Program Structure

Registered participants in the seminar will receive, at least a month in advance, the reading material for the seminar. Classes will be conducted five days a week, mornings and afternoon. The program is a lecture intensive seminar. Student participation is encouraged and faculty will have office hours to meet with students individually. Space and time for students’ self-organized workshops and discussions will be provided. These workshops will be organized along students’ interests.

We will explore the following issues and questions:

  1. The formation and transformation of Western principles of knowledge (epistemology) and understanding (hermeneutics). The role of the invention of the Americas for a creation of Christian-European identity and the relevance of Indians, Blacks, Moors and Jews in the invention of the modern/colonial racial matrix. The place of Muslims from the sixteenth century until today. From Christian Theology to Secular Philosophy and Sciences--how the idea of Man in the Renaissance and the Enlightenment to the idea of Man and Human in human rights, racism and patriarchy have controlled the material apparatus of enunciation and, therefore, knowledge.
  2. The diverse local histories and their decolonial responses/resistances/re-existence to Western colonial/imperial designs in world-historical perspective: Muslims, Indigenous Peoples, Black Peoples, etc. in different world-regions such as the Middle East, Latin America, Europe, North America, Asia, Africa and the Caribbean.

Total number of hours: 49 astronomical hours; 75 academic hours.