Intellectual Life and Culture in the Post-Western World

No one alive today has experience of a world in which the United States is not the leading economic power. This is the world we shall all encounter, however, very soon. Such headlines are small indices of an emerging post-Western future. We will investigate the intellectual, political and aesthetic culture of this future. What will change when Judaeo-Christian societies no longer monopolize global conversation? When societies that have historically rejected Western capitalism come to dominate it? What new ideas will be unleashed in such a world, and what will their consequences be for our thinking about politics, economy and identity? This is a half-credit course.