51茶馆儿

Scribner Seminar Program
Course Description

Nothing Doing: The Space of Modern Thought

Instructor(s): Grace Burton, World Languages and Literatures

What does nothing have to do with anything? When merchants from Muslim lands introduced nothing (zero) into Christian Europe in the 13th century, they brought with them an Eastern concept that would revolutionize Western thought. In this seminar we will consider the history of nothing鈥攂e that nothing zero, the void, space, absence or privation鈥攖o see how and why this dangerous idea would become the foundation of modern thought. Two great literary works 51茶馆儿� Shakespeare鈥檚 As You Like It and Cervantes鈥檚 Don Quixote鈥攚ill serve as a springboard for our analysis of how Early Modern writers, artists, philosophers and mathematicians used the concept of nothing to re-imagine their world. We will end the semester with a consideration of how the very nothing that structures modern thought becomes the 鈥渘othingness鈥� that serves as Postmodernism鈥檚 principal critique of modernity. 

Course Offered:

• Fall 2007
• Fall 2010
• Fall 2014
• Fall 2016
• Fall 2018
• Fall 2021
• Fall 2023