Graduate

HISC 203A Approaches to History of Consciousness

An introduction to history of consciousness required of all incoming students. The seminar concentrates on theory, methods, and research techniques. Major interpretive approaches drawn from cultural and political analysis are discussed in their application to specific problems in the history of consciousness. Prerequisite(s): first-year standing in the program. See the department office for more information.

Credits

5

Quarter offered

Fall

HISC 203B Approaches to History of Consciousness

Writing-intensive course based on readings in HISC 203A.

Credits

5

Requirements

Prerequisite(s): HISC 203A. Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

Quarter offered

Spring

HISC 205 Global Political Thought

Seminar anchored in a question fundamental to the history of ideas in the modern history of empire: How to think globally about political thought. Through sustained examinations of classic texts in the history of moral and political philosophy, the seminar explores how the "global" itself becomes a universal framework essential to understanding politics worldwide.

Credits

5

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

HISC 214 What is a Subject?

Examines major streams of theorization about the subject in postwar and contemporary continental and critical theory. Thinkers include Althusser, Badiou, Balibar, Butler, Fanon, Foucault, Honneth, Laclau and Mouffe, Mbembe, Ranciere, and Sartre.

Credits

5

Instructor

Banu Bargu

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

HISC 215 History of Unconsciousness

There is a history of political consciousness that culminated in the project of enlightenment. There is a history of individual, collective, and political unconscious, which culminated in fascism. These two histories are intertwined, but their outcome is not preconceived. On the contrary, their relationship and integration constitute a field of possibilities for social, political, and human experimentation. This course inquires into the concept of political unconscious by exploring thinkers, such as Kant, Foucault, Adorno, Horkheimer, Freud, Jung, Reich, Fromm, Marcuse, and Klein.

Credits

5

Instructor

Massimiliano Tomba

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

Quarter offered

Spring

HISC 216 Critical Race/Ethnic Studies

Explores foundational and emergent theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of race. Issues examined include the production of race within and across various spheres of human activity and how race has shaped notions of difference and commonality in the past and present.

Credits

5

Instructor

Eric Porter

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

HISC 217 Critical Human Rights Theory

Addresses about 10 of the significant critiques of human rights discourse published in the past decade by authors, such as Moyn, Douzinas, Fassin, Ticktin, J. Slaughter, D. Chandler, Mamdani, Weitzman, Badiou, and Meister.

Credits

5

Instructor

Robert Meister

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

Repeatable for credit

Yes

Quarter offered

Winter

HISC 218 French Hegel

Students expected to locate with fluency and precision their own research projects within the conceptual and methodological frameworks defining the late-20th century constellation of thought to be laid out systematically over the course of the term.

Credits

5

Instructor

Robert Meister

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

Quarter offered

Fall

HISC 219 Radical Futures and Visual Culture

Attempts to break through the pervasive dystopia and catastrophism of the present and open up speculative proposals regarding the not-yet and what's to come. Students critically consider methodologies of futurity among varieties of radical imaginaries grounded in the traditions of the oppressed—including Afrofuturisms, Indigenous, Chicanx/Latinx, multispecies, postcapitalist, and communist proposals—and place them in relation to threatening reactionary, neo-fascist tendencies.

Credits

5

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

Quarter offered

Spring

HISC 221 Surveillance Culture: Privacy, Publicity, Art, and Critical Social Practice

Examines how artists and activists are responding by using surveillance technologies to look over "big brother's" shoulder and to create greater awareness of privacy issues. Course pays particular attention to metadata, big data, bio-power, and the relationship between various forms of surveillance with respect to privacy, publicity, and free speech.

Credits

5

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

Quarter offered

Spring

HISC 222B Theories of Late Capitalism

Writing-intensive course based on readings in HISC 222A.

Credits

5

Requirements

Prerequisite(s): HISC 222A. Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

HISC 223 Althusser

Through close readings of Althusser's major texts, this course systematically examines the political and philosophical thought of Louis Althusser and analyzes why he is one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century.

Credits

5

Instructor

Banu Bargu

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

HISC 224 Marx's Capital Vol. 1

Investigates the many layers of Marx's Capital.

Credits

5

Instructor

Massimiliano Tomba

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

Quarter offered

Fall

HISC 226 Liberty and Resistance

Examines modern conceptions of liberty from a non-liberal perspective. Proposes to inquire into the concept of liberty as an individual and collective right by exploring its philosophical justifications and criticism in thinkers, such as Kant, Hegel, and Marx.

