Political Science 135

Politics After the Apocalypse

Fall 2016
Tues. & Fri., 1:10-2:25

Professor Laura Ephraim

[email protected]
Schapiro 218
Office hours: Tuesday 3-4:30, Thursday 1-2:30, and by appointment

The zombies are coming! Climate change will destroy us! Bird-flu pandemic! To our horror and delight,
reminders are everywhere that the end is near. Some of these projected apocalypses are alarmist, some
fanciful…and others all too realistic. What shape will politics take after the apocalypse? What aspects of
politics will endure the ravages of fire or pestilence? What new political realities might emerge on ground
cleared by disaster? And what does it say about politics today that we are so eager to consume stories of states
falling and bands of survivors scraping together a nasty, brutish and short existence?

In this class, we reconsider what politics is and should be by contemplating accounts of its destruction and
rebirth in television, film, literature, activism, social science, and critical theory. We will approach these sources
as analogous to political theory’s classic thought experiment of the "state of nature" and social contract. We
will explore family resemblances between apocalyptic narratives and key concepts in political theory: the state
of exception, (post)millennialism, and anarchy. And we will consider what it suggests about our time
that we are so eager to imagine ourselves at the beginning of the end.

Course Format

Class will be driven primarily by discussion, sometimes in small groups. Students will have significant
responsibility for setting the agenda for discussions through memos submitted prior to class (see requirements
below). Brief in-class writing exercises will be used regularly to spur individual thinking and fuel group
discussion.

Requirements

Active Reading: Read all assigned texts (print, film and otherwise) closely, carefully, and actively. “Active
reading” could mean taking notes, underlining, jotting questions in the margins, or free writing. It could also
mean reading aloud or talking through questions with yourself or your friends. Taking the time to put your
thoughts into language (however tentatively) while you are reading will improve your memory, comprehension,
analysis and enjoyment of texts.

Participation: I expect you to be here, be prepared (pen, book, brain, paper, sense of humor), be on time, be
awake, and be ready to participate. Participation will be evaluated primarily for quality – though a willingness
to speak regularly and in the face of uncertainty is also crucial. Participation involves, but is NOT exhausted by

 speaking your opinion.

Other essential components of participation include:

 asking questions and helping classmates to answer theirs

 revealing through body language your engagement with the opinions of others
  writing down the ideas that come to you as you listen
 suggesting passages/examples for us to consider
 reading passages aloud
 pouring yourself into the writing I ask you to do in class
 stepping back if you’ve had the floor a few times to leave room for other voices
 throwing your hand in the air like you just don’t care if you’ve been hiding in the background,
trusting that you have gestated particularly worthwhile (if still tentative) ideas during your period of
silence and that others will be glad that you shared

Good participation, like good writing, requires practice and benefits from guidance and feedback. I am here to
help you move closer to both your writing and your speaking goals. Please don’t hesitate to talk with me to
strategize ways to improve your performance in discussion.

Three Discussion Memos, to be posted on Glow by 5:00 pm on the day before class. I will assign you
responsibility for memos for two specific class meetings; the other one you may write in advance of any class of
your choosing. The main purpose of these memos is to inspire and focus class discussion on the issues that most
fascinate or confound you. To that end, you might use discussion memos to:

 flag a couple of passages/scenes that grabbed your attention and briefly explain what you found
intriguing, confusing, annoying, inspiring, or infuriating about them
 offer some questions that you’d rather explore with the group than alone
 draw a connection between the ideas in the text and current political events (links to related media very
welcome!)
 connect the text with things we encountered previously or you are studying in other classes
 offer your thoughts about why this text matters to you, your generation, your community, your world (or
vent about its irrelevance)

In addition to shaping our discussions, the process of writing these memos will help you to form opinions of
class material and generate ideas for other writing assignments. Memos should be brief – several sentences of
your own, perhaps a quote or two from assigned material, no more than one page altogether. The writing can be
informal and unpolished. Discussion memos will be graded on a check/check plus/check minus basis; you can
assume you got a “check” unless you hear from me. Late memos will not be accepted. Reading the discussion
memos posted by your classmates prior to class is a required part of class preparation.

Three Papers, one of 3-5 pages and two more of 6-8 pages each. Topics will be distributed in advance, but I
encourage you to develop your own paper topics (run them past me first). We will discuss expectations for
papers in detail upon distribution of the first paper assignment and I will provide a grading rubric describing
characteristic qualities of an A, B, C, and D paper.

A Short Story or Film Short that responds to and promotes reflection upon themes, ideas and motifs
encountered in the course, accompanied by a 1-2 page cover letter explaining the relationship between your
creation and our assigned texts. A 1-2 page ungraded draft/proposal is due on Nov. 29th and will be
workshopped in class that day. Each student will give a brief reading/screening of their short story/film on a
date TBD in the second week of Dec. submit a final draft with the cover letter on that date.

Honor Code

The Williams Honor Code applies to all aspects of your work in this course. You are encouraged to discuss
ideas with fellow students and to have peers read drafts of your work, but all assignments must be written by
you alone. All quoted or paraphrased material must be correctly cited and referenced – if you don’t know how
to do this, ask me for help. This course does not have a research component and you are not required to consult
any sources outside of assigned course readings. If you do consult outside books, websites, articles, or other
resources to inform your papers, you must list them in your References list, regardless of whether or not you
quoted or paraphrased them. If you are at any time uncertain about how the honor code applies to this class, ask
me. If you have concerns about your ability to complete an assignment, come to me for help—do not
plagiarize.

