Politics and Culture: Nation, Empire, Class

This course examines the fundamental relationship between politics/political economy and culture/cultural production, and focuses on explaining the interrelatedness between the two via problems and topics relating to the formation of nation, empire, and class/class consciousness primarily in the twentieth century. The course is designed to offer students a broad survey of the humanities and seminars will focus on a plethora of socially specific and culturally embedded cultural/artistic expressions of politics-as-culture (and vice versa) while introducing students to diverse theoretical approaches that unearth the influence of nation/alism and empire/governance.

Students will be able to understand categories as personal identity, self, other and subjectivity via analyses of complex societal formations with the help of Marxist, feminist, deconstructivist, post-colonial, de-colonial and intersectional critiques, enabling them to deconstruct representations by dissecting the inner workings of power and power relations.