Credits

5

Instructor

Massimiliano Tomba

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

HISC 227 Carl Schmitt

Provides a careful contextualization and a critically informed interrogation of the major works of Carl Schmitt, a figure at the center of many contemporary debates in political and legal thought.

Credits

5

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

HISC 230A Poetry, Language, Thought

Introduces the relation between philosophy and poetics in some major 20th-century poets and thinkers.

Credits

5

Instructor

David Marriott

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

HISC 230B Poetry, Language, Thought

Writing-intensive course based on readings in HISC 230A.

Credits

5

Instructor

David Marriott

Requirements

Prerequisite(s): HISC 230A, or permission of instructor.

HISC 231 From System to Fragment

Explores the rise and fall of the philosophical system. It proposes to inquire into the origin of the systematic philosophy, its development, its crisis, and its disintegration. This theoretical trajectory will be investigated together with alternative trajectories in thinkers, such as I. Kant, G. Fichte, Novalis, K.W.F. Schlegel, G.W.F. Hegel, M. Stirner, S. Kierkegaard, K. Marx, F. Nietzsche, L. Wittgenstein, T.W. Adorno, W. Benjamin, Empedocles.

Credits

5

Instructor

Massimiliano Tomba

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

Quarter offered

Winter

HISC 232 Music, Social, Thought

Examines the various modes through which intellectuals, artists, and other commentators have written about music as a socially situated art as well as the ways they have theorized the social through examinations of musical phenomena. Focus changes with course offering.

Credits

5

Instructor

Eric Porter

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

HISC 236 20th Century Critical Theory

Focuses on the critical-theoretical approaches that are associated with an interdisciplinary group of scholars affiliated with the Institute for Social Research, known as the "Frankfurt School". Surveys some of their most important contributions to the critique of capitalism, the authoritarian state, instrumental reason, culture, historical progress, law, and social organization. Discusses whether or not these different works fit together into a single tradition called "critical theory" and what theoretical and political implications the gesture of such naming entails. Investigates the normative foundations of critique and the philosophical influences that shape them. Course also explores the different "generations" of the Frankfurt School and map out the relationship of these thinkers to the traditions of Western Marxism, psychoanalysis, and social theory. Concludes by analyzing the limitations of critical theory and the intellectual challenges it faces in the contemporary world.

Credits

5

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

Quarter offered

Spring

HISC 237A Historical Materialism

Students read landmark works of classical and contemporary Marxism. Writings from Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Lukacs, Gramsci, Adorno, Benjamin, Sartre, Althusser, Anderson, Jameson, and Zizek are addressed.

Credits

5

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

Repeatable for credit

Yes

HISC 237B Historical Materialism

Writing-intensive seminar based on HISC 237A. Students read landmark works of classical and contemporary Marxism. Writings from Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Lukacs, Gramsci, Adorno, Benjamin, Sartre, Althusser, Anderson, Jameson, and Zizek are discussed.

Credits

5

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

Repeatable for credit

Yes

HISC 240 Basic Principles of University-Level Pedagogy

Provides training for graduate students in university-level pedagogy in general. Under the supervision of the department chair, coordinated by a graduate student with substantial experience as a teaching assistant.

Credits

2

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

Repeatable for credit

Yes

Quarter offered

Fall

HISC 242A Violence and Phenomenology: Fanon/Hegel/Sartre

Study of the work and influence of Frantz Fanon from a range of viewpoints: existential, phenomenological, psychoanalytic, and political; a variety of genres: film, literature, case history, and critique; and a set of institutional histories: clinical, cultural, and intellectual.

Credits

5

Instructor

David Marriott

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

HISC 242B Violence and Phenomenology: Fanon/Hegel/Sartre

Writing intensive course based on readings in HISC 242A.

Credits

5

Instructor

David Marriott

Requirements

Prerequisite: HISC 242A. Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

HISC 246 Black Radicalism

Examines the history of black radical intellectual, cultural, political, and/or social movements. May take the form of a survey of different aspects of black radicalism or may focus on a particular individual, groups, period, etc.

Credits

5

Instructor

Eric Porter

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

HISC 248 Black Critical Theory

Offers a critical introduction and overview of black critical theory across multiple fields and genres. Beginning with the question of race and ontology, students go on to consider questions of sovereignty and domination, freedom and liberation, identity and difference, and conclude with a study of race and the post-human. Major thinkers studied include: Sylvia Wynter, Achille Mbembe, Frantz Fanon, and W.E.B. DuBois, as well as contemporary figures, such as Frank Wilderson, Fred Moten, and Hortense Spillers.

