Modern Political Thought (mixed undergraduate & graduate lecture course)
This course attends to a distinctive cluster of political and philosophical concerns that have preoccupied ‘modern’ thinkers from Machiavelli to Mill, including: What grounds obedience to the laws and justifies the coercive power of the state? Can individual liberty be reconciled with the power of the collective? What kind of inequalities among human beings are permissible? Must the citizens of a well-ordered polity be virtuous, or do cleverly designed institutions obviate the need for that? Is there a common good? Does history chart a foreseeable course, and how far do human beings control the social forces that govern them? In addition, the class examines different political thinkers’ accounts of the rise of the sovereign state, the decline of hereditary privilege, the challenges of cultural, racial, and religious pluralism, European hegemony and colonial exploitation, the revival of popular government after centuries of disuse, and the growing importance of market exchange.
Citizenship & Exclusion (undergraduate lecture course or senior seminar)
Citizenship has always been a battleground in struggles for inclusion and exclusion. This course aims to familiarize students with contemporary theories of citizenship from the lens of boundaries. What kind of ‘good’ is citizenship, and why is it denied to some? How do politically, socially, or culturally marginalized groups use the discourse of citizenship to claim equal participation and recognition? How should access to citizenship be regulated in contemporary democracies? Is it possible to imagine citizenship without exclusion? As citizenship is inseparable from political practice, the assigned reading is drawn from a wide range of materials: philosophical and normative accounts, historical studies, social science research, judicial decisions, manifestoes, and speeches.
Introduction to Contemporary Civilization in the West (Columbia College Core Curriculum 2-semester sequence)
What is the good life for human beings? How can we adjudicate among the competing demands of moral, political, scientific, or religious viewpoints? On what grounds do social and political institutions claim our allegiance? What role do virtue and moral character have to play in society? Can individual liberty be reconciled with power? What, for that matter, is individual liberty? Can we find a scientifically validated way of ordering society, or do such attempts constrict the scope of human freedom and agency? As the central pillar of Columbia’s famed Core Curriculum, Contemporary Civilization addresses these enduring questions through the prism of some of the most influential texts of Western thought from Plato to Nietzsche, and pays particular attention to how each of these works builds on, amends, or rejects the wisdom of its predecessors.
Click here for the Contemporary Civilization website.
International Political Theory (graduate colloquium)
This graduate seminar in political theory reviews a series of themes that are foundational to contemporary normative debates about international and transnational politics. Taking seriously the proposition that public power is no longer exercised exclusively at the level of the nation-state, the seminar surveys a number of critical perspectives on the legitimacy of contemporary institutions of governance beyond the state. The course is organized into seven major themes, including sovereignty, imperialism, commerce, cosmopolitanism, justice, human rights, and democracy.
Commerce & Civic Virtue (graduate colloquium)
This graduate colloquium in political theory examines 18th century philosophies of commerce, civic virtue, and freedom. The course is centered on primary texts, including the works of Bernard Mandeville, Adam Smith, David Hume, Montesquieu, Adam Ferguson, and Immanuel Kant. Of particular interest is these thinkers’ respective treatments of the moral and behavioral foundations of market society, the relationship between wealth and political equality, the effects of commerce and luxury on social mores and personal morals, and, perhaps most importantly, the domestic and international consequences of economic exchange. The selected reading highlights the gradual dismantlement of the classical republican aversion to wealth accumulation, and the rehabilitation of avarice into an integrative (even edifying) social force.
Normative & Empirical Perspectives on International Law (graduate colloquium co-taught with Dr. Tonya Putnam)
This graduate colloquium aims to give students from different subfields of political science a rigorous cross-disciplinary foundation in key themes that cut across international relations, international law, and political theory. The themes covered by the seminar include territory, sovereignty, interstate cooperation & anarchy, the use of force, and human rights. Students will focus on conceptual, normative, and empirical articulations of each theme with an eye to the ways in which the insights from each disciplinary perspective reverberate in the development of international legal norms. The course also attends to how normative perspectives inform empirical work, and whether and how particular empirical presumptions underwrite normative perspectives. Course materials are drawn from classical texts in political philosophy, contemporary empirical scholarship, and legal documents.
