Upper-Division

Introduction to the relationship between philosophy and poetics in some major 19th- and 20th-century poets and thinkers.

From Muir Woods to Hollywood and Silicon Valley to the Central Valley, California has been a path breaker that has shaped politics and cultural production. The state's rich diversity makes it an especially exciting site for studying the relations between divergent social, economic, cultural, political, and ecological forces. Course investigates the histories, cultures, and geographies of California by exploring relations between power and place through ethnographic, archival, critical, and aesthetic lenses. Also examines the role of identity within constructions of inequality and struggles for political change. Course fulfills one upper-division course requirement for the minor in the history of consciousness.

Explores the politics of writing by moving beyond rehearsals of established form into an analysis of the politics of writing, asking: What are the philosophical and political implications of the writing forms we choose?

Provides an introduction to critical scholarship on media infrastructures with a focus on cybernetic systems, internet protocol, surveillance, logistics, and finance. It explores how these configurations of power are reorganizing our societies and restructuring our subjectivities.

Analyzes films and images to consider how the genre of horror has screened the problems, expectations, and fantasized afterlives of racism, labor exploitation, ruin, and war.

Examines the "real" in a variety of registers—from realism in art to reality TV, from virtual reality to the real number system—and asks what, if anything, these usages have in common, what distinguishes the real from the unreal, from the ideal, and from the lie. Through writing, films, and television ranging from the serious to the whimsical, course looks at the ways in which the idea of "reality" is invoked, how it is represented, and to what ends.

Examines the literary forms of parables, allegories, fables, and other kinds of storytelling as a way of understanding and responding to ecological crises. How can these stories capture the scale and myriad agents of climate change, sea level rise, and species collapse while helping us explore options for a planetary future? What kinds of attention do these forms demand of their readers and how is their simplicity matched by a complexity of possible interpretations? Course also examines the role of figurative language and speculation in the discourse of science. What are the stories that science tells itself? Texts span literature, science, and philosophy with a special interest in the fields of Black feminism, science studies, and Indigenous thought of the Island Pacific.

Explores the meanings of modernity, religion, and violence and examines the conceptual status that war and sovereignty, long associated with religious belief, have since been accorded within the modern humanist and secular tradition. Also explores aspects of this tradition and their relationship to questions of morality and violence and how violence-and its relationship to secularism-can be better understood today as a mode of negotiating human existence in a world dominated by technology and its myths.

This interdisciplinary course considers the atom in four respects: as philosophical idea, as weapon, as catastrophe, and as clock. Students will learn about ancient atomisms, radiometric dating, the Manhattan Project, the bombing of Hiroshima, and the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

Survey of seminal work on ancient origins of the state, diverse geo-political systems of war and diplomacy, and consequences of the formation of the world market on the evolution of geo-political systems up to and beyond the wars of today.

Concentrates on the Marxist tradition of critical theory, centering on classical texts by Marx and by writers in the Marxist tradition up to the present.

Surveys major developments in the capitalist world economy from the 13th century to today. Topics include: the transition to capitalism in Europe; the emergence of banking; colonization, slavery, and uneven development; industrialization; and globalization.

Examines the history of the idea of "miseducation" through a transnational lens. Focuses in particular on histories of the (mis)education of people of African descent, drawing on historical cases and theorizations from both the Continent and the diaspora. This class will trace the emergence of the concept and proximate theorizations of "education" itself through an array of different social movements, institutional formations, and texts.

Provides the historical context and the theoretical tools necessary for understanding today's radical right. Specific focus on considering the far right in the context of radical constructions under conditions of late capitalism.

Examines the rise of species-thinking within the Western philosophical tradition and how different thinkers have defined what distinguishes the human species from others. A critical and close examination of Charles Darwin’s role as a thinker of species is at the center of the course, with interest in its theoretical and political implications for discourses on gender and race. Readings include Kant, Feuerbach, Marx, Plessner, Grosz, Haraway, and others.

Examines the material, discursive, and racialized conditions that have produced refugees in the last century. Also examines the social claims made by refugees, institutional responses to them, and political alternatives to state belonging

Explores what happens if money is examined as a material and politically contingent phenomenon in its own right, rather than assuming the classic "three functions of money" (unit of account, means of exchange, and store of value). Students examine these functions separately with an eye to the tensions that arise between them, and trace a deep history of monetary systems as the outcome of a process of negotiation and contestation. Topics considered include palace economies, cowrie shells, metallic coinages, the modern monetary revolution, and contemporary struggles over student debt.

Course touches on the philosophical roots of Hegel's text, starting from the pre-World War II rereading of Hegel's master/slave dialectic that became the kernel of postwar thought arising from struggles over capitalism, communism, fascism, racism, colonialism, and feminism.

