Courses

This seminar is intended as a general introduction to a series of conversations that have been taking place across the humanities with regard to the role of inanimate objects in the construction of human subjectivities and social behavior. By calling into question methodological and theoretical dispositions rooted in deeply entrenched dichotomies between subject and object, spirit and matter, social and natural, animal and human, text and artifact, scholars in such diverse fields as philosophy, anthropology, economics, art history, and literary theory have been highlighting the manifold ways in which humans live with and through the fabricated and natural objects that shape our world, our identities and our social behavior. This course is also designed to aid students preparing for the Religion Department Zones exam in media.