TEACHING

Autumn 2024

Classics of Social and Political Thought I

Why do humans form political communities? What qualifies someone for citizenship in them and who should rule? What roles do justice, virtue, and law play in our political communities? Is it ever acceptable to violate the laws that govern us? We will examine how these questions were answered by Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, and Machiavelli. In addition to studying the substance of their political theories, we will analyze the principles and assumptions that animate them. We will pay especially close attention to how these theorists’ accounts of human nature informed their ideas about political life.

Winter 2024

On Leave

Spring 2025

Classics of Social and Political Thought II

The final quarter of Classics of Social and Political Thought turns to texts by nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers who developed critiques of existing social and political conditions: John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Simone de Beauvoir. These thinkers will invite us to explore a variety of ideas about the ways in which domination appears and operates within liberal democracies and capitalist societies, as well as the requirements for overcoming it. We will also examine the meaning of values such as equality, freedom, self-reliance, thrift, morality, and truth, and we will consider how these values shape human lives. Finally, throughout the quarter we will use the assigned texts as resources for learning about the practice of social criticism. We will consider how it can serve society, as well as how we might use the concepts and models of inquiry that we find in our texts to analyze present social and political conditions. What kinds of lives do these conditions allow us to lead?

Recent Courses

University of Chicago, Social Sciences Collegiate Division

Democracy’s Life and Death (Sosc 18400)

Democracy, Revolutions, and Constitutions (Sosc 18500)

The Challenges of Modern Democracies (Sosc 18600)

Harvard University, Committee on Degrees in Social studies               

Rethinking the City: Modern Life in and Beyond Europe       

Foundations in Social Science Research

Language, Culture, and Power

The Politics of “Culture” in Europe

Readings in Ethnography, Storytelling, Violence

Ethnographic Methods Workshop – Social Studies