Examines the modern concept of state, its anthropological assumptions, categories, its critique, and its crisis. Inquires into the concept of representation, borders, security and control in thinkers, such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, G.W.F. Hegel, Karl Marx, Carl Schmitt, and Lenin.

Reviews the concept and practice of politics, its anthropological assumptions, categories, its critique, and its crisis. Students inquire into the concept of politics, justice, conflict, and law. 

Explores the clinical, political, and philosophical relevance of the (post) Freudian psyche. Examines how the psyche takes shape around various social forms (e.g., child, woman, queer, colonial, Black, proletarian, religious, digital), as well as how the social is shaped by psychical processes (e.g., projection, introjection, transference, splitting, repression, dissociation, identification, sublimation). Approaches the psyche from various disciplinary perspectives. Clinical and experimental research is used to illustrate a range of theoretical constructs.

Gives students a grasp of different definitions and uses of the concept queerness in its relationship to race and how it's tied to the politics of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) identity.

Is modernity a Western concept? Are there plural modernities? How many modernities? Is the concept of modernity a polemical concept? Modernity was born as a new epoch in opposition to the dark age, as a new beginning in opposition to old traditions, as a tabula rasa in opposition to previous forms of knowledge. This course investigates the concept of modernity, its philosophical and political categories, and the underlying notion of time and history. The course proposes to inquire into the concept of modernity and its critics in texts by Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, Immanuel Kant, G.W.F. Hegel, Walter Benjamin, Simone Weil, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Sylvia Wynter.

We are everyday confronted with countless expectations of obedience—at home, work, while studying or at worship; with parents, teachers, the police. Some demands are formal and public, others are informal, unwritten norms, or habitual codes of conduct. Basic observation of the vast range of rules, norms, and codes that demand compliance invites a range of questions, from a diverse set of perspectives. In response to this challenge, this course examines the theory and practice of disobedience across a range of time periods and contexts. Course considers examples of conscientious objection, riots, strikes, direct action and the like, ultimately seeking to answer: why and how do people disobey?

Inquires into the relationship between politics and violence as articulated by early modern, modern, and contemporary political theorists. Investigates the role of violence in the constitution and maintenance of sovereign power and the construction of the modern subject of politics.

Scholars in African and Black Studies have critiqued Freudian and post-Freudian psychoanalysis for its claim of universality, emphasizing its conscious and unconscious failures in accounting for the psycho-historical effects of racial violence. Drawing on thinkers and practitioners situated in both disciplines, this seminar examines Freudian notions of instinct, drive, desire, death, and sexuality in relation to blackness. Our critical study of Freud is guided by the following questions: how should we make sense of the seeming incommensurability between psychoanalysis and blackness?

How postcolonial thought occasions the reconsideration of the Western tradition of political philosophy and the discovery of alternative pathways of modernization within it.

Offers an opportunity to study with established artist and Distinguished Professor Sir Isaac Julien and gain insight into production and the critical reception of moving image, video art, and installation work by examining historical and contemporary art practice from the 1960s to the present, focusing on artists and curators working in the field of film art. Julien’s film installations are the result of research that combines insights from many different disciplines with the recurring question of freedom present and treated throughout his work. His poetic artworks question the established preconceptions around the understanding of history and the Western aesthetics and encourage liberation in face of political injustices and artistic constraints.

Seminar in modern political thought. The focus and outcome of the course is developing the skill of analytical thinking and clear formulation of concepts in writing. Raises and discusses a set of fundamental questions around the method and methodology of moral and political thought, to which every member in the seminar contributes.

Does Latin American thought have to appeal to quintessential Western philosophical questions regarding knowledge, ethics, reality? Course explores how concepts such as identity and abstraction, as well as realities of indigeneity and diversity, both cause and effect the development of analytical and political frameworks across Latin America. Examines what difference social, political, and ethnic inequality might make to the development of core conceptual and philosophical questions and frameworks.

Have you ever wondered why you should care? Or wished you wouldn’t? Caring can be overwhelming. But most people need care, feel they care, or encounter care in one way or another. Caring can feel good, and also awful; it can do good but also be used to control or hurt others. Care can be rigged by inequalities, and power. Care is complicated, but also vital to people, non-humans, and the planet. It matters what happens with care, when we care, and if we don’t. It matters who gets the care they need, and who doesn’t. In this course we explore what care means from a range of interdisciplinary perspectives.

Provides students with an opportunity to try to understand what fascism is, what it looks and sounds like. Course investigates the conditions from which fascism arises, attempting to answer such questions as: Why is fascism always nationalist? How does it relate to liberalism and capitalism? A wide variety of literature is studied to answer these questions – from Marx’s writing to the Futurist Manifesto to early-20th century analyses of fascism to contemporary psychoanalytic and political economic analyses. The course pays special attention to a few themes, including economy, ideology, culture, psychology and fascism’s social movement quality.

