Interpretive Methods
Module V
Rohit Goel
Online via Zoom
Download Course Poster
6 - 30 March 2024
Wednesdays and Saturdays
INR 7,500 Participation
INR 10,000 Participation + Writing
6:30 PM IST - 8:30 PM IST
Worldwide Registration Open
About the Course
This course will provide students with an introduction to interpretive methods in the social sciences and humanities. We will learn to ‘read’ texts and images while also becoming familiar with contemporary thinking about interpretation, narrative, ethnography, social construction, Marxian dialectical materialism, and psychoanalytic approaches. Among the methods we shall explore are: semiotics (Barthes), hermeneutics (Geertz), ordinary language philosophy (Wittgenstein), discourse analysis (Foucault), dialectics (Hegel and Marx), and psychoanalysis (Freud and Lacan). This iteration of Interpretive Methods foregrounds ‘psychologism’ and ‘historicism’ as blindspots to avoid regardless of what interpretive method you use to address the problem you want to resolve in your analysis.
About the Professor
Rohit Goel is Director/Professor of the Bombay Institute for Critical Analysis and Research (BICAR). He is the editor of Future Perfect: Catastrophe and Redemption in the Contemporary (Kaph 2023) and the co-editor of Lacan contra Foucault: Subjectivity, Sex, Politics (Bloomsbury 2019). Rohit has taught courses in critical theory, historiography, and politics at the University of Chicago, Sciences Po Paris, the American University of Beirut, and Jnanapravaha Mumbai. He received the Fulbright IIE and Center for Arabic Study Abroad (CASA) fellowships to pursue years of Arabic language study in Syria and was awarded the Fulbright DDRA and Andrew C. Mellon Fellowship for PhD dissertation research in primary sources in Lebanon. He completed his BA from Harvard College and, as Harvard University’s Paul Williams Fellow to Emmanuel College, was granted an MPhil in Social and Political Sciences from the University of Cambridge.
Certificate
Students will receive a Certificate of Completion upon successful attendance of a course or a Certificate of Completion and Letter of Evaluation if they successfully attend and complete the final assignment. Those who complete three courses (attendance and writing) in the Interpretive Methods track over two calendar years are eligible for a BICAR Diploma in Interpretive Methods.
Refund Policy
We will refund your mode of payment — minus a 25% processing fee — if you choose not to take this course after the first session. Or, you can ‘roll over’ your balance to another or future BICAR course without a fee deduction.
Register
To register, we can facilitate two modes of payment — either a direct bank transfer to our Indian account or we also have a PayPal link: