Fall 2021

Core Courses

The following courses satisfy Critical Theory Designated Emphasis core course requirements.

English 250 (Critical Theory 200)
Research Seminars: “Critical Philosophy: Kant, Hegel, Marx”

Dan Blanton
Mondays, 3-6 pm / Wheeler 301
Class #: English 21513

This course traces the formation of a ‘critical’ mode of thought, in philosophy and beyond, through the late 18th and 19th centuries, concentrating on the major works of Immanuel Kant, G. W. F. Hegel, and Karl Marx. It seeks to discern and to specify the modes of and claims for reason and critical knowledge in the wake of early modern rationalism and enlightenment empiricism–and in response to the contradictory effects of European modernization. Throughout, we will attend to the methods that distinguish critique from other philosophical practices and enterprises.

For students enrolled in (or planning to join) the Designated Emphasis Program in Critical Theory, this course also satisfies the requirement for Critical Theory 200, the first in the sequence of courses required for the D.E.

Gender & Women’s Studies 235 (Critical Theory 240*)
Capitalism, Gender and the Present Moment

Leslie Salzinger
Mondays, 3:30-6:30 pm / 602 Social Science Building
Class #: Gender & Women’s Studies 30179

Capitalism is often seen as a system that overrides everything in its path. However, a closer look at its development suggests that it emerged and still operates within and in relation to gender and racial domination, reconstituting those meanings and systems in turn. In this seminar, we will investigate that imbrication, exploring the role and constitution of gender and race in ongoing primitive accumulation, in the labor of social reproduction, and in the unfolding of the neoliberal present. Over the course of the semester, we will explore exploitation’s ongoing operations amid a broad terrain of appropriation by other means.

Geography 252 (Critical Theory 240*)
Southern Questions: Gramsci, Subalternity and the World

Sharad Chari
Mondays, 12-3 pm / 575 McCone
Class #: Geography 31980

Antonio Gramsci’s thought remains unique in various ways for bridging the socio-cultural and the political-economic, and the critique of capital as intertwined with other forms of social domination. Gramsci also offers a way of thinking across historical geographies of capital and revolution, and for translating different forms of critique. Gramsci has been central to rethinking the project of an open Marxist critique of modern social domination in the Global South, including forms of Black, Indigenous and otherwise subaltern critique everywhere. In this course, we read Gramsci’s thought in relation to the challenges of radical critique in various parts of the world, and to the kinds of ‘southern questions’ that they provoke.

German 256 (Critical Theory 240*)
History and concept: Phenomenology, narrative, figure

Karen Feldman
Wednesdays, 1-4 pm / 282 Dwinelle
Class #: German 32249

The practice of “conceptual history” (German: Begriffsgeschichte)—or, better said, “history of concepts”—combines several approaches and disciplines. The task of producing a historical narrative about a concept involves tethering an abstraction to material circumstances and contexts. It is also a phenomenological operation, insofar as a delineation of “what X concept means” takes place through various historical lenses. There is a philological aspect, insofar as concepts are attested in texts from a range of epochs. This combination of elements also involves what Blumenberg defines as a “metaphorological” analysis, insofar as the concept is described in a variety of figural modes. In this course we will look at a selection of “conceptual history” essays and works, along with their phenomenological and historical predecessors. Authors will include Heidegger, Arendt, Auerbach, Blumenberg, Habermas, and Koselleck, and concepts that will be examined will include history, time, being, freedom, and modernity.

*These courses can also fulfill the electives (Critical Theory 290) requirement

Elective Courses (Critical Theory 290)

The following courses satisfy Critical Theory Designated Emphasis elective requirements.

Anthropology 250A (Critical Theory 290)
Art/Cure

Stefania Pandolfo
Thursdays, 2-5 pm / Social Sciences 192
Class #: Anthropology 32822

In this seminar we will reflect together on the relation of art and healing–the curative, or agentive dimension of art, which, once centrally present to the practice and experience of sacred art, is today marginalized and disavowed, and limited to the function of art-therapy. We may think of the effigy, the mask and “sickness mask”, the image-example (mithal or `ibra in Arabic), as portals to the Invisible and the unknown, and of their connection to the existential dimensions of violence, life and death. The relationship of art and the cure takes on the other hand the front stage in the aesthetic, ritual, and medical practices, as well as, in the modality of disfiguration and distortion, in certain trends in European and extra-European modern art, and in that frequentation of the unknown and the uncanny that are Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis. In this perspective, we will explore the capacity of the artistic process to produce a shift in the coordinates of the real, carrying us beyond the boundary of the visible and the invisible, the living and the dead, to produce uncanny and unexpected angles from which to feel, think, and see. Artistic, psychoanalytic, and mediumistic practices explore the gaps, silences, and voids of modernity and reason. May these traumatic cuts be also an “abyss” which may grant us an access to an otherwise?

