Electives 2008/09
Fall 2008/09
SINGLE ELECTIVES
AH220 Conceptual Art
Since antiquity, artists have been concerned with Mimesis, the imitation of the natural world. At the same time, there have been repeated efforts to reach beyond the depiction of the visible world and to engage with ideas which have been described as "absolute", "spiritual" or "supreme". It is this tension between the real and the absolute which constitutes one of the core debates of artistic practice. This seminar analyses, primarily through art works of the twentieth and twenty-first century, the different treatments of nature, beauty and truth. In addition to the close analysis of selected art works in museums and special exhibitions (Picasso, Klee, Beuys, Warhol, Koons and others) we will be reading texts which engage with the above issues. A. SOIKA
LT211 The Philosophy of Greek Tragedy
In this class, we shall explore some of the most important Greek tragedies as well as some of the most important philosophical approaches to tragedy. We shall read through Sophocles' Antigone and Oedipus the King, Euripides' Medea and Aeschylus' Agamemnon, and explore the philosophical dimensions of these plays, drawing on Aristotle's, Hegel's and Nietzsche's theories of tragedy. Comparing these three seminal theories, we shall address the core questions of the class: What is the nature of tragedy? Is tragedy real? In what way is tragedy philosophical? J. PETERS
PL209 The Greek Polis in Hegelian Perspective
For Hegel, the Greek polis is one of the landmarks in the development of human freedom, because the highest good of the Greek is human goodness, and the highest laws accepted by the Greeks are posited by humans. Thus not only is the ideal of Greek art the beautiful human figure, but even the Greek Gods appear essentially in human shape. In this class, we shall explore and critically examine how Hegel demonstrates this thesis with respect to the core aspects of the Greek polis: its political system, its social structure, its religion, and its art. We shall seek to understand Hegel's reasons for regarding the Greeks as one of the first genuinely free people, as well as his reasons for holding that the Greek polis, nevertheless, is bound to fail as a genuine embodiment of free spirit. J. PETERS
PL221 Journeys to Selfhood: Reading Søren Kierkegaard
We will read and engage with the extraordinary writings of the Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard. Out of his rich and diverse authorship, this elective will delve into three texts Either/Or, Fear and Trembling and The Sickness unto Death as well as looking at one or two of his short discourses in discovering the existential, post-modern and therapeutic elements of his thinking. Kierkegaard stands in a unique place in the history of thought as a thinker against philosophy, a Christian against Christianity and a poet against aesthetics. There is also the chance to watch a few films that held tease out some of Kierkegaard's themes from directors such as Theodor Dreyer, Ingmar Bergman, David Fincher, Gabriel Axel and Stephen Frears. B. RYAN
TH232 Installation
This is a studio art class. Participants acquire the means to manipulate sound, light, space and video by creating a series of room-based installations during the term. Participants are given their own studio space for the term. D. LEVINE
NOTE: This is a single elective (3 credits) with 6 hours of in-class/studio time.
DOUBLE ELECTIVES
AH/LT261 Museums, collections and literature
From the Studioli and Wunderkammern of the Renaissance to modern museums, via the universal exhibitions, our culture has been fascinated with selecting objects, artefacts and sometimes even people, in order to exhibit them, communicate and preserve something about itself or what it construed as its other, as well as about what it considers to be the order of the world. The course will investigate the role, function and impact of the culture of collecting and exhibiting in Europe in its historical development by asking questions concerning the status of exhibits, the political meaning of museums, the difference between museums and collections, as well as about the way in which museums and collections have interacted with the organization of knowledge into disciplines. Students will also be asked to reflect on the influence and significance of museums and collections on literary practices. As part of the course, students will visit Berlin museums, and reflect on the project of the Museumsinsel, which continues to cast its shadows into contemporary Berlin politics and cultural life. L. SCURIATTI
FM201 Introduction to Film Studies
Film is a language, and like any other language it has diverse elements of organisation, different accents and different levels of meaning. Understanding the language of film implies the awareness of its structural and lexical development since its invention in the late 19th century. This course is an introduction to film studies and provides an insight into the basic knowledge of film history and theory, film aesthetics and cinematic language. Central topics are modes and styles of filmic presentation, film analysis and different ways of film interpretation. The course explores classical films and directors and investigates the meaning of film as an art form of the modern age, the elements of narration in fiction film and the representative function of film in our modern world and society, i.e. the ability of film to address important social and/or philosophical issues.
