POL 281 - The Politics of Marriage and the Art of Democracy

Credits: 4
When Offered: Spring 2011 and alternate years

Are marriage and democracy a good match? This course aims to shine light on recent public debate about marriage in the United States, namely the relationship between citizenship rights and same-sex marriage and the relationship between the health of civic community and the viability of long-term, heterosexual couplehood. We examine earlier conceptions of the connection between marital alliances and egalitarian, individualist political practices. Using three novels – Anthony Trollope’s Phineas Finn, Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy, and Tom Wolfe’s A Man in Full – in which the dramas surrounding marriage partners are embedded in the struggle for a more democratic politics in their protagonists’ respective communities, we consider how marriage practices in earlier, undemocratic regimes are challenged by the demands of democratic political life.LeBlanc.