HISC - History of Consciousness

HISC1 Introduction to History of Consciousness

Investigates the politics of identity and recognition as the basis for claims about institutional legitimacy and social struggle. Examines such diverse figures as Sartre, Fanon, Bataille, Foucault, Lacan, Levinas, Derrida, Deleuze, Zizek, and Badiou.

Credits

5

HISC12 Historical Introduction to Philosophy

Focuses on moral, metaphysical, and epistemological issues using classical texts along with some contemporary readings on related philosophical problems. Plato, Kant, and Sartre provide the central readings on ethics, while Descartes, Hume, Kant (again), and Wittgenstein provide the central metaphysical and epistemological discussions. Issues of philosophy of language and method are highlighted throughout.

Credits

5

HISC60A What is Revolution?

Studies the modern concept of revolution. Course proposes to inquire into the concept of revolution, insurgency, revolt and resistance in theory and practice. The course aims to analyze thinkers such Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, G.W. F. Hegel, Karl Marx, Carl Schmitt, Hannah Arendt, V.I. Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, and the revolutionary declarations from the French Revolution to the Zapatista insurgency.

Credits

5

HISC60C What Is Resistance?

Explores the politics of resistance and how different thinkers have conceptualized what it means to resist, why it is necessary, and with what methods it should be done. Side by side with the theorists of resistance, the course analyzes examples of resistance from around the world, traversing different time periods, geographies, and cultures. Examples range from peasant revolts to labor movements, feminist struggles to anti-war mobilizations, prisoner uprisings to anti-colonial wars and contemporary forms of corporeal, self-sacrificial resistance. Relying upon the concrete political problems posed by each historical instance as springboards into larger theoretical concerns, the course focuses on questions such as the nature of power relations, different forms of political organization and representation, the relationship between means and ends, the role of violence, and the function of different media, especially as they become manifest in the complexity of real politics.

Credits

5

HISC80N Prophecy Against Empire

In the core of a London slum, with wars raging all around him, the printer William Blake sounded the trumpet of prophecy. This course channels Blake's war-time revelations, laying bare the antimonies of imperial violence and the prophetic tradition.

Credits

5

HISC80O Understanding Popular Music

Students develop the skills necessary to analyze popular music. First, challenging common-sense understandings of how music functions. And second, understanding how history works its way into musical forms.

Credits

5

HISC80P The Black Panther Party: History and Theory of a Political Movement

Examines the history and theory of the Black Panther Party (BPP). Texts situate the historical conditions leading to the BPP's rise; theoretical inspirations and contributions; national and international reach; and decline following state repression, electoral campaigns, and guerrilla warfare.

Credits

5

HISC80S War and the Media

Examines how war is represented in journalism using perspectives from political theory, intellectual history, and related fields. Materials aim to challenge media depictions, from the Civil War to the War on Terror, assessing how news shapes knowledge of conflict.

Credits

5

HISC85 Politics and Religion

Considers both the religious sources of political ideas and the political sources of religious ideas, addressing topics, such as sovereignty, justice, love, reason, revelation, sacrifice, victimhood, evil, racism, rebellion, reconciliation, and human rights.

Credits

5

HISC102 Philosophy and Poetics

Introduction to the relationship between philosophy and poetics in some major 19th- and 20th-century poets and thinkers.

Credits

5

HISC105 Antisocial Media

Provides an introduction to critical scholarship on media infrastructures with a focus on cybernetic systems, internet protocol, surveillance, logistics, and finance. It explores how these configurations of power are reorganizing our societies and restructuring our subjectivities.

Credits

5

HISC106 The U.S. Horror Film: Race, Capitalism, and Monsters

Analyzes films and images to consider how the genre of horror has screened the problems, expectations, and fantasized afterlives of racism, labor exploitation, ruin, and war.

Credits

5

HISC108 Parables for a Warming Planet: The Politics of Climate Change

Takes up the literary form of the parable to illuminate a pressing and complex problem: the threat of global climate change. How can the simplest of stories help us to explore our options for a planetary future?

Credits

5

HISC109 Liberalism and Violence

Explores the meanings of modernity, religion, and violence and examines the conceptual status that war and sovereignty, long associated with religious belief, have since been accorded within the modern humanist and secular tradition. Also explores aspects of this tradition and their relationship to questions of morality and violence and how violence-and its relationship to secularism-can be better understood today as a mode of negotiating human existence in a world dominated by technology and its myths.