Credits

5

Instructor

David Marriott

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

HISC 252 Poststructuralism

French poststructuralism, with particular attention to the main philosophical texts of Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault. Other representative theorists as well as critics of poststructuralism are studied as time permits.

Credits

5

Cross Listed Courses

PHIL 252

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

Repeatable for credit

Yes

HISC 261 Modern Intellectual History

Survey of 19th- and 20th-century intellectual history that focuses on a cross-section of major works from Hegel to Levi-Strauss.

Credits

5

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

HISC 262 Critical Theory After Habermas

Examines key works of Frankfurt School theorist Jurgen Habermas, his followers, and critics, on topics such as the public sphere, the theory of communicative action, power and domination, and religion and secularism.

Credits

5

Instructor

Tyrus Miller

Requirements

Prerequisite(s): Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

HISC 263 European Philosophies of Difference

Survey of European philosophies of difference, tracing the evolution of philosophical concepts and frameworks from Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Bergson, and Heidegger through later 20th-century French post-structuralist, feminist, and Frankfurt School theory.

Credits

5

Instructor

Tyrus Miller

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

HISC 264 The Idea of Africa

Examines the position of Africa in cultural studies and the simultaneous processes of over- and under-representation of the continent that mark enunciations of the global and the local. Themes include defining diaspora, the West as philosophy, and Africa in the global economy.

Credits

5

Cross Listed Courses

FMST 264

Instructor

Gina Dent

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

Quarter offered

Spring

HISC 265A Biopolitics l: Problematics

Focuses on the theorization of life and death in relation to power as proposed by 20th-century thinkers. Investigates how a biopolitical problematic has emerged and what insights into politics it offers. Explores the different ways in which thinkers have conceptualized biopolitics and its broader implications.

Credits

5

Instructor

Banu Bargu

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

Quarter offered

Spring

HISC 265B Biopolitics II: Corporealities

Focuses on the exploration of biopolitics and necropolitics on the body. Examines how the body has become deeply integrated into power relations in modern society. Also explores different forms of corporeality that are conduits of political struggle and sites of transgression, resistance, and refusal.

Credits

5

Instructor

Banu Bargu

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

HISC 268A Rethinking Capitalism

Readings include works by speakers at UCSC's Rethinking Capitalism Initiative. Topics are: (1) financialization versus commodification (how options-theory has changed capitalism); (2) material markets (how this theory performs); and (3) valuation and contingency (how economies make worlds).

Credits

5

Cross Listed Courses

ANTH 268A

Instructor

Robert Meister

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

HISC 268B Rethinking Capitalism

HISC 268A addressed changes in the theory and practice of capitalism as derivatives markets have become increasingly central to it. This course, which can be regarded as either background or sequel, concerns questions that surround recent debates about derivatives from the standpoint of broader developments in law, culture, politics, ethics, ontology, and theology. What would it mean to see questions of contingency and value as a challenge to late-modern understandings of these modes of thought?

Credits

5

Cross Listed Courses

ANTH 268B

Instructor

Robert Meister

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

HISC 269 Property and Possession

Covers modern conceptions of property and their critique. Inquires into the concept of property as an individual right by exploring its philosophical justifications and criticism in thinkers, such as John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, G.W. F. Hegel, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, and Karl Marx.

Credits

5

Instructor

Massimiliano Tomba

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

HISC 271 Historical Temporalities

Explores the critique of the unilinear historical time through the prism of Reinhart Koselleck, Walter Benjamin, and Ernst Bloch's attempts to reconfigure the concepts of time and history. During the course, students investigate how time affects both representation of reality and political praxis.

Credits

5

Instructor

Massimiliano Tomba

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

HISC 272 Deprovincializing Marx

Course aims to rethink Marx against the grain, from the debate with Russian populists to Capital and the Grundrisse. Investigates formal subsumption not as a historical stage, but as a form that denotes how capitalism encounters, incorporates, and combines existing modes of production without creating a homogeneous world.

Credits

5

Instructor

Massimiliano Tomba

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

HISC 275 Sovereignties

The guiding thought of this seminar is the question of what is, and is not, sovereign. Exploring a wide range of authors (such as Bodin, Hobbes, Spinoza, Rousseau, Kant, Schmitt, Bataille, and Fanon), this seminar addresses the most salient problems in recent discussions of sovereignty.

