Comparative (and connected) exploration of philosophies of the body and questions of power. In the west, we have inherited a model of the body as object, opposite to the mind - reinforced by a variety of everyday discourses including medical and health discourses as well as those around beauty, capability, and culpability. This course historicizes continental European theories of mind-body duality, and dives into several global traditions – embodied as well as textual – which offer different models for the thinking-feeling-subjective body. By addressing bodies (in motion), perception/cognition, and epistemology we ask the following: 1) How are our bodies navigating but also subverting or intervening in multiple matrices of power dynamics or knowledge systems through the ways in which we move through the world and 2) what radical possibilities open in the process. Ultimately, these various approaches force us to question what it means to even talk about “a body”. (Meets the Critical Learning: AIM requirement.) (Meets the Equity and Power: EPG requirement.) 1 unit - Sriram.

Across diverse cultures and historical epochs, individuals have asserted a profound 'mystical' connection to reality. In this context, mystics claim an intimate familiarity with an alternative reality or profess the ability to discern reality from mere appearance. This course focuses on exploring a broad spectrum of mystics, extending from Classical to late ancient Greeks, early to medieval Christians, Muslims, and Jews. Additionally, we will engage with contemporary mystics associated with these traditions, emphasizing that mysticism is not confined to the past. 1 unit - Wright.

How has psychoanalysis revolutionized our understanding of human beings, and how can it be fundamental in helping us live more authentic lives? This course will give students a background in some of the major psychoanalytic thinkers, including Freud, Winnicott, Kohut and Jung. We will think about these thinkers in dialogue with various philosophers, such as Rousseau, Nietzsche and Marcuse, among others. For all of these thinkers, we will look at the different ways in which they conceptualize the barriers to living a free, creative life, and what they think it is to flourish as a human being.

In this course, we will read Psychoanalytic perspectives on the self and society to discern how the outside world and the internal workings of the human psyche shape one another. We will trace developments within the field of social psychoanalysis, and think about how these theories can shed light on current social phenomena. We will read texts by social psychoanalytic thinkers like Freud, Bion, Ferenczi, Benjamin, and Fanon, among others.

This course interrogates anthropocentrism and human/nonhuman animal relations through a specialized, eceocritical and ecofeminist analysis of theoretical, visual and literary texts. This program will visit the Andean highlands as well as the Galapagos archipelago.

An introduction to the depth psychology of C.G. Jung, including his notions of the structure of the personal and collective unconscious, the function of archetypes and dreams in development and healing, and the transcendent function as it relates to the individuation process. Contemporary advances in Jungian work in such areas as ecopsychology, soul psychology and Jungian feminist thought will also be considered.

Pragmatist thinkers, often flouting academic disciplinary norms, challenge assumptions central to mainstream Western philosophies. The course surveys the history of pragmatism, beginning with the so-called “classical pragmatists,” leading American intellectuals of late 19th and early 20th century who questioned the modern values, embraced critical social action, and worried about the loss of meaning in modern societies. Next, we explore the works of their female and African-American collaborators and students who, despite making significant innovations, were excluded from the philosophical academy and until recently were largely written out of the history of pragmatism. The class will then turn to pragmatist criticisms of logical positivism, the dominant approach of mid-20th century American philosophy and investigate the recent emergence of “neopragmatism,” a movement questioning analytic approaches and reviving interest in pragmatism. The block will end by examining contemporary efforts to develop pragmatic approaches to engaging diversity in contemporary democratic societies.

How has psychoanalysis revolutionized our understanding of human beings, and how can it be fundamental in helping us live more authentic lives? This course will give students a background in some of the major psychoanalytic thinkers, including Freud, Winnicott, Kohut and Jung. We will think about these thinkers in dialogue with various philosophers, such as Rousseau, Nietzsche and Marcuse, among others. For all of these thinkers, we will look at the different ways in which they conceptualize the barriers to living a free, creative life, and at the same time, what they think it is to flourish as a human being.

This course interrogates anthropocentrism and human/nonhuman animal relations through a specialized, ecocritical and ecofeminist analysis of theoretical, visual and literary texts. In many European and Judeo-Christian representations, the nonhuman animal is subjected to the human, and represented as the carrier of a 'value' or 'message' applicable to the human world. In such cultural texts and artifacts, nonhuman animals tend to not be seen, represented, understood as equals, and/or as members of a completely difference species holding value per se, having abilities and skills not directly exploitable in the anthropocentric world. Recent theory has instead voiced the importance of including analyses of the nonhuman vis--vis existing analyses questioning colonialism and exploitations based on religion, gender, race, political ideas. Based on these theoretical readings, we will ask: Which discriminatory mechanisms, which power structures apply, similarly or even identically, to nonhumans and to minority, colonized, discriminated groups? How in turn have some minority groups (such as indigenous people) have fought to include land and animal rights in their own battle for full recognition as equal political subjects? We will work actively as a group and individually to identify the cultural discourses enabling domination and exploitation of nonhuman animals, along other subtler instances of anthropocentrism and speciesism. We will then try to leave behind our anthropocentrism and to come up with creative solutions for a more just interspecies world.