The course consists of both seminars and film screenings (6 hours a week plus film screening). M. HURST
Winter 2008/09
SINGLE ELECTIVES
ED252 Education/Enlightenment
The eighteenth century saw an intense debate over the question of education, its proper methods, and the dangers to be excised from it. We explore the entwinement of these dangers with enlightenment pedagogical programmes and principles. Romance-reading, seduction, itineracy, abuse-these recurring threats to the educational enterprise become an integral part of its unfolding, shaping the sometimes chaotic and contradictory form of stories of individual development. The course looks at a variety of narratives: fictions which borrow their trajectory from founding models of the novel as a genre; autobiography; the inaugural gestures of the Bildungsroman, and 'gothic' nightmares of corruption. C. TOAL
Charlotte Lennox, The Female Quixote (1752)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Julie: or the New Heloise (1760)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions (1782)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (1795-96)
William Thomas Beckford, Vathek (1782)
Denis Diderot, The Nun (1796)
Matthew Lewis, The Monk (1796)
LT232 Céline: Real Hallucinations
The writings of Louis-Ferdinand Céline have exerted a quiet but persisting influence on twentieth-century authors, one less heralded than that of the major modernists, since his reputation has been marred by evidence of anti-Semitism and suspicions of pro-Nazi sympathy. This course examines the contagious qualities of the 'modern' in Céline's prose, its phantasmal blend of psychological projection and gritty realism, its rapid transfers of space and time, and, above all, its development of misanthropy as personal style. We will consider the forces generating these qualities, the question of what might constitute a proto-'collaborationist' aesthetic, and the latter's continuing life within the political discontents of subsequent times. C. TOAL
Journey to the End of Night (1932)
Death on the Installment Plan (1936)
Trifles for a Massacre (1937)
The School of Corpses (1938)
The Fine Mess (1941)
Interviews with Professeur Y (1955)
Castle to Castle (1957)
North (1960)
FM222 Controversial Cinema
Sometimes watching a film is an experience that makes one feel uneasy. This is because sometimes a film seems to be provocative art of disturbing proportions, and sometimes it seems that a film just serves as a means of voyeuristic pleasure appealing to our baser instincts and satisfying our need for spectacle and sleazy sensations. Most people would agree to rather appreciate the former and reject the latter. But is it possible to draw a clear demarcation line between these two possibilities? Has (cinematic) art to be provocative in order to stimulate spectators and make them think about the relevant topics? And does a breach of taboo in film change our perception and our notions of conventional order or social values? What does that say about the social influence of cinema and our systems of value?In this seminar we will take a look at some films that gained a certain reputation and provoked controversies in the past - e.g. A Clockwork Orange (1971; dir. Stanley Kubrick), Last Tango in Paris (1972; dir. Bernardo Bertolucci), Salo or The 120 Days of Sodom (1975; dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini), Natural Born Killers (1994; dir. Oliver Stone), The Passion of the Christ (2003; dir. Mel Gibson) -, films that irritated their audiences by presenting ethical and social, political and religious issues in an original and/or disturbing way. We will discuss the meaning of the films and the questions and values reflected by them as well as the specific aesthetics connected to the films as works of art and as part of cultural discourse.
The course consists of both seminars and film screenings (4 hours a week plus screening).
