New School June 2015 Seminars: Syllabus

Monday, June 15: What is disenchantment?

Marcel Gauchet, The Disenchantment of the World
Jane Bennet, The Enchantment of Modern Life (Chapters 1, 4, 6)

Tuesday, June 16: An influential account of secularization

Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Introduction, Chapters 1, 4, 7, 8, 16)

Wednesday, June 17: What is post-secularism?

Jürgen Habermas, “Religion in the Public Sphere” European Journal of Philosophy, 14:1,
1006
Jürgen Habermas and Joseph Ratzinger, The Dialectics of Secularization: On Reason and
Religion
Austin Harrington, “Habermas and the Postsecular Society” European Journal of Social
Theory, 10:4, 2007

Thursday, June 18: Secularization as conversion

Gauri Viswanathan, “Comments on Conversion” in Conversion to Modernities: The
Globalization of Christianity, edited by Peter van der Veer
Web Keane, “Materialism, Missionaries, and Modern Subjects in Colonial Indonesia,” in
Conversion to Modernities
Talal Asad, “Comments on Conversion,” in Conversion to Modernities
Matthew Scherer, Beyond Church and State (Introduction, Conclusion, Chapters 1, 5)

Friday, June 19: Belief, Pain and Criticism

Talal Asad, “Thinking about the Secular Body, Pain, and Liberal Politics,” to appear in
Veena Das and Clara Han (eds.) The Anthropology of Living and Dying (to appear in Fall
2015)
T. Asad, W. Brown, J. Butler, S. Mahmood, Is Critique Secular?