TEACHING

What does collective political activity look like outside, beyond, or beneath the structures of the sovereign state? How have ordinary people fought to transform state structures or build alternative political institutions of their own? This course examines these and related questions by turning to the history and political theory of social movements. From 19th-century labor uprisings and 20th-century anti-colonial struggles to the global rise of populism, the course investigates how movements for political and social change have not only challenged existing institutions, but also sought to invent new forms of organization while contesting the limits of democratic life. Key themes include the relationship between social movements and democracy; the tensions between spontaneity and organization, centralization and decentralization, revolution and reform; the “subject” or agent of social transformation; effective forms of institutionalization; and the evolving meanings of “democracy” itself.

Instructor: Lisa Wedeen

This course introduces undergraduate and graduate students to an array of interpretive methods in the social sciences. Authors include Karl Marx, J.L. Austin, Clifford Geertz, Sigmund Freud, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Hannah Pitkin, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Slavoj Žižek.

Instructor: David Lebow

This course prepares undergraduate students to begin a major in Law, Letters, and Society by offering critical perspectives on the role of law in shaping the social world. Authors include John Locke, James Madison, Karl Marx, Karl Polanyi, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Carl Schmitt, Friedrich von Hayek, Hannah Arendt, and Melinda Cooper.

Instructor: Gary Harrigel

This course introduces undergraduate students to a core curriculum focused on texts that have shaped the modern world. Authors include Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Weber, W.E.B. DuBois, and Simone de Beauvoir.

Instructor: John P. McCormick

This course introduces undergraduate and graduate students to the core writings of Niccolò Machiavelli, including The Prince, Discourses on Livy, and the Florentine Histories.

Instructor: Matthew Landauer

This course introduces undergraduate students to a core curriculum focused on texts that have shaped the modern world. Authors include Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.