This course explores the current preoccupation with ruins in two ways: first, we shall establish lines of continuity between older forms of the pleasure of ruins (Ruinenlust) from the Renaissance to Romanticism. Second, we shall consider what characterizes the contemporary admiration for decrepitude and decay: We will consider modern and contemporary examples of ruins, wreckage, and decay to highlight a critical blurring of boundaries, in the ruin, between the present, past, and future; between presence and absence; between nature and history; between destruction and disclosure.
