Spring 2025 Middle East GR5000 section 001

THEORY AND METHODS I

Call Number 11291
Day & Time
Location
M 4:10pm-6:00pm
To be announced
Points 4
Grading Mode Standard
Approvals Required None
Instructor Timothy Mitchell
Type SEMINAR
Method of Instruction In-Person
Course Description This course will be the first part of a two part introduction to theoretical approaches to modern social science and cultural studies in Asian and African contexts. The first course will focus primarily on methodological and theoretical problems in the fields broadly described as historical social sciences - which study historical trends, and political, economic and social institutions and processes. The course will start with discussions regarding the origins of the modern social sciences and the disputes about the nature of social science knowledge. In the next section it will focus on definitions and debates about the concept of modernity. It will go on to analyses of some fundamental concepts used in modern social and historical analyses: concepts of social action, political concepts like state, power, hegemony, democracy, nationalism; economic concepts like the economy, labor, market, capitalism, and related concepts of secularity/secularism, representation, and identity. The teaching will be primarily through close reading of set texts, followed by a discussion. A primary concern of the course will be to think about problems specific to the societies studied by scholars of Asia and Africa: how to use a conceptual language originally stemming from reflection on European modernity in thinking about societies which have quite different historical and cultural characteristics.
Web Site Vergil
Department Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies
Enrollment 19 students (25 max) as of 11:06AM Saturday, December 7, 2024
Subject Middle East
Number GR5000
Section 001
Division Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Section key 20251MDES5000G001