European Critical Thought
Source: https://www.brown.edu/undergraduate-programs/european-critical-thought-certificate Parent: https://www.brown.edu/undergraduate-programs
The Certificate Program in European Critical Thought offers Brown undergraduates from all areas of the University a scaffolded approach to foundational texts in critical theory, as well as its antecedents and legacy.
Degree Type
Certificate
department
- Modern Greek Studies
- German Studies
- Philosophy
- History
- Slavic Studies
- Comparative Literature
- Cogut Institute for the Humanities
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General Undergraduate Certificate Policies & Guidelines
European Critical Thought
The Certificate Program in European Critical Thought offers Brown undergraduates from all areas of the University a scaffolded approach to foundational texts in critical theory, as well as its antecedents and legacy.
Students will hone skills in analyzing a wide range of complex arguments and modes of expression, including literary and aesthetic idioms, which probe and expose the limits and conditions of possibility for conceptual formations, institutional establishments, disciplinary boundaries, and organizations of power. Students will develop a broad familiarity with the most enduring aspects of European thought since the eighteenth century, and they will gain a deeper understanding of especially significant movements within this tradition (such as the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory). This transdisciplinary certificate program is therefore exceptionally suited not only to prepare students of literature and culture to analyze the tensions that span works of art and larger social structures, but also to prepare scientists to question, for instance, the social and conceptual presuppositions of the scientific approach to data and knowledge. In this way, the Certificate Program in European Critical Thought will affirm the central role of the humanities within the broader context of the University, and it will offer a much-needed complement to the recent investment in other areas of research at Brown, such as the newly established Data Science Institute. Thinkers to be studied on a regular basis will include, among others, Kant, Schelling, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Gramsci, Heidegger, Bloch, Benjamin, Adorno, Horkheimer, Arendt, Lacan, Foucault, Blanchot, Lyotard, Derrida, Cixous, and Agamben.
Student Goals
Students in this certificate will:
- Students will progressively engage with the rich archive of texts that led to the development of critical theory and emerged from it, including the oeuvres of writers such as Kant, Hegel, Schelling, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Adorno, Horkheimer, Benjamin, Bloch, and Derrida.
- Students will cultivate skills in textual and conceptual analysis, as well as dialectical reasoning.
- Through intensive analysis of the argumentative approaches taken by major figures in critical theory, students will also learn to develop modes of writing that are adequate to the complexity of the questions, concepts, phenomena, and structures that they address in their own writing.
- Students will learn to relate critical theory to other disciplines.
The Director is typically the first point of contact for students interested in pursuing an undergraduate certificate. Once students have declared a certificate, they may be assigned a specific advisor from within the department or program.