Time Schedule:
Stacey C. Moran
CHID 390
Seattle Campus
Basic theoretical issues in the comparative history of ideas as a disciplined mode of inquiry; examination of representative historical figures and problems. Primarily for majors.
Class description
Course Title: Cyborgs, bugs, and troglodytes: the matter and meaning of metamorphosis
This seminar-style course uses metamorphosis as an analytic to explore the productive inter-relations between discourse and matter, and language and bodies. Kafka turns into a bug, Jekyll morphs into Hyde, and in our posthuman world, we have already become cyborgs. What are we to make of transformations of this kind? Students will read five stories of metamorphosis alongside theoretical texts culled from a variety of academic fields in order to consider not only bodily change, but also broader questions of change and innovation in science and technology, identity and subjectivity, politics and culture. Students will write two essays for the course. Readings include: Ovid, Apuleius, Kafka, Stevenson, Nietzsche, Deleuze and Guattari, Lakoff and Johnson, Haraway.
Student learning goals
General method of instruction
Recommended preparation
Class assignments and grading
