Graduate Seminar in Political Theory (Spring 2023)
Philosophy and Political Thought I and II
A year-long freshman course exploring philosophical texts and ideas from the Chinese, Indian and "Western" traditions.
Modern Social Thought
A course introducing and challenging some key social and political ideas in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. With de Tocqueville, Marx, Durkheim and Weber at its centre, but including readings from Mary Wollstonecraft, Simone de Beauvoir, Sojourner Truth, W.E.B. Dubois, Franz Fanon, Dadabhai Naoroji, Fei Xiaotong and others.
The Political Thought of the Enlightenment
A course in the history of modern political thought from Machiavelli to Mill, focusing on the eighteenth century.
Theories of Freedom
What is freedom and unfreedom, and what does it feel like? A course looking at theories of individual freedom and barriers to freedom, and to that end exploring topics such as classical ideas of liberty and autonomy (e.g. Mill and Kant), individual freedom and group identity, feminist political thought, and structural injustice.