Introduces the histories of exploration, museum collection, and photography that shape historical and contemporary ideas about race, culture, and place in Africa.

The question ‘what is a person?’ may seem simple, but upon reflection it is revealed to be complex and contentious. Consider: the vast majority of human beings have historically been denied the status of “persons,” including most women and racialized peoples. Conversely, there are many non-human entities that have been granted recognition as persons, including corporations, artificial learning systems, even rivers and mountains. So, if ‘persons’ are not merely synonymous with individual biological humans, what are they? This course examines these questions through the scope and nature of personhood from the medieval world to the present, exploring how they touch upon fields such as philosophy, law, politics, science, and the arts.

Introduction to texts of radical political theory, a body of work that critically examines fundamental premises of politics. Addresses the question "What is the 'political'?" Explores political theory of the word "radical" Examines texts of contemporary political theory, ideas of politics and the political that are original, defy convention, and challenge our notions of what is acceptable; and examines etymological origins of the word. Weekly readings include new "little" books, contemporary essays, manifestos, and zines, that touch on the current edges of political theory. Course fulfills the ;Textual Analysis and Interpretation (TA) general education requirement. This means that students are expected to read attentively, exercising critical and analytical thinking, and evaluate the effectiveness and persuasiveness of the theories contained within these readings, as well as the modes of writing used to convey them.

As the environmental crisis deepens in vastly unequal ways across the planet, people and societies are compelled to prevent the collapse of living environments by becoming more ecological. This course explores how ecological notions deploy across different terrains of thinking and practice, changing how we conceive the place of humans in the world. The focus is on more than human interdisciplinary approaches that question dominant environmental relations, de-center the traditional place assigned to humans as the highpoint of nature, and seek for more caring ways of living with non-humans.

Can we revolutionize the world with science and tech? How do science and technology shape the societies and the environments we live in? How can we create radical social and ecological change through new innovations and inventions? The course introduces students to Science and Technology Studies (STS) and to critical perspectives on the history, social aspects, ecological dimensions, culture, and politics of science, technology, and medicine in the context of contemporary real-world issues. The course is open to everyone. Students from all departments and disciplines across the arts and humanities, sciences, engineering, and social sciences are welcome.

Provides students an opportunity for in-depth analysis of advanced topics within the history of consciousness arena. Course topic changes; see the Class Search for current topic.

The development of Freud's concept of mind. Extensive reading tracing the origins and development of Freud's theories and concepts (e.g., abreaction, psychic energy, defense, wish-fulfillment, unconscious fantasy, dreams, symptoms, transference, cure, sexuality) and emphasizing the underlying model of the mind and mental functioning.

Is race a social construct or (partially at least) a biologically grounded reality? Which medical, biological, social, and political agendas are at play with respect to the genomics of race? Genomic results of the past few decades have added significant complexity to the view that race is primarily a social construct. The debates rage, and the stakes are high. Course engages the history, philosophy, and anthropology of the genetics and genomics of race from the 19th century to today, also introducing the basic science on a "need-to-know" basis.

As steerers of planetary climate systems, loci of biodiversity, sources of food, and cradles of inspiration to poets, philosophers, artists, and society in general, the oceans are essential to our future. Course combines history, philosophy, literature, and cinema, using them as lenses through which to analyze, understand, and effect positive change on troubled oceans. Course fits well with UCSC's oceanside location and marine campus.

Introduces the comparative study of world religions and provides critical entry points toward the understanding of its history as a discipline. Special emphasis on the troubled history of imperialism, orientalism, and facile generalizations that have always accompanied the attempt to understand foreign or dead cultures.

Critically engages with feminist-Marxist perspectives on social-reproduction. Introduces the foundation of Marxism and feminist-Marxist critique while examining the international feminist struggle historically from the origins of capitalism to the present moment.

Examines the socio-political and cultural origins of early 20th-century avant-garde movements focusing on the vanguard movement of futurism, the roles played by the disenchantment of the world, and technological rationalization as it relates to warfare and aesthetic production.

Examines baseline philosophical and scientific views of human nature in the context of the debate about existence and the role of human nature., Considers whether human nature is singular or plural, genetic or environmental, and what role it plays in political and social thought. Examines race and sex/gender as biological and/or cultural categories and realities. Concludes with explicit attention to theoretical and conceptual frameworks highlighting nurture, the environment, and social construction, vis-a-vis human "nature." As a critical and exploratory course, no ultimate position on human nature is endorsed. Prerequisite(s): HISC 166 and by permission of instructor.

A program of individual study arranged between an undergraduate student and a faculty member. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.