Can we tell stories that span 1,000 or 10,000 years? Can an individual’s affect be contextualized not only by her immediate environment but by the epoch in which she lives? What formal techniques—time lapse, montage, allegory—can be used to convey that our creaturely fragility is shared not only with species contemporaneous to us, but with Continue Reading »
In FMS 321 we will study the cultural significance of videogames from a number of critical perspectives. As products of a complicated network of social, economic, and technological forces, videogames are dense objects, deeply layered with multiple meanings and hidden histories. Whether we consider early arcade games like Pac-Man or the latest blockbusters like No Continue Reading »
The primary goal of this course is to teach students the tools and vocabulary needed to critically engage with and write about cultural objects in our contemporary media age. The class will focus both on “big picture” questions relating to the ways in which new forms of media and technology may significantly alter fundamental aspects Continue Reading »
This course is a graduate seminar focusing on the history of biology in art and design. It traces biocentrism – a biology-based philosophy of the oneness of art and science – from the late nineteenth century to the present within the greater world of art. It focuses on the work of nineteenth-century naturalists Ernst Haeckel Continue Reading »
The relationship between the humanities, science, and technology has been a matter of consternation for some time. C. P. Snow’s famous 1959 lecture, “The Two Cultures,” epitomizes this anxiety. Snow gave primacy to science and technology, shaming British society and government for not supporting the sciences to the degree it had traditionally supported the humanities. Continue Reading »
This course interrogates the relationships between gender, race and the practices of the psychological sciences from the 19th century to the present. Rather than focus on the discoveries, diagnosis, or effects of psychological knowledges, this course attends to the methods used by researchers in the 19th and 20th century. Our reading and discussion will focus Continue Reading »
The relationships between literature and medicine are many, varied, and at least as old as the Greeks. Above the door of the ancient Library at Thebes an inscription read, “Medicine for the Soul” and at the heart of the philosopher Aristotle’s description of the effect of tragic drama on its audience, we find a medical Continue Reading »
We currently live amidst the sixth mass extinction in the history of life on Earth. The last mass extinction event is known as the K-T event, and it occurred 65 million years ago. It resulted in the extinction of the dinosaurs and most other large land animals. Unlike the K-T event, however, our mass extinction Continue Reading »
From Kari Nixon and Lorenzo Servitje: Endemic: Essays in Contagion Theory (Palgrave 2016) Exploring the nexus of contagion’s metaphorical and material aspects, this volume contends that contagiousness in its digital, metaphorical, and biological forms is a pervasively endemic condition in our contemporary moment. The chapters explore both endemicity itself and how epidemic discourse has become endemic to Continue Reading »
We will examine how black writers have articulated utopian visions, from Emancipation to the 20th century, and how they have intervened in the utopian traditions of American literature and culture, including anti-utopia, heterotopia, and dystopia. Novels, short stories, and film by African-American authors that portray utopian societies and movements, along with cultural criticism grounded in Continue Reading »
