Spaces Movements Identities. Fall 2004. B. Ricardo Brown, Ph.D.


NODE.801 Obsolete Syllabus B. Ricardo Brown, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Cultural Studies Pratt Institute BRBrownIII@earthlink.net Retrurn to the Course Materials Page

Spaces, Movements, Identities
Monday
Room NH106
2:00pm – 4:20pm
Fall 2004
Department of Social Science & Cultural Studies
Pratt Institute

B. Ricardo Brown, Ph.D.
Department of Social Science & Cultural Studies
Office: Dekalb 419
Office Phone: 1.718.636.3567, ext. 2709
Office Hours: Monday 1:00pm-1:55pm and 4:30pm-5:30pm,
Tuesday 1:00pm-1:55pm and by appointment
Email: brbrowniii@earthlink.com
URL: http://www.geocities.com/brbgc
Blog: http://node801.blogspot.com
_______________________________________________________________________

__Course Description__

With the Cold War and its aftermath an implicit subtext, various commentators have described the “postmodern” moment as being constituted by tremendous changes in three areas: space, social movements, and the politics of identity. Space and the City: the postmodern world is characterized by the globalization of American culture and the spatial reordering of the social relations of capital. Movements: resistance no longer takes the form of the demand for economic redistribution. Instead, “new social movements” demand new genres de vie, or modes of life, which are explicitly tied to a politics of the everyday. Identities: the end of the colonial period and the successes of the American Civil Rights Movement have occasioned the emancipation of identities which characterize the postmodern as a time of “new subjectivities.” This passage from colonial to neo-colonial subjectivities has occasioned “the rise of multiculturalism” at the boundaries and “New Social Movements” at the centers of social conflict. Some of these are progressive and some are not, but all are related to new social conflicts and new spaces of resistance which have the everyday and the body as important points of resistance. These changes affect both the Left and the Right, and are vital to our understanding of the contemporary period.

This course will interrogate these three notions of the present. We will closely read some of the most important contemporary writings on space, new social movements, identity, and the body. The texts will be drawn from sociology, geography, architecture, cultural studies, gender and feminism. Always on the agenda will be the question of power, how it is to be conceived, questioned, desired, and resisted.

__Course Requirements__

As this is a 500 level course and akin to a graduate seminar, the requirements are greater than many other courses. You should consider carefully whether you will be able to devote enough time and effort to the course of study.

Presentations and Commentaries
Students are expected to give at least one presentation during the semester on the readings for the class. One person per required reading. The presenter will prepare a two page typed commentary (approximately 650 – 700 words), which will be read or summarized in class. Copies will be distributed at the beginning of class (those presenting must see me immediately before class so that copies can be prepared (or bring your own copies to class). Those not presenting should prepare their comments after the class, including a commentary on the presentations for the week (three pages or approximately 1000 words). At the end of the semester, each student should have a collection of 12 weeks of readings (approximately 39 pages) and 1 three page presentation. The commentaries will be collected 3 times during the semester.

Or to put it another way:
If you are presenting a commentary:
Prepare two typed pages to be read or summarized to the class (650 -700 words).
Meet me in my office immediately before class in order to make copies for the class.

If you are not presenting a commentary:
Prepare an approximately 1000 word commentary (typed) on the reading and the in-class commentary on the reading.

The presentations and commentaries will account for 50 percent.

Landscape Project
A project on a landscape as described in the readings for the course. This is to be presented at the end of the semester along with a short essay (5 pages) will be due at the end of the course. The essay question will be distributed at the final class and will be 40 percent of the final grade.

Class Participation
Education is not a one way street and we can not expect to simply passively receive knowledge unless we expect to live a passive life. Participation is mandatory and will be factored into the final grade (10 percent).

Absences and Lateness
Persistent absences or lateness will result in a reduction of your final grade.

