SYLLABUS
Collegiate Seminar 146: Questions of Citizenship
Julie Park
Fall 2017
COURSE DESCRIPTION
The liberal arts were originally understood in part as the arts proper to a life of political freedom;one aim of a liberal education was to prepare students to be active and responsible citizens of afree polity. This course is meant to support that aim by engaging students in questions ofcitizenship and the common good. Where did the institution of citizenship come from? How has it evolved? Who has been included or excluded by evolving definitions of citizenship? Whatdoes it mean to be a good citizen? How can citizens best contribute to the common good? Howbest to understand the common good itself? How do different visions of the good entail differentviews of human nature? How do views of human nature underlie ideas of the most just socialorder? How can citizens best work for a more just society? Does the concept of citizenship implyallegiance to a particular state, or can one be a cosmopolitan “citizen of the world”? Can onebalance the claims of patriotism and cosmopolitanism? How should we understand the meaningof citizenship today? We will focus especially on the diversity of American political thought,
and on the ways in which diverse authors have appropriated and interpreted classic texts.
TOPICS
Ancient Citizenship.The Common Good. Civility/The Ethics of Democratic Discourse.
Polemics. The Question of Democracy. Demagoguery. The Meaning of Politics. Revolution.Violence. Power. Natural Law. Classic Liberalism and its Critics. The History of PoliticalEquality. Civil Disobedience. Patriotism. Cosmopolitanism. Nationalism. Citizenship Today.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
1. To trace the lineage of current ways of thinking of citizenship and the common good.
2. To understand the strengths and limitations of these different ways of thought.
3. To reflect on the ways in which human beings find fulfillment in community.
4. To work out and articulate in writing one’s vision of a just social and political order.
5. To develop the capacity to apply the ideas learned in this course to the analysis ofconcrete social and political issues today.
TENTATIVE READING LIST
Homer,The Iliad, Book IX, lines 9-145
Herodotus,The History, 3:80-83 (Debates over Government); 4:110-117 (The Amazons);
5:66-78 (The Birth of Democracy in Athens)
Thucydides,The History, “Pericles’ Funeral Oration”; “The Mytilenian Debate”
Aristotle,The Politics, Book One, sections 1-2, and Book Three
Titus Livy,The Early History of Rome, 2.31-33 (The Conflict of the Orders)
Thomas Aquinas,De Regno
Niccolò Machiavelli,Discourses on Livy, 129-133
John Locke,Second Treatise on Government
Adam Smith,The Wealth of Nations, Book IV, Ch. II, pp. 568-573
Immanuel Kant,What Is Enlightenment?
Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence
Alexander Hamilton,Federalist Paper #1
James Madison,Federalist Paper #10
Constitutional Convention, The United States Constitution
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, The Seneca Falls Declaration
Henry David Thoreau,On Civil Disobedience
Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address
Roger Taney,Dred Scott v. Sanford
James Fenimore Cooper, “On Demagogues”
George Orwell, “Notes on Nationalism”
William F. Buckley, “Why the South Must Prevail”
James Baldwin, “My Dungeon Shook”
Hannah Arendt,On Violence, Part II; “Civil Disobedience”
Margaret Chase Smith, “A Declaration of Conscience”
Martin Luther King, “I Have a Dream”
Garret Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons”
Bill Clinton, Message to Gay Rights Protestors
Stephen Carter, “The Etiquette of Democracy” 277-286
Michel Foucault, “Polemics, Politics, and Problematizations”
Nelson Mandela,Long Walk to Freedom (selection)
EvgenyAfineevsky,Winter on Fire (film)
Toni Morrison, “A Return to Citizenship”
Alasdair MacIntyre, “Is Patriotism a Virtue?”
Kwame Anthony Appiah,Cosmopolitanism (selection)
Danielle Allen,Our Declaration (selections)
Lin Manuel Miranda,Hamilton!
