Sample Syllabi
Environmental Politics
It is beyond a truism to state that global climate change represents a, if not the, profound political challenge of the 21st century. However, it would be a mistake to reduce the questions of environmental politics either to climate change or a recent phenomenon. As we will see throughout the quarter, it is important to understand the environment as a site of politics and treat environmental questions as political questions – involving competing interests, unfolding through institutions, and invoking contending ethical and value systems. This course will provide a variety of theoretical frameworks and empirical analyses to understand environmental challenges as political ones as well as to evaluate different possibilities for political action, from the local to the international level.
This course is organized into four main units:
- We will begin by introducing key concepts and principles that organize the study of environmental politics as well as a survey of environmentalism to study the how the environment came to be regarded as an issue of political concern.
- We will then turn to study environmental policy-making in an American perspective, analyzing both different frameworks and political avenues for environmental policies.
- The third unit will study the unique global challenges of environmental politics, with particular attention focused on global climate change.
- Finally, we will conclude this course with a discussion of different ethical and moral questions raised by environmental politics including scientific authority, environmental justice, and responsibility.
Climate Change and Global Justice
Many activists and advocates have argued in recent years that climate change is not only an environmental problem, but a problem for global justice. What does it mean to treat climate change as an injustice? How does treating it as a question of global justice change the way we understand and respond to climate change? Who is responsible for global climate change? This course explores these questions by studying debates over the ethics of global climate change.
Our study will be organized into two main sections. We will begin by asking the question, is climate change a question of global justice? To answer this question, we will begin by studying theories of justice, or different accounts of what counts as an injustice. Then, we will turn to climate change to analyze three different ways that it could be understood as an injustice: it is unjust towards the poor, it is unjust towards future generations, and it is unjust towards nature. The second half of the course will focus on what responsibilities or obligations we have, if we understand climate change as a question of global justice. Once again, we will begin with theoretical questions, specifically: do our ethical and political obligations end at national boarders, or do we have similar obligations to all persons regardless of where they live? Subsequently, we will analyze different responses to climate change from the perspective of global justice, paying specific attention to the question of responsibility. Who should bear responsibility for the costs of adapting to and mitigating the effects of climate change? This class will not settle these questions definitively, but will provide a survey of the different challenges of and responses to climate change from the perspective of global justice and empower you to develop your own position.
Utopianism and Dystopianism
Throughout history, philosophers, novelists, essayists, and filmmakers have imagined what a perfect society would look like: a world with no war, violence, suffering, or injustice. Utopian thinking seems to be an inherent part of human political theorizing, and raises several questions:
Are these merely examples of wishful thinking or unbridled optimism?
Are utopias really no-places, as the Greek root would suggest, or are they valuable guides for improving our society?
Have the horrors of 20th century totalitarianism definitively proven that utopias are really dystopias in disguise?
Or should we treat utopias as cultural and political artifacts that reveal their societies’ political values, anxieties, and challenges through their ideals and aspirations?
These questions will occupy our study of utopias and dystopias throughout the term, as we survey the history of utopian thinking in Western thought. The goal of this course is to understand political thinking more generally through studying utopian thought as a particular modality of political theory. That is in addition to studying utopias and dystopias as political ideals or warnings we will use them to gain an understanding of the purposes and goals of politics and the nature of political theory as a human endeavor.
We will begin in classical Athens with Plato’s Republic and Aristophanes’ satire Birds. We will then turn to the early modern period with Thomas More’s Utopia, Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World, and Marx’s communist utopia. Subsequently we will turn the reactions against utopianism in both literature and political theory including the works of Dostoevsky, Hannah Arendt, and classic dystopian novels. We will close our course with a study of the ambiguities of utopia and the inescapability of politics by reading Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed and the question of whether or not utopian thinking is a thing of the past.
Introduction to Political Theory
What is the nature of politics?
Is it a distinct mode of human behavior?
What is the best way to organize a political community?
How should political decisions be made?
What is justice?
Is it ethical to participate in politics?
Questions like these have preoccupied political theorists for generations. In this course, we will survey some of the different answers to these and other questions from the history of political thought. By analyzing important and influential works of political theory, we will gain insight into how our conceptions of politics have changed over timeand in different political contexts. This survey will also provide a series of analytical and interpretive lenses through which we can understand and critique the political world we inhabit.
The course will be organized around four political questions. We will begin with the question: What are politics? Comparing Plato and Machiavelli and discussing Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, we will study the relationship between ethical principles and political systems. The second question – Why obey authority? – compares ancient and modern accounts of political authority to examine the sources of legitimate political power. Subsequently, we will ask: Is our society just? To answer the question, we will consider both liberal theories of justice and critiques from the perspective of power, race, gender, economics, and colonialism. Finally, we will engage the question: What are our responsibilities? This final unit will examine our responsibilities as individuals and citizens to rectify injustices in our world, through studies of reparations, climate change, and the Holocaust.
American Government and Public Policy
What are the foundational political principles of the United States? How do these shape political institutions and behavior? How does power function and what determines how political decisions get made in the United States? How have conceptions of citizenship and democracy changed over time? This course will grapple with these questions through an introduction to American politics and public policy. While the course is focused on political institutions, behavior, and change in the United States, it will also introduce students to core concepts in political science, such as rationality, collective action, power, citizenship, and democracy.
This course is organized into four sections. The first focuses on the foundations of American democracy both historically and analytically. In addition to studying the United States’ founding documents and principles, we will also survey the analytic foundations of political science. The second turns to the problem of collective action and how American political institutions, both formal and informal, serve to both resolve and intensify them. The third section introduces different conceptions of power to study what shapes political behavior and outcomes in the United States. The final section turns to the slow and uneven resolution of the contradiction between universal claims of the United States’ founding documents and the exclusions and inequalities it sustained, through an analysis of slavery, reconstruction, the expansion of the suffrage, and civil rights.