The Centre for the Humanities in co-operation with the Graduate Gender Programme and Media and Culture Studies hosts a fifth round of the seminar on Cultural Theory. The seminar is a close-reading seminar, which focuses on texts that are valuable to the humanities as a whole and is open to scholars, students and people working outside of academia. In the sessions we do not build up knowledge, which means that you can join in whenever you like. Yet we work with themes in order to structure our thoughts a little bit. Earlier we have discussed “naturecultures”, “immanent times/ immanent spaces”, “Linguistics/ signification/ communication”, “After Finitude”, and “Signs & numbers; culture & nature”. We hope many of you will be interested in contributing to our discussions. The reading material can be copied at Kromme nieuwegracht 20 (cursuspostvakken; ground floor).

Theme six: Rewriting Enlightenment

Organised by: Dr. Rick Dolphijn (Media and Culture Studies), Dr. Iris van der Tuin (Gender Studies)

Location: Muntstraat 2a room 0.02, Utrecht | Time: Tuesdays 13:15 - 14:45 (you can bring your lunch)

In this theme we are inspired by Lyotard’s claim that our times are not postmodern in that the modern dualisms should be put aside, but rather that we ought to rethink them, rewrite them. Thus we set ourselves to reading texts of the two mastodons of modernity (Kant and Hegel) in combination with several of the most influential and powerful rewritings of their arguments. We will study Kant’s aesthetics (notably his conceptualizing of the Sublime). Hegel will be studied regarding his idea’s on Spirit.