Topics in Cultural Studies (450-0-1)

Topic

CARE AND HARM

Instructors

Francisco Miguel Caballero Vazquez

Meeting Info

Kresge Centennial Hall 2-410: Mon 2:00PM - 4:50PM

Overview of class

CARE AND HARM

This course focuses on the dialectics of care and harm in contemporary literary, philosophical, and artistic productions. We will explore multiple theoretical frameworks, including critical disability theory, new materialisms, and posthumanism, vis à vis modern and contemporary texts and performances produced in Spain and Latin America that center care and harm. Some key topics addressed will be: contemporary reelaborations of Spinozian desire to live, radical care and activism, the democratization of science, pharmacology, dysphoria, decolonized epistemologies of care, mourning, sacrifice, addiction, charity, pandemics, and neoliberal/welfare state. Key questions will be: why does care feel like harm sometimes? Why there is a distrust for care services in contemporary societies? How are racialized and gendered care labor transforming? What experiences of autonomy and interdependence are at stake? Readings in Spanish and English.

Learning Objectives

- Get familiar with critical disability theory
- Get familiar wirth new materialisms
- Get familiar with posthumanism
- Critical examine modern and contemporary literatuyre of Spain and Latin America

Enrollment Requirements

Enrollment Requirements: Please contact the department of Spanish & Portuguese to request a permission number, spanish-portuguese@northwestern.edu.