Course Descriptions
CTMP 2322 The Experience of Others in Philosophy, History and Literature
CREDIT HOURS: 3
This course examines some of the contemporary theories that have addressed the issue of alterity and focuses on social mechanisms of marginalizing "the other". We will raise questions such as what it means to live with others and to act responsibly in relations with others. The readings include philosophy (Heidegger, Levinas, Kristeva) as well as literature, political theory, and film.
FORMAT: Seminar
CTMP 2330 Reflections on Death
CREDIT HOURS: 3
The texts in this course consist of literary and philosophical reflections on death, the "permanent and irreversible cessation of life" (J.M. Fischer). With references to Plato and Hegel, we will consider the ways in which death has been understood as giving meaning and structure to life. The focus will be on contemporary confrontations with "pure negativity" and on different thinkers' attempts to articulate death as an ontological condition. We will also look at representations of death in contemporary art, literature, and film.
FORMAT:
CTMP 2335 The Artist and Society
CREDIT HOURS: 3
A preoccupation of 20th century cultural life has been the relation between the creative artist and society. To what extent should the artist engage in the social and political currents of her/his time, or retreat into solitude? What responsibility does the artist have to society, or society to the artist? This course often concentrates on a particular artist or group of artists. In 2017-18, the artist will be David Bowie.
FORMAT: Seminar
CTMP 2336 East Meets West in Popular Culture
CREDIT HOURS: 3
This course is devoted to examining intersections between “West” and “East” through the study of cross-cultural influences in popular literature, cinema, music, and comics in Europe, North America, China, and Japan.
CROSS-LISTING:
CHIN 2052.03
RESTRICTIONS: Restricted to students in their 2nd year and above.
CTMP 2340 Theories of the Avant-Garde
CREDIT HOURS: 3
This course investigates concepts of the Avant-Garde in early 20th century futurism, expressionism, dadaism, and surrealism. We will read representative texts, including prose, poetry, drama, and manifestos as well as examine selected works from the visual arts and film. Topics for discussion include the historical Avant-Garde, the reintegration of art and life, the relations of the Avant-Garde to romanticism and modernism, the institution of art, aesthetics, the autonomy of art, and political radicalism. We will also examine the implications of theories of the Avant-Garde for the debates about the relation between modernism and postmodernism. A key theoretical text in the course is Peter Burger's
Theory of the Avant-Garde but we will also examine selected writings by Lukacs, Brecht, Benjamin, Kracauer, Poggioli, Adorno, Bataille, Habermas, Lyotard, and Agamben.
FORMAT:
CTMP 2350 Feminisms: The First Three Waves
CREDIT HOURS: 3
In this course we will consider major developments in feminist theory from the 19th century to the present, concentrating on primary philosophical and literary texts. We will read representative works from all three waves, and consider black, lesbian, and postcolonial feminisms, as well as writing by trans* authors.
FORMAT: Seminar
CTMP 3001 Science and Culture I: The Discourses of Modernity
CREDIT HOURS: 3
This class engages one of the main questions of our modern world: what is science and how does it relate to the rest of modernity? It explores the rise of a “scientific” world view, the clashes over methodologies, the disputed meanings of technology and the oppositions between the social/cultural and the natural, introducing recent crises of rationality and its defence.
NOTES:
CTMP 3001.03 &
CTMP 3002.03 must normally be taken in the same academic year to fulfill the requirements of the CTMP Combined Honours degree.
FORMAT:
CROSS-LISTING:
HSTC 3031.03
EXCLUSIONS: CTMP 3000.06/HSTC 3030.06
CTMP 3002 Science and Culture II: Resetting the Modern
CREDIT HOURS: 3
This class follows on
CTMP 3001.03/
HSTC 3031.03, using case studies and recent debates within Science and Technology Studies, feminist theory, postcolonial and ecological thinking, to deepen the critical engagement with science and reset the place of science and technology in our contemporary world.
NOTES:
CTMP 3001.03 &
CTMP 3002.03 must normally be taken in the same academic year to fulfill the requirements of the CTMP Combined Honours degree.
FORMAT:
PREREQUISITES: CTMP3001.03 or permission of the instructor
CROSS-LISTING:
HSTC 3032.03
EXCLUSIONS: CTMP 3000.06/HSTC 3030.06
CTMP 3011 The Lecture Series
CREDIT HOURS: 3
See
CTMP 2011.
FORMAT: Other (explain in comments)
CROSS-LISTING:
CTMP 2011.03,
CTMP 4011.03
CTMP 3101 Crisis of Critique of Reason
CREDIT HOURS: 3
There is a tendency, widespread in our day, to deny that we can know with certainty the conditions of any claim to knowledge, and as a result to doubt that we can say anything true about the world and ourselves. This class reconstructs the history of this critique of reason with a view to understanding the profound changes that have overtaken the social disciplines in the course of the past few decades. The class spans a couple of centuries. We discuss amongst other things the relationship between scepticism and truth, the practical character of human rationality, and the role of the language in the formation of our scientific theories, our ethical and political thinking, and our aesthetic sensibilities.
FORMAT: Seminar
CTMP 3102 Tradition & Critique
CREDIT HOURS: 3
Nothing generates more controversy in our intellectual world than questions concerning the interpretation of history and culture. To what extent should interpretation be negative or critical? How are critical ideas contained in traditional practices and beliefs? In this class we explore the antagonism between tradition and critique. Starting from two opposed theories of interpretation - "deconstruction" (Derrida) and the "historicity of understanding" (Gadamer) - the class proceeds in a historically-oriented way to study, on the one hand, the philosophical traditions of idealism, Marxism, and hermeneutics and, on the other hand, psychoanalysis and literary criticism. We discuss amongst other things the distinction between myth and science, the notion of "progress" in history, and the sources of understanding.
