Listed in: First Year Seminar, as FYSE-121
Trent E. Maxey (Sections 01 and 02)
From the late-eighteenth century onward European intellectuals frequently drew on images of Asia to discuss what it meant to be modern, enlightened, and historically progressive. By critically tracing this intellectual genealogy we will together confront controversial yet remarkably durable conceptions of human subjectivity, freedom, and social progress, conceptions in which we may find ourselves to be complicit today. We will start with key figures in the intellectual tradition of modern Europe, including Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), Georg W. F. Hegel (1770–1831), Karl Marx (1818–1883), and Max Weber (1864–1920), but move on to the echoes of their thought in more recent, especially Asian, conversations about modernity. We will conclude with contemporary thinkers like Judith Butler (1956-), Ueno Chizuko (1948-), Naoki Sakai (1946-), and Dipesh Chakrabarty (1948-), and consider their attempts to grapple with the tension between universal conceptions of human history and modes of criticism and resistance.
The seminar is designed to practice the related skills of close reading, engaged discussion, and critical writing. In addition to 5 formal essays, reading prompts and short writing exercises will ask you to practice the reading skills needed for active class discussion and effective writing. Short research exercises will introduce you to Frost Library and a group presentation will allow you to practice oral communication skills. Class meetings twice weekly.
Fall semester. Professor Maxey.