Comparative Literature 258: Mysticism and Modernity
Instructor: Niklaus Largier
So-called ‘mystical’ forms of thought and experience have played a major role in the history of modern philosophy and literature from Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Schopenhauer to Lukàcs, Heidegger, Bataille, Benjamin, Derrida, and Fred Moten; and from Novalis to Musil, Kafka, Celan, Bachmann, Klossowski, and Cage (to name just a few). In this seminar we...
English 203: Edmund Spenser
Instructor: David Landreth
Sidney wrote that the poet’s task was to “grow in effect into another nature.” No poet in English has fulfilled that charge more luxuriantly than Edmund Spenser. We will read widely in Spenser’s oeuvre and milieu, but most of our attention will be devoted to exploring the strange landscapes and structures of The Faerie...
History 280B: Religion and the State in Early Modern Europe
Instructor: Ethan Shagan
The interactions between religion and the state in early modern Europe (c.1450-1750) have shaped modern legal-political regimes of state power and religious toleration, and have also shaped modern understandings of “religion” as a category in human society. This course therefore has two interconnected goals. As a History class, it will teach graduate students about...
History of Art 200: Graduate Proseminar in the Interpretation of Art Historical Materials
Instructor: Todd Olson
This seminar is intended to introduce graduate students to a range of critical perspectives, theoretical issues, and methodologies that constitute the practice of art history. The seminar is not intended to be a comprehensive survey of the history of the discipline. The selected topics and readings are in no way entirely inclusive of contemporary...
Political Science 214: Leviathan
Instructor: Kinch Hoekstra
A reading seminar on Thomas Hobbes’s masterwork, Leviathan (1651). Beginning at the beginning. Ending at the end.