Attendance Policy

Attendance is crucial to your learning and the quality of our discussions. Yet it may occasionally be necessary
to miss class for serious personal reasons. You may miss up to two classes without penalty for whatever reason.
These two “freebies” need not be documented; they are automatically excused. Each additional absence will
lower your final course grade by 1/3 of a letter (e.g. an A- becomes a B+). I will reconsider this policy only
in the case of 1) religious observance or 2) extraordinary medical/personal issues documented by a college
dean. Notify me as soon as you are aware that 1) or 2) may apply to you. Perfect attendance will enhance your
participation grade.

Approximate Grading Criteria

Participation: 15%
Discussion Memos: 10%
Paper #1: 15%
Paper #2: 20%
Paper #3: 20%
Short Story/Film: 20%

Course Texts

Four books are available for purchase at Water St. Books and many online retailers and are on library reserve:

Colson Whitehead, Zone One

Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
Marcel Theroux, Far North: A Novel
Roy Scranton, Learning to Die in the Anthropocene

Other readings are contained in two course packets, the first of which is available to be picked up at the Office
of Print & Mail in the '37 House at 51 Park Street. Packet readings are marked with an asterisk in the schedule.

Film & Television: All of the following are available to stream from our course Glow page, and DVDs are on
library reserve:

The Walking Dead, season 4

28 Days Later, dir. Danny Boyle
Children of Men, dir. Alfonso Cuarón
Mad Max: Fury Road, dir. George Miller
Snowpiercer, dir. Bong Joon-ho
 Approximate Course Schedule

The Beginning
Fri., Sept 9 Introductions

The State of Nature

Tues., Sept 13 *Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, selections

Zombies
Fri., Sept 16 The Walking Dead, Season 4, Episodes 1-8
*Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, “Monster Culture (Seven Theses)”

Another State of Nature

Tues., Sept 20 *Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality among
Men, selections

More Zombies
Fri., Sept 23 The Walking Dead, Season 4, Episodes 9-16
*Cory James Rushton and Christopher M. Moreman, “Race, Colonialism, and the
Evolution of the “Zombie”

Tues., Sept 27 28 Days Later

The State of Exception

Fri., Sept 30 *Karl Schmidt, Political Theology, Ch. 1
*Walter Benjamin, Thesis #8 on p. 257 of “Ten Theses on the Philosophy of History”
(flip ahead in packet to find it)
*Georgio Agamben, The State of Exception, selections

Tues., Oct 4 Review Agamben selections

*Mark Danner, Spiral: Trapped in the Forever War, p. 85-126
* Sanford Levinson, “Preserving Constitutional Norms in Times of Permeant
Emergency”
Paper #1 assignment distributed

Even More Zombies

Fri., Oct 7 Zone One, p. 3-103

Tues., Oct 11 Reading period; no class

Fri., Oct 14 Zone One, pp. 107-259

(Post) Millenialism
Tues., Oct 18 *Abbas Amanat, “Íntroduction: Apocalyptic Anxieties and Millennial Hopes in the
Salvation Religions of the Middle East”
*Stephen J. Stein, “American Millennial Visions”
*Lois Parkinson Zamora, “The Myth of Apocalypse and the American Literary
Imagination”
*Recommended: The Book of Daniel and The Revelation of Saint John the Divine
Paper #1 due

Fri., Oct 21 This space intentionally left blank for Mountain Day
Tues., Oct 25 *Walter Benjamin, “10 Theses on History”
*Michael E. Gardiner, “Marxism and the Convergence of Utopia and the Everyday,” p.
16-22.

Reproductive Failure
Fri., Oct 28 Children of Men
Williams Family Day – visitors welcome!

Tues., Nov 1 *Samuel Scheffler, Death and the Afterlife, selections

*Lee Edelman, No Future, Ch. 1

Fri., Nov 4 Margaret Attwood, The Handmaid’s Tale, Ch. 1-6

Paper assignment #2 distributed

Tues., Nov 8 Mad Max: Fury Road

Anarchy
Fri., Nov 11 *Emma Goldman, “Anarchism: What it Really Stands For”
*Alexander Berkman, ABCs of Anarchism, Intro and Ch. 19-22
*Andrej Grubacic and David Graeber, “Anarchism, Or The Revolutionary Movement Of
The Twenty-first Century”

Climate Catastrophe
Tues., Nov 15 Marcel Theroux, Far North: A Novel, p. 3-103

Fri., Nov 18 Marcel Theroux, Far North: A Novel, p. 105-172

Paper #2 due
Short story/film assignment distributed

Tues., Nov 22 Marcel Theroux, Far North: A Novel, p. 175-314

Fri., Nov 25 Thanksgiving recess; no class

*Recommended: short stories from Wasteland by Octavia Butler, Carol Emschwiller and
Dale Baily; selections from Lucy Corin’s 100 Apocalypses and Other Apocalypses

Tues., Nov 29 Short story/film draft due & workshopped in class

Fri., Dec 2 Snowpiercer

Tues., Dec 6 Roy Scranton, Learning to Die in the Anthropocene, Intro and Ch. 2-5
*Eddie Yuen, “The Politics of Failure Have Failed”
Recommended: review Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction from Williams Reads
The End
Date, Time TBD Readings, screenings of student projects over dinner or other refreshments
Short story/film short due

Fri., Dec 9 *Alan Weisman, The World Without Us, pp. 15-38
*Ray Bradbury, “There Will Come Soft Rain”
Paper assignment #3 distributed

Sat., Dec. 19 Paper #3 due, 5:00 pm