AESTHETC THRY-FRANKFURT SCHOOL

Critical theory was the central practice of the Frankfurt School. Founded in Frankfurt in 1923 and later based at Columbia University, this interdisciplinary institute influenced fields like sociology, political science, film, cultural studies, media theory, and comparative literature. The course begins by examining the genealogy of the Frankfurt School in Marxism and its critique of fascism and traces its afterlife in aesthetic theory, deconstruction, and gender studies, as well as the specter of “Cultural Marxism” recently floating around right-wing circles. We read texts by key figures of the Frankfurt School such as Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse and Jürgen Habermas as well as works by adjacent figures like Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, and Siegfried Kracauer.