<p>Hi! I’m planning to major in Philosophy. I was wondering if any of you could tell me about the Philosophy program at Brown and go into detail about the professors, courses offered, and popularity of the major. Thanks so much.</p>
<p>It’s a very strong field here at Brown, but very much focused on the analytical and Western traditions. In fact, on the CCC we approved an independent concentration in “Modern Critical Theory”, which was essentially a continental philosophy concentration. It had to be created from resources that existed across quite a few departments (and in fact, I believe it will be a very strong concentration because of the scholars at Brown it will bring together) because the philosophy department at Brown does not really have any focus in that area.</p>
<p>I love continental philosophy so much more than analytic philosophy. That makes me really happy.</p>
<p>Well then, if you’re looking at doing continental philosophy all I have to say is we certainly have amazing resources but they are spread out quite a bit and you may have to go the independent concentration route. </p>
<p>Hahaha. I still have the IC proposal in my box, so I may as well list the courses on there:
PH80: Existentialism, MCM150: Text/Media/Culture-Readings in Theory, PH175 Epistemology, MCM 2110D The History of Theory: The Case of Roland Barthes, MCM 1502D Figures of Fetishism, MCM 2100F Althusser, AFRI 1800 Race, Empire, and Modernity, MCM 1500W Foucault and His Interlocutors, ENGL 1140B The Public Intellectual, POLS 1030 Modern Political Thought, PHIL 1770 Philosophy of Mind, and an independent study in the Gender and Sexuality dept.</p>
<p>Like I said, this is Modern Critical Theory, which if I understand correctly, is a particular field of continental philosophy, however, I think this demonstrates how you can use a range of departments to pool our resources in this area even if it’s not a focus of our actual philosophy department.</p>
<p>THANK YOU, modestmelody! I was looking for a way to cover Critical Theory without taking the English Concentration route, and this looks to be it. So, if this concentration has already been approved, all we would need to do is speak to our advisor about it, right?</p>
<p>Well it’s been approved as an independent concentration, so it’s not quite as simple as signing up because it’s not designed for other people to use, yet. However, if you’re interested in studying critical theory you should go to the Curricular Resource Center and speak with Dean Karen Krahulik about starting the IC process. It should be fairly simple to get a concentration approved that’s quite similar to the above. You’ll be allowed to look at the full application for the IC process that the Modern Critical Theory person filled out.</p>