Incompletes
Incompletes will be granted only in accordance with the established policy of the college. The request must be made in advance of the last week of class. It must be made in writing and the standard incomplete contract submitted to the Department Chair before the last week of the semester. An incomplete is “available only if the student has been in regular attendance, has satisfied all but the final requirements of the course, and has furnished satisfactory proof that the work was not completed because of illness or other circumstances beyond control” (Pratt Institute Bulletin). If you do not turn in your paper on time, and you do not have an approved incomplete, you will fail the course. If you do not complete your work be the beginning of the next semester, I will not issue a change of grade except under the most extraordinary circumstances.

For stylistic questions, William Strunk and E.B. White’s Elements of Style is highly recommended.
__Texts__

Course reader available from
(some selections also available via internet)

Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes: Geographical Essays
D. W. Meining [Donald W. Meinig (Editor)]
ISBN: 0195025369, Paperback, 266pp, January 1979, Oxford University Press

Dreamworld and Catastrophe: The Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West
Susan Buck-Morss
ISBN: 0262523310, Paperback, 432pp, February 2002, MIT Press
Empire
Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri
ISBN: 0674006712, Paperback, 504pp, September 2001, Harvard University Press

Communists like Us: New Lines of Alliance
Felix Guattari & Toni Negri, [Thomas Yemm (Editor), Michael Ryan (Translator)]
ISBN: 0936756217, Paperback, 192pp, June 1998, Autonomedia, Foreign Agents Series

Early Writings
Karl Marx [Gregor Benton (Translator), Rodney Livingstone (Translator)]
ISBN: 0140445749, Paperback, 464pp, June 1992, Penguin Classics

Suggested Reading:
Henri Lefebvre [Donald Nicholson-Smith, translator] 1991. The Production of Space. ; ISBN: 0631181776, paperback,1991, Blackwell Publishing
__Outline of the Course of Study__

Session One
Introduction to the Course

Session Two
Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze, “Intellectuals and Power”
John D’Emilio “Capitalism and Gay Identity”
Gilles Deleuze, “Postscript on the Societies of Control,” from Interrogations.

Session Three
Lewis Mumford, Sticks and Stones: A Study of American Architecture and Civilization
Ralph Waldo Emerson “The American Scholar” from Nature, Addresses, Lectures

Session Four
Donald Meinig, “The Beholding Eye” from Meinig, The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes
Pierce Lewis, “Axioms for Reading the Landscape” from Meinig, The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes
Donald Meinig, “Symbolic Landscapes,” from The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes
J.B. Jackson, “Reason and Religion in Newtonian America” from Meinig, The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes

Session Five
David Byrne True Stories
Commentaries Due

Session Six
Karl Marx “On the Jewish Question” from Early Writings
Melucci, Alberto. "The Symbolic Challenge of Contemporary Movements " Social Research 52 (Winter 1985) 789-816
Session Seven
Stanley Aronowitz “The White Working Class and the Transformation of American Politics” from The Politics of Identity
Paul Routledge 1997. “The Imagineering of Resistance” Transactions of the Institute of British Geography, 22:359-376.
Cornel West, “The New Cultural Politics of Difference?”

Suggested Reading:
Stuart Hall, “What is this ‘Black’ in Black Popular Culture?”

Session Eight
Edward Soja “History: Geography: Modernity” from Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory
Gearóid Ó Tuathail “Visions and Vertigo: Postmodernity and the Writing of Global Space” from Critical Geopolitics: The Politics of Writing Global Space

Session Nine
Susan Buck-Morss Chapter 1-3: “Dreamworlds of Democracy: The Political Frame,” “Dreamworlds of History: On Time,” “Dreamworlds of Mass Culture: Common Sense” from Dreamworld and Catastrophe: The Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West

Session Ten
Susan Buck-Morss Chapter 4-6: “Culture for the Masses,” “Dream and Awakening,” “Lived Time / Historical Time,” from Dreamworld and Catastrophe: The Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West

Session Eleven
Toni Negri & Felix Guattari Communists Like Us

Session Twelve
Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri, Parts I-II, “The Political Constitution of the Present,” “Passages of Sovereignty,” from Empire

Session Thirteen
Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri, Parts III-IV, “Passages of Production,” “The Decline and Fall of Empire,” from Empire

Session Fourteen
Landscape project presentations

Session Fifeteen
Commentaries due