How does literature bear on individual and collective action? Dr. Mieszkowski will study conflicting models of   intellectual labor that arise in 19th-century debates about aesthetics and politics to show how the evolution of   literary and political thought in the 19th century is the key to the development of modern interdisciplinary   studies. A gifted teacher as well as scholar, he will in his course, “Humanities and their Discontents,” offer   undergraduates the opportunity to explore Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment accounts of humanity and   the process of becoming human.