Credits

5

HISC110 Histories of the Atom

This interdisciplinary course considers the atom in four respects: as philosophical idea, as weapon, as catastrophe, and as clock. Students will learn about ancient atomisms, radiometric dating, the Manhattan Project, the bombing of Hiroshima, and the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

Credits

5

HISC111 States, War, Capitalism

Survey of seminal work on ancient origins of the state, diverse geo-political systems of war and diplomacy, and consequences of the formation of the world market on the evolution of geo-political systems up to and beyond the wars of today.

Credits

5

HISC112 Foundations in Critical Theory

Concentrates on the Marxist tradition of critical theory, centering on classical texts by Marx and by writers in the Marxist tradition up to the present.

Credits

5

HISC113 History of Capitalism

Surveys major developments in the capitalist world economy from the 13th century to today. Topics include: the transition to capitalism in Europe; the emergence of banking; colonization, slavery, and uneven development; industrialization; and globalization.

Credits

5

HISC115 The Radical Right, A Symptom of Capitalism

Provides the historical context and the theoretical tools necessary for understanding today's radical right. Specific focus on considering the far right in the context of radical constructions under conditions of late capitalism.

Credits

5

HISC117 Making the Refugee Century: Non-Citizens and Modernity

Examines the material, discursive, and racialized conditions that have produced refugees in the last century. Also examines the social claims made by refugees, institutional responses to them, and political alternatives to state belonging

Credits

5

HISC119 Politics of Recognition

Course touches on the philosophical roots of Hegel's text, starting from the pre-World War II rereading of Hegel's master/slave dialectic that became the kernel of postwar thought arising from struggles over capitalism, communism, fascism, racism, colonialism, and feminism.

Credits

5

HISC120 What is a State?

Examines the modern concept of state, its anthropological assumptions, categories, its critique, and its crisis. Inquires into the concept of representation, borders, security and control in thinkers, such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, G.W.F. Hegel, Karl Marx, Carl Schmitt, and Lenin.

Credits

5

HISC125 Queerness and Race

Gives students a grasp of different definitions and uses of the concept queerness in its relationship to race and how it's tied to the politics of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) identity.

Credits

5

HISC129 Politics of Violence

Inquires into the relationship between politics and violence as articulated by early modern, modern, and contemporary political theorists. Investigates the role of violence in the constitution and maintenance of sovereign power and the construction of the modern subject of politics.

Credits

5

HISC131 Postcolonial Paths

How postcolonial thought occasions the reconsideration of the Western tradition of political philosophy and the discovery of alternative pathways of modernization within it.

Credits

5

HISC140A Africa: How to Make a Continent

Introduces the histories of exploration, museum collection, and photography that shape historical and contemporary ideas about race, culture, and place in Africa.

Credits

5

HISC150 Radical Political Theory

Provides an introduction to classical and contemporary texts of radical political theory, a body of work that critically examines fundamental premises of politics. Addresses the question What is the 'political?'

Credits

5

HISC160 Advanced Topics in History of Consciousness

Provides students an opportunity for in-depth analysis of advanced topics within the history of consciousness arena. Course topic changes; see the Class Search for current topic.

Credits

5

HISC163 Freud

The development of Freud's concept of mind. Extensive reading tracing the origins and development of Freud's theories and concepts (e.g., abreaction, psychic energy, defense, wish-fulfillment, unconscious fantasy, dreams, symptoms, transference, cure, sexuality) and emphasizing the underlying model of the mind and mental functioning.

Credits

5

HISC185C Comparative Religion: A Critical Introduction

Introduces the comparative study of world religions and provides critical entry points toward the understanding of its history as a discipline. Special emphasis on the troubled history of imperialism, orientalism, and facile generalizations that have always accompanied the attempt to understand foreign or dead cultures.

Credits

5

HISC185T Marxism and Feminism

Critically engages with feminist-Marxist perspectives on social-reproduction. Introduces the foundation of Marxism and feminist-Marxist critique while examining the international feminist struggle historically from the origins of capitalism to the present moment.

Credits

5

HISC187 The Emergence of the Avant-garde from Disenchantment to Dada

Examines the socio-political and cultural origins of early 20th-century avant-garde movements focusing on the vanguard movement of futurism, the roles played by the disenchantment of the world, and technological rationalization as it relates to warfare and aesthetic production.

Credits

5

HISC199 Tutorial

A program of individual study arranged between an undergraduate student and a faculty member. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.

