Instructor: H. Mokoena

Enrollment limit is 20. This course is a consideration of the choices and dilemmas faced by the category of intellectuals who have been labeled ‘colonial intellectuals,

Instructor: D. Fields

Ancient Greek and Roman comedies are studied along with their modern English counterparts, as we explore how fantasy and satire have been developed as tools for grappling with political, social and cultural issues. Authors may include Aristophanes, Petronius, Lucian, Apuleius, Seneca, Tom Stoppard, Thomas Pynchon, Douglas Adams and John Waters.

Instructor: P. Oldenburg

This course first compares the post-independence political histories of South Asian countries, particularly India and Pakistan. It then explores selected topics across countries: social and cultural dimensions of politics; structures of power; and political behavior. The underlying theme is to explain the development and durability of the particular political regimes – democratic or authoritarian – in each country.

This survey examines art being made today by African artists working in Europe, America and in Africa, and surveys the origins of African modernity in the 20th century. Theoretical and critical approaches and even basic definitions in this new field are still being challenged, and the course will consider these and the many Africas evoked by artists and critics.

This seminar requires an application.

WE ARE NO LONGER ACCEPTING APPLICATIONS FOR THIS COURSE AS OF AUGUST 22, 2011

The course aims at rethinking the articulation of “insurrection” and “constitution” in the trajectory of modern citizenship. It begins with a return to the conflicts between vindications and critiques of the “natural rights” declared by bourgeois revolutionaries, and finishes with a discussion of the perspectives of a “citizenship beyond the institution” opened by the contemporary crisis of the national, social and imperial State. A turning point will be provided by the critical discussion of Hannah Arendt’s statement of the “right to have rights” as a negative foundation of the political community.

Instructor: M. Vail

Introduction to the theory and practice of ethnography the intensive study of peoples lives as shaped by social relations, cultural images, and historical forces. Considers through critical reading of various kinds of texts (classic ethnographies, histories, journalism, novels, films) the ways in which understanding, interpreting, and representing the lived words of people at home or abroad, in one place or transnationally, in the past or the present can be accomplished. Discussion Section Required.

Instructor: A. McKeown

Why have some forms of migration, trade, and organized violence become illegal, and how is this connected to the formation of modern states and borders? These questions will be addressed from a global perspective over the last five centuries.

Instructor: D. Miron

Instructor: S. Beardman

Prerequisites: one course in philosophy. Examines theories of normative ethics against the background of studies in cognitive and social psychology. How important are empathy, self-knowledge, and cultural norms to determining what is the right thing to do? Topics include moral cognition, the rationality of certain ethical intuitions, and the possibility of altruism.