POL 370 - Seminar in American Political Thought

FDR: SS2
Credits: 3 credits in fall or winter; 4 credits in spring.
Planned Offering: Offered when interest is expressed and departmental resources permit.

Prerequisite: POL 100 or 111. An examination of classic themes and current issues in American political thought. Depending on the instructor, emphases may include the Federalists, Anti-Federalists, Alexis de Tocqueville, Abraham Lincoln, and voices from the Progressive and civil rights eras. Course readings stress primary sources including speeches, essays, and books by politicians and theorists. The course explores the effort to reconcile liberty and equality, individualism and community, liberalism and republicanism, politics and religion, among other themes. The course highlights the contemporary relevance of the enduring tensions between political principles and practice.

Topic for Spring 2012:

POL 370-01: Seminar in American Political Thought (4). Prerequisite: POL 100 or 111. An examination of classic themes and current issues in American political thought. In particular, the course concentrates on a series of American debates about the nature of liberty, debates which necessarily also consider the nature of a truly democratic society. We study the thought of Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Walt Whitman, Alexis de Tocqueville, Herbert Croly, Wendell Berry, Wilson Carey McWilliams, and various Supreme Court justices. These authors lead us into more general considerations of the Puritans, the Founders, the Anti-Federalists, the Progressives, as well as current articulations of liberalism, conservatism, libertarianism, and what might be called the New Agrarianism. Readings stress primary sources including speeches, court decisions, letters, essays, and books. (SS2) Scott. Spring 2012