I’m excited to discuss my forthcoming book Late Star Trek: The Final Frontier in the Franchise Era with my North Central colleague Rebecca Stafford at the Seminary Co-op Bookstore on Thursday, May 8, at 4pm. See details are available here.
I have added this semester’s syllabi to my teaching history page. All three are repeats, making this the first semester in many years when I have not had a fresh prep.
Ethics (philosophy department): This course is my showcase for translating the primary text-based format of the Shimer Great Books School into a large lecture class. My biggest innovation here was to hold them accountable for the reading by requiring them to upload images of their annotated pages. I further motivate them to engage with the text by making all exams open-book, but only for print books (except in case of an accomodation, which has not occurred so far). Last year’s iteration was very successful, so I am not changing much this time around.
Gaming the System: Alternatives in Math and Logic (Shimer): Last fall I taught this course for the first time, which put me on the home stretch toward my goal of teaching the entire Shimer Great Books curriculum. After teaching a new class for the first time, I always like to teach it again the following year so that my mistakes are fresh in my mind. This is probably my most significant revision this semester, drawing on a great deal of reading and research in the year and a half since I last taught it.
Deals With the Devil (Shimer): A version of this course, centered on the Faust legend, was a staple offering for me for several years when we first arrived at North Central. Last year I offered it for the first time in the Shimer program after a period of dormancy, and I realized that I was spending too much time trying to replicate my argument in The Prince of This World and delving far too much into the enigmatic Part 2 of Goethe’s Faust. This time around, I have trimmed those aspects and taken advantage of the additional time gained to transition into more of a film class format in the second half of the semester, when they will be working on their research papers.
I have received the endorsements that will appear on the back cover of my forthcoming book, Late Star Trek: The Final Frontier in the Franchise Era, which is available for preorder directly from the press, from Bookshop.org, or from the Evil Empire. Both are from path-breaking scholars of Star Trek, so they mean a lot!
“Combining the rigorous critical eye of a literary and political theorist and the encyclopedic knowledge of a devoted fan, Adam Kotsko offers an original, persuasive, ethical, funny, grim, and nevertheless hopeful examination of Star Trek’s twenty-first-century incarnations. Late Star Trek is a salutary intervention, a sustained, cogent analysis of what’s gone wrong, what’s gone right, and what possibilities remain for creative and critical storytelling in our late-neoliberal streaming era.” —David K. Seitz, author of A Different Trek: Radical Geographies of Deep Space Nine
“Adam Kotsko has written an eminently readable and deeply researched book on twenty-first-century Star Trek, providing an analysis that is both timely and long overdue. A must-read for anyone teaching, doing research on, or just thinking about this ever-growing franchise.” —Sabrina Mittermeier, coeditor of The Routledge Handbook of Star Trek and Fighting for the Future: Essays on “Star Trek: Discovery”
I’m pleased to announce that I have signed a contract with Taylor & Francis to write a book entitled Political Theology: The Basics, which will be part of a series of introductory works intended for undergraduates. My goal in writing the book is to present both major strains of what is called “political theology” — politically-engaged theology as well as the genealogical political theology I usually practice — within a unified historical framework. I plan to deliver the manuscript in Fall of 2026. Thank you to Beatrice Marovich for recommending me as a possible author for this project.
I have belatedly added my Fall syllabi to my teaching history page. They are as follows:
What is Life? (syllabus): This is a Shimer seminar on the history of biology and evolutionary thought. I have been expanding my teaching competence in the history of science over the last few years, and this is the second-to-last course I needed to complete Shimer’s entire Natural Sciences curriculum.
Logic and Critical Thinking (syllabus): For reasons I have discussed elsewhere, formal logic has become a staple course for this dyed-in-the-wool continentalist. After a few years, this has become fairly routine — but I chose to switch from Copi/Cohen to Hurley this year, as the former has too many misprints and poorly designed problem sets. Hurley is proving superior in most ways.
Star Trek and Social Justice (syllabus): This is a half-semester seminar offered for students in North Central College’s Honors Program. Last year I offered one on Watchmen (both the original comic and the HBO series), and it went so well that I decided it was time to put together something in my core area of pop cultural expertise. I opted to center the course on the first season of Discovery, which is unique in being a pretty self-contained serialized narrative and rewards analysis even more than most Star Trek does.
To help promote my forthcoming book and to give me somewhere to put my many thoughts about Star Trek in general, I have started a new Substack, also entitled Late Star Trek. You can read the first post here.
Here is the cover art for my forthcoming book Late Star Trek: The Final Frontier in the Streaming Era, which will serve as the template for subsequent entries in the Mass Markets series published by University of Minnesota Press. For more details about the book, see here.
I’m very honored to have received the Distinguished Scholarship and Creative Work Award today from my colleagues at North Central College!
At the end of August, I will be taking part in this online conference. I will be presenting a keynote address entitled “Faust in the Anthropocene,” which builds on some research connected to a course on Faust that I have been offering frequently over the last several years.
Adam Kotsko 