courses
Classics of Social and Political Thought I (SOSC 15100)
Part one of the Classics sequence. In this quarter, we focus on ancient and medieval political thought including Plato, Aristotle, Alfarabi, Aquinas, and Machiavelli (Autumn Quarter).
Classics of Social and Political Thought II (SOSC 15200)
This course is the second part of the year long Classics sequence. In this quarter, we focus on social contract theory through classics works by Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau (Winter Quarter).
2009 Syllabus, 2007 Syllabus
Classics of Social and Political Thought III (SOSC 15300)
This course is the third part of the year long Classics sequence. In this quarter, we turn Tocqueville, Marx, Mill, Weber, Nietzsche, Du Bois, and Beauvoir (Spring Quarter).
Politics of Punishment (PLSC/CRPC 20702)
This is a seminar course asking what punishment means in a modern democratic state and what particular forms of punishment reveal about conceptions of personal responsibility and subjectivity. The first half of the course will explore the dominant modern approaches to understanding punishment, covering Durkhiem, Marxist interpretations, modern Anglo-American legal traditions, expressive retributivism, and culminating with a close reading of Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish. The second part of the course focuses on incarceration as it is practiced in the United States in light of these theoretical approaches. The third part of the course asks how such practices play out in terms of collateral consequences and the importance of racial, gender, and sexual identities in relation to punishment (Autumn Quarter, 2006).