PSC 312 - The Family and Politics

Institution:

University of New England

Subject:

Political Science

Description:

This course will focus on how the development of modern politics in the West has gone hand in hand with radical changes in the ways that people think about families and live their familial lives. Questions we will examine are whether modern politics can exist without the modern family, whether the decline of religious sentiment and local community has forced ideas about the family to carry new burdens, why changes in ideas about family seem so political threatening to some groups, and whether the ideas about authority and freedom that drive politics are rooted in the family. This course will then examine the contemporary politics of the family in the United States. We will examine the ways that ideas about the family underlie conservative and liberal worldviews, debates about family values, and the way changes in the composition of the modern families reverberate in politics. Readings from the class will include selections from: Wollstonecraft. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Rousseau. The Confessions, Emile, Julie. Nietzsche. Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols. Tocqueville. Democracy in America Christopher Lasch. Haven in a Heartless World: The Family Besieged. George Lakoff. Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think. Dorothy Dinnerstein. The Mermaid and the Minotaur.

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.une.edu/

Phone Number:

(207) 283-0171

Regional Accreditation:

New England Association of Schools and Colleges

Calendar System:

Semester

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