration of literary texts, social organization, and ritual practices, with emphasis on Christian Europe as continually self-defining against its pagan and Muslim frontiers. Meets the Critical Learning: AIM requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement.
Scientific, religious and artistic achievements of the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
The birth of the modern state and the creation of modern society. From the end of the sixteenth-century Reformation and the religious wars through the crisis of the seventeenth century, as well as the making of the constitutional order in England and the absolutist state in France. Political, social, and cultural perspectives. (Not offered 2024-25).
Causes and the social and political effects of the French Revolution, the Revolutions of 1848, and the Industrial Revolution. Particular attention to the process of revolutionary change and to political movements including liberalism, Marxism, and nationalism. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
The course analyzes the origins of 'modernity' in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Beginning with the Scientific Revolution, it then looks at the social and political environment that made the 'Republic of Letters' possible. A wide variety of primary-source texts, including social and political criticism, novels and poetry, painting and sculpture, will be examined. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Changes in European thought from the early modern to the modern periods examined through the works of representative writers, philosophers, political theorists, scientists and artists (including Locke, Galileo, Hegel, Marx, Darwin, Nietzsche, Freud, Sartre, Foucault, and others). The relationships between these changes and social developments. (Not offered 2024-25).
The “revolt against reason.” The effects of World War I and the Great Depression on society and politics. Analysis of the appeal of Bolshevism and Fascism. Particular attention to Mussolini and Hitler’s successful challenge to liberal governments and to the Spanish Civil War. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
World War II and Its Aftermath in Europe, 1939-2000. The outbreak, course, and the effects of the War, including the advent of Communism in eastern Europe, European integration, and the 'economic miracle' in western Europe. The emergence of consumer society, the spread of popular culture, and the development of mass education. Attention to the challenges of decolonization and immigration Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Herodotus, sometimes called the 'father of lies,' and Thucydides, sometimes called the first political scientist, treated as the first historians. Study of the ways of conceiving history and its relation to the peoples and periods explored. No Greek or Latin required. Meets the Critical Learning: AIM requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement.
Critical issues in the philosophy of history and historical methodology as seen from the standpoint of the historian and the philosopher. (Offered by individual arrangement.) (Not offered 2024-25).
Selected topics in the history of one or more world regions. Thematic concentration determined by the instructor.
Analysis of sexual roles and sexual practices in the world before the concept of ‘sexual identity’ emerged in the late nineteenth century. Examination of how different religious traditions such as Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Christianity, and Buddhism have viewed sex, and exploration of a wide variety of topics including pornography, prostitution, and same-sex sexual behavior throughout the pre-modern world. May meet either the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures or Social Inequality requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement.
After examination of the birth of ‘sexuality’ in late nineteenth-century Europe, exploration of the acceptance of and resistance to this new conceptual model throughout the world. Attention to heterosexuality and homosexuality, intersexuality, and ‘perversion,’ concluding with analysis of the contemporary cultural wars over sexuality in Africa, Asia, Europe, and South America. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Social, intellectual, and spiritual ferment between the Investiture Contest of the 1170s and the death of Francis of Assisi in 1226, with special attention to ideology of expansionism in the eastern Mediterranean and diversity of belief within Latin Christendom. Readings in primary sources for military action in the Middle East, pogroms in the Rhineland, saints’ lives, and persecution of heretical groups, as well as major recent works of historical criticism. (Not offered 2024-25).
Examines the representation of history in film. It compares a series of films to major themes and issues in the historiographical literature and raises questions about the ways films should adhere to the academic standards of the historical discipline. Students will read significant debates among cinematic and academic historians and explore the possibilities and limitations of cinematic presentations of history.
An examination of the relationships, both similarities and differences, of history and literature. Using selected theoretical texts from Aristotle to the present, traditional narrative historical texts, experimental histories, fictions based on imagined thoughts and actions of historical figures, and comparisons of historical/biographical texts and historical novels, the course explores the different and/or similar purposes and functions of historical writing and literary writing, and the truth claims of each as forms of narrative and knowledge. In addition, we will read history literally and literature historically in order to interrogate the uses and limitations of both forms of writing. (Not offered 2024-25).
