Martini Paula, Rodrigo
MWF 3 :00 PM
Park Hall 0126
Introduction to Posthumanism
This course will provide an introduction to the recent conversations decentering the “human” in critical theory over the past 20 years. We will analyze how humanity changes in light of technological and scientific advances, and how modernity constructs “the human” in opposition to mechanical and animal others. In this process, our conversations will touch on concerns in postcolonialism and race, media thinking, animal studies, and other fields of inquiry in critical theory.
We will read two primary texts to center our conversation in Literature:
H.G. Wells, Island of Dr. Moreau (1896). New York: Penguin Classics, 2005. ISBN: 978-0141441023
Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun (2021). New York: Vintage, 2021. ISBN: 978-0593311295.
The novels will help us frame and understand the lineages of posthumanist thought, which will constitute the bulk of the reading this semester: classical critical theory essays by Michel Foucault, Donna Haraway, and Jacques Derrida, as well as more recent works by Cary Wolfe, N. Katherine Hayles, Fatimah Tobing Rony, Kalpana Seshadri, Dominic Pettman, and others.