JWST 350 - Confronting Modernity

Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)

Topic for 2015/16a: Archiving Einstein. The Vassar Library holds an archive of some of the private papers of Albert Einstein, providing an excellent resource for research in Jewish social history. The course pursues three areas of study: 1) close reading of the documents in the archive; 2) historical contextualization of the German-Jewish refugee community in the U.S. in the mid-twentieth century; and 3) theoretical consideration and literary elaboration of the archive as a thought-figure and of the process of archiving. The principle disciplines engaged are history, philosophy and literature (not physics). In addition to Einstein and his correspondents in the papers in the archive, readings include texts by such authors as Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Hélène Cixous, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and American Jewish poet Philip Schultz. Mr. Bush.

Two 75-minute periods.