Overview
The Critical Perspectives on Democratic Anti-Colonialism graduate minor is currently open only to graduate students at The New School for Social Research.
This interdisciplinary graduate minor explores the theoretical foundations and political manifestations of radical democratic and anti-colonial traditions. It focuses on various struggles of peripheral peoples, past and present, in countries of the central
core and peripheral fringe. The aim is to make sense of the changing meanings and practices of plebeian forms of dissent, resistance, and self-rule that have surfaced in the modern and contemporary world.
Students critically examine the dominant socio-institutional structures, power relations, and regimes of knowledge and how plebeian groups reformulate, subvert, and generate emancipatory and heterodox alternatives. Discussions combine theoretical
and empirical readings of influential thinkers from core and peripheral countries, such as Karl Marx and Leon Trotsky; W.E.B. DuBois, Antonio Gramsci, and José Carlos Mariátegui; Hannah Arendt and Frantz Fanon; and the Latin American Dependency, Indian
Subaltern, and African Perspective schools. Readings will cover notions such as uneven and combined development, the boomerang effect of colonialism, indigenous anti-imperialism, and world systems as well as narratives of universalism, particularism,
and provincialism.
Students are encouraged to participate in extracurricular activities, including monthly workshops, a lecture series, and an annual distinguished lecture followed by an intensive seminar.
Curriculum
This graduate minor requires successful completion of 9 credits. Students generally select one course from each of the subject areas in the chart below.
Course availability may vary from semester to semester. Some courses may be in development and offered at a later time. Students seeking to pursue alternative coursework in other subject areas to fulfill the minor should consult with the Critical Perspectives
on Democratic Anti-Colonialism faculty advisors.
Fall 2023 courses are listed below. Please consult this spreadsheet for a list of past courses.
Learning Outcomes
A student who has completed this graduate minor should be able to demonstrate:
- A broad-minded and heterodox grounding in classical, modern, and current discussions on radical democracy and decolonial and postcolonial theories of politics and society by thinkers from the North and South
- A sophisticated understanding of contemporary debates on anti-colonial struggles; post-democracy; imperialism; racialized and gendered capitalism; global color lines; state sovereignty and civic and ethnic nationalisms; material, symbolic, and gendered
asymmetries; migration and mobility; transnational commons; assemblyism; and contested relations between oligarchs, plebeians, and non-citizens across the public and private domain
- An understanding of alternative approaches to the study of power relations, regimes of knowledge, and the social movements that develop in response to them
Faculty
Carlos Forment, Associate Professor of Sociology
Andreas Kalyvas, Associate Professor
of Politics
Eligibility
The Critical Perspectives on Democratic Anti-Colonialism graduate minor is available only to graduate students at The New School for Social Research. Students can retroactively count successfully completed courses toward a minor upon declaring. After
students successfully complete the minor’s requirements, the completed minor will appear on their academic transcripts at graduation.
For questions about this minor, please contact Carlos Forment at [email protected] or Andreas Kalyvas at [email protected].