FORMAT: Seminar
CTMP 3103 Critiques of Modernity
CREDIT HOURS: 3
What is the status of the modern world? It is a source of freedom and truth or rather of the deconstruction of religion, humanity and nature. The contemporary period has defined itself in many ways through the critique of modernity. These critiques have come from an array of perspectives: philosophic, aesthetic, religious, moral, political. This course will provide a survey of a number of such critiques seeking to grasp both points of commonality, disagreement and development.
FORMAT: Seminar
CROSS-LISTING:
EMSP 3203.03
CTMP 3104 The Rise of Nietzscheanism
CREDIT HOURS: 3
This course will show the origins and growth of Nietzsche's fame and influence from the late nineteenth century to around the middle of the twentieth, and consider his impact on many different and conflicting trends of thought, including Nazism and avant-garde art, depth psychology,existentialist philosophy and anarchistic social theory.
FORMAT: Seminar
RESTRICTIONS: Restricted to students in their 2nd year and above.
CTMP 3105 The Nietzschean Legacy
CREDIT HOURS: 3
This course surveys the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche on Western thought and culture, from the middle of the twentieth century to the present day. We will see Nietzscheanism at work in many different schools of thought, from French existentialism and American liberalism to various forms of contemporary anti-humanism and post-humanism.
FORMAT: Seminar
RESTRICTIONS: Restricted to students in their 2nd year and above.
CTMP 3110 The Ideal World of Enlightenment: Desire and Freedom
CREDIT HOURS: 3
In the course of criticizing tradition and integrating the experience of the Renaissance and the Reformation, in responding to the beginnings of modern natural science and modern political institutions, early modern Europeans sought in diverse - and often conflicting - ways to express the self-understanding of Enlightenment. By the end of the eighteenth century, science, morality and art were seen as different realms of activity in which questions of truth, justice and taste could be separately determined, that is, evaluated according to their own specific criteria of validity. This course will consider how these differences compelled European philosophers and theologians, artists and social theorists, to develop and expand their self-understanding to the point where enlightened reason could properly reflect the formal divisions of culture and make critical judgements in relation to them. Special attention will be paid to the relationship between faith and knowledge and the growing sense of conflict between religion and secular freedom.
FORMAT: Seminar
CROSS-LISTING:
EMSP 3210.03
CTMP 3113 Kant and Radical Evil
CREDIT HOURS: 3
This course will examine the roots of the modern conception of radical evil in the late work of Immanuel Kant. Beginning with the traditional, pre-Kantian conception of evil as merely a negative phenomenon - as a lack or privation of being - we will trace the emergence of Kant's radical innovation, his positive conception of evil as the ineradicable "knot" at the very heart of human freedom. We will also consider at some length the subsequent career of Kant's doctrine in 19th and 20th Century thought.
FORMAT: Seminar
CROSS-LISTING:
EMSP 3213.03
EXCLUSIONS:
EMSP 3630.03
CTMP 3115 The Real World of Enlightenment: Time and History
CREDIT HOURS: 3
In enlightened European culture, religion, state and society as well as science, morality and art were gradually separated from one another under exclusively formal points of view, and subordinated to a critical reason that took on the role of a supreme judge. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, many Europeans began to question the self-understanding evoked by the principle of critical reason. This course will consider how enlightened freedom and reason moved European philosophers and theologians, artists and social theorists, to conceive of themselves historically, that is, to become conscious of the dissolution of tradition, and of the need to ground the divisions of culture in ideal forms of unity derived from the tradition. The course will pay particular attention to the relationship between religion and the demand that the unifying force in culture come from a dialectic residing in the principle of enlightened reason itself.
FORMAT: Seminar
CROSS-LISTING:
EMSP 3220.03
CTMP 3116 Heidegger: Science, Poetry, Thought
CREDIT HOURS: 3
In this course, we shall examine the complex relations that obtain in Heidegger's early and later work between science, poetry and thought. From his early identification of phenomenology as "philosophical science" to his mature insistence on the irreducibility of philosophy to science (and his new emphasis on the essential kinship of philosophy and poetry), we shall trace the contours of this powerful and inescapable path of thinking.
FORMAT: Seminar
RESTRICTIONS: Restricted to students in their second year and above.
CTMP 3121 Genocide: Comparative Perspectives
CREDIT HOURS: 3
This course is an inquiry into the concept of genocide, which takes into account its cultural, socio-political and historical contexts. Which atrocities are included in that concept and why? What is the relation between “genocide” and “human rights”? Does the fact that the term was coined in a specific context (after WWII) limit its applicability to non-European phenomena, both prior to and after the war? We will consider several documented instances of genocidal violence and reflect on the relations between genocide and the politics of memory, including museum displays, public commemorations, and popular culture. We will look at competing claims from victim groups and ask questions about the impact of racism in targeting specific populations; gender difference in the experience of atrocity; and the role of world powers in deciding about intervention or non-intervention.
FORMAT: Lecture
LECTURE HOURS PER WEEK: 3
CTMP 3125 The Concept of Memory in Late-Modernity: Commemoration, Representation, Trauma
CREDIT HOURS: 3
This course will involve an examination of the relations between memory, theory, and representation in the context of proliferating ‘cultures of memory’. Differing theoretical approaches to memory from the philosophy and psychoanalysis of the 19th and 20 centuries will be explored, alongside various genres & practices of memory (political, memorial, artistic, and critical).
FORMAT: Seminar
RESTRICTIONS: Restricted to students in their second year and above
EXCLUSIONS: CTMP3410.03 for the 2008/09, 2009/10, 2010/11 academic years only and CTMP3415.03 for the 2011/12 academic year only