Summer College-Existentialism

This course places literature and philosophy in conversation with one another, pointing to their close connections. Existentialism asks about the foundations of mind, morals, and the meaning of life. It asks about ways of living, ways of reading, and ways of writing. Key themes will be existence, ethics, meaning of life, freedom, death, and writing. Questions – such as, is God dead and is there any reason to be moral – will be explored alongside consideration of nihilism, racism, and sexism. Texts may include writings by Soren Kierkegaard, Fredrich Nietzsche, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Simone de Beauvoir, Frantz Fanon, Iris Murdoch, and others.