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Course Criteria
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3.00 Credits
This course is an introduction to the religious literature of the Arab-Islamic world. Emphasis is on works from the classical and medieval periods of Islam, roughly from the seventh to the 14th century of the Common Era. We will read selections from the Qur'an (the sacred scripture of Islam), the Hadith literature (sayings attributed to the prophet Muhammed), the biography of the Prophet, commentaries on the Qur'an, historical and philosophical texts, and mystical poetry. All texts will be read in English translation. No prior knowledge of Islam and its civilization is assumed, although helpful.
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3.00 Credits
Islam and its compatibility with modernity is a much-debated issue in the contemporary period. The course will address this timely topic and discuss the most important "hot-button" issues involved: political Islam, democracy, pluralism, rights of women, and secularism. The historical contexts in which these issues have been debated will also receive attention. What internal resources exist within Islamic thought, which are being drawn upon by modernists to make a strong case for an essential compatibility between Islam, modernity, and democracy, for example? Is democracy (or Islam, for that matter) a monolithic concept? Students will be expected to actively take part in discussions centered around such questions, the assigned readings, and class lectures. Prior exposure to at least one class on Islam or the Middle East is strongly recommended.
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3.00 Credits
This is a comparative study of short prose fiction in the Portuguese-speaking world, with special emphasis on theoretical issues related to this literary genre. Authors studied include Machado de Assis, Joao Guimaraes Rosa, Clarice Lispector, Mario deCarneiro, Miguel Torga, and Luandino Vieira. Texts and discussions in English.
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3.00 Credits
An introduction to the literary productions by African, Caribbean, and Asian immigrants to France. Students will acquire a detailed understanding of the relevant strands of current theoretical thinking, and through a close analysis of the texts themselves, will examine recurrent themes and forms in immigrant literature, including the representation of identity; the concepts of origins; the intersection of race, class, and gender; and the textual strategies underpinning these considerations. Finally, we will examine the different ways in which these authors are redefining French literature with their singular voices and styles. Writers to be studied include Farida Belghoul, Azouz Beggag, Soraya Nini, Calixthe Beyala, Bolya Baenga, Gisele Pineau, and Linda Li. The course will be taught in French.
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3.00 Credits
This course will take an interdisciplinary literary-historical approach to revolutionary movements that electrified populations around the world: the revolt of the sans-culottes in France (1789-1794) and the slave uprisings in colonial Saint-Domingue (1791-1804). Through analysis of short stories and novels by authors such as Condorcet, Balzac, and Hugo, and readings in nineteenth-century and modern-day historiography by scholars such as Michelet, Soboul, James, and Dubois, students will appreciate the controversies that have perplexed observers for centuries.
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3.00 Credits
This course will introduce the changing perspectives and current controversies concerning international economic relations between the developed and developing worlds. What do we mean by "development"? To what extent should states intervene in free markets? Does it matter that today's developing countries operate in a different global environment than countries like Britain and the U.S. did during their development period? Should developing countries be given special consideration in trade and financial agreements? Do international financial institutions (IFIs) like the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO act in the interest of the world as a whole or serve the narrower interest of the powerful north? How are domestic imperatives balanced with global aims? The course will have a strong interdisciplinary flavor, with readings taken from both political science and economics.
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3.00 Credits
This course introduces students to the dynamics of the social and historical construction of race and ethnicity in American political life. The course explores the following core questions: What are race and ethnicity? What are the best ways to think about the impact of race and ethnicity on American citizens? What is the history of racial and ethnic formation in American political life? How do race and ethnicity link up with other identities animating political actions like gender and class? What role do American political institutions (the Congress, presidency, judiciary, state and local governments, etc.) play in constructing and maintaining these identity categories? Can these institutions ever be used to overcome the points of division in American society?
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3.00 Credits
This course will describe and seek to explain racial differences in public opinion, political participation, party affiliation, representation, and policy outcomes.
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3.00 Credits
This course analyzes prominent resistance movements in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. We first examine the conceptual tools of contentious politics, domination and resistance, state-society relations, and violent vs. nonviolent strategies of resistance. We then examine various nationalist independence movements, revolutionary movements, communist insurgencies, civil wars, and peaceful democracy movements. To better understand resistance movements from the perspectives of leaders and participants, we will watch a series of documentaries and read the (auto-) biographies of Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi, the Dalai Lama, Wei Jingshen, and others. In analyzing democracy movements, we will further examine what the third wave of democracy entails, why some movements succeed while others fail, how new democracies should reconcile with past dictators, to what extent constitutional engineering can solve past problems and facilitate successful transitions, and why some new democracies remain fragile.
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3.00 Credits
In this course, students will study the focal ideas and arguments that helped shape the development of Western modernity--and its notions of freedom, equality, citizenship, rights, democracy, nationality, justice, and cosmopolitanism--through close readings of classic texts of European and American political thought. Hobbes's Leviathan, Locke's Second Treatise of Government, Rousseau's First Discourse, Second Discourse, and Social Contract, plus several historical and political essays by Kant will offer students the opportunity to understand the evolution of the vastly influential "social contract" tradition and the variants of democracy that have sprung from it. In addition, we will read contemporary works of political theory by John Rawls, Anthony Appiah, and Martha Nussbaum that both build on and move beyond the early modern social contract tradition in order to engage pressing issues of global justice that are inflected by race, ethnicity, nationality, class, sex, and gender. Students will participate in an on-campus conference on "Cosmopolitanism: Gender, Race, Class and the Quest for Global Justice," which will feature Appiah and Nussbaum as keynote speakers.
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