Credits

5

HISC203A Approaches to History of Consciousness

An introduction to history of consciousness required of all incoming students. The seminar concentrates on theory, methods, and research techniques. Major interpretive approaches drawn from cultural and political analysis are discussed in their application to specific problems in the history of consciousness. Prerequisite(s): first-year standing in the program. See the department office for more information. (Formerly course 203.)

Credits

5

HISC203B Approaches to History of Consciousness

Writing-intensive course based on readings in course 203A.

Credits

5

HISC214 What is a Subject?

Examines major streams of theorization about the subject in postwar and contemporary continental and critical theory. Thinkers include Althusser, Badiou, Balibar, Butler, Fanon, Foucault, Honneth, Laclau and Mouffe, Mbembe, Ranciere, and Sartre.

Credits

5

HISC215 History of Unconsciousness

There is a history of political consciousness that culminated in the project of enlightenment. There is a history of individual, collective, and political unconscious, which culminated in fascism. These two histories are intertwined, but their outcome is not preconceived. On the contrary, their relationship and integration constitute a field of possibilities for social, political, and human experimentation. This course inquires into the concept of political unconscious by exploring thinkers, such as Kant, Foucault, Adorno, Horkheimer, Freud, Jung, Reich, Fromm, Marcuse, and Klein.

Credits

5

HISC216 Critical Race/Ethnic Studies

Explores foundational and emergent theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of race. Issues examined include the production of race within and across various spheres of human activity and how race has shaped notions of difference and commonality in the past and present.

Credits

5

HISC217 Critical Human Rights Theory

Addresses about 10 of the significant critiques of human rights discourse published in the past decade by authors, such as Moyn, Douzinas, Fassin, Ticktin, J. Slaughter, D. Chandler, Mamdani, Weitzman, Badiou, and Meister.

Credits

5

HISC218 French Hegel

Students expected to locate with fluency and precision their own research projects within the conceptual and methodological frameworks defining the late-20th century constellation of thought to be laid out systematically over the course of the term.

Credits

5

HISC222B Theories of Late Capitalism

Writing intensive course based on readings in course 222A. (Formerly Theories of Late Capitalism, Nationalism, and the Politics of Identity.)

Credits

5

HISC223 Althusser

Through close readings of Althusser's major texts, this course systematically examines the political and philosophical thought of Louis Althusser and analyzes why he is one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century.

Credits

5

HISC224 Marx's Capital Vol. 1

Investigates the many layers of Marx's Capital.

Credits

5

HISC226 Liberty and Resistance

Examines modern conceptions of liberty from a non-liberal perspective. Proposes to inquire into the concept of liberty as an individual and collective right by exploring its philosophical justifications and criticism in thinkers, such as Kant, Hegel, and Marx.

Credits

5

HISC227 Carl Schmitt

Provides a careful contextualization and a critically informed interrogation of the major works of Carl Schmitt, a figure at the center of many contemporary debates in political and legal thought.

Credits

5

HISC230A Poetry, Language, Thought

Introduces the relation between philosophy and poetics in some major 20th-century poets and thinkers.

Credits

5

HISC230B Poetry, Language, Thought

Writing-intensive course based on readings in course 230A.

Credits

5

HISC231 From System to Fragment

Explores the rise and fall of the philosophical system. It proposes to inquire into the origin of the systematic philosophy, its development, its crisis, and its disintegration. This theoretical trajectory will be investigated together with alternative trajectories in thinkers, such as I. Kant, G. Fichte, Novalis, K.W.F. Schlegel, G.W.F. Hegel, M. Stirner, S. Kierkegaard, K. Marx, F. Nietzsche, L. Wittgenstein, T.W. Adorno, W. Benjamin, Empedocles.

Credits

5

HISC232 Music, Social, Thought

Examines the various modes through which intellectuals, artists, and other commentators have written about music as a socially situated art as well as the ways they have theorized the social through examinations of musical phenomena. Focus changes with course offering.

Credits

5

HISC236 20th Century Critical Theory

Focuses on the critical-theoretical approaches that are associated with an interdisciplinary group of scholars affiliated with the Institute for Social Research, known as the "Frankfurt School". Surveys some of their most important contributions to the critique of capitalism, the authoritarian state, instrumental reason, culture, historical progress, law, and social organization. Discusses whether or not these different works fit together into a single tradition called "critical theory" and what theoretical and political implications the gesture of such naming entails. Investigates the normative foundations of critique and the philosophical influences that shape them. Course also explores the different "generations" of the Frankfurt School and map out the relationship of these thinkers to the traditions of Western Marxism, psychoanalysis, and social theory. Concludes by analyzing the limitations of critical theory and the intellectual challenges it faces in the contemporary world.