Education 280A (Proseminar) (Critical Theory 290)
Sociocultural Critique of Education

Zeus Leonardo
Tuesdays, 1-4 pm / Berkeley Way West 4310
Class #: Education 29027

These interdisciplinary seminars address a series of questions. In what ways can philosophical, sociological, anthropological, historical, and psychological forms of inquiry be brought together to bear on the analysis of learning, on schooling, and on education more generally? What do we mean by critical and interpretive theories, and what are their relations with social practice? How can education come to constitute itself otherwise than in its current form?

Education 281A (Critical Theory 290)
Race, Whiteness Studies and Education

Zeus Leonardo
Mondays, 1-4 pm / Berkeley Way West 4310
Class #: Education 30565

This course is designed to introduce graduate students to the area of whiteness studies and how it has been taken up by education scholars. As a relatively recent innovation (arguably about 30 years old), whiteness studies has become a burgeoning literature across many disciplines, from history to literature to education. It asks the student to assess what this innovation within race theory (as well as secondarily within other theories, such as class and gender analysis) produces in terms of knowledge and understanding of a general racial predicament. For example, what is particular about whiteness studies as a field, which classical race scholarship could not have explained adequately? In addition, the course asks what the conceptual and practical applications of whiteness studies might look like in a field like education. For instance, what does focusing on whiteness in a racially charged atmosphere accomplish in the end, even if it aims to study it critically? Finally, the course asks what can be done, in the name of whiteness studies, to ameliorate racial disparities.

Gender & Women’s Studies 235 (Critical Theory 240/290)
Capitalism, Gender and the Present

Leslie Salzinger
Mondays, 3:30-6:30 pm / 602 Social Science Building
Class #: Gender & Women’s Studies 30179

Capitalism is often seen as a system that overrides everything in its path. However, a closer look at its development suggests that it emerged and still operates within and in relation to gender and racial domination, reconstituting those meanings and systems in turn. In this seminar, we will investigate that imbrication, exploring the role and constitution of gender and race in ongoing primitive accumulation, in the labor of social reproduction, and in the unfolding of the neoliberal present. Over the course of the semester, we will explore exploitation’s ongoing operations amid a broad terrain of appropriation by other means.

Geography 252 (Critical Theory 240/290)
Southern Questions: Gramsci, Subalternity and the World

Sharad Chari
Mondays, 12:00–3:00 pm / McCone 575
Class #: Geography 31980

Antonio Gramsci’s thought remains unique in various ways for bridging the socio-cultural and the political-economic, and the critique of capital as intertwined with other forms of social domination. Gramsci also offers a way of thinking across historical geographies of capital and revolution, and for translating different forms of critique. Gramsci has been central to rethinking the project of an open Marxist critique of modern social domination in the Global South, including forms of Black, Indigenous and otherwise subaltern critique everywhere. In this course, we read Gramsci’s thought in relation to the challenges of radical critique in various parts of the world, and to the kinds of ‘southern questions’ that they provoke.

German 256 (Critical Theory 240/290)
History and concept: Phenomenology, narrative, figure

Karen Feldman
Wednesdays, 1-4 pm / 282 Dwinelle
Class #: German 32249

The practice of “conceptual history” (German: Begriffsgeschichte)—or, better said, “history of concepts”—combines several approaches and disciplines. The task of producing a historical narrative about a concept involves tethering an abstraction to material circumstances and contexts. It is also a phenomenological operation, insofar as a delineation of “what X concept means” takes place through various historical lenses. There is a philological aspect, insofar as concepts are attested in texts from a range of epochs. This combination of elements also involves what Blumenberg defines as a “metaphorological” analysis, insofar as the concept is described in a variety of figural modes. In this course we will look at a selection of “conceptual history” essays and works, along with their phenomenological and historical predecessors. Authors will include Heidegger, Arendt, Auerbach, Blumenberg, Habermas, and Koselleck, and concepts that will be examined will include history, time, being, freedom, and modernity.

German 214/Comparative Literature 215 (Critical Theory 290)
Robert Musil and European Modernism

Niklaus Largier
Tuesdays, 3-6 pm / Dwinelle 282
Class #: German 30271

This seminar provides an introduction to one of the key works of European modernism, Robert Musil’s unfinished novel The Man Without Qualities. Starting with two shorter narrative texts and the first chapters of the novel, we will focus on Musil’s modernist prose style. We will then move on to his understanding of the ‘essayistic novel’ and its engagement with science and psychology; psychiatry, the law, and morality; questions of perception and affect; the role of gender, sexuality, and violence; and the desire for “other states” of experience. This is a novel that is—from Emerson to Nietzsche, Mach, and Freud—in dialog with a wide range of scientific, psychological, and theoretical texts, and it will be our goal to bring many of these into view. Students who are interested in this seminar should read as much of the novel as possible before the start of the fall semester. With the exception of a few additional materials, all texts will be available in English and in German.

History 280/Architecture 279 (Critical Theory 290)
Yesterday’s Tomorrows: Past Visions of the Future

Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann (History) & Andrew Shanken (Architecture)
Wednesdays, 9 am-12 pm / Dwinelle 3205
Class #: History 25570 / Architecture 15096

The future ain’t what it used to be. In the two centuries after the French Revolution, the future was everything—the promise of a radical break with the past and present, the possible dreamland of utopia or apocalypse. All aspects of modern society, from architecture and planning, industry and infrastructure, law and labor, technology and mass culture were “temporalized,” sucked into the vortex of an envisioned future. In contrast, our experience seems to be dominated by stasis and presentism, an unending now.

