Week 1: Introduction

Reading (excerpt)

Charles Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries (Duke University Press, 2004).

Arjun Appadurai, Modernity At Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (University of Minnesota Press, 2005).

Week 2: What Separates the Moderns from the Ancients?

Screening:  Hu An, Shadow Magic (2000)

Reading (excerpt)

Giorgio Agamben, ‘Appendix. The Supreme Music: Music and Politics,’ What Is Philosophy?, (Stanford University Press, 2018), 97-107.

Simone Weil, The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Towards Mankind (Routledge, 2003).

Leo Strauss, Natural Rights and History (University of Chicago Press, 2013).

Week 3: Humanity in Modernity

Reading (excerpt)

Michel Foucault.  Discipline and Punish (Vintage, 1977).

Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (Verso, 2010).

Walter Benjamin, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,’ Illuminations (Random House, 2015), 211-244.

Week 4: State in Modernity

Reading (excerpt)

Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty (University of Chicago Press, 2010).

Louis Althusser, ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus,’ On the Reproduction of Capitalism (Verso, 2014).

Thomas Ertman. Birth of the Leviathan. (Cambridge University Press, 1997).

Week 5: Civilisation, Nation, and State

Reading (excerpt)

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (Verso, 2016).

Gellner E. Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983).

Nira Yuval-Davis, Gender and Nation (SAGE, 1997).

Week 6: Imperialism, Colonialism, and Racism

Reading (excerpt)

Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (Grove Press, 2021).

Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (Routledge, 2012).

Ariella Azoulay, Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism (Verso, 2019).

Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather (Routledge, 2015).

Week 7: Wars, Totalitarianisms, and Holocaust

Reading (excerpt)

Boris Groys, The Total Art of Stalinism (Verso, 2014).

James E. Young, The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning (Yale University Press, 1993).

George Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (Oxford University Press, 1990).

Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Polity, 2013).

Week 8: Self-determination, the UN, and the Global Order

Screening: Joshua Oppenheimer, The Act of Killing (2012)

Reading (excerpt)

Carl Schmitt, The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum (Telos, 2003).

James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed. (Yale University Press, 2010).

Jeffrey Herbst, States and Power in Africa (Princeton University Press, 2014).

Week 9: Soviet Modernity

Screening: Robin Hessman, My Perestroika (2010)

Reading (excerpt)

Pamela Kachurin, Making Modernism Soviet: The Russian Avant-Garde in the Early Soviet Era, 1918-1928 (Northwestern University Press, 2013).

Anna Lawton, The Red Screen: Politics, Society, Art in Soviet Cinema (Routledge, 2003).

Martin Sixsmith, “The story of art in the Russian Revolution,” Royal Academy of Arts, https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/article/art-and-the-russian-revolution.

Week 10: The Liberal Modernity

Screening: Wes Anderson, The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014).

Reading (excerpt)

Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity (Polity, 2013).

Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry Into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Polity, 2015).

Louis Menand, The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021).

Week 11: The End of History, or the Clash of Civilisations?

Screening: James Tusty and Maureen Castle Tusty, The Singing Revolution (2006).

Reading (excerpt)

Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulations (University of Michigan Press, 1994).

Fukuyama, Francis. “The End of History?” The National Interest, no. 16 (1989): 3–18.

Samuel P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?” Foreign Affairs, 72 (3):1993.

Week 12: The War on Terror

Screening: Richard Rowley, Dirty Wars (2013).

Reading (excerpt)

W.J.T. Mitchell, Cloning Terror: The War of Images, 9/11 to the Present (University of Chicago Press, 2011).

Judith Butler, Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? (Verso, 2016).

Ashis Nandy: “A New Cosmopolitanism: Toward a Dialogue of Asian Civilizations”, in: Kuan-Hsing Chen ed., Trajectories: Inter-Asia Cultural Studies (Routledge, 1998), 142-149.

Week 13: The Rise of China

Screening: Frant Gwo, The Wandering Earth (2019).

Reading (excerpt)

Kim Dae Jung, “Is Culture Destiny? The Myth of Asia's Anti-Democratic Values,” in Hwa Yol Jung ed., Comparative Political Culture in the Age of Globalization: An Introductory Anthology (Lexington, 2002).

