Studies in Communication and Culture (441-0-1)

Topic

History of Aesthetics

Instructors

Erica Weitzman
847/467-1849
1880 Campus Drive, Kresge Hall, Rm 3333
Office Hours: Tues, 3:30-5:30 PM and by appointment

Meeting Info

Kresge Centennial Hall 2-420: Mon 2:00PM - 4:50PM

Overview of class

This course provides an introduction to foundational texts in the history of modern western (primarily German) theoretical aesthetics. Starting from Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten's emphatic appropriation the term "aesthetics" to designate the study of beauty and good taste, the course will move chronologically through major texts of aesthetic theory from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century. The course will simultaneously examine the specific problems and questions raised by the course texts and consider the texts as historical documents, looking at the ways in which they both respond to one another and to the political and cultural tensions of their respective eras. We will also consider the ways in which these texts cross disciplinary boundaries or indeed are always already transdisciplinary, constantly moving from the fields of artistic and literary criticism to fundamental issues of ethics, epistemology, politics, and psychology and back again, always asking ourselves the questions: What are the historical and political conditions of the ways in which we make and/or think about works of art, broadly conceived, and how do these historical and political conditions, in turn, shape the world that art is said to reflect?

Registration Requirements

Graduate students (advanced undergraduates with instructor permission)

Learning Objectives

- To learn about the history and background of modern western aesthetics in its historical, social, and philosophical contexts
- To be able to draw on this background in relation to individual works of art, literature, and culture
- To gain skills in analyzing and discussing theoretical and philosophical texts on a professional level

Evaluation Method

Attendance
Class participation
Paper, final
Presentations

Class Materials (Required)

1) Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment. Edited by Paul Guyer, translated by Paul Guyer and Eric Mathews. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. ISBN: 9780521348928
2) Friedrich Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man. Edited and translated by Reginald Snell. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2004. ISBN: 9780486437392