Undergraduate Courses by Agatha A Slupek
PSCI 3600 Ancient Political Thought Syllabus, 2023
Many of the ideas central to Western politics can be traced back to ancient Greece, and more spec... more Many of the ideas central to Western politics can be traced back to ancient Greece, and more specifically, to the ancient Athenian city-state. Indeed, classical Athens is often referred to as the birthplace of democracy itself. From the eighth to the fifth century BCE, a series of legislative reforms and popular revolts alike saw power (kratos) wrested out of the hands of nobility and placed among the people (demos). Average citizens passed, voted, and deliberated on laws in the assembly and played an important role in deciding upon matters of right and wrong as jurors in the courts. During Athens' period of direct democratic government, Plato wrote his most famous tract, The Republic. Yet the canonical text has come to be known for its rebuke of, rather than celebration of, democratic rule. Plato's student Aristotle, for his part, was not himself a citizen of the famed Athenian city-state in which he wrote his Politics. What are we, contemporary readers, to make of these disjunctures? This course serves as an introduction to political theory as a sub-field of political science, as well as an introduction to ancient political thought. We will spend our semester reading Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Politics closely, paying particular attention to how it is that these thinkers view the relationship between justice and democracy. Is popular judgment in matters of right a crucible of democratic government? Can justice exist absent democratic governance? We will focus our attention on these questions in class, with some reference to contemporary issues. Our primary goal, however, will be to attend to the form and substance of the arguments put forward in these canonical texts. After surveying the arguments made for and against democracy by these thinkers and learning about the mechanisms of democratic government and popular judgment in ancient Athens, we will turn our attention to the thought of Abu Nasr Muhammad al-Farabi. al-Farabi was an important interpreter of both Plato and Aristotle and is considered the father of Islamic political philosophy. In our last classes, we will think about the legacy of "the ancients" or "the Greeks" and learn about how it is that their texts were passed down to us by way of early medieval Islamic philosophers. In doing so, we will consider how the history of political thought is narrated and told, pondering upon the questions of justice that are raised by its telling.
I have updated the syllabus for my spring course, "A Kind of Wild Justice": Justice, Vengeance, a... more I have updated the syllabus for my spring course, "A Kind of Wild Justice": Justice, Vengeance, and the Law.
Course Description Recent years have seen a surge in feminist activism. From the Women's Marches,... more Course Description Recent years have seen a surge in feminist activism. From the Women's Marches, to #MeToo and Incite!, political activists are reclaiming and reanimating feminism as a way of constituting public spaces and making claims to social justice. Contemporary struggles both take up and depart from past feminist practices in ways that are not always well understood. How has feminism historically challenged traditional ideas of the public and how are new forms of feminism developing alternative concepts of publicity? What does it mean to think about feminist activism, both past and present, as public practices of freedom? How have past feminist activists used existing forms of media to advance their cause and how do new forms of social media enable new public forms of feminism? This course will examine these and related questions in an attempt to develop a more situated understanding of the challenges and possibilities for feminism today.
Book Reviews by Agatha A Slupek
My review of Chakravarti's new book.
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Undergraduate Courses by Agatha A Slupek
Book Reviews by Agatha A Slupek