Time Schedule:
Nektaria Klapaki
JSIS 498
Seattle Campus
Reading and discussion of selected works of major importance in interdisciplinary international studies. Restricted to majors in International Studies.
Class description
Combining the methodologies of the social sciences and the analytical approaches of the humanities, this course is an interdisciplinary exploration of capitalist industrialization, its discontents, and the utopian alternative of the secular epiphany put forward by the 19th century British Romantics as a remedy to the maladies of the industrial bourgeois civilization. First, we discuss some of the effects of capitalist industrialization within national and global contexts. Second, we examine the critique capitalist industrialization received in the contexts of Romantic and Marxist anti-capitalist thought. Third, we focus on the secular epiphanies of the British Romantics and how they were offered as utopian antidotes to the antinomies of capitalist industrialization by encoding the hope of a spiritually centered and whole life.
Student learning goals
Master past and recent debateds in the historiography of the Industrial Revolution
Study phenomenon of capitalist industrialization through the perspective of socio-cultural theories
Engage critically with a number of varied, and sometimes opposed, interpretations regarding facets of capitalist industrialization
Grasp the, often latent, connections linking the world of ideas (romantic epiphany) with historical events (Industrial Revolution) and teh material world (industrialization), and vice versa
Consider the lasting influence of Romantic cultural values on contemporary values and their impact on the development of specific scholarly fields, esp. Environmental Studies
General method of instruction
Recommended preparation
None
Class assignments and grading
Weekly papers, a mid-term paper and a final paper.
