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Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2:15–3:30 p.m. Professor David Troyansky (History)
Mondays and Wednesdays, 11 a.m.–12:15 p.m. Associate Professor Christopher Ebert (History)
Mondays and Wednesdays, 11 a.m.–12:15 p.m. Professor Benjamin Carp (History)
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 4:15–5:55 p.m. Professor David Troyansky (History)
Mondays and Wednesdays, 12:25–2:05 p.m. Professor Andrew Meyer (History)
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 9:30–10:45 a.m. Online (Pathways: US Experience in Its Diversity)
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2:15–3:30 p.m. In person (Capstone)
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 11 a.m.–12:15 p.m. Associate Professor Andrew Arlig (Philosophy)
Perhaps you have heard the old saying that “ignorance is bliss,” or in other words, that the more you reflect philosophically on your condition—and the human condition, in general—the less happy you will be. On the other hand, Socrates reportedly held that the unexamined life is not worth living. The Western tradition inspired by Socrates has generally assumed that philosophy is the key to living a flourishing and even pleasurable life. At the very least, philosophy is often thought to provide a buEer and consolation to people when they hit upon hard times. In this class, we will read several important elaborations and defenses of these claims. Possible texts: Plato The Apology of Socrates, Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics, Lucretius On the Nature of Things, Epictetus Enchiridion, Boethius Consolation of Philosophy, Catherine of Siena Dialogues.
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 9:30–10:45 a.m. Associate Professor Andrew Arlig (Philosophy)
In this seminar we will look at some philosophical approaches to love. The seminar will consider several forms of love, including not only romantic or erotic love, but also familial love, friendship, and charity. Some of the big themes and questions to be considered are these:
Possible texts: Plato Symposium, Al-Ghazali Revival of the Religious Sciences, book 35, or ‘A’ ishah al-Ba ‘uniyyah Principles of Sufism.
Fridays, 10 a.m.–12:30 p.m. Professor Lauren Mancia (History)
In this class, we will investigate the European Middle Ages (ca. 500–1500 CE) through the lens of performance. By thinking about how medieval people performed—e.g., regularly created theater, ritual, and ceremonies, on and off the “stage”—can we better understand their desires, their aesthetics, and their values? In this class, we will explore various arenas in medieval society: the Church, its liturgy, its ascetics (like monks and nuns), its music, its art, and its ceremonies; secular power structures, and the rituals of kingship, warfare, lordship, homage, and proto-nationalism; and the growing urban centers of the Middle Ages, with their merchants, craft guilds, cosmopolitan ideas, cross-cultural interactions, and proto-capitalism. The course will be highly interdisciplinary, with theoretical grounding in performance studies, trips to museums around New York City, and attention to all kinds of medieval sources, including art, music, maps, theology/philosophy, literature, and more traditional historical records.
Professor Nicola Masciandaro (English)
This seminar is inspired by a passage from Clarice Lispector’s last novel, Breath of Life: “It’s all rotten. I feel it in the air and in the people frightened and starving huddled in a crowd. But I believe that in the depths of rottenness there exists—green sparkling redeeming and promised-land—in the depths of the dark rottenness there shines clear and captivating the Great Emerald. The Great Pleasure. But why this desire and hunger for pleasure? Because pleasure is the height of the truthfulness of a being.” The plan is to study the nature of pleasure and its representations across a series of ancient, medieval, and modern texts, keeping an eye on this insight, namely, that our belief in pleasure is found, not unlike the beauty of a still life whose objects have long decayed, in the midst of our sense of the rottenness of things, their decomposing, fermenting, and sometimes disgusting ephemeral nature. Filling our conceptual picnic basket with some ancient theories of pleasure, we will wander among medieval and Renaissance gardens in order to arrive upon the Romantic and decadent shores of modernity with a fresh sense of pleasure’s truth and taste for its question. Authors to be read include: Angela of Foligno, Aristotle, Augustine, Barthes, Bataille, Baudelaire, Behn, Blake, Cioran, Dante, Dickinson, Foucault, Huysmans, Julian of Norwich, Kafka, Leopardi, Levinas, Lispector, Lucretius, Marvell, Montaigne, More, Nietzsche, Pizarnik, Plato, Sappho, Wordsworth.
