Intellectuals and the Public Sphere

Catalog description

Considers the relationship of the artist to the public sphere, focusing on the late nineteenth century. We will look back from debates today over the "public intellectual" to Victorian debates over the "intellectual." Attention to how narratives of intellectual decline in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries portray the figure of the artist: as prophet, intellectual, professional, critic, genius, woman, madman, aesthete, scientist, and social celebrity. Readings will include literary writers and essayists (such as Dickens, Trollope, James, Pater, Shaw, Wilde, Wells), alongside theorists (Humboldt, Weber, Brecht, Benjamin, Habermas, Bourdieu, Latour, Kittler). Enrollment limited to 15 graduate students.