LTA2016 Violence: Theories of Cruelty, Evil, and the Inhuman
4 Intermediate Liberal Arts Credits
This course will investigate the idea of violence across an extensive spectrum of authors, texts, films, and literary-philosophical perspectives from the East and the West. We seek not merely to engage in a conventional critique but to exceed the boundaries of our embedded understanding by also contemplating this concept's fascinating potential as a form of literary imagination and intellectual expression. Topics will therefore include cruelty, vulnerability, power, betrayal, destruction, vengeance, anger, terror, defacement, pain, disaster, and inhumanity. From the poetics of torture to the damaged writings of war, from theoretical works on catastrophe to cinematic and artistic pieces on the nature of evil, the intent is to explore the many narratives that have emerged across the global horizon in the face of an often violent experience of the modern world.
Prerequisites: (FCI1000 or AHS1000) and (WRT1001or RHT1000)