Race, Class, Gender and Violence in the Enlightenment

Catalog description

Ideas change the world. Sometimes the same ideas can do tremendous good and also cause great suffering. In this course we will consider violence and revolutionary changes through the prism of European 17th- and 18th-century Enlightenment thought. Thinking through the writings of Mary Wollstonecraft, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Catherine Macaulay, Rousseau and others, we will explore how African philosophers and writers such as Emmanuel Eze, Paulin Hotoundji and Chinua Achebe are in conversation with the enlightenment as well as African thought. (ENGL-GLS, ENGL-PRE)