Night, Movements of the After Dark

Instructor: Jason Mohaghegh Date & Time: Saturdays, September 19, 26, October 3, 10, 17, 24, 31, November 7 14:00 - 16:30 ET

DESCRIPTION: This Seminar explores the fascinating paradoxes of nocturnal experiences, treating Night as a domain for the rarest orchestrations of mood (those of fear, pleasure, calm, mystery, vengeance). To achieve this end, we will engage Night through the tactics of its most dynamic practitioners, those who keep strange hours and navigate the hidden potentialities of the after-dark: the thief, the runaway, the beggar, the drunkard, the insomniac, the revolutionary, the prophet, the madwoman, the storyteller, and the sorcerer. We will also seek out its conceptual relations to solitude, forgetting, secrecy, monstrosity, nothingness, violence, adventure, and intoxication.

By covering texts and images encompassing ancient mythology, medieval mysticism, modern philosophy, avant-garde literature and poetry, as well as contemporary visual art, film, and architecture, the Seminar will wager itself across the many perceptions of Night that have emerged across different epochs, cultures, and mediums. Moreover, our inquiries will be based on new materials not included in the instructor’s own recent book titled Night: Philosophy of the After-Dark (2020), using an alternative collection of sources in order to map further atmospheric and material dimensions of the twilight, evening, midnight, and pitch-black.

Seminar 1. Ancient Gods, Rituals, Cosmologies of Night / Seminar 2. Medieval Night Journeys and Nocturnal Mysticism / Seminar 3. Philosophies of Night / Seminar 4. Decadent, Modernist, and Avant-Garde Literatures of Night / Seminar 5. Poetics of Night / Seminar 6. Aesthetics of Night (visual art, film, sound, performance, installation, architecture) / Seminar 7. Spaces, Phenomena, Objects of Night / Seminar 8. Visions of Permanent Night (doomsday theory)

 

IMAGE: Ivan Lam Wai Hoe, I Have Loved You Too Fondly To Be Fearful of the Night, Synthetic polymer, paint and resin on canvas and board, 2012-13.

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