Scribner Seminar Program
Course Description
Nothing Doing: The Space of Modern Thought
Instructor(s): Grace Burton, World Languages and Literatures
What does nothing have to do with anything? When merchants from Muslim lands introduced nothing (zero) into Christian Europe in the 13th century, they brought with them an Eastern concept that would revolutionize Western thought. In this seminar we will consider the history of nothing鈥攂e that nothing zero, the void, space, absence or privation鈥攖o see how and why this dangerous idea would become the foundation of modern thought. Two great literary works 鈥� Shakespeare鈥檚 As You Like It and Cervantes鈥檚 Don Quixote鈥攚ill serve as a springboard for our analysis of how Early Modern writers, artists, philosophers and mathematicians used the concept of nothing to re-imagine their world. We will end the semester with a consideration of how the very nothing that structures modern thought becomes the 鈥渘othingness鈥� that serves as Postmodernism鈥檚 principal critique of modernity.
Course Offered: