RHET 409 - Foundations of Modernity

Semester Offered: Second Semester
Full Course
Credits: 4 credits
Attribute: 4HU, CD, WADV

This advanced seminar centers on the questions: Who counts as Human? When? Why? How have these understandings changed over time? As a class, we will unpack the historical and theoretical formations of racial liberalism and racial capitalism. By engaging in close, extended readings of key theorists, we will collectively build a rubric of how the founding theories of modernity are fundamentally racialized and gendered and how they reproduce racialized exclusions. For the final projects, students will engage a “burning question” developed from their lived experiences and analyze it through self-reflexivity, theory, and research, guided by in-class workshops.

Enrollment Limit: 10
Instructor: L. Beutin