EN2N5/EN3N5: On Nothing

Overview

Final syllabus for 2025/26 will be confirmed by 31st July

“‘Nothing’ is | the force | That renovates | the World” — Emily Dickinson

Attention is the new currency, and our minds are being fracked for it. ‘On Nothing’ proposes a space for building critical and practical resistance to the crowded time of our digitally accelerated and platform saturated learning environment: a seminar for slowing down to recover, together, the lost art of thinking and doing nothing. The ten hours a week this module asks of you (including our time together in seminar) will not be crammed to overflowing with readings, resources, media, links to explore. We’ll read one carefully selected group of texts per week—a poem, some excerpted critical or theoretical resources, a short work of literary fiction, though on occasion we may look at visual art or listen to music—and do lots of thinking (and talking) together. The syllabus won’t overwhelm you with an agenda for which there never is enough time. We’ll check our instruments of distraction (smartphones and laptops) at the seminar door. Instead, you’ll bring physical books (or a hard copy reading packet) to seminar and a readiness to open your mind. (On occasion, we can use the in-class A/V to watch or listen to something together.) With weekly group (secular) meditation practice, and daily practice on your own, we’ll introduce ourselves to techniques for attention, concentration, and mindfulness, and we’ll cultivate inner resources for disengaging from chains of reaction, for being fully present to one another in openness to dialogue. We’ll introduce ourselves to the mentally challenging concept of ‘nothing’—which, without a disciplined approach, can all too easily encompass everything—through reading (along with some looking and listening) that covers, over nine weeks: meditation techniques, some introduction to philosophies of nothing both Western and Eastern, a glimpse into contemporary particle physics and cosmology, some literature (poetry, fiction, drama, nonfiction) about saying or doing nothing, creative practices that seek to ‘dematerialise’ the work of art and the media theory that accompanies these practices, critiques of nothing from (and negative approaches to) feminist, Black studies and Decolonial perspectives, and theories and practices for ‘degrowth’ in the face of a capitalist-induced ecological crisis.

Assessment includes a midterm meditation journal (24 x 50-word entries, worth 20% of the final mark), a challenge to ‘do nothing’ (documented by a 1000-word report / 500-word for intermediate students and/or a video or audio report at the end of term, worth 20% of the final mark; NB: not doing anything—for reasons we will explore in the seminar—won’t count for much), and an essay or creative project on an aspect of ‘nothing’ covered on the syllabus (worth 60% of the final mark: essays are 2,500 words / 2,000 words for intermediate students, while creative projects, the format of which is to be determined in consultation with the instructor, must be accompanied by a 1,000-word reflection / 500-word for intermediate students).

Assessment

Intermediate Year students:

• Midterm meditation journal, 24 x 50-word entries (20% of the final mark)

• Challenge to ‘do nothing’, documented by a 500-word report and/or a video or audio report at the end of term (20% of the final mark)

• 2,000 word essay or creative project on an aspect of ‘nothing’ covered on the syllabus; creative projects, the format of which is to be determined in consultation with the instructor, must be accompanied by a 500-word reflection (60% of the final mark)

Final Year students:

• Midterm meditation journal, 24 x 50-word entries (20% of the final mark)

• Challenge to ‘do nothing’, documented by a 1,000-word report and/or a video or audio report at the end of term (20% of the final mark)

• 2,500 word essay or creative project on an aspect of ‘nothing’ covered on the syllabus; creative projects, the format of which is to be determined in consultation with the instructor, must be accompanied by a 1,000-word reflection (60% of the final mark)

Syllabus

Week 1 ‘Beginner’s mind’: techniques for attention, concentration, and mindfulness.
Week 2 ‘On the being of nothing’: philosophies of nothing.
Week 3 ‘I have nothing to say and I am saying it’: boredom, saying and doing nothing, or ‘doing life’?
Week 4 ‘Everything from nothing’: contemporary particle physics and cosmology.
Week 5 ‘Literature of the unword’: writing nothing, or ‘at degree zero.’
Reading Week
Week 7 ‘No medium’: art of nothing
Week 8 ‘Much ado about nothing’: (un)gendering the void.
Week 9 ‘The position of the unthought’: Black and Decolonial negativity.
Week 10 ‘Nothing at all’: the case for degrowth.

Full syllabus 2025-26