T, 4:00 PM-6:30 PM, Location: TBA
Open to Graduates Only!
	
Instructor: Ilana Gershon
E-Mail: igershon@indiana.edu
Office: Mottier Hall 211
Phone: 856-3728

Are you curious about how commodities or film stars have come to
represent nations, ethnic communities or other social unities?  Or
do you wonder about how essential it is to understand others’
motivations when creating political communities? This course
suggests these two questions are interrelated and will explore the
role of empathy and emblems in forming communities and nations.  We
are particularly concerned with how performance forms – ritual,
music, dance – come to stand for communities of varying sizes.  We
are going to be looking at the techniques used to identify with
others and objects across different levels of scale.  Readings will
range in focus from dyadic relations all the way up to national
icons.   The first half of the course focuses on empathy—how people
imagine they connect with others in a one to one relationship, and
whether this is a basis for forming communities, moral and
otherwise.  The second half of the course analyzes how people and
objects come to represent neighborhoods, ethnicities, regions, and
nations.   Beginning with Herder and Adam Smith, we juxtapose
theoretical perspectives with ethnographic case studies.  Other
theorists include Agamben, Levinas, Strathern, and Zizek.