Courses

Fall 2019

PERSONHOOD

, 3 pts, GR6245

PERSONHOOD

This seminar seeks to engage with materials that question personhood. Drawing on both fictional and non-fictional accounts, we will be involved with textual and visual documents as well institutional contexts in order to revisit such notion under contemporary capitalism. We will cover topics like rites of passage and life cycle, the role of the nation state and local communities in defining a person, the relation between self and non-self, between the living and the dead. We will likewise address vicarious forms of personhood through the prosthetic, the avatar or the anonymous. But we will also look into forms of dissipation of personhood and unreliable agency where subjects become more like a medium through which to think rhythms and ongoing infrastructures of the living. As a whole, the course will bring to light how the question of personhood cross-culturally relates to language, performativity, religion, law, gender, race, class, care, life and death.

Section Number
001
Call Number
45210
Day, Time & Location
M 4:10PM-6:00PM 467 EXT Schermerhorn Hall [SCH]
Instructor
Maria Jos De Abreu