ENG 444G - Seminar on Foucault

The scholarship of Michel Foucault has deeply transformed the way many perceive the world. In providing a number of influential concepts, and in suggesting a variety of innovative approaches to academic study, Foucault’s work has helped scholars to reconsider their own fieldworks, archives, and discourses, and encouraged them to develop new forms of critique in a wide range of disciplines. This class is an introduction to the diversity of Foucault’s intellectual legacy in the fields of anthropology, sociology, history, and geography. Based upon a chronological and thematical introduction to Foucault (from his early years to his last conferences on ethics and liberalism), this class aims at providing students with a rigorous survey of Foucault’s notions and a conceptual apparatus useful in questioning how the world in which we live is produced and shaped. Readings include, among others, selections from Foucault’s “History of Sexuality,” “Discipline and Punish,” and “The Birth of Biopolitics.” Letter grade with Pass/No Pass option. (Offered as needed.) 3 credits