This course will explore how people come to develop and value the self as well their specific social identities. The course will draw on anthropology, sociology, neurobiology and philosophy to grapple with that which is most intimate yet often most opaque to us: our own selves. Yet we shall also explore the cultural limits of our unstable understanding of our individuated selves as well as the dialectic of self and other in the formation of identity.

SUMMER 2025: Emotions are not the opposite of thought, nor of rationality, we have learned from the latest research in psychology. Sociologists, political scientists and historians have recently developed critical tools for studying the importance of emotions for explaining major social and cultural changes. Through examples from modern Western history and the present day, this course examines how selves learn to navigate emotions, tame or excise the dangerous ones, and steer them into socially acceptable forms of public and private life. These forms include: liberal democratic citizenship, the corporate workplace, nationalist and populist politics in Europe and the US, international diplomacy, the humanitarianism of international NGOs, and contemporary trends in music and popular culture.

Repeat Rules

Course is not repeatable for credit.

Requirements class fulfills