[EU/TC] This course explores the intellectual history of the “Age of Extremes” by focusing on its feuding political ideas and their chief advocates: the public intellectuals. Liberalism, Conservatism, Communism, and Fascism were all created by intellectuals, and all relied on intellectuals for their ideological struggle. The course will investigate the many – glorious and inglorious – careers of intellectuals of very different agendas, polities, legacies and fates (Arendt, Gramsci, De Beauvoir, Sartre, Orwell, Schmitt, to name a few). The course thus has two goals: first, it is an introduction to twentieth-century political ideas in their historical contexts; second, it is an examination of public intellectuals, their history, role, responsibility and even accountability. Course materials will include historical analysis and works of fiction; works of propaganda and works of art; manifestos and political trial confessions. Two class meetings per week.
Fall semester. Professor A. Gordon.
Keywords
Attention to Issues of Class, Attention to Research, Transnational or World Cultures Taught in English
Offerings
2022-23: Not offered Other years: Offered in Fall 2019