TENTATIVE COURSE SCHEDULE
Collegiate Seminar 146: Questions of Citizenship
Julie Park
Fall of 2017
WEEK ONE
8/29 Homer,The Iliad, Book IX, lines 9-145
Nelson Mandela,Long Walk to Freedom (20-22)
8/31 Stephen Carter,Civility, “The Etiquette of Democracy” (277-286)
Michel Foucault, “Polemics, Politics, and Problematizations”
WEEK TWO
9/5 Herodotus,History 3:80-83 (Debate over Government)
4:110-117 (The Amazons)
5:66-78 (The Birth of Democracy)
9/7 Thucydides “Pericles’ Funeral Oration”
WEEK THREE
9/12 Thucydides, “The Mytilenian Debate”
James Fenimore Cooper, “On Demagogues”
Margaret Chase Smith, “A Declaration of Conscience”
9/14 Aristotle,The Politics, Book One, sections 1-2
Book Three
WEEK FOUR
9/19 TitusLivy,The Early History of Rome, 2.31-2.33
EvgenyAfineevsky,Winter on Fire (film)
9/21 Hannah Arendt,On Violence, Part II
WEEK FIVE
9/26 Thomas Aquinas,De Regno, Book One pp. 5-45
9/28 Thomas Aquinas,De Regno, Book Two, pp. 45-52
Niccolò Machiavelli,Discourses on Livy, 129-133
WEEK SIX
10/3 John Locke,Second Treatise on Government, Chapters 1-9
10/5 John Locke,Second Treatise on Government, Chapters 10-19
WEEK SEVEN
10/10 Adam Smith,The Wealth of Nations, Book IV, Ch. II, pp. 568-573
Garrett Hardin “The Tragedy of the Commons”
10/12 Immanuel Kant,What Is Enlightenment?
WEEK EIGHT
10/17 Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence
Danielle Allen,Our Declaration (selection)
10/19 MIDTERM BREAK
WEEK NINE
10/24 Lin Manuel Miranda,Hamilton!
10/26 Alexander Hamilton,Federalist Paper #1
James Madison,Federalist Paper #10
WEEK TEN
10/31 U.S. Convention, The United States Constitution
11/2 Elizabeth Cady Stanton, The Seneca Falls Declaration
WEEK ELEVEN
11/7 Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address
Roger Taney,Dred Scott v. Sanford
11/9 Henry David Thoreau On Civil Disobedience
WEEK TWELVE
11/14 Hannah Arendt “Civil Disobedience”
11/16 William F. Buckley “Why the South Must Prevail”
James Baldwin “My Dungeon Shook”
WEEK THIRTEEN
11/21 Martin Luther King, “I Have a Dream”
Bill Clinton Message to Gay Rights Protestors
11/23THANKSGIVING BREAK
WEEK FOURTEEN
11/28 Alasdair MacIntyre, “Is Patriotism a Virtue?”
Kwame Anthony Appiah,Cosmopolitanism (selection)
11/30 George Orwell, “Notes on Nationalism”
WEEK FIFTEEN
TBA Toni Morrison, “A Return to Citizenship”
First Assignment: A Critical Essay
Collegiate Seminar 146: Questions of Citizenship
Julie Park
Fall of 2017
Rationale: The point of seminar is to learn to think for oneself, and we do this best by thinkingthrough questions we really care about in dialogue with each other and with a few classic texts.Writing is a way to have this dialogue--to ask critical questions about a text, but also to respondto questions raised by the text itself.
Assignment: Choose a text we have read so far, introduce and pose a question it raises, lay outyour interpretation of the text by quoting and explaining specific passages, and then in light ofyour interpretation lay out your own answer to the question.
Format: Your essay should have three sections:
(1) A question. A good question points to something obscure--something that is not fully clear.If the meaning of your question is self-evident, you can just pose it at the start of your essay andgo from there. But if the meaning of your question is not immediately evident, it would help tointroduce your question, explain what it means, and explain what is at stake.