We live in a haunted landscape, an environment that, to quote Vladimir Nabokov, is filled with objects and places “through which the past shines.” Although some of these vectors of the past – monuments, for example, or even museums – can serve to strengthen structures of domination in the present, this is not always true. Indeed, old houses, city streets, and discarded objects can retain traces of their original contexts; haunted palimpsests of layered time that, according to some theorists at least, can open the way to different futures. Analyzing a diverse array of texts from a range of disciplines this course explores how our visions of the past (and our conceptions of the future) are, to a large extent, mediated by the built environment. As a 300-level course, the class will culminate in a 15-page research paper. (Not offered 2024-25).
A junior seminar organized around comparative analysis of a common theme or topic, employing both historical and political science approaches to analysis and research. Designed principally for History/Political Science majors, but others may be admitted with consent of instructors.
An examination of the effect of total war, extremism, and economic crisis on politics and society, with special attention to fascism, the resistance, post World War II revival, and to cultural movements such as the avant-garde, futurism, and existentialism. (Not offered 2024-25).
This 300-level, co-taught course brings together historical and philosophical methodologies to explore a rotating theme, such as: “African History and Philosophy,” “History and Philosophy of Science,” or “The Philosophy of History.” Although conceived as a cornerstone course for the History-Philosophy Major, all are welcome. Students may take the course more than once, if taught on a different topic. With approval from the student’s advisors, it may be used to satisfy the 300-level History-Philosophy course requirements listed under “Thematic Coursework.”
Social and cultural history of China under the last two imperial dynasties, the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911), with emphasis on print culture and popular literature, examination culture, religious belief and practice, social structure and statecraft. May meet either the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures or Social Inequality requirement.
Analyzes the relationship between law, society and culture in China during the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1910) dynasties. Considers the classical foundations of Chinese jurisprudence, then examines late imperial culture using legal codes, case records, popular fiction and contemporary historical scholarship to explore the relationship between state and society in this period, in particular the relationship between social hierarchies and configurations of power. Culminates in a substantial research project based on primary sources. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement. Meets the Equity and Power: EPG requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Formation of the new nation that Hitler said in 1933 the world would not recognize. Germany’s catalysis of European and world transformations, as well as its institution of dictatorship and genocide at home. Political, economic, social/cultural, intellectual, and military aspects of German experience. (Not offered 2024-25).
An examination of traditional and new methods of studying the past and an exploration of the debate over the nature and the meaning of history. Designed primarily for history majors, but others may be admitted with the consent of the department. Meets the Writing in the Discipline requirement.
Students learn how to develop a research topic, advanced library and primary document research, and historical research design and organization. Students meet regularly to discuss their work in progress. Usually, a central text is also discussed throughout the semester. (Semester-long extended format course.) (Not offered 2024-25).
An advanced seminar on selected topics and themes in historical study.
Independent, primary source research. Particular content and emphasis of the paper to be determined in consultation with supervising professor. To be taken in the block immediately following HY 410.
An interdisciplinary, primary source-based thesis on a subject of interest to the student. Independent study format with regular consultation between the student and the faculty supervisors.
An interdisciplinary, primary-source based thesis on a subject of interest to the student and approved by two faculty supervisors, one in Philosophy and one in History. Independent study format with regular consultation between the student and the faculty supervisors.
Directed reading and preparation of a thesis.
(Summer only 2024-25).
Philosophy
An examination of the origins of Western philosophy as it arose in ancient Greece. The course begins with the Pre-Socratic philosophers, centers on the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, and closes with the important Hellenistic traditions of Stoicism, Skepticism, Epicureanism, Cynicism, and Neoplatonism. Meets the Critical Learning: AIM requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement.
Aegean and Greek archaeological, historical, literary and philosophical texts, with emphasis on ideas formative of Western culture. The development and transformations of these ideas as reflected in selected texts from the early Christian era, the Enlightenment, and the Modern Age. We concentrate on concepts of what it means to be human, and the relation of individuals to community, nature, and the divine in such authors as Homer, Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Dante, Descartes, Goethe, Nietzsche, and Heidegger (Also listed as History 116 and Philosophy 116.) Meets the Critical Learning: AIM requirement. Meets the Equity and Power: EPG requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
An introduction to critical thinking and conceptual argument, this course will cover basic principles of logic as they pertain to philosophical writing and thinking. Students will master essential skills for reading and evaluating arguments, engage with a variety of methods and styles of philosophical inquiry, and learn techniques of composition that enhance the clarity and elegance of their written work. Meets the Critical Learning: AIM requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: CP requirement.
