Core Seminars

Hobbes theorized the unlimited sovereign authority of the modern state. At the same time, Hobbes never wavered in identifying individual liberty as the ultimate source of sovereign authority. By deriving absolute sovereignty from individual liberty through the mechanism of the covenant, Hobbes inaugurated the tradition of liberalism in political thought. 

This course explores the Western conception of the human place in the natural world as it has shifted across four centuries. It features, alongside corollary readings, close study of three classic texts: Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632), Giambattista Vico’s New Science (1744), and Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859).

Fear is a dominant political, cultural, social, and economic force today. However, its importance is often overlooked, especially in film and media studies. While recent work has looked at our positive affective relationships with media, including fandom and cinephilia, the fear of media has been largely ignored. Yet, media are deeply accomplice of social anxieties.

A careful reading of Karl Marx’s classic critique of capitalism, Capital volume 1, a work of philosophy, political economy, and critical social theory that has had a significant global readership for over 150 years. Selected readings also from Capital volumes 2 and 3.

For a long time, early film theory and criticism have been overlooked and underestimated. However, their recent rediscovery has highlighted their crucial role in framing film as a “modern” invention. While discussing what then was a recent invention, early film theory and criticism tackled some of the main characteristic of modern life: speed, excitation, contingency, openness, subjectivity, circulation, etc. 

Before his tragic death at the age of 32, and with a comparatively small total output, Hart Crane produced some of the most astonishing and influential poems of the 20th century. This seminar will focus on close-reading Hart Crane’s complete poetic oeuvre, with sustained attention to his volume of poems White Buildings and his short epic The Bridge.