(2) A close reading of a text. You have to find part of a text that is relevant to your question. It isessential that you INTRODUCE each passage by summarizing its point in a sentence, QUOTEactual passages from the work, and then EXPLAIN how you interpret them. You do not have toagree with the text your cite; you only have to respond to it with your answer.
(3) An answer. In light of your reading, you have to lay out your own answer to the question.It is not enough just to say what you think; you have to explain why you think this is a goodanswer, for what reasons this is (in your opinion) better than other possible answers to the samequestion. To give a reason is to put your understanding into words in a way that lets otherpeople see how you think about something and why you think the way you do.
Audience: Part of being well-educated is being able to connect with people who do not shareyour background. So write the essay for a general audience--assume that readers have notnecessarily read the same books you have read.
Grading Criteria: Your essay will be evaluated according to a few criteria:
1. The quality of your questioning. You do not need a complex or sophisticated question.
The most important questions are often the simplest and most naïve. But you have to fully
understand the meaning, stakes, and implications of your question, and you have to choose aquestion that gets to the heart of the text--that points to and illuminates something that isessential to understanding the text.
2. The quality of your reading. Is your essay based in a close and insightful reading of the text?Have your found and quoted key passages? Have you been able to discern in those passagessomething obscure, that is not obvious but that is crucial to understanding the text—anunspoken question, an implicit meaning, a questionable assumption, an opaque figure ofspeech, a moment of ambiguity where the text could be read more than one way, a hiddentension or contradiction between different parts of the text, a non-obvious connection betweendifferent parts of the text that illuminates the sense of the whole? Have you been able to shedlight on this obscurity? Does your reading point to and illuminate something in the text that mostreaders could not see on their own?
3. The quality of your answer. Do you give reasons for your answer? Are these reasons laid outas simply and precisely as possible? Do your reasons let others see clearly why you think youranswer is a good one. Does your answer show a real understanding of the question (anunderstanding that is deep, clear, precise, refined, and complex)?
4. The quality of your writing: Does your outline allow you to lay out your thoughts in a clearsequence of steps? Are your paragraphs focused and coherent? Are your sentences fluent andconcise? Do you use words simply and precisely, with a clear understanding of their meaningsand connotations?
Length:4-5 pages
Due Date:TBA
Second Assignment: A Public Narrative
Collegiate Seminar 146: Questions of Citizenship
Julie Park
Fall 2017
Rationale: The point of this course is not just to think about the common good in the abstract,but to prepare ourselves to be active and responsible citizens--to be able to speak outpersuasively to our fellow citizens on concrete problems we face concerning the common good.Research has shown that the most persuasive discourse is a public narrative--a story that relates your own personal experience with a topic, situates your story in a commonly shared context,and then proposes a concrete course of action.
Assignment: Choose a topic that concerns the common good, and write a public narrative thatargues for a specific course of action. Your topic may be global, national, regional, or local.Think of your paper as an opinion/editorial essay, or a speech to a town hall meeting.
Format: Your essay should have three sections:
(1)A Story of You: Personal Narrative. Tell a story about your own experience with this topic.You need to convey how you became aware of the topic and how your thinking has evolved onit. You also want to tell your story in a way that emphasizes clearly what is at stake (what is thefailure, injustice, inconvenience, or looming disaster that needs to be confronted). If you areinterested in a topic you have no personal connection to, tell the story of a person who does.One page.
(2) A Story of Us: General Narrative. Tell the broader story of the trend or phenomenon of whichyour own personal story is a part. Here you need to shift from a personal to an objectiveapproach to your topic. Your story will be persuasive to the extent that you can give us a fewverifiable facts and figures from respected sources. One page.
(3) A Story of Now: Action Proposal. In light of your two stories, you need to make the case for acourse of action. Here you need to propose a specific, concrete, achievable goal. You cannotunite people around vague demands for a general change (e.g. end racism); you have to starttowards that general goal through a small but achievable step (e.g. integrate the busses ofMontgomery, Alabama). One page.