Please note: The films we will watch and discuss feature graphic images of violence and sexuality. M.HURST
PE202 Political economy
Political economy will be studied as a comprehensive tool for the understanding of reality. In principle every question can have an economic answer, even the question of man, what we are as human beings, or the question of how we should live. Old questions receive new and surprising answers. We will want to look at some of these answers, but the main part of the course will consist of examining how the claims of political economy to know the truth can be justified. How did economic rationality develop? What other ways of thinking did it replace or try to replace? What does it mean to say, as Michel Foucault does, that the market is a site of the formation of truth? Is this a thought shared by the great economists of the past? B. MACAES
PS252 Cosmopolitanism
Living and traveling in multiple continents with equal confidence and knowledge, having friends from different countries, speaking many languages, feeling more at home and more attracted to airports and hotels than to small towns and old homes. Why do so many of us dream of a cosmopolitan lifestyle? What does it mean to be a citizen of the world? How can one live without being a member of a particular country or society? In what sense is this a better or a worse life than the alternative? After considering the political and moral aspects of the cosmopolitan vision, we turn to the idea of a world literature and discuss what it would mean to write about the world as a whole and whether this has ever been done. B. MACAES
LT207 Wandering through Modernity: Reading James Joyce's Ulysses
In this course, we analyze the classic twentieth century modernist novel Ulysses by James Joyce published in 1922. The novel encompasses a single day in the life of Leopold Bloom in Dublin, the capital of Ireland in 1904. We will make our way through each chapter, looking at the various symbols, literary techniques, representations of art and the parallels and allusions to Greek and Irish mythology. Ulysses has been called "an endlessly open book of utopian epiphanies". In this elective, we will have the chance to look at the disruptions that Joyce makes between the masculine and the feminine, how he gives voice to the marginalized figures in the world, his critique of institutions such as church, state and empire, and how these various aspects are interlinked towards capturing the hope and despair of the twentieth century and beyond. B. RYAN
LS202 Contemporary Theories of Law and Social Justice
What is law and what are its purposes? Is it just an instrument of political power or can it be used to discipline this power? Is there a insoluble chain between law and morality? And what is social justice? Is this a question that can be answered or is it impossible for a market system to rely on this idea? These are some of the fundamental questions to discuss in the class. But there also should be a closer look at new proposals: Shouldn't we leave these traditional core questions aside and reconstruct law, justice and morality as different social systems, cultures or questions of benefits and costs. C. BUMKE
DOUBLE ELECTIVE
AR202 The Cult of the Artist
With the Renaissance, painters, sculptors and architects were no longer perceived as anonymous craftsmen, but admired as divine geniuses, often enjoying political patronage and high social status. The painters' development from artisans to figures of note is outlined by Giorgio Vasari in his book "The Lives of the Artists" of 1568. Concepts of originality, creativity, (economic) value are still highly relevant today. By focussing on different artistic personalities (from Michelangelo over van Gogh to Damien Hirst) students will be discussing issues such as the importance of patronage, the dilemma between artistic independence and the execution of commissions, and the increasing need to establish a distinct artistic profile. This course coincides with a major show of the same theme "Der Kult des Künstlers" in Kulturforum on Potsdamer Platz. A. SOIKA
Spring 2008/09
SINGLE ELECTIVES
AH223 German Art: 1800 - 2000
This seminar introduces a range of artistic positions in German Art of the last two hundred years, from Romanticisim (e.g. Caspar David Friedrich) over Expressionism and the art of the 1920s, to Gerhard Richter and the latest offerings of the New Leipzig School. Students will take a look at themes which are closely linked to Germany's past and analyse the works in relation to their historical context. A. SOIKA
AR203 Methods and Interpretation: the Visual Arts
This course explores issues in visual analysis, both through the methodological range within art history and, more importantly, in terms of the possibilities of response arising from the direct experience of works of art. Focusing on a small number of major works in the Western tradition, topics include formal analysis and its limits, iconography and counter-iconography, visual storytelling, art and the viewer, and the role of social and historical context in the interpretation of art objects. Painting's relationship to poetry and music will also be examined, among other things with an eye to understanding what differentiates painting from its sister arts, as well as what it shares with them. Visits to Berlin museums to engage works of art firsthand are an integral part of the course. G. LEHMAN
AR233 Mimesis
Taking Plato's discussion in the Republic as a starting point, this course considers the issue of mimesis - specifically, the relationship between art and nature and the problem of representation itself - through a focus on selected works of Western art from the Renaissance to the present day. Topics include perspective, illusionism, and the perception of space; realism and idealism; painting and photography in the nineteenth century, including the early development of cinema; and twentieth-century abstraction as an (apparent) alternative to mimetic art. Mimesis in its coexistence, conflict, and/or interdependence with other aspects of art such as narrative, theological meaning, or visuality for its own sake is carefully examined. Visits to Berlin museums to engage works of art firsthand are an integral part of the course. G. LEHMAN
TH234 Introduction to Acting & Directing:
Through careful examination of a Chekhov play, participants gain a practical understanding of both scene analysis and the principles of stage naturalism. The course focuses on actual scene-work and staging, supplemented by reading from Stanislavski's An Actor Prepares. (This course meets 6 hours a week, but is still considered a single elective!) D. LEVINE
FM223 Fight, Pain, Death: Existential Philosophy and Film
Fight, pain, chance, guilt and death are crucial concepts in Karl Jaspers' philosophy of existentialism. He calls them Grenzsituationen (border situations) and describes them as universal experiences of life-shattering power that could enable us to recognize the true essence of existence beyond mere historical factuality and social conventions and to realize the full potential of our human nature. At the core of human nature Jaspers identifies authentic communication, sincere love and the freedom to act rationally and responsibly as most wanted existential abilities.
