Questioning value and its discontents

Undergraduate / Graduate

How does value move through the world? With what concepts and practices do individuals and groups ascribe value to the things they make, to the people they care about, and to the lives they lead? Why do questions of politics and ethics (i.e., how to convene as a community and how to conduct ourselves as individuals) so frequently turn on disagreements over the having, holding, giving, and taking of value? This course addresses these questions by investigating value as a terrain of struggle. First, we use topical readings to build a repertoire for understanding value as a material, symbolic, and semiotic force. We then use this repertoire to analyze three contemporary texts on the role of value within political catastrophe, globalization, and human-environment relations. This course is interdisciplinary in approach and is structured around three multimodal assessments (value story, value game, and value project). It is open to advanced undergraduates by consent request.