Audience: Part of being a good citizen is being able to connect with people who do not shareyour background. So write the essay for a general audience--assume that readers have notnecessarily read the same books you have read.
Grading Criteria: Your essay will be evaluated according to a few criteria:
1. The quality of your personal story. The point of your personal story is to get people to care.Your narrative needs to show how your topic is connected to values they care about. You needto dramatize the negative side of the problem (failure, injustice, inconvenience, harm), andhighlight the positive qualities of the people who are negatively affected. You have to make thetopic meaningful to people by showing how it is relevant to their core values.
2. The quality of your general story. The point of the general story is give people a clear vision ofour situation. Your story has to be grounded in specific facts rather than vague generalizations.It needs to acknowledge the complexity of the topic rather than over-simplifying it. It needs tobe impartial and fair-minded rather than obviously biased, tendentious, and self-serving.
3. The quality of your proposal. Is your proposal clearly defined and realistically achievable? Canyou lay out the steps we would need to take to achieve it? Can you lay out and answer thepossible arguments against your solution? Can you lay out the arguments for your proposal in aclear, coherent, and forceful way?
4. The quality of your writing: Do your stories lay out your thoughts in a clear sequence of steps?Are your paragraphs focused and coherent? Are your sentences fluent and concise? Do youuse words simply and precisely, with a clear understanding of their meanings and
connotations?
Length:3 pages
Due Date:TBA
Third Assignment: A Reflective Paper
Collegiate Seminar 146: Questions of Citizenship
Julie Park
Fall of 2017
Rationale: We learn better if we occasionally reflect on what and how we have learned.
Assignment: On pages v-viii, the Seminar textbook lists seventeen specific learning
outcomes of the course: five for critical thinking; four for shared inquiry; four for
written and oral communication; and four for Seminar as a whole. Choose one specific
learning outcome from each of the four categories of learning outcomes, and write a 2-4
page essay reflecting on what you have struggled with or learned for each one in
seminar this semester.
Format: The assignment asks you to make a general statement about your work in the
Seminar so far, and to illustrate that statement with specific examples. The simplest way
to organize your writing would be as a paper that lays down a thesis and tries to
support it with evidence. The classic thesis/support paper has three sections:
(1) A thesis--a claim that can be supported by argument and evidence. Your thesis will
be a general assessment of your work so far in Seminar (e.g. “I’ve learned a lot in
Seminar,” “I’ve struggled in Seminar,” “My experience in Seminar has been mixed”).
The first paragraph of the paper should introduce the topic of Seminar and state your
thesis in the final sentence.
(2) Four paragraphs that support or illustrate your thesis. Each paragraph should
quote one particular learning outcome, explicate in your own words the meaning of that
specific outcome, and use one or two concrete examples from specific classes, readings,
or essays, to explain what precisely you have learned or struggled with.
(3) A conclusion. In light of your self-assessment, explain what specific learning
outcomes you intend to work on in your next seminar.
Grading Criteria: Your paper will be evaluated by a few criteria:
1. Realism. The point of the paper is not to write a happy story about how you have
already learned everything that Seminar has to teach. The point is to reflect seriously on
what has come easily and what has been hard, what you have struggled with and what
you have neglected, what you have learned and what you still need to work on in
seminar. Vague claims that you have learned immensely from seminar will seem
suspiciously like BS, while more precise and nuanced assessments will be easier to
support with specific examples.
2. The precision and clarity of your understanding of the learning outcomes. For each
paragraph you first have to explain in your own words and in general terms the outcome
you have tried to learn. The point here is not to regurgitate in your paper the
descriptions of the learning outcomes in the textbook; the point is to show that by
reflecting on the textbook and on the seminar itself you have achieved a deeper, clearer,
more precise, nuanced, and refined understanding of the aims of Seminar.
In other words, the assignment asks you to reflect on the meaning of the learning