Credits

5

HISC237A Historical Materialism

Students read landmark works of classical and contemporary Marxism. Writings from Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Lukacs, Gramsci, Adorno, Benjamin, Sartre, Althusser, Anderson, Jameson, and Zizek are addressed.

Credits

5

HISC237B Historical Materialism

Writing-intensive seminar based on course 237A. Students read landmark works of classical and contemporary Marxism. Writings from Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Lukacs, Gramsci, Adorno, Benjamin, Sartre, Althusser, Anderson, Jameson, and Zizek are discussed.

Credits

5

HISC240 Basic Principles of University-Level Pedagogy

Provides training for graduate students in university-level pedagogy in general. Under the supervision of the department chair, coordinated by a graduate student with substantial experience as a teaching assistant.

Credits

2

HISC242A Violence and Phenomenology: Fanon/Hegel/Sartre

Study of the work and influence of Frantz Fanon from a range of viewpoints: existential, phenomenological, psychoanalytic, and political; a variety of genres: film, literature, case history, and critique; and a set of institutional histories: clinical, cultural, and intellectual.

Credits

5

HISC242B Violence and Phenomenology: Fanon/Hegel/Sartre

Writing intensive course based on readings in course 242A.

Credits

5

HISC246 Black Radicalism

Examines the history of black radical intellectual, cultural, political, and/or social movements. May take the form of a survey of different aspects of black radicalism or may focus on a particular individual, groups, period, etc.

Credits

5

HISC248 Black Critical Theory

Offers a critical introduction and overview of black critical theory across multiple fields and genres. Beginning with the question of race and ontology, students go on to consider questions of sovereignty and domination, freedom and liberation, identity and difference, and conclude with a study of race and the post-human. Major thinkers studied include: Sylvia Wynter, Achille Mbembe, Frantz Fanon, and W.E.B. DuBois, as well as contemporary figures, such as Frank Wilderson, Fred Moten, and Hortense Spillers.

Credits

5

HISC252 Poststructuralism

French poststructuralism, with particular attention to the main philosophical texts of Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault. Other representative theorists as well as critics of poststructuralism are studied as time permits.

Credits

5

HISC261 Modern Intellectual History

Survey of 19th- and 20th-century intellectual history that focuses on a cross-section of major works from Hegel to Levi-Strauss.

Credits

5

HISC262 Critical Theory After Habermas

Examines key works of Frankfurt School theorist Jurgen Habermas, his followers, and critics, on topics such as the public sphere, the theory of communicative action, power and domination, and religion and secularism.

Credits

5

HISC263 European Philosophies of Difference

Survey of European philosophies of difference, tracing the evolution of philosophical concepts and frameworks from Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Bergson, and Heidegger through later 20th-century French post-structuralist, feminist, and Frankfurt School theory.

Credits

5

HISC264 The Idea of Africa

Examines the position of Africa in cultural studies and the simultaneous processes of over- and under-representation of the continent that mark enunciations of the global and the local. Themes include defining diaspora, the West as philosophy, and Africa in the global economy.

Credits

5

HISC265A Biopolitics l: Problematics

Focuses on the theorization of life and death in relation to power as proposed by 20th-century thinkers. Investigates how a biopolitical problematic has emerged and what insights into politics it offers. Explores the different ways in which thinkers have conceptualized biopolitics and its broader implications.

Credits

5

HISC265B Biopolitics II: Corporealities

Focuses on the exploration of biopolitics and necropolitics on the body. Examines how the body has become deeply integrated into power relations in modern society. Also explores different forms of corporeality that are conduits of political struggle and sites of transgression, resistance, and refusal.

Credits

5

HISC268A Rethinking Capitalism

Readings include works by speakers at UCSC's Rethinking Capitalism Initiative. Topics are: (1) financialization versus commodification (how options-theory has changed capitalism); (2) material markets (how this theory performs); and (3) valuation and contingency (how economies make worlds).

Credits

5

HISC268B Rethinking Capitalism

Course 268A addressed changes in the theory and practice of capitalism as derivatives markets have become increasingly central to it. This course, which can be regarded as either background or sequel, concerns questions that surround recent debates about derivatives from the standpoint of broader developments in law, culture, politics, ethics, ontology, and theology. What would it mean to see questions of contingency and value as a challenge to late-modern understandings of these modes of thought?

