Founded in 2016, Intensive views itself as a counterbalance to seminar discussions which, for reasons of necessity, can tend to speed through a text, pausing only to discuss the "greatest hits." We propose, instead, to create the time and space to linger with the work of a single thinker, unpacking the texts and ideas that are frequently cited and infrequently assigned.
In previous semesters we've tackled György Lukács's The Theory of the Novel and selected chapters from Fredric Jameson's Marxism and Form, selected essays by Sylvia Wynter, Karl Marx's Capital Vol. I, Karen Barad's Meeting the Universe Halfway, Jacques Derrida's Of Grammatology, Walter Benjamin’s The Arcades Project, The Phenomenology of Perception by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, A Thousand Plateaus by Deleuze and Guattari, and Foucault's lectures Society Must Be Defended!, Security Territory Population, and The Birth of Biopolitics.
Intensive meets biweekly and has been generously supported by SASgov.
Please contact Ash Maria at ashermar@sas.upenn.edu with any questions.