My teaching interests combine themes from the history of political thought with contemporary political and social theory. Past courses taught as instructor of record are listed below. Syllabi available upon request.
Florida International University
POT 5007: Seminar in Political Theory
This graduate seminar is designed to introduce PhD students in Political Science to contemporary debates in political theory. It will be organized around four main themes: power, authority and legitimacy, freedom and equality, and justice. Yet far from treating these themes in isolation from each other, the course is designed to place treatments of the themes in dialogue with one another. Thus, in addition to examining different approaches to the major themes of the course, we will ask questions about the relationship between them (i.e. Can security exist without power?; Can power exist without freedom?; Are freedom and equality fundamentally in tension with one another or can they be reconciled?; What is more important for political legitimacy – freedom or justice?; Is it possible to have effective authority without legitimacy? etc.) All major required readings are drawn from the department’s political theory comprehensive field list. They will range over the historical and contemporary parts of the list. This course aims to be methodologically ecumenical, drawing on intellectual-historical, critical, Straussian, Cambridge School, and normative approaches throughout the course. As a seminar, this course relies heavily on the preparation and active participation of seminar participants; and every student will be required to take on a leadership role for two class sessions. In addition to class participation and leadership, students will be required to take a final exam which serves as a practice exam for the political theory comprehensive exam.
POT3013 RVC 122B: Ancient and Medieval Political Theory
This writing-intensive course surveys the origins and development of political thought in ancient Greece and the reinterpretation, appropriation, and contestation of this tradition in Roman and medieval Christian political philosophy. We will explore ancient political thought not just in texts that are self-consciously philosophical in the contemporary sense of the term, but also in epic and lyric poetry, tragedy, comedy, historiography, oratory, and biography. Throughout the course, students will learn to analyze central themes and arguments about political life within their appropriate historical and cultural contexts while also drawing parallels to the continuing centrality of these themes in contemporary political theory. In so doing, this course will draw on a variety of disciplines and approaches, including philosophy, political theory, and classical/literary studies.
Yale University
PLSC 108: Contemporary Political Theory: Justice, Freedom, Power
When and why should governments command our allegiance, and what are the limits to governments’ legitimate coercive authority? This course examines how contemporary Anglo-American political philosophy has answered such questions. We look at five main approaches to thinking about the moral principles that underlie evaluations of political legitimacy: Utilitarianism, Marxism, Social Contract Theory, Communitarianism, and Democracy. Readings from Bentham, J.S. Mill, Singer, Marx, Rawls, Nozick, Charles Mills, Pateman, MacKinnon, Crenshaw, MacIntyre, Habermas, Shapiro, Pettit.
Stanford University
POLISCI 234N: The Concept of Society
What is society? Does one choose to be a member of society or is it merely a condition within which one finds oneself? In what ways is society a category of political, economic, or social membership? Who or what counts as a member of society in the first place? What is a good society and how is it achieved?
This course analyzes debates about society over three broad periods. In the first section of the course, we will explore the idea of “civil society” and its critics within eighteenth- and nineteenth-century political thought, and the relationship between this concept and notions of property, the state, and commerce. In the second section of the course, we will turn to twentieth-century debates concerning mass society and issues such as communication, identity, democracy, and judgment. In the final section of the course, we will focus on the emergence of “digital” or “information society” and examine new concepts and debates about cyborgs, spectacle, and surveillance. Across the course, we will also bring out how different ways of conceptualizing society may or may not relate to different beliefs about the way economies work, the purpose of politics, and the relationship between humans and nature. We will engage with and draw on Marxist, liberal, libertarian, feminist, and postmodern traditions of thought. Readings from Marx, Weber, Bell, Arendt, Habermas, Fraser, Warner, MacKinnon, Haraway, Debord, Zuckerberg, Zuboff.
POLISCI 230A, CLASSICS 181, PHIL 176/276: Origins of Political Thought: Homer to Aristotle
This course surveys the origins and development of political thought in ancient Greece through the work of poets, plays, philosophers, historians, and legal documents. Readings from Homer, Hesiod, Plutarch, Aeschylus, Herodotus, Old Oligarch, Aristophanes, Thucydides, Gorgias, Isocrates, Demosthenes, Plato, and Aristotle.
* The image on this page is the frontispiece from William Blake’s Europe a Prophecy (1794) from The British Museum online collection.