Core Seminars

This year’s seminars:

Every Humanities major must complete two core seminars - an Interpretations seminar that engages deeply with one particular work or author and a Modernities seminar that probes the question: what is modernity? 

The most recently-offered seminars are listed below. 

2023-2024

  • 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. 

    Spring 2024
    M 3:30p-5:20p
  • How can we live well in periods of instability, when the founding ideas of our civilization come under threat? What does it mean to be ethical in a situation you cannot control? Can bewilderment be a virtue? What role might poetry play in living a good life?

    Spring 2024
    M 1:30p-3:20p
  • 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).

    Spring 2024
    M 3:30p-5:20p
  • A systematic, chapter-by-chapter study of Heidegger’s Being and Time, arguably the most important work of philosophy of the twentieth century. All the major themes of the book are addressed in detail, with a particular emphasis on care, time, death, and the meaning of being.

    Spring 2024
    MW 11:35a-12:50p
  • 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.

    Spring 2024
    TTh 9:00a-10:15a
  • British historical narratives in the 19th century, the crucible of modern historical consciousness. How a period of industrialization and democratization grounded itself in imagined pasts— recent, distant, domestic, foreign—in historical novels and works by historians.

    Fall 2023
    Tuesdays and Thursdays 11:35am to 12:50pm
  • Culture wars are all the rage these days. But why do we say that works of art are political? What does that even mean? And, if it is true, what part do works of art play in the dynamics of social contest?  In concert with the special exhibition “Art, Protest, and the Archives” at the Beinecke, this seminar explores those questions by placing major works of literature in conversation with influential works of political and cultural theory.

    Fall 2023
    M 1:30-3:20p
  • Intensive study of the life and work of Simone Weil, one of the twentieth century’s most important thinkers. We read the iconic works that shaped Weil’s posthumous reputation as “the patron saint of all outsiders,” including the mystical aphorisms Gravity and Grace and the utopian program for a new Europe The Need for Roots

    Fall 2023
    Wednesdays 9:25am-11:15am
  • This course explores the world of William Blake’s poetry, with an emphasis on the longer prophetic poems, in conversation with his artistic output. We locate Blake in his historical moment, responding in his poetry and art to a variety of political, philosophical, and aesthetic movements in England and elsewhere. 

    Fall 2023
    Mondays 1:30pm-3:20pm
  • Transparency is the metaphor of our time. Whether in government or corporate governance, finance, technology, health, or the media–it is ubiquitous today, and there is hardly a current debate that does not call for more transparency. But what does this word actually stand for and what are the consequences for the life of individuals? 

    Fall 2023
    Wednesdays 9:25am-11:15am
  • A close reading of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s masterpiece, Emile. Though the book poses as a guide to education, it has much grander aspirations; it offers a whole vision of the human condition. Rousseau called it his “best and worthiest work” and said he believed it would spark a revolution in the way that human beings understand themselves. 

    Fall 2023
    Tuesdays 1:30pm-3:20pm