Intoxication, Addiction, and Art [6-weeks, $250 Suggested]
Instructor: Andrews | Wednesdays March 23-April 27 | 8:00-10:00 PM ET
When does pleasurable intoxication turn to debilitating addiction? Why are some writers and artists drawn to drugs and alcohol as a creative stimulant, while others find in them their demise? This seminar covers visual art, music, film, and literature that draws from, depicts, or expresses the experiences of intoxication and addiction. We will read philosophical explorations of intoxication, as well as theoretical, scientific, and historical accounts of addiction. We will use art to consider both the pleasures and perils of drugs and alcohol (and other “addictive substances”) and our own and loved ones’ experience(s) of them. Expect the course to consider intoxication and addition in their broadest possible uses, and also to put pressure on the romanticization of intoxication, as well as on dominant theories and practices around addiction. Central to our inquiry will be concerns about how race, class, and gender have determined our understandings of what count as “healthy pleasures” versus incapacitating “vices.” We will also pay attention to how both State and market forces determine our experience of drugs and alcohol, and how artists, musicians, filmmakers, and writers have engaged with and critiqued these structures. Writers and artists considered: Derrida, Klee, Burroughs, Acker, Aronofsky, Foucault, Ward, Preciado, Jamison, van Gogh, Deleuze, and Wilde.
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If at any point up to 48 hours before your first class session you realize you will be unable to take the class, we will work with you to reallocate your funds to a future class, to another student’s scholarship, or refund it. After classes begin, we are only able to make partial refunds and adjustments.