HIST 4277 Modern European Cultural-Intellectual History through Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project (ALC-AS, HST-AS) (HEU)
Tuesday: 2:00-4:30 plus Independent Research
Professor Claudia Verhoeven
The premise of this senior seminar in European cultural-intellectual history is that we can learn some of the most crucial aspects of the historian’s craft through just one book: Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project. Benjamin is normally seen as a philosopher, cultural critic, literary critic, art historian, media theorist, essayist, and translator, but he was one of the most original and influential historical thinkers of the modern era, and the Arcades Project is one of the key texts of 20th-century European intellectual history. Studying this book will teach you modern European history (esp. late 18th – early 20th c.), but also how to read, research, and write history more creatively. The structure of the seminar is straightforward: we will make our way through the Arcades Project’s “convolutes,” which means we will cover topics such as architecture, photography, fashion, poetry, prostitution, capitalism, communism, conspiracy, revolution, Marx, Nietzsche, modernity, and more, like boredom for example, or theories of progress and knowledge. Your research projects will take shape as you learn to recognize and make connections between the great variety of ideas and sources united in this magisterial and magical text.
