UCOR Section Descriptions

Course Description

Empires are often associated with power, and utopia with impossible visions. What are the global challenges created by legacies of modern imperialism? How are these reflected in unequal contemporary political and economic relations? We will explore how African Diaspora intellectual history has engaged with inequality in the discourse of justice. Under the rubric of empire and utopia, we will explore how freedom and justice, and philosophical and material progress are encoded in African Diaspora narratives.

Course Description

This course explores the nature of contemporary global violence through a philosophical lens. It mobilizes the concept of historical effect, developed by the German thinker Hans-Georg Gadamer, to assess our present-day situatedness within an ongoing era of conflict, suffering, and trauma. In taking account of our historical inheritance of conflict, this assessment will involve analyzing both the overt narratives and tacit assumptions that frame our conception of violence.

Course Description

The global challenge this course explores, through dystopian literature, is how desires for social order, and the globalizing philosophies underlying those desires, result in hegemonic forms of social control achievable only through the imposition of ideologies of perfection. Dystopian literature imagines grim worlds where plurality and co-existence are sacrificed for the hegemonic establishment of social harmony. Students will engage and critique these literary landscapes to analyze and assess how global dreams can become global nightmares.

Course Description

This course asks students to consider the ways in which, according to Marshall Berman, the city street operates as “the primary symbol of modern life” Students will explore how various texts 1) celebrate the richness of the city street as a space of global contact and 2) use the literary street to push back against attempts to limit access to this potential.

Course Description

This course will examine U.S. military intervention in the world from 1898 to the present.

Course Description

Through a study of literary texts, this course will explore nationalism, citizenship, and belonging in South Asia post 1945. The course will focus primarily on India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lankan writers.

Course Description

This course starts with a study of the UNESCO charter on world heritage sites, which represents sites of both tangible and non-tangible heritage for the world. Then we will study the historical and contemporary conditions of some of these sites in all continents. At the end of the course, we will go back to the UNESCO charter in light of everything students have learned, to re-examine the global challenges regarding cultural heritage. Covered topics include the selection criteria for the world heritage sites and procedures of campaigns for the selection of sites, as well as the aftermaths of the selection of the sites.

Course Description

Empires are often associated with power, and utopia with impossible visions. What are the global challenges created by legacies of modern imperialism? How are these reflected in unequal contemporary political and economic relations? We will explore how African Diaspora intellectual history has engaged with inequality in the discourse of justice. Under the rubric of empire and utopia, we will explore how freedom and justice, and philosophical and material progress are encoded in African Diaspora narratives.

Course Description

This course explores the core tenets and limitations of the field of postcolonial studies. After drawing on this critical lens to read literature written from the epicenter of British empire, we will turn to later writers who respond to and critique the legacies of imperialism and its concomitant literary traditions. We will trace the emergence of this field in its historical and cultural context, recognizing its productive value as well as potential fault lines.

Course Description

Why do people sometimes rise up against political or cultural institutions? How do the reasons for and goals of these revolutions change depending on the historical, political, and social contexts in which they take place? How can previous revolutions help us understand and/or problematize recent revolutions? How can a revolution be a force for social justice? This course asks you to consider these questions through the lens of literary texts that respond to and help incite political and social revolutions. You will develop insights into revolution as a global phenomenon with shared foundations but markedly different manifestations. This course emphasizes the complex ways different cultures are interconnected through their revolutionary literatures and their responses to oppressive governance and social structures.