GOVT 2304: Introduction to Political Science (Honors)
Writings that hypothetically realize political principles form the basis of classical political science, and more recent works continue to productively enquire about the limits and possibilities of our lives together, while challenging us to question the desirability and justice of the received political orders in which we live. This Honors course places in conversation three core perspectives on human, political order: the theological, the rational and the imaginative. Our course will conclude with the study of two modern perspectives on the consequences of failed executions of political visions in the 20th century, and the forces that compelled the attempts to realize them and which perhaps still do.
Plutarch
Life of Lycurgus
Plato
Republic
Ibn Tufayl
Hayy Ibn Yaqzan
Thomas Moore
Utopia
Francis Bacon
New Atlantis
Shulamith Firestone
The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution
W.E.B. DuBois
The Comet and Dark Princess
Octavia E. Butler
Parable of The Sower
Sun Ra
Space is The Place (film) and selected poems/compositions
Eric Voegelin
Science, Politics & Gnosticism
Hannah Arendt
The Origins of Totalitarianism