Unit 1: Contact, conquest, taste
Assignments1
DueSeptember 18
Week 1: The problem of subjective universality
| Reading | Read | Original |
|---|---|---|
| Roelofs, The Cultural Promise of the Aesthetic | 1-22 | |
| Kant, Critique Of Judgment | all |
Week 2: Edwards: Beauty as consent
| Reading | Read | Original |
|---|---|---|
| Edwards, A Divine and Supernatural Light | 1–17 | |
| Edwards, The Nature of True Virtue | all |
Week 3: The view from the colonized
| Reading | Read | Original |
|---|---|---|
| Apess, Selections | 119–121, 155–161 | |
| Occom, Selections | 52–58 | |
| Pratt, Native Pragmatism, chap. 1 | 1–2, 12–16 |
Week 4: Taste and race in the founding of the US
| Reading | Read | Original |
|---|---|---|
| Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia XVIII | all | |
| Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia XIV | 210–223 | |
| Wheatley, Selections | all | |
| Gikandi, Slavery and the Culture of Taste (excerpts) | optional |
Unit 2: Transcendental universality
Assignments2
DueSeptember 24
DueOctober 23
Week 5: Emerson I: Forging an American intellect
| Reading | Read | Original |
|---|---|---|
| Emerson, “Self-Reliance” | 175–181 | |
| Emerson, “The American Scholar” | all |
Week 6: Emerson II: The skeptic
| Reading | Read | Original |
|---|---|---|
| Cavell, “Aversive Thinking” | 43–48, 57–58 | |
| Cavell, “Thinking of Emerson” | 167–171, 173–176 | |
| Emerson, “Experience” | 285–289, 304–308 | |
| Cavell, Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome, introduction | optional — 25–28 | |
| Emerson, “Circles” | optional — 225–228, 236–238 |
Week 7: Fuller: Who universalizes?
| Reading | Read | Original |
|---|---|---|
| Fuller, Summer on the Lakes (excerpts) | all | |
| Fuller, Woman in the Nineteenth Century | all |
Week 8: Douglass: The democratic image
| Reading | Read | Original |
|---|---|---|
| Douglass, “Pictures and Progress” | all | |
| Douglass, “The Claims of the Negro” | all |
Unit 3: Pragmatism and experience
Assignments2
DueOctober 22
DueNovember 20
Week 9: Peirce: The community of inquirers
| Reading | Read | Original |
|---|---|---|
| Peirce, “Fixation of Belief” | all | |
| Peirce, “How to Make Our Ideas Clear” | all |
Week 10: James: A certain blindness
| Reading | Read | Original |
|---|---|---|
| James, “Does Consciousness Exist?” | all | |
| James, “On A Certain Blindness” | all | |
| James, Pluralistic Universe (excerpts) | all |
Week 11: Dewey: Experience and community
| Reading | Read | Original |
|---|---|---|
| Dewey, Art as Experience (excerpt) | all |
Week 12: Addams and Santayana: Two resolutions
| Reading | Read | Original |
|---|---|---|
| Addams, “Subjective Necessity” | all | |
| Santayana, The Sense of Beauty (excerpt) | all |
Unit 4: Double consciousness and decolonial aesthetics
Assignments4
DueNovember 19
DueDecember 1
DueDecember 5
WindowDecember 14–December 18
Week 13: Du Bois: The veil
Week 14: Locke and the propaganda debate
| Reading | Read | Original |
|---|---|---|
| DuBois, “Criteria of Negro Art” | all | |
| Locke, “Art or Propaganda?” | all | |
| Locke, “Legacy of the Ancestral Arts” | all | |
| Locke, “Values and Imperatives” | all |
Week 15: Borderlands
| Reading | Read | Original |
|---|---|---|
| Anzaldua, Borderlands, chap. 1 | all | |
| Anzaldua, Borderlands, chap. 7 | all | |
| Anzaldua, Borderlands, preface | all | |
| Marti, “Our America” | all | |
| Zitkala-Ša, “Why I Am a Pagan” | all |
Week 16: Black aesthetics
| Reading | Read | Original |
|---|---|---|
| Morrison, Playing in the Dark (excerpts) | all | |
| Taylor, Black Is Beautiful, chap. 1 | all |