John Street, Music and Politics (Polity, 2012).

Chenyang Li, “Missing Links in the China Model,” Philosophy East and West, 69(2):2019, 568-576.

Week 14: The Civil Resistance in the Non-West

Screening:

Guo Zen, Ten Years (2015)

Waad Al-Kateab and Edward Watts, For Sama (2019)

Reading (excerpt)

Mitchell, Timothy. “The Stage of Modernity.” Questions of Modernity, Timothy Mitchell ed. (University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 1–34.

Zeynep Tufekci, Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest (Yale University Press, 2021).

Week 15: The Return of Wars: Russia, China, and the US

Reading (excerpt)

Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (Picador, 2004).

Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics (Duke University Press, 2019).

Week 16: The Future of Art and State-Building

Reading (excerpt)

           Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern (Harvard University Press, 1993).

Charles Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries (Duke University Press, 2004).

Arjun Appadurai, Modernity At Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (University of Minnesota Press, 2005).

Giorgio Agamben, ‘Appendix. The Supreme Music: Music and Politics,’ What Is Philosophy?, (Stanford University Press, 2018), 97-107.

Simone Weil, The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Towards Mankind (Routledge, 2003).

Leo Strauss, Natural Rights and History (University of Chicago Press, 2013).

Michel Foucault.  Discipline and Punish (Vintage, 1977).

Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity (Verso, 2010).

Walter Benjamin, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,’ Illuminations (Random House, 2015), 211-244.

Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty (University of Chicago Press, 2010).

Carl Schmitt, The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum (Telos, 2003).

Louis Althusser, ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus,’ On the Reproduction of Capitalism (Verso, 2014).

Thomas Ertman. Birth of the Leviathan. (Cambridge University Press, 1997).

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (Verso, 2016).

Gellner E. Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983).

Nira Yuval-Davis, Gender and Nation (SAGE, 1997).

Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (Grove Press, 2021).

Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (Routledge, 2012).

Ariella Azoulay, Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism (Verso, 2019).

Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather (Routledge, 2015).

Boris Groys, The Total Art of Stalinism (Verso, 2014).

James E. Young, The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning (Yale University Press, 1993).

George Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (Oxford University Press, 1990).

Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Polity, 2013).

Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity (Polity, 2013).

James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed. (Yale University Press, 2010).

Jeffrey Herbst, States and Power in Africa (Princeton University Press, 2014).

Pamela Kachurin, Making Modernism Soviet: The Russian Avant-Garde in the Early Soviet Era, 1918-1928 (Northwestern University Press, 2013).

Anna Lawton, The Red Screen: Politics, Society, Art in Soviet Cinema (Routledge, 2003).

Martin Sixsmith, “The story of art in the Russian Revolution,” Royal Academy of Arts, https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/article/art-and-the-russian-revolution .

Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry Into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Polity, 2015).

Louis Menand, The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021).

Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulations (University of Michigan Press, 1994).

Fukuyama, Francis. “The End of History?” The National Interest, no. 16 (1989): 3–18.

Samuel P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?” Foreign Affairs, 72 (3):1993.

W.J.T. Mitchell, Cloning Terror: The War of Images, 9/11 to the Present (University of Chicago Press, 2011).

Judith Butler, Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? (Verso, 2016).

Ashis Nandy: “A New Cosmopolitanism: Toward a Dialogue of Asian Civilizations”, in: Kuan-Hsing Chen ed., Trajectories: Inter-Asia Cultural Studies (Routledge, 1998), 142-149.

Kim Dae Jung, “Is Culture Destiny? The Myth of Asia's Anti-Democratic Values,” in Hwa Yol Jung ed., Comparative Political Culture in the Age of Globalization: An Introductory Anthology (Lexington, 2002).

John Street, Music and Politics (Polity, 2012).

Chenyang Li, “Missing Links in the China Model,” Philosophy East and West, 69(2):2019, 568-576.

Mitchell, Timothy. “The Stage of Modernity.” Questions of Modernity, Timothy Mitchell ed. (University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 1–34.

Zeynep Tufekci, Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest (Yale University Press, 2021).

Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (Picador, 2004).

Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics (Duke University Press, 2019).

           Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern (Harvard University Press, 1993).