Burkay Ozturk

Today western societies put science on a pedestal. As a result, science informs anything and everything from city planning to whether you should put soy or oat milk in your latte. Does science deserve this reputation? If it does, what is the thing that makes science so special and authoritative? Or should we be worried about the domination of culture by science? In this course, we will study those questions with an eye on high-profile cases of scientific fraud and types of statistical manipulation known as 'p-hacking.' The reading list includes articles and book chapters by Paul Feyerabend, Alan Chalmers, Karl Popper, Imre Lakatos, Thomas Kuhn, Larry Laudan, David Goodstein, Jerry Fodor, Aubrey Clayton, Jacob Cohen, David Lykken, John Ioannidis and Richard Smith. Assignments vary, but they might include some or many of the following: weekly reading responses, quizzes, papers, and exams.

This course investigates the relationship between eroticism, excess, writing, and artistic practice. The work of heterodox mystic and literary pornographer Georges Bataille¿particularly his thinking on eroticism¿provides a theoretical throughline for the course, with other readings in critical theory, philosophy, psychoanalysis, and literature. Among the thinkers engaged are: Freud, Kristeva, Audre Lorde, Alyce Mahon, Julianna Huxtable, Barbara DeGenevieve, and Pierre Guyotat. Art in a variety of mediums is also discussed. The class investigates a variety of ambivalent modes and movements, for example, the play of form and formlessness, taboo and transgression, attraction and repulsion, incorporation and excretion, abjection and sublimity. Further key ideas include sex/sexuality, gender, difference, bodies, ritual, representation, taboo, transgression, surrealism, ecstasy, desire, and ¿perversion.¿ Students are encouraged to bring course themes and ideas into conversation with their own art making, developing and articulating ¿erotics¿ as a mode of praxis. Assignments include essays, short reflection papers, and occasional drawing exercises.