Author Archives: ehayot

Asia/Europe: What is Self-Consciousness?

Below the draft syllabus for the course I’ll be teaching in the Winter semester (Oct 15 – Feb 4) at the University of Heidelberg. Brief description:

Every idea of the modern includes a concept of the primitive. Primitive humans, we are told, inhabited a world without self-consciousness: in daily life, no gap between action and belief (Mircea Eliade); in aesthetics, no “representation,” only presentation (Heidegger); and in history, no fracture between the event and its possibility (Hegel). This course ranges across many of the central theorizations of modernity in order to ask questions about the nature of our contemporary self-understanding as moderns.

See more for the daily reading schedule, assignments, and so on. Continue reading

Posted in Courses, Penn State University | 1 Comment

2013-14: In Heidelberg, Germany

I will be spending the 2013-14 academic year in Heidelberg, Germany, at the Karl Jaspers Center for Advanced Transcultural Studies at the University of Heidelberg. I’ll be teaching a course in the MA in Transcultural Studies program (“What is Self-Consciousness? Primitivism, Deception, … Continue reading

Posted in Travel | Comments Off on 2013-14: In Heidelberg, Germany

Through the Mirror

For the LA Review of Books, a review of two recent collections of Claude Levi-Strauss’s thoughts on Japan: TIME MAKES US ALL ANACHRONISMS to ourselves. As we get older, we are all left behind by a history we had once … Continue reading

Posted in Ephemera | Comments Off on Through the Mirror

Who’s Afraid of China?

I’ll be giving a keyonte at Indiana University of Pennsylvania’s first annual Asian Studies Undergraduate Research Conference, title “Who’s Afraid of China?” One of the pleasures of writing the talk was the opportunity to go back to these sentences, which I … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Who’s Afraid of China?

Penn / Feb 21 and 22

Two talks coming up at Penn: one, a second try at “Academic Writing, I Love You. Really, I Do,” this time with, lesson learned, purely extemporized (from notes) entractes (on Thursday Feb 21), and, on Friday, a roundtable and talk … Continue reading

Posted in Ephemera | Comments Off on Penn / Feb 21 and 22