An exploration of the questions of what constitutes a good human life, what it means to be a moral human being, and whether reasoning about ethical and moral values can be objective. Texts may include works by Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and Nietzsche, among others. Meets the Critical Learning: AIM requirement.
Through a study of the literary style of certain philosophical texts and the philosophical significance of selected literary works of art, this course will study the comparative ability of different modes of writing to address traditional philosophical questions and to illuminate particular features of human experience. Meets the Critical Learning: AIM requirement.
An introduction to philosophy through works of science fiction. Many profound questions about the nature of reality and the nature of humanity have been raised in sci fi and discussed in philosophical essays. Students in this course will consider a wide range of important philosophical questions with the help of mutually illuminating works of philosophy and science fiction. Meets the Critical Learning: AIM requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Generally regarded as the first existentialist, Søren Kierkegaard wrote a remarkable variety of texts with profound philosophical, spiritual, and literary significance. This course is a survey of his works and an introduction to the existential tradition, against the background of Kierkegaard’s biography. It deals with themes such as anxiety, faith, despair, love, selfhood, ethics, possibility, God, and the meaning of life.
An exploration of the conceptual roots of discrimination against racial and ethnic groups, women, and minoritized people. The course examines the ways in which self-professed ideals of equality have been inconsistently realized; investigates relations between patriarchy, racism, and capitalism; and considers the role of reason in both advancing and hindering justice and equity. Meets the Equity and Power: EPG requirement. Meets the Equity and Power: EPUS requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
This course explores how 17th and 18th century European philosophers critiqued the religious epistemology and way of being that reigned for a millennium in the West. In contrast, they proposed novel ways to attain knowledge and to conceive of the powers and limitations of the human mind. These philosophies helped create a “modern mind”: one that demands rational arguments and/or empirical evidence to establish knowledge, that doubts authorities claiming to know metaphysical realities, that demands freedom to pursue its individual life, and that is prone to nihilism. This kind of mind, increasingly dominant globally, appears natural and underlies a problematic way of being in the world. Philosophers studied may include Descartes, Spinoza, Hume, Kant, and Nietzsche. Meets the Critical Learning: AIM requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
A study of the evolution of philosophical “modernity” and of the “modern” concept of the subject or self. The course includes major ethical, epistemological, and metaphysical developments from the mid17thcentury to the mid-19th, as situated in medieval philosophy. The course also includes a critique from the margins of modern Europe, interrogating the concepts “Europe,” “Modernity,” “Enlightenment” and “Reason,” which are key to the European project of modernity. Modernity is more than an intellectual initiative; it is the expansion of a way of life that has encompassed the world. Meets the Critical Learning: AIM requirement. Meets the Equity and Power: EPG requirement.
Experimental and occasional courses taught by either visiting professors or permanent staff. Courses offered under this rubric will vary from year to year.
An exploration of the philosophical thought of American philosophers, focusing on those associated with transcendentalism and pragmatism, with an emphasis on their conceptions of nature, the construction of truth, and their theories of individualism. Thinkers to be read can include Emerson, Thoreau, Pierce, James, Dewey, Whitehead, Mead, Santayana, Rorty, and Cavell. Meets the Critical Learning: AIM requirement.
An exploration of the development of French philosophy from the interwar period to the present. Using the city of Paris as its context, the course examines how dramatic social and political challenges influenced the paths of French philosophical reflection, moving thinkers to question the foundations of knowledge, morals, and politics, leading ultimately to what might be called a “decentered” cosmopolitanism. Taught in Paris. Meets the Critical Learning: AIM requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
A thematically or historically organized course dealing with a single topic or set of related topics in philosophy, to be taught as an extended format course over one semester or part of a semester. Topics will vary from year to year. .25 unit (Not offered 2024-25).
A thematically or historically organized course dealing with a single topic or set of related topics in philosophy, to be taught either during half-block or as a one-semester extended format course. Topics will vary from year to year. (Not offered 2024-25).
