TOPICS: CONFLICT & THE COSMOPOLITAN IMAGINATION in Summer 2022 (HI20913WK1A)

This summer course, held in Paris and in Cres (Croatia), explores various dimensions of what the historian of ideas Itzvan Hont calls “The Permanent Crisis of a Divided Mankind”: the enduring tension/contradiction between our mixed belongings: our cosmopolitan belonging as natural and moral beings to humanity, on the one hand, and our segmented and conflicted socially constructed belongings (the nation and ethnicity, most notably), on the other. It explores this problem through philosophical investigation (moral philosophy, thick and thin cosmopolitan theory); theoretical and historical studies of nationalism, mass violence and inter-group conflicts; and the role of collective memories in the perpetuation or transcendence of conflict. Ex-Yugoslavia will be the core empirical focus of the course, which will be held alongside the international conference Re-inventing/reconstructing cosmopolitanism in contested spaces and post-conflict zones in Cres, Croatia. Students will participate in the conference and will then have the unique opportunity to hear from and dialogue with leading ex-Yugoslav psychologists, historians and social scientists. This course will take place from May 21st- May 29th