Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus – November 8-10, 2007

In this text-based seminar scholars of literature, film, philosophy, and science will take up Frankenstein’s cultural footprint and use its vision to frame a discussion of science and the human in the modern world.    Returning to the novel begs the question of why it is that our culture has morphed Mary Shelley’s 1818 tale into the cluster of tropes that bear its name today: the mad-scientist thriller, the green-faced monster, and the “Franken-foods” that encode the dangers of scientific innovation are hardly recognizable in the pages of Shelley’s Romantic tragedy.  There is also far more to be gained from reading Frankenstein than a historical reference point.  The story about the consequences of reckless creation is one that resonates in the current climate of anxiety around the possibilities of biotechnology.  Frankenstein is also an exploration of the boundaries of the human, and anticipates modern discourses around, for example, biocybernetics and the ethical treatment of animals.  Our discussion will at once examine this fascinating novel on its own terms, and expand the context to include some of the most salient issues of today’s world.

Global Feminisms: Are Women’s Rights Human Rights? – January 17–19, 2008

Whether considering France’s attempt to ban Islamic headscarves or Oprah’s South African school for girls, feminists face complex and difficult questions when confronting the international scene.  For example, how relative or universal are ideas of women’s rights?  Is feminism is an American and European phenomenon that has been exported to other parts of the world, or are there indigenous varieties of feminism?  How do local “women’s movements” relate to global “feminist movements”?  On a practical level, what are the opportunities and constraints that affect struggles for political equality when they attempt to mobilize beyond the local and national community?  In this seminar, scholars from such fields as law, women’s studies, area and international studies, literature, political science, anthropology, and sociology will consider these questions as we explore the relationships between women’s rights and international human rights and between gender and international conflict.

Bollywood – March 6–8, 2008

The first Indian talkie was made in Bombay in 1931. By 1947 the Bombay film industry was among the largest industries of the country, and it now produces twice as many films as Hollywood--approximately one thousand per year. This seminar uses Bollywood as a lens through which to explore a range of issues central to our contemporary world.  These include South Asian imaginations of modernity and globalization; gender, sexuality and the family; religious devotion; class; and ethnic relations, as well as general questions about the relations between globalization, nationhood, and film culture. Inviting scholars from fields like cinema and media studies, area studies, gender studies, literature, sociology, and anthropology, we will also explore the mass appeal of Hindi film in other parts of the world, its importance to the Indian diaspora, and the recent embrace of Bollywood in the West.

Mind, Brain, and World: On Embodied Cognition – April 24–26, 2008

For the past few decades, there has been a wide-ranging rethinking of the nature of cognition. Researchers in a variety of fields, including neuroscience, developmental psychology, robotics and artificial intelligence, philosophy, and literary and cultural theory, have shifted away from the traditional cognitivist stance that imagines the mind as a device that processes abstract symbols according to formal rules. New accounts argue instead that embodiment (understood as the way that an organism’s sensorimotor system enables it to interact with its environment) is not merely accessory to but a necessary condition for cognition.  Put another way, embodied cognition means that there can no thinking independent of an embodied experience of the world. We will look at the various implications of this account of cognition, including its challenge to the distinction between perception and action, and its proposition that thinking beings should first and foremost be understood as beings that (inter)act in their world.