Spring 2025 Course Offerings

Also GOVT
Spring. 3 Credits. 
Patchen Markell
R 2-4:30pm
A.D. White House

According to Aristotle, human beings are political animals because they are speaking animals. What’s the connection? What are its implications? Is it anti-political to use violence to compel silence, or to vest authority in philosophical insights beyond language, or to coordinate action mechanically or algorithmically? Is this association of politics with speech ideological, a way of valorizing some utterances while casting others as mere noise? What are the implications of the double gesture of affirming human animality while simultaneously elevating humans above other animals? We’ll pursue these questions through a close engagement with the political theory of Hannah Arendt, whom we’ll place in critical conversation with a wide range of other ancient, modern, and contemporary sources.

https://classes.cornell.edu/browse/roster/SP25/class/SHUM/4698

Also ASIAN

Spring. 3 Credits. 
Angelica Allen
T 11:15am-1:45pm
A.D. White House

This seminar investigates the emergent concept of the Black Pacific, an area that scholars across multiple disciplines in recent years have begun to shed new light on. This course is designed to encourage an exploration of various methods including autobiography, video, film and others. This seminar seeks to examine the histories of African descendants to Asia via the Pacific rim and consider the ways in the varying concepts of Blackness itself may look different if we center our gaze on the trans-Pacific world. The term “Mapping” in the course title is in response to the often-overlooked encounters between peoples of African and Asian descent and the presence of African descendants in this region. 

https://classes.cornell.edu/browse/roster/SP25/class/SHUM/4699

Also ANTHR,JWST

Spring. 3 Credits. 
Jonathan Boyarin
T 2-4:30pm
A.D. White House

We will explore the thesis that far from being dead and therefore gone, the continued presence of the dead is absolutely foundational for the workings of Jewishness. What that “presence” could possibly mean, to us who do not usually think in terms of immortal spirit, will be a central puzzle for our discussions. We will also have scope for consideration of ways in which the continuing “weight” of the dead may inhibit needed change and rethinking. Readings will include selections from the Babylonian Talmud, Samuel Heilman’s When a Jew Dies, work in early modern cultural history, and studies of the culture of death and dying in contemporary Jewish communities, including the life and culture of Jewish cemeteries, especially in the New York area.

https://classes.cornell.edu/browse/roster/SP25/class/SHUM/4700

Spring. 3 Credits. 
Dawn LaValle Norman
R 11:15am-1:45pm
A.D. White House

What can you do with silence? One branch of silence studies tries to quiet the human element to hear the natural sounds around us. But many people who have the privilege to choose silence ‘on demand’ elect instead to carry on a more intense internal activity. This course will focus on interior conversations and their relationship to silence, interrogating the relationship between silence and creation, both mental creativity and works of craft. The course pairs modern theory with ancient texts from the early Christian ascetic tradition, written by authors such as Augustine of Hippo and Gregory Nazianzus, to draw out both the possibilities of silence as well as some of silent creation’s dark sides.

https://classes.cornell.edu/browse/roster/SP25/class/SHUM/4702

Also ASIAN 4703/6703, BSOC 4703/6703, STS 4703/6703. 

Spring. 3 Credits. 
Andrew Campana
M 2-4:30pm
A.D. White House

A “glitch” is when something goes “wrong” in digital media—sometimes, however, it is precisely when something “fails” that can tell us about the structures and forces that underlie that media. In this course we’ll be exploring a wide variety of examples of how media creators, artists, hackers, game developers, Deaf and disability activists, and other marginalized groups have used “glitches” to tell us something new about the digital, looking at works ranging from electronic literature to online horror stories to experimental video games and installation art. 

https://classes.cornell.edu/browse/roster/SP25/class/SHUM/4703