Credits

5

HISC269 Property and Possession

Covers modern conceptions of property and their critique. Inquires into the concept of property as an individual right by exploring its philosophical justifications and criticism in thinkers, such as John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, G.W. F. Hegel, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, and Karl Marx.

Credits

5

HISC271 Historical Temporalities

Explores the critique of the unilinear historical time through the prism of Reinhart Koselleck, Walter Benjamin, and Ernst Bloch's attempts to reconfigure the concepts of time and history. During the course, students investigate how time affects both representation of reality and political praxis.

Credits

5

HISC272 Deprovincializing Marx

Course aims to rethink Marx against the grain, from the debate with Russian populists to Capital and the Grundrisse. Investigates formal subsumption not as a historical stage, but as a form that denotes how capitalism encounters, incorporates, and combines existing modes of production without creating a homogeneous world.

Credits

5

HISC275 Sovereignties

The guiding thought of this seminar is the question of what is, and is not, sovereign. Exploring a wide range of authors (such as Bodin, Hobbes, Spinoza, Rousseau, Kant, Schmitt, Bataille, and Fanon), this seminar addresses the most salient problems in recent discussions of sovereignty.

Credits

5

HISC285 Topics in Political Theology

Readings focus on the early 20th-century rediscovery of political theology; its use in theorizations of the Holocaust; and its return in 21st-centurty debates on empires, war, terror, enmity, reconciliation, fanaticism, human rights, political economy, and global catastrophe. Students cannot receive credit for this course and course 85.

Credits

5

HISC291 Advising

Independent study formalizing the advisee-adviser relationship. Regular meetings to plan, assess and monitor academic progress, and to evaluate coursework as necessary. May be used to develop general bibliography of background reading and trajectory of study in preparation for the qualifying examination.

Credits

2

HISC292 Practicum in Composition

A practicum in the genres of scholarly writing, for graduate students working on the composition of their qualifying essay or doctoral dissertation.

Credits

5

HISC293A Field Study

Research carried out in field settings, based on a project approved by the responsible faculty. The student must file a prospectus with the department office before undertaking the research and a final report of activities upon return.

Credits

5

HISC293B Field Study

Research carried out in field settings, based on a project approved by the responsible faculty. The student must file a prospectus with the department office before undertaking the research and a final report of activities upon return.

Credits

10

HISC293C Field Study

Research carried out in field settings, based on a project approved by the responsible faculty. The student must file a prospectus with the department office before undertaking the research and a final report of activities upon return.

Credits

15

HISC294A Ind Study-Teaching

Directed graduate research and writing coordinated with the teaching of undergraduates. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.

Credits

5

HISC294B Ind Study-Teaching

Directed graduate research and writing coordinated with the teaching of undergraduates. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.

Credits

10

HISC294C Ind Study-Teaching

Directed graduate research and writing coordinated with the teaching of undergraduates. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.

Credits

15

HISC295 Directed Reading

Systematic working through a prearranged bibliography which is filed as a final report at the end of the quarter with the signature of the instructor. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.

Credits

5

HISC295A Directed Reading

Systematic working through a prearranged bibliography which is filed as a final report at the end of the quarter with the signature of the instructor. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.

Credits

5

HISC295B Directed Reading

Systematic working through a prearranged bibliography which is filed as a final report at the end of the quarter with the signature of the instructor. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.

Credits

10

HISC295C Directed Reading

Systematic working through a prearranged bibliography which is filed as a final report at the end of the quarter with the signature of the instructor. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.

Credits

15

HISC296 Special Student Seminar

A seminar study group for graduate students focusing each quarter on various problems in the history of consciousness. A statement and evaluation of the work done in the course will be provided each quarter by the students who have participated in the course for that quarter, and reviewed by the responsible faculty.

Credits

5

HISC297A Independent Study

Independent study and research under faculty supervision. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.

Credits

5

HISC297B Independent Study

Independent study and research under faculty supervision. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.

Credits

10

HISC297C Independent Study

Independent study and research under faculty supervision. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.

Credits

15

HISC298 Doctoral Colloquium

Under the supervision of a History of Consciousness faculty member, students finishing their dissertation meet weekly or bi-weekly to read and discuss selected draft chapters, design difficulties and composition problems.

Credits

5

HISC299A Thesis Research

Prerequisite(s): advancement to candidacy.

Credits

5

HISC299B Thesis Research

Prerequisite(s): advancement to candidacy.

Credits

10

HISC299C Thesis Research

Prerequisite(s): advancement to candidacy.

Credits

15