Syllabus
Week 1 History, Nation, Community (1)
Readings: Etienne Balibar, “Racism and Nationalism” and “The Nation Form: History and Ideology,” Etienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein, Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities (Verso, 1991), 37-67 and 86-106.
Week 2 History, Nation, Community (2)
Readings: Benedict Anderson, “Introduction” and “Official Nationalism and Imperialism,” Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (Verso, 1991), 1-8 and 83-112, Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire,” Representations, no. 26, Special Issue: Memory and Counter-Memory (Spring, 1989), 7-24; Thongchai Winichakul, “Preface,” “Introduction,” and “Geo-Body,” Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-Body of a Nation (Hawaii UP, 1994), ix-xi, 1-19, and 128-39; Karatani Kōjin, “Introduction,” “Discovery of Landscape,” and “Discovery of Interiority,” Origins of Modern Japanese Literature, trans. by Brett de Bary et al. (Duke University, 1993), 1-10, 11-44, and 45-75.
Week 3 Signification, Representation, Meaning (1)
Readings: Pierre Macherey, “Some Elementary Concepts: the Spoken and the Unspoken,” A Theory of Literary Production (Taylor & Francis, 2006), 95-100; Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (Vintage), first half.
Week 4 Signification, Representation, Meaning (2)
Reading: Foucault, The Order of Things (Vintage), second half; Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Bonding in Difference: Interview with Alfred Arteaga,” ed. by Donna Landry and
Gerald Maclean, The Spivak Reader (Routledge, 1996), 15-28.
Week 5 Time, Space, History (1)
Reading: Michel Foucault, “Questions on Geography,” Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews &
Other Writings 1972-1977, ed. and trans. by Colin Gordon et al. (Vintage, 1980), 63-77;
Reinhart Koselleck, “Introduction,” “Author’s Preface,” and “Part I,” Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, trans. by Keith Tribe (Columbia, 2004), vii-xxii, 1-6, 7-72.
Week 6 Time, Space, History (1)
Reading: Koselleck, “Part III,” Futures Past, 153-276.
Week 7 Holiday
Week 8 Modernity: Experience of Past and Present
Readings: Walter Benjamin, “Task of the Translator,” “The Storyteller,” and “Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Illuminations: Essays and Reflections (Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1968), 69-82, 83-109, and 217-251; Foucault, “Truth and
Power,” Power/Knowledge (Vintage, 1980), 109-33.
Week 9 Language, Enunciation, Identity
Reading: Jacques Derrida, Monolingualism of the Other; Or, the Prosthesis of Origin, trans. by Patrick
Mensah (Stanford University, 1998); Homi K. Bhabha, “Of Mimicry and Man: the
Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse,” The Location of Culture (Routledge, 1994), 85-92.
Week 10 Translation, Transformation, Positionality (1)
Readings: Susan Sontag, On Photography (1977)
Week 11 Translation, Transformation, Positionality (2)
Readings: Mahasweta Devi, “The Author in Conversation,” “Translator’s Preface,” “The
Hunt,” “Douloti the Bountiful,” and “Afterword,” Imaginative Maps, trans. by Gayatri
Chakravorty Spivak (Routledge, 1995), ix-xxii, xxiii-xxix, 1-18, 19-94, 197-205.
Week 12 Wrap-up
Readings: Julia Kristeva, “Might Not Universality Be . . . Our Own Foreignness,” Strangers to
Ourselves, trans. by Leon S. Roudiez (Columbia UP, 1991), 169-92.
Annotation
The history of concepts, or conceptual history is a branch of historical and cultural studies that deal with the historical semantics of terms. Concepts of “beauty,” “righteousness,” and “morality,” for example, existed throughout history, but these terms did not necessarily signify the same thing in different historical moments. In order to understand the meaning of a given concept in the specific historical context, we cannot simply apply our presentist perspectives to the concept. Rather, we need to consider how concepts acquire their meaning from the uses in their respective historical contexts, and it is very important to recognize that all the dimensions of the meaning of a concept are deeply rooted in diachronic and synchronic contexts. During 12 weeks, we devote our attention and analysis to the exploration of concepts vital to the construction of knowledge, writing, time/history, space, and community, just to name a few, to make sense of the experience of past and present in the present context of globalization.
Conceptual history is essentially interdisciplinary, and we will read a variety of theoretical texts to get a grip on the philosophical and methodological ideas. As for preparing for the seminar, students must finish all assigned readings before the seminar. If the syllabus failed to note, please read such sections as “Acknowledgement,”
“Preface,” “Introduction,” and “Conclusion” in order to get a grasp of the book’s overarching argument, goals, and visions. “Acknowledgement” certainly helps to illustrate intellectual connections and patterns of scholarship in which the author is positioned, and this kind of information becomes useful to map out the dynamics of the field and hence to position yourself within. Students shall bring a response paper to the seminar where they identify the major themes, issues, problems, or arguments of the author(s). Students are also encouraged to bring questions, while actively absorbing the ways in which they could use some of the theoretical insights from weekly readings to shape their own approach and methods. It is very important to reflect on how they can create a dialogue between the theoretical ideas and their own research questions, while rigorously questioning the validity of the argument introduced in the reading. Depending on the robustness of students’ participation, the seminar will introduce a weekly presentation (led by one student) in order to counter the quiet class environment.
Your participation in the Zoom discussion is absolutely necessary to make this course a success. If you have concerns about any aspect of the course, it is your responsibility to get in touch with me at your earliest convenience. I will be more than happy to meet and discuss any concerns you have.