The Fall of Nature in Western Religions
Upper-division Undergraduate Course
Course Description:
If the humankind has entered a new geological age called the Anthropocene, one shaped and conditioned by human activities since at least two centuries ago, what has been the role of Western or Abrahamic religions? What will be the fate of faith confronted with the unprecedented human-made transformations in nature and history as the sites of divine revelations? This course studies the fundamental ideas in Judeo-Christian-Islamic traditions of nature, creation, history, environment, and the very idea of human action that have pervaded longstanding practices devoted to the domination or “occupation” of nature. We will examine key theological positions and philosophical statements by reading primary sacred and exegetical texts in each of the three major monotheistic religions. We will delve into their different accounts of the genesis of the universe and the natural-historical world, of the meaning of God’s transcendence, of the economy of the divine plan, and the productive and destructive activity of human beings as God’s “trustees” on earth. Our goal is to grasp the wide-ranging crises of the present age, or, the fall of nature, from a deep historical and philosophical perspective afforded by the archives and ideas of monotheism.
FASCISM: HISTORY, REVOLUTION, REACTION
Course Description:
In his well-known 1995 essay the Italian thinker Umberto Eco names fourteen common features of fascism as an alarming phenomenon no matter which form it takes and when. We will examine this claim and ask of the historical substance of fascism while discussing the recurrent allure of it from a philosophical, psychoanalytical, aesthetic, and politico-economical perspective. We consider how fascism emerged as a reactionary revolution to resolve crises of modern bourgeois society.
Human Nature and Philosophy
Course Description:
Augustine’s famous “I have become a question to myself,” in so far as it has persisted through centuries and geographies and continues to bother us, describes a peculiar sort of being that constantly puts its own self, its own life, into question. With what sort of knowledge, discipline, method, or trick are we to quench the thirst for an answer? In western philosophy, the answer has taken many shapes and the most influential among them tend to draw on something other than the human being: God, nature, society, history, and mother. But perhaps none has been more intriguing than the philosophical effort to answer the question by rewriting it in a more fundamental way: What kind of being is the one that can, and always does, become a question to own self? In this course, we will explore the philosophical accounts of human nature by reading a series of classical, modern, and contemporary texts that not only offer answers to the question but also propose ways to realize its far-reaching political significance.
Grammar of Loss: Iranian Cinema since 1979 Revolution
Course Description:
This course is an interpretive and critical engagement with a number of social, political, and ethical issues that are raised in five Iranian movies made during decades since the 1979 Iranian Revolution until present. We will deal with immanent problems in the form and structure of the movies in their relation to the actual and open problems in social and political structures in Iran.
Global Works and Society in a Changing World
Course Description:
When Galileo proved that the earth turns around the sun, toppling the Heliocentric world-view, there came a massive backlash from some of the major institutions of his time, from philosophers to the Church. In the long transition from the Dark (or Obscure) Ages to a rebirth, a renaissance, of ways of seeing, living, and acting, especially in European traditions, there were many counterparts to Galileo’s scientific claim: in ethics, aesthetics, theology, politics. In this course we will be examining some of the key themes that emerged and dominated the crisis that the Late-Ancient and the Late-Medieval worlds underwent, as critical models or systems that posted responses to that crisis. We will start with the rise of Islam, which opens our period of ‘a changing world’ (roughly 700-1700 CE), go through Iran and China, and end with the post-Reformation world in which a new continent had entered the European imagery: America.
Our approach is philosophical and interpretive and our methods include techniques in close readings inspired by literary criticism, hermeneutics, and deconstruction. Writing about texts and works from historical and geographical past requires skills in reading and interpretation that we will practice in this course.
Introduction to German Aesthetic Theory
Course Description:
Dieser Kurs führt in die Genese, Entwicklung, Hauptthemen, und ersten Begriffen der Ästhetik als ein bahnbrechendes, literarisch und philosophisch bedeutendes modernes Forschungsbereich ein. Anhand Schlüsseltexte der ästhetischen Tradition seit ihrer Entstehung im 18 Jahrhundert, der Kurs bringt theoretischen Überlegungen und Positionen in der Geschichte der Ästhetik im Gespräch mit wichtigen Kunstwerken und Dichtungen der vorigen zwei Jahrhunderten. Die Texte wie auch unsre Diskussionen werden in deutscher Sprache sein.
This course is an introduction to the genesis, development, main themes, and primary concepts in aesthetics as a pathbreaking, philosophically and literarily significant modern discipline. We will read key texts in aesthetic tradition since the eighteenth century and bring theoretical reflections and positions in dialogue with some important artistic and literary works of the past two centuries. Texts and discussion will be in German.