This course explores how the future was imagined at different moments of crisis from the Enlightenment’s invention of the “future” to the late twentieth century’s turn to presentism and nostalgia. Using a variety of case studies drawn from different sources (historiography, film, architecture and so on) and periods (around 1789, post-WWI, Depression, post-WWII, 1960s) it provides a sampling of possibilities and models for a final student project, an in-depth, original research paper. Several themes thread their way through the course, including the role of the “unbuilt” in architectural history and practice, the uses of the future in the construction of social and political communities, memorials and mythologies, the anticipation of urban ruin and the perplexing synchronicity of competing conceptions of past, present and future. We will explore how the future was embedded in concrete practices and experiences but also how the concept of the “future” itself was completely transformed. Readings are drawn from different disciplines, times and places but the course’s “home” positions are European/North American history and architecture. Student projects from other geographies and disciplines are welcome.

Law 267.4/History 280D 002 (Critical Theory 290)
American Legal History

Christopher Tomlins
Mondays, 2:10-5 pm / 2240 Piedmont Rm 102
Class #: History 25183

NOTE: This class follows Berkeley Law’s academic calendar (August 16th-November 22nd). Critical Theory enrollment is limited; permission from the instructor is required.

The Law & History Foundation Seminar is a reading and discussion seminar in American legal history. It is the Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program’s Foundation Seminar in Law and History. It is open to all JSP graduate students, Berkeley Law JD, LLM and JSD students, and graduate students. This is a shared course with History and Critical Theory; students from those departments should register in their department’s course accordingly.

Legal history is as much history as law, and history is primarily a discipline of the book. This course focuses on books, particularly books about the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We will achieve a thorough grounding in American legal history by reading a wide selection of the field’s best work: classics that have structured the field (like James Willard Hurst’s Law and the Conditions of Freedom and Morton Horwitz’s Transformation of American Law); the best work of the current generation (like Laura Edwards’ The People and their Peace and Michael Willrich’s City of Courts); and notable recent work by younger scholars (like Karen Tani’s States of Dependency and Ken Mack’s Representing the Race). We will also explore the methodological and theoretical possibilities for innovation that exist at the conjunction between history and other social science and humanities disciplines. The course concentrates on the United States, but to set our discussion of theory and method off with a bang, we will begin (literally) in the dark undergrowth of a forest in eighteenth-century England.

In the American law curriculum, a course like American Legal History is usually considered an “enrichment” or “perspective” course because it does not offer instruction in doctrine or skills directly oriented to law practice. One might consider the absence of a clear instrumental function liberating. Law school is likely to be the last extended period in a budding lawyer’s life when s/he can explore general ideas about law, probe theories, think about large issues of justice or policy, and develop skills in research and analysis. Still, lack of direct relevance may not seem very sensible to students with crowded schedules. Why read all this stuff if it has no direct instrumental take-away? There are two answers to this sensible question. The first is the enrichment/perspective answer: to study the history of law is to study the culture and practice of one’s chosen profession. Historical knowledge supplies both “deep background” on what one is doing in the present, and also a fund of examples and parallels that help one understand why one is doing it. The second answer is that how one studies in a course like this can be of real practical benefit. Lawyers (particularly young lawyers) are required to assimilate large amounts of information efficiently in a short period of time, grasp the essentials, and analyze them. This course requires that you develop an ability to assimilate and analyze large quantities of information. Each week we will read a book, in whole or in part. Class participants will come to class prepared and willing to talk about what they have read. To prime discussion, each participant will circulate (via bCourses) brief and informal impressions/questions about the week’s reading to every other participant and to the instructor. For detailed information on readings and assessment, see the course syllabus (on bCourses or obtainable from the instructor). Students enroll in this course for 3 units. JSP students are required to take an additional 1 unit in conjunction with this course through enrolling in Law 602. The additional unit of credit requires additional work within the course framework. To enroll in Law 602, JSP students must complete an Add Form by the add deadline and submit the completed form to the Registrar’s Office. Graduate students from campus units outside Law/JSP are also required to take the additional 1 unit so that they will earn the 4 units of credit customary in non-law graduate courses.  

Philosophy 290 (Critical Theory 290)
Hegel’s Subjective Logic

Andreja Novakovic
Tuesdays, 12-2 pm / Moses 234
Class #: Philosophy 17504

Hegel’s Science of Logic is the very core of his system, laying out the categories that he took to be fundamental to both nature and spirit. In this seminar we will read the third and final part, the “Subjective Logic,” in its entirety. We will focus on Hegel’s accounts of the concept, judgment and syllogism, teleology, and cognition. We will consider two broader questions: 1. What are Hegel’s metaphysical commitments? and 2. How is he building upon and departing from Kant’s “Transcendental Logic”?