Critical Social Inquiry 0168 - History of Political Theory

How are citizenship and recognition construed and managed throughout the history of political theory? How are individual's gender, race, and ethnicity noted-implicitly or explicitly in "universalist" political theories? Can liberalism tolerate differences or does it attempt to ignore, or even eliminate them? What is the relationship between citizenship and differences? Are some populations valorized in order to legitimate the vilification and dehumanization of others? If so, how? In this course, we will explore the dominant ideas, which remain with us today, of political philosophers from the ancient era to the contemporary world. This course will be reading-, writing-, and theory- intensive. Authors may include Plato, Aristotle, John Locke, Gobineau, Kant, Hegel, Rousseau, Du Bois, Alain Locke, Beauvoir, Sartre, Hannah Arendt, Charles Mills, among others. Open to first year students. This is a prerequisite for other political philosophy courses.

Power, Community and Social Justice Multiple Cultural Perspectives Writing and Research