Courses

(Seminar). The class is an intensive reading of the prose and poetry of Emerson, Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, and Emily Dickinson. Through detailed analysis of Emerson's Essays we will try to understand his philosophy as an effort to radically reformulate traditional concepts of identity, thinking, and everyday living, and investigate the politics that guided his philosophical efforts, especially his stance on slavery and his activism against the Cherokee removals. In reading Fuller, we will investigate her thinking on dreams, visions, mental transports and headaches, in order to ask how those experiences come to model her understanding of personal identity, as well as processes of writing and translating. Additionally, we will investigate her political theories concerning the 19th century through the prism of her writings on women. In Thoreau, we will look closely into ideas about the art of living and his theory of architecture, as well as quotidian practices of dwelling, eating or cooking, as ways to come to terms with one's own life. We will pay special attention to Thoreau's understanding of thinking as walking, as well as the question of space vs. time. And we will try to understand how ideas and values of transcendentalist philosophy fashion poetry of Emily Dickinson. Application instructions: E-mail Prof. Arsic ([email protected]) with your name, school, major, year of study, and relevant courses taken, along with a brief statement about why you are interested in taking the course. Admitted students should register for the course; they will automatically be placed on a wait list from which the instructor will in due course admit them as spaces become available.