Surveys the development of philosophy from its beginnings in classical Greece through the early modern period in Europe, culminating in Kant’s philosophical revolution. This two-block course introduces major figures in the history of Western philosophy, selected areas of philosophical inquiry, and central questions that remain pertinent today. The course may incorporate some amount of non-Western thought, to provide comparative perspectives. (Not offered 2024-25).
An introduction to the study of logical reasoning through formal languages. Students will use a variety of tools to evaluate and construct arguments, including the languages of sentential logic and first-order Meets the Critical Perspectives: Quantitative Reasoning requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: FRL requirement.
An introduction to contemporary issues in the philosophy of science, focusing on the nature of science; scientific epistemology; values and objectivity in science; and relationships between science and society. Meets the Critical Learning: AIM requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
An exploration of the nature of language and its relation to thought and reality. Specifically, we will consider communication and coordination between people, as well as language’s essential role in conceptual thought. Readings will be mostly contemporary Meets the Critical Learning: AIM requirement.
Considers the meanings, problems, and possibilities of contemporary identity politics. Explores different approaches toward identity and politics, including liberal, existential, and traditionalist understandings. Traces the emergence of a new kind of identity politics out of racial, feminist, and queer movements of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Assesses contemporary discussions of identity and politics, in relation to both the history of Western thought and contemporary multicultural societies. Authors discussed may include Locke, Sartre, MacIntyre, Fanon, Young, Taylor, Butler, Azoulay, and Alcoff. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: SHB requirement.
Explores major works of classical idealist philosophy, considered in contexts of Greek, Roman, Biblical, and medieval political orders. Addresses the tensions between philosophical visions of the good and democratic or republican politics. Texts discussed may include works by Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Augustine, or Pizan, as well as Biblical sources. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement.
Investigates leading modern and contemporary political philosophers, highlighting the ways these thinkers sought to break with tradition and rethink political membership, ethical obligations, and governmental authority in light of the evolution of modern states and societies. Addresses tensions between proclamations of human equality and the emergence of new forms of hierarchy and exclusion in states formally committed to inclusive democratic principles. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement.
This course explores the ethical dimensions of humans’ relationships with the environment and one another, focusing on environmental ethics as developed in and through practice as well as theory. We will consider topics such as animal ethics, land and ecological ethics, ecofeminism, environmental justice, climate ethics, and intergenerational ethics. Meets the Critical Learning: AIM requirement.
This course deals with the creation and appreciation of works of the imagination, including such questions as: what is art?, how are we to evaluate works of art?, and how does art enrich our lives? Meets the Critical Learning: AIM requirement.
An examination of multiple conceptions of fairness, equity, and justice in relation to climate change, and how calls for justice and fairness are used both to reinforce and to challenge existing power relations, within and among nations. Prerequisites: None. 1 unit. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: AIM requirement. Meets the Equity and Power: EPUS requirement.
What does education mean and what are its purposes and values? Topics examined: education vs. schooling; education for critical consciousness vs. conservation of values; training vs. the search for wisdom; how can students learn to educate themselves, and how can schools, administrators and teachers aid in education? (Not offered 2024-25).
A study of several thinkers in the existential tradition, which has its origin in the 19th century writings of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and includes such 20th century authors as Heidegger and Camus, among others. Issues to be covered include freedom, authenticity, meaning, the absurd, the predicament of the contingent individual, and the aims of philosophy itself. Meets the Critical Learning: AIM requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
An examination of different ways of understanding the mind, beginning with classic arguments for dualism and materialism and moving on to contemporary views which seek to avoid either separating mind and body or reducing one to the other. Consideration of various functions of the embodied mind and of the difference between mental and physical concepts. 1 unit - Furtak
Major psychoanalytic perspectives of the late 19th and 20th centuries on the concept of the unconscious in theory, case studies, and fiction. Emphasis on unconscious processes as they relate to the formation of identity. Readings from such authors as Freud, Jung, Klein, Winnicott, Kohut, and Yalom. Meets the Critical Learning: AIM requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: SHB requirement.
