courses
This page contains past and future descriptions and syllabi for courses I’ve taught at the University of Chicago and which I am prepared to teach.
A statement of my pedagogical approach is available as a PDF.
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 Sophocles, 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).
Foucault’s Turn to Ethics
In 1976, when Michel Foucault published the introduction to the History of Sexuality, it was planned to be the first in a multi-volume series of texts on the development of sexuality in the modern era. In what turned out to be only a few months before his death in 1984, two additional volumes were published. These texts were, on Foucault’s own appraisal, a significant departure from what he had intended to write. The 8-year gap between these works saw a transformation in Foucault’s thought, which Foucault scholars have frequently identified as a turn away from analysis of discursive power to an ethical project. This seminar in Foucault’s late thought takes up this ethical turn through a close reading of several lectures given during his period along with the entire 3 volumes of the History of Sexuality. We will focus particular attention on the 1982 lecture course at the College de France entitled The Hermeneutics of the Subject. This course will give students a fuller picture of Foucault’s thought in the several years before his untimely death. We will take up the question of whether his late work is continuous with, or signals a break from, his early thought. Additionally, we will take this opportunity to explore the differences between writing and speaking, between the book and the lecture as genres of political theory.
Introduction to U.S. Politics: Institutions and Issues
This is an introductory course in the politics of the United States. We will cover a large range of topics, institutions, and issues driven by historical documents and supplemented by classic Political Science analysis. Unlike a traditional introductory course in US Politics, which typically offer a synthetic overview of political institutions and practices, this course is historically driven and relies on original documents and original political science research. More importantly, we will understand the terms “institutions” and “practices” in a broader context, and explicitly question how we have come to understand what it means to some things as “political” instead of others.
