Category: Liberal Arts Electives

The seminar will proceed through close reading of,key texts of philosophy in relation to competing,readings of literary works – for example,,Beckett’s Endgame as interpreted by Cavell and,Adorno. The course will also pay attention to,the role of film in the development of,avant-garde and feminist critical theory -,Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle and,Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman.(There will be,screenings of Endgame and The Society of the,Spectacle in class, and In girum nocte et,consumimur igni, and Jeanne Dielman will be,outside class at MOCAD.) The course is not a,survey, but an introduction, and so seeks to,provide students with a vocabulary historically,situated to enable independent work; to this end,the emphasis will be upon close attention to,texts and works.,,DEI: Critical Theory is a post-philosophical style,of thinking developed in Germany between the two,World Wars. Critical Theory, begun in the,Frankfurt School, is the use of psycho-analytic,concepts (Freud) with the politics of the Young,Marx to develop a theory of society, art,,literature, and modernity.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: DEN 102

The Special Project class is offered on an,occasional basis, with course content specific to,the area being explored.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites:

Homer’s Odyssey, Sci-Fi, and Afro-Futurism is a,class in Critical Theory, Visual Culture/Film,Studies that explores the impact of The Odyssey,in Sci-Fi, Critical Theory, and Post-Colonial,discourse in experimental film, poetry, and the,novel. The class explores why The Odyssey has,become the source text for the Sci-Fi genre in,which seas are replaced by space, in which the,journey home is the means of encounter with the,strange and the alien, and where the migration of,a people becomes existential. The class is also,an introduction to Homer’s Odyssey, to the,philosophical interpretation of film/Sci-Fi, and,to the movement known as Afro-Futurism, a,transnational Black avant-garde that uses music,,film, art, and poetics to explore the future in,terms of the place of space. In this class there,is a deliberate juxtaposition of mainstream and,experimental Sci-Fi to elicit a new critical,thinking.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: Take one 3.0 credit, 200 level course from one of the,following subjects: DAH (Art History), DEN (English), DAS,(Academic Studies), DVC (Visual Culture).

Socrates famously said to his student, Meno: “I,don’t know that I can teach you, and I don’t even,know that you can learn! The best I can be is a,midwife to ideas.” At first, Socrates is talking,about Virtue, but also, Justice, Beauty, Art.,Joseph Beuys declared that “To be a teacher is my,greatest work of art.” If we do not know that we,can learn, and do not know that we can teach, why,,then, do we talk so much about Art, as a society,spend so much on Art, and go into debt to,”learn” about something that we are not even sure,can be learned? What are the implications of,making pedagogy – and with it dialogue and a,changed relationship between “teacher”and,”student” – the subject of art? Art + Pedagogy,from Socrates to Joseph Beuys looks at why,teaching / pedagogy (BFA/MFA/PhD; Paulo Freire,,Jacques Rancière, Lygia Clark, etc.) along with,dialogue / conversation and the meal as a vehicle,of self-learning and new strategies of,inter-subjectivity (Plato’s The Banquet /,Symposium, Dante’s The Banquet, Theaster Gates,,Rirkrit Tiravanija, Michael Rakowitz, InCubate,,Detroit Soup, etc.) have become such prominent,,troubling, and exciting subjects in contemporary,art practices precisely at the moment when there,is recognition that the democratization of art and,its institutions begun in the Twentieth Century is,over and the techniques for transmitting /,teaching this “art” have become obsolete. Students,are invited to conclude the semester with a,student-curated meal and conversation or Banquet,of friends.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: Take one 3.0 credit, 200 level course from one of the,following subjects: DAH (Art History), DEN (English), DAS,(Academic Studies), DVC (Visual Culture).

Biopolitics is one of the most significant,developments in Critical Theory. Using the topics,of waste and violence, this class offers an,introduction to the main concepts, strategies,,and pre-occupations of Biopolitical thinking and,its relevance to understanding the contemporary,world and violence of globalization. A,significant aspect of the course is the use and,role of film as critical theory.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: Take one 3.0 credit, 200 level course from one of the,following subjects: DAH (Art History), DEN (English), DAS,(Academic Studies), DVC (Visual Culture).