An introductory study of Freud and Kohut and the transformation of their theories in contemporary psychoanalysis. Students will read the works of and meet with distinguished psychoanalysts who will present new approaches to understanding psychoanalytic theory and therapeutic action. We will also explore how psychoanalysis can be used in the interpretation of culture, especially art and theater. 1 unit. Taught in part in Chicago at the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute. Meets the Critical Learning: AIM requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: SHB requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
An exploration of the work of Sigmund Freud designed to introduce the wide-ranging scope and the dramatic evolution of his thought. Beginning with his collaboration with Josef Breuer in Studies on Hysteria (1895), the course continues with a careful examination of Freud’s approach to dream interpretation, his account of psychosexual development, and his nuanced theory of unconscious processes. On the basis of this review of classical psychoanalytic theory, the course then delves into Freud’s controversial but influential use of psychoanalysis as a tool for cultural criticism, while also turning to Freud’s continual revision of his fundamental theoretical models during the 1920s and 1930s. Meets the Critical Learning: AIM requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
This course explores central issues in philosophy from a cross-cultural, comparative perspective. Drawing on classical and contemporary texts, the course covers topics such as ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, and conceptions of the self from a comparative point of view. The challenge of comparing concepts and traditions across cultures is discussed. (Not offered 2021-22). Meets the Critical Learning: AIM requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
The development of Indian philosophy from its roots in the Vedic tradition of Hinduism. The focus of the course will be both on the ethical, epistemological, and metaphysical systems that grew out of the Hindu tradition and on the challenges to this tradition posed by Buddhism and by 20th century developments. (Meets the Diverse Cultures and Critiques requirement.) (Also listed as Asian Studies 220) 1 unit - Lee Meets the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: AIM requirement.
An exploration of themes in African, Caribbean, and North American thought, this course looks closely at ways in which philosophers of the African diaspora have responded to colonialism, the process of decolonization, and the postcolonial situation. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures requirement. Meets the Equity and Power: EPG requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
A survey of philosophical writings by Latin-American authors in the social and historical context of the region. Texts studied include Indigenous philosophies of the pre-Hispanic tradition, as well as those of the colonial and postcolonial periods. Particular attention will be devoted to issues that are central to this philosophical tradition, such as identity, consciousness through education, and philosophies of liberation. Our readings draw from Aztec or Maya sources, as well as from Leon-Portilla, Vasconcelos, Paz, Freire, Gutierrez, Dussel. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: AIM requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
An exploration of feminism through the lens of philosophy, this course will involve both classic and contemporary works of feminist thought. Topics may range from political philosophy and ethics to epistemology and metaphysics, including issues to do with the body, race, class, sexuality, work, family, science, climate change, or disability. Meets the Critical Learning: AIM requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: SHB requirement. Meets the Equity and Power: EPUS requirement.
Race is a social construct that invites a number of philosophical questions, such as those of identity, inter-subjectivity, justice, rationality, and culturally different ways of knowing. The course will examine, among others, philosophical reflections on race by the following thinkers: Douglass, West, Fanon, Vasconcelos, Appiah, Bernsaconi, Outlaw, Levinas, Mendieta. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: AIM requirement. Meets the Equity and Power: EPG requirement.
An exploration of classical Chinese philosophy (~600-200 BCE). The course focuses on primary texts in English translation – the Analects of Confucius, Mozi, Mengzi, Laozi (the Daodejing), Zhuangzi, and Xunzi– and considers topics and themes such as ethics, moral development, governance, and human nature. Meets the Critical Learning: AIM requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
An exploration of trends in European philosophy since the Second World War. Movements covered may include phenomenology, existentialism, hermeneutics, structuralism, post-structuralism, and posthumanism. Philosophers covered may include, among others, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Levinas, Arendt, Foucault, Deleuze, and Derrida. 1 unit
An in-depth study of an important period, idea, text or philosopher. Courses offered under this rubric will vary from year to year. 1 unit
A study of one or more major texts by a single important philosopher. Possible texts for study might include, among others: Plato, Republic; Aristotle, Metaphysics; Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy and The Passions of the Soul; Spinoza, Ethics; Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature; Kant, Critique of Pure Reason; Heidegger, Being and Time; Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations. (Not offered 2024-25).
