Contemporary Studies
Introduction
The world is becoming more diverse and complex, and our assumptions about it are constantly challenged. The Contemporary Studies Program tries to make sense of today’s world as a whole by considering the important writers, thinkers, and artists of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, both on their own terms and in relation to some of the fundamental themes of our time. The annual ‘core’ courses give students a framework for understanding political, scientific, and aesthetic phenomena in the contemporary period. The elective courses focus on various aspects of, and explanations for, these often contradictory contemporary phenomena.