Credits

5

Instructor

David Marriott

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

HISC 285 Topics in Political Theology

Readings focus on the early 20th-century rediscovery of political theology; its use in theorizations of the Holocaust; and its return in 21st-centurty debates on empires, war, terror, enmity, reconciliation, fanaticism, human rights, political economy, and global catastrophe. Students cannot receive credit for this course and HISC 85.

Credits

5

Instructor

Robert Meister

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

Repeatable for credit

Yes

HISC 291 Advising

Independent study formalizing the advisee-adviser relationship. Regular meetings to plan, assess and monitor academic progress, and to evaluate coursework as necessary. May be used to develop general bibliography of background reading and trajectory of study in preparation for the qualifying examination.

Credits

2

Repeatable for credit

Yes

Quarter offered

Fall, Winter, Spring

HISC 292 Practicum in Composition

A practicum in the genres of scholarly writing, for graduate students working on the composition of their qualifying essay or doctoral dissertation.

Credits

5

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

HISC 293A Field Study

Research carried out in field settings, based on a project approved by the responsible faculty. The student must file a prospectus with the department office before undertaking the research and a final report of activities upon return.

Credits

5

Repeatable for credit

Yes

HISC 293B Field Study

Research carried out in field settings, based on a project approved by the responsible faculty. The student must file a prospectus with the department office before undertaking the research and a final report of activities upon return.

Credits

10

Repeatable for credit

Yes

HISC 293C Field Study

Research carried out in field settings, based on a project approved by the responsible faculty. The student must file a prospectus with the department office before undertaking the research and a final report of activities upon return.

Credits

15

Repeatable for credit

Yes

HISC 294A Ind Study-Teaching

Directed graduate research and writing coordinated with the teaching of undergraduates. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.

Credits

5

Repeatable for credit

Yes

HISC 294B Ind Study-Teaching

Directed graduate research and writing coordinated with the teaching of undergraduates. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.

Credits

10

Repeatable for credit

Yes

HISC 294C Ind Study-Teaching

Directed graduate research and writing coordinated with the teaching of undergraduates. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.

Credits

15

Repeatable for credit

Yes

HISC 295 Directed Reading

Systematic working through a prearranged bibliography which is filed as a final report at the end of the quarter with the signature of the instructor. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.

Credits

5

Repeatable for credit

Yes

Quarter offered

Fall, Winter, Spring

HISC 295A Directed Reading

Systematic working through a prearranged bibliography which is filed as a final report at the end of the quarter with the signature of the instructor. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.

Credits

5

Repeatable for credit

Yes

HISC 295B Directed Reading

Systematic working through a prearranged bibliography which is filed as a final report at the end of the quarter with the signature of the instructor. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.

Credits

10

Repeatable for credit

Yes

HISC 295C Directed Reading

Systematic working through a prearranged bibliography which is filed as a final report at the end of the quarter with the signature of the instructor. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.

Credits

15

Repeatable for credit

Yes

HISC 296 Special Student Seminar

A seminar study group for graduate students focusing each quarter on various problems in the history of consciousness. A statement and evaluation of the work done in the course will be provided each quarter by the students who have participated in the course for that quarter, and reviewed by the responsible faculty.

Credits

5

Repeatable for credit

Yes

Quarter offered

Fall, Winter, Spring

HISC 297A Independent Study

Independent study and research under faculty supervision. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.

Credits

5

Repeatable for credit

Yes

HISC 297B Independent Study

Independent study and research under faculty supervision. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.

Credits

10

Repeatable for credit

Yes

HISC 297C Independent Study

Independent study and research under faculty supervision. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.

Credits

15

Repeatable for credit

Yes

HISC 298 Doctoral Colloquium

Under the supervision of a History of Consciousness faculty member, students finishing their dissertation meet weekly or bi-weekly to read and discuss selected draft chapters, design difficulties and composition problems.

Credits

5

Repeatable for credit

Yes

HISC 299A Thesis Research

Prerequisite(s): advancement to candidacy.

Credits

5

Repeatable for credit

Yes

HISC 299B Thesis Research

Prerequisite(s): advancement to candidacy.

Credits

10

Repeatable for credit

Yes

HISC 299C Thesis Research

Prerequisite(s): advancement to candidacy.

Credits

15

Repeatable for credit

Yes