2010-2011 Academic Catalog

May 03, 2024

2010-2011 Academic Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

HIST 264 - The European Mind, History & Theory, 1700-2000

Type of Course: Lecture, Discussion

What are the principal ideas that inform the modern mind? Designed to complement the department’s European history offerings and instrumental to a variety of subject areas - - such as Holocaust and genocide studies, women’s studies, and Jewish studies – this upper level lecture course provides a critical framework for the study of modernity. Through a variety of primary sources, we explore an intellectual tradition that has given us some very provocative views of the human condition - - including, for instance, that civilization is the source of inequality (Rousseau), that sexual desire empowers the intellect (Freud), that creation has no discernible moral purpose Darwin), that there is nothing outside the text (Derrida), that kindness is an expression of weakness (Nietzsche), that popular culture is a form of thought control (Adorno). What were these people thinking? What are the factors that lay at the root of their modern discontent and their aspiration toward the new? As we will see, their anxieties intersect with our own and their radical conceptions of politics, gender, economy and society helped to shape the world in which we live.

Cross Listed: HIST 364, WS 266

Instructor: Ms. Litvak

When Offered: Offered biannually

Faculty: Olga Litvak, Ph.D. Associate Professor; Michael and Lisa Leffell Chair in Modern Jewish History