LHIS
3110

The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure

Eugene Lang College Lib Arts: History

Liberal Arts
Undergraduate Course
Degree Students
Politics and Poetics
Fall 2024
Taught By: Emma Park
Section: A

CRN: 17157

Credits: 4

From roads networks to electricity grids, infrastructures are often taken to be the invisible background of social life. On this framing, networked infrastructures are the apolitical substratum of modernity itself. In this course, by contrast, we will explore infrastructures as complex assemblages of power and politics. In the first half of the course, we will begin by reviewing the now-classic texts on infrastructures coming out of the humanities and social sciences. The second half of the course will be devoted to setting these ideas and theorizations in motion by tracking the infrastructural politics that have animated social, political, and economic life in the global south. Drawing these literatures together, we will query how starting a discussion of infrastructures from these other geographies has opened up new questions about the materiality of politics, power, and the making of subjectivities. Drawing on literature in history, Science and Technology Studies (STS), anthropology, and geography, we will analyze the complex and unexpected ways that infrastructures have been mobilized as vectors of power, objects of political concern, and networks of poetic meaning-making.

College: Eugene Lang College Lib Arts (LC)

Department: History (HIS)

Campus: New York City (GV)

Course Format: Seminar (R)

Modality: In-Person

Max Enrollment: 18

Add/Drop Deadline: September 9, 2024 (Monday)

Online Withdrawal Deadline: November 17, 2024 (Sunday)

Seats Available: Yes

* Seats available but reserved for a specific population.

Status: Open*

* Status information is updated every few minutes. The status of this course may have changed since the last update. Open seats may have restrictions that will prevent some students from registering. Updated: 11:10am EDT 3/29/2024

Meeting Info:
Days: Tuesday, Thursday
Times: 2:00pm - 3:40pm
Building: TBD
Room: TBD
Date Range: 8/26/2024 - 12/15/2024