Where could we find more depictions of fight and pain and death than in cinema? Indeed, popular cinema seems to cherish and celebrate the very idea of border situations. Films do not only show these existential experiences as part of a character's story, but sometimes recreate border situations on a structural level to make the cinematic experience itself similar to a ritualistic encounter with extraordinary sensations.
Thus we will watch and discuss several films in the light of Jaspers' key concepts and try to apply his ideas of life, love and death to our understanding of Ikiru (dir. Akira Kurosawa), Cries and Whispers (dir. Ingmar Bergman), Leaving Las Vegas (dir. Mike Figgis), The Game and Fight Club (dir. David Fincher).
The course consists of both seminars and film screenings (4 hours a week plus screening). M. HURST
PL225 Engaging Schopenhauer
A self-proclaimed heir of Kant's critical philosophy and a distant father of the existentialist movement, Schopenhauer is best known as the philosopher of pessimism who argued for the worthlessness of life and viewed an attitude of resignation or world-denial as the only appropriate response to this judgment. Yet despite the historical influence he has exercised, Schopenhauer has often been sidelined by present-day philosophers and his status as a thinker worthy of serious philosophical interest often contested. He has won many more admirers for his graceful style, the passionate and iconoclastic tone of his writings, and the mood and world-view he expresses than for the conviction his philosophical views carry. In this course, we will examine Schopenhauer's philosophy on the basis of his main work, The World as Will and Representation, with the aim of forming a clear grasp of Schopenhauer's philosophical system. This will put us in a position to reflect on the relevance of Schopenhauer's philosophy for us, and the different ways of evaluating this relevance. S. VASALOU
RE203 Ethics in Islam: Islamic law
In the practice of Islam, Islamic law is the fundamental normative code used in determining the values of human acts and in guiding believers to right conduct, and as such, represents the foremost way of specifying the ethics of Islam. A tradition with a rich history, it has developed complex methodologies for deriving evaluative determinations of actions from scriptural bases. In this course, we will begin by considering the theoretical groundwork of Islamic law and its operative methods and principles. Then we will turn to a range of concrete ethical questions in order to consider the responses they have received in an Islamic context, ranging from life and death questions in medical ethics (such as abortion or euthanasia), to questions about war (justification and conduct of war, linking to contemporary concerns with jihad), and questions concerning punishment and gender relations. This will allow us not only to gain a closer understanding of Islamic ethical reasoning and to develop a grasp of important aspects of Islamic practice, but also to engage reflectively with the questions themselves and consider the different kinds of moral reasoning by which they can be addressed. S. VASALOU
LT223 Introduction to Poetry LT233 Comedies of Remarriage
This class is an introduction to the appreciation and analysis of "the most concentrated form of verbal expression" (Ezra Pound). We will examine representative poets and works from four great eras of composition: archaic Greece, the Chinese T'ang dynasty, English Romanticism, and American Modernism. At the end of the quarter, some consideration will be given to the fate of lyric poetry in the contemporary world. In order to complement the Spring AY core, we will pay special attention to poems with subject-matter related to some of the core's weekly themes (e.g., houses, spouses, treasure, etc.). D. HAYES
The curriculum for this course consists of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and seven films produced in Hollywood between 1934 and 1949: The Lady Eve, It Happened One Night, Bringing Up Baby, The Philadelphia Story, His Girl Friday, Adam's Rib, and The Awful Truth. Although most of these films have been called "Screwball Comedies," the title of the course and the specific films to be discussed have been adopted from the contemporary philosopher Stanley Cavell's book Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage (1981), which we also read in the course. It may be important to note that this is not a class on Cavell on film; rather, Cavell will be used throughout as an interlocutor in our conversation about artistic objects which share certain characteristics, concerns, and possibly a deep structure. D.HAYES