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Nature of Politics online course (Fall 2013)

Online activity: instructions provided weekly

Instructor: Alina Vamanu
Email: alvamanu@rci.rutgers.edu


Nature of Politics


Dear students:

This course aims at providing you with the theoretical tools to better
articulate and understand what politics means and what it ought to be.
Some of the questions we will be asking are: What are the main issues
that politics involves? What goals do we want to set for ourselves in
politics? How can we best accomplish these goals? In trying to answer
these questions, we will examine the relationship between the individual
and the community, as well as the relationship between citizens and
political authorities of various kinds (kings, princes, democratic
government officials). We will also inquire into ideals such as freedom,
justice, and equality, in order to grasp the various meanings they can
acquire and see in what ways they might be attained.

Our journey will take us from ancient Greece, through the Florentine
Renaissance, up to the modern period. In looking at the work of the most
important political thinkers in all these historical periods, we will pay
particular attention to the ways in which they critically engage with the
ideas of their predecessors, thus forming a tradition. It is the task of the
political thinkers of today to continue this tradition, by acquiring a good
grasp of past theories and reinterpreting them in light of new
circumstances. This course will guide you in this direction.

Please note that this is an online course, which means it will fully
unfold on the e-college course web page. Lecture slides and other
resources will be posted on this web page for your convenience. At the
same time, you too will be posting comments and questions on e-college.
Thus, you will have the opportunity to interact with your fellow students
and myself from the comfort of your room.

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I will be holding Live Office Hours weekly through the e-college chat
function. We will have informal discussions about the class material and
you are welcome to share any comments or ideas you find interesting.
These chat sessions are not obligatory, but everyone is warmly
encouraged to join in and ask questions or simply listen to what other
people in the course are saying. The chat logs will be saved in e-college,
so even students who cannot participate in the live sessions have access
to the discussions.

Course requirements

You are expected to complete all required readings for each week of the
course.

Online participation: 28%

Weekly online participation is required. Clear and specific
instructions about what you need to do will be provided under the
Weekly Instructions tab on e-college. Each week, you will be
submitting:
- Weekly Forum contributions: one response to a specific
question; one comment on another students response

Two short assignments (3-4 pages, double-spaced): 20% each

These assignments will consist of concise, critical discussions of
particular authors we will be reading in this course. The purpose of
these short papers is to help you become proficient at looking at
various political theories critically and building your own positions
at the same time.

Final take-home exam: 32%

This will be a take-home exam consisting of two parts:

- Part I: short answers to specific questions about the course
material (a review sheet will be provided one week prior to
the exam)
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- Part II: an essay (3-4 pages, double-spaced) on one of the
topics discussed in this course.

Extra credit:

You will have the opportunity to earn up to 3 extra credit points
(i.e., a maximum of 3% of your final grade) if you commit yourself
to providing a 3-page paper on material we will be engaging with in
the course. If you are interested in earning extra credit, you must
contact me in advance.

Required books

The books we will be using in this course are:
Sophocles, Antigone, translated by Reginald Gibbons and
Charles Segal, Oxford University Press, 2003
Plato, The Trial and Death of Socrates (3
rd
edition), translated by
G.M.A. Grube and revised by John M. Cooper, Hackett
Publishing Company, 2000
Niccol Machiavelli, The Prince, translated by Peter Bondanella,
Oxford University Press, 2005
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Other Later
Political Writings, edited by Victor Gourevitch, Cambridge
University Press, 1997

These books will be available through the Rutgers bookstore. We will
also be looking at selected chapters from other books, but electronic
copies of these chapters will be made available on the e-companion
class web site. Detailed information on how you can access this web
site will be provided at the beginning of the course.









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Course outline


Week Topic Authors

Week 1


Classical Republicanism:
Ancient Greece


Sophocles, Antigone



Week 2

Classical Republicanism:
Ancient Greece (cont.)


Plato, Apology and Crito

Week 3


Civic Republicanism:
Renaissance Florence


Niccol Machiavelli, The
Prince (selections)

Week 4


Social Contractarianism

Thomas Hobbes, The
Leviathan (selections);
documentary viewing

***First Short Assignment due***

Week 5

Social Contractarianism
(cont.)

John Locke, Two
Treatises of Government
(selections)


Week 6


Social Contractarianism
(fiction illustrating Hobbes
state of nature)


William Golding, Lord of
the Flies (selections)



Week 7


Social Contractarianism
(cont.)



Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
The Social Contract
(selections)


Week 8


Liberalism





John Stuart Mill, On
Liberty; Considerations
on Representative
Government (selections)
***Second Short Assignment due***
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Week 9

American Republicanism


Federalist Papers #10,
#47, #48, #51


Week 10


The Civil Rights Movement


Martin Luther King,
Letter from the
Birmingham Jail


Week 11


Women in Political Thought


Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
Lucretia Mott, and Jane
Hunt, Declaration of
Sentiments


Week 12


Women in Political Thought
(cont.)


Susan Moller Okin,
Women in Western
Political Thought
(selections)

Carole Pateman, The
Sexual Contract
(selections)


Week 13


Womens Diversity

bell hooks, Aint I A
Woman: Black Women
and Feminism
(selections)


Week 14


Course Review