Courses

This course examines how conflicting knowledges and belief-systems have been rendered occult, marginal, or repressed, and it refocuses attention on enchantment in modernity and modern disciplines as a means of their recovery. Among the questions we will explore are the following: From what place, and by what means, is the world enchanted? Is enchantment a compensation for what Freud called “the lost appeal of life on this earth”? Or is it ultimately a privileging of the irrational in a world dominated by reason? What is the place of science in enchantment? Does the decline of religion precipitate the re-enchantment of the world via art?  And finally and most importantly, can we understand intellectual formations by revisiting the processes of enchantment and disenchantment?  Readings will include conceptual works by Max Weber, Theodor Adorno, Marcel Gauchet, Jane Bennett, Michael Saler, Alex Owen, Bruno Latour, and Jason Josephson-Storm, among others; and literary works by Kipling, H. Rider Haggard, George du Maurier, H. G. Wells, Helena P. Blavatsky, H. P. Lovecraft, and Philip Dick.

Application Instructions: E-mail Professor Gauri Viswanathan ([email protected]) with the subject heading "seminar application." In your message, include basic information: 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.