This course attends to a distinctive cluster of political and philosophical concerns that have preoccupied ‘modern’ thinkers from Machiavelli to Mill, including: What grounds obedience to the laws and justifies the coercive power of the state? Can individual liberty be reconciled with the power of the collective? What kind of inequalities among human beings are permissible? Must the citizens of a well-ordered polity be virtuous, or do cleverly designed institutions obviate the need for that? Is there a common good? Does history chart a foreseeable course, and how far do human beings control the social forces that govern them? In addition, the class examines different political thinkers’ accounts of the rise of the sovereign state, the decline of hereditary privilege, the challenges of cultural, racial, and religious pluralism, European hegemony and colonial exploitation, the revival of popular government after centuries of disuse, and the growing importance of market exchange.
Citizenship & Exclusion (undergraduate lecture course or senior seminar)
Citizenship has always been a battleground in struggles for inclusion and exclusion. This course aims to familiarize students with contemporary theories of citizenship from the lens of boundaries. What kind of ‘good’ is citizenship, and why is it denied to some? How do politically, socially, or culturally marginalized groups use the discourse of citizenship to claim equal participation and recognition? How should access to citizenship be regulated in contemporary democracies? Is it possible to imagine citizenship without exclusion? As citizenship is inseparable from political practice, the assigned reading is drawn from a wide range of materials: philosophical and normative accounts, historical studies, social science research, judicial decisions, manifestoes, and speeches.
Introduction to Contemporary Civilization in the West (Columbia College Core Curriculum 2-semester sequence)
What is the good life for human beings? How can we adjudicate among the competing demands of moral, political, scientific, or religious viewpoints? On what grounds do social and political institutions claim our allegiance? What role do virtue and moral character have to play in society? Can individual liberty be reconciled with power? What, for that matter, is individual liberty? Can we find a scientifically validated way of ordering society, or do such attempts constrict the scope of human freedom and agency? As the central pillar of Columbia’s famed Core Curriculum, Contemporary Civilization addresses these enduring questions through the prism of some of the most influential texts of Western thought from Plato to Nietzsche, and pays particular attention to how each of these works builds on, amends, or rejects the wisdom of its predecessors.
Click here for the Contemporary Civilization website.
International Political Theory (graduate colloquium)
This graduate seminar in political theory reviews a series of themes that are foundational to contemporary normative debates about international and transnational politics. Taking seriously the proposition that public power is no longer exercised exclusively at the level of the nation-state, the seminar surveys a number of critical perspectives on the legitimacy of contemporary institutions of governance beyond the state. The course is organized into seven major themes, including sovereignty, imperialism, commerce, cosmopolitanism, justice, human rights, and democracy.
Commerce & Civic Virtue (graduate colloquium)
This graduate colloquium in political theory examines 18th century philosophies of commerce, civic virtue, and freedom. The course is centered on primary texts, including the works of Bernard Mandeville, Adam Smith, David Hume, Montesquieu, Adam Ferguson, and Immanuel Kant. Of particular interest is these thinkers’ respective treatments of the moral and behavioral foundations of market society, the relationship between wealth and political equality, the effects of commerce and luxury on social mores and personal morals, and, perhaps most importantly, the domestic and international consequences of economic exchange. The selected reading highlights the gradual dismantlement of the classical republican aversion to wealth accumulation, and the rehabilitation of avarice into an integrative (even edifying) social force.
Normative & Empirical Perspectives on International Law (graduate colloquium co-taught with Dr. Tonya Putnam)
This graduate colloquium aims to give students from different subfields of political science a rigorous cross-disciplinary foundation in key themes that cut across international relations, international law, and political theory. The themes covered by the seminar include territory, sovereignty, interstate cooperation & anarchy, the use of force, and human rights. Students will focus on conceptual, normative, and empirical articulations of each theme with an eye to the ways in which the insights from each disciplinary perspective reverberate in the development of international legal norms. The course also attends to how normative perspectives inform empirical work, and whether and how particular empirical presumptions underwrite normative perspectives. Course materials are drawn from classical texts in political philosophy, contemporary empirical scholarship, and legal documents.