An advanced investigation into the nature of reality, this course will require students to consider the world in strange and challenging ways. Specific topics covered will vary, but may include: space and time, the existence and nature of God, causation, freedom and determinism, and the nature of persons. Readings will be from historical and contemporary sources. 1 unit (Not offered 2024-25).
This course focuses on philosophical questions concerning knowledge and belief, for example, how beliefs are acquired and justified, the possible limits to knowledge, interactions among people with conflicting beliefs, and issues of epistemic justice. Readings will be from historical and contemporary sources. Meets the Critical Learning: AIM requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
An advanced investigation into pressing ethical issues we face today. Students will work to develop both nuanced understandings of the issues as well as their own positions on them. 1 unit
Examines works of influential recent or contemporary political philosophers, with a focus on debates raised initially by the works of prominent liberal theorist John Rawls. The concepts or topics discussed reflect concerns central to contemporary political philosophy: justice and liberalism, discourse and the public, equality and law, representation and diversity, sovereignty, and human rights, and capabilities and globalization. In addition to Rawls, authors discussed may include, Habermas, Sandel, Charles Mills, Iris Young, and Sen. Meets the Critical Learning: SHB requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Investigates the radical interdisciplinary social philosophy that German scholars hostile to fascism developed by combining Marxist philosophy with Freudian psychoanalysis, in an effort to understand the promise and dangers of mass societies. The course addresses both the origins of critical theory and the more contemporary modernist and postmodernist variants. Authors discussed may include Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Althusser, Habermas, Foucault, and more recent thinkers. Meets the Critical Learning: SHB requirement.
This 300-level, co-taught course brings together historical and philosophical methodologies to explore a rotating theme, such as: “African History and Philosophy,” “History and Philosophy of Science,” or “The Philosophy of History.” Although conceived as a cornerstone course for the History-Philosophy Major, all are welcome. Students may take the course more than once, if taught on a different topic. With approval from the student’s advisors, it may be used to satisfy the 300-level History-Philosophy course requirements listed under “Thematic Coursework.”
An exploration of what the discovery of unconscious mental functioning means in relation to philosophical problems in ethics, philosophical psychology, social theory, and theory of meaning. The course is grounded in the work of Freud and may include such post-Freudians as Lacan, Cixous, Winnicott, Klein, and Kohut. Meets the Critical Learning: AIM requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: SHB requirement.
Explores a range of theoretical attempts to explain the emotions and their place in human life. Emotions such as fear, anxiety, hope, love, and regret will be studied both for their own sake and as sources of insight into the nature of meaningful experience. Attention will be paid to the distinction between momentary passions and abiding affective dispositions, and to such questions as how emotions might be justified and what sort of cognition they involve. (Not offered 2024-25).
The most widely read and translated Japanese philosophers of the modern era, Nishida Kitarô and Nishitani Keiji flourished in the early through late twentieth century. Their distinctive school of thought builds upon both European and Asian sources in an effort to comprehend the fundamental character of experience, the limits of reason, and the possibility of overcoming nihilism. Meets the Equity and Power: EPG requirement.
An interdisciplinary, primary-source based thesis on a subject of interest to the student and supervised by two faculty supervisors, one in Philosophy and one in History. Independent study format with regular consultation between the student and faculty supervisors.
An examination of the work of a living philosopher, especially as this contemporary work relates to broader traditions and themes in philosophy. When possible, the philosopher in question will participate in the seminar.
Independent study for advanced students who wish to do work supplementary to that offered in the Catalog.
Independent study for advanced students who wish to do work supplementary to that offered in the Catalog.
Year-long, extended format seminar for advanced students in philosophy centered on the work of the philosophy department's colloquium speakers and on the practice of philosophical discourse. Course emphasizes critical engagement with contemporary philosophical research. Pass/Fail Only. 1 unit
An intensive individual exploration of a particular philosophical issue or problem in the work of one or more philosophers. Must be taken prior to Senior Seminar (PH 476). Arranged by the student and the department in Block 7 of the student’s junior year. 1 unit
Revision and presentation of senior essays. Students collaborate in substantial revision of their essays and the development of oral presentations of their research. The course culminates in public presentations of the students’ work. Pass/Fail Only. 1 unit