Professor
Tom Atchison Office: 320 St. John’s Hall, St. Paul Campus
Phone: 651-793-1493
E-mail:
Thomas.Atchison@Metrostate.edu
Class website: I maintain my own website (not part of D2L)
where I post course handouts and information at: http://www.woldww.net/classes
Course
Objectives:
1.
To learn something about a variety of approaches to politics --
including some that are outside the 'mainstream' of U.S. political
culture. This involves:
c. Learning something about how those
ideologies have been put into practice.
2. To get better at analyzing and evaluating
political institutions, policies and issues.
a. Deepen understanding of important
political value terms like 'democracy', 'equality', 'liberty', 'community',
'stability', 'justice', etc.
b. Become more familiar with the way
various ideologies (or 'isms') may understand those values differently.
c. Practice defending and criticizing
political principles, institutions, policies, reforms, etc.
Texts:
Dogmas and Dreams: A Reader in Modern Political
Ideologies, 3rd edition, 2006, edited by Nancy S. Love
Political
Ideologies: An Introduction, 4th edition, 2007, by Andrew
Heywood
Be sure you have
the most recent editions of these texts.
Other readings will be photocopied and handed out in class or will
be made available on the Internet. Some
assignments for this class will require access to the Internet – Metro State
provides access in its computer labs and library.
Please make
sure your Metro State Netmail account is working and check regularly for class
related emails
Please bring
the assigned readings to class each week
Please keep
copies of all the work you hand in.
Please be
aware that the University now requires students to complete 2/3 of the
courses they attempt. If you withdraw
from this course after the drop deadline (August 31) you may run afoul of this
requirement. Decide quickly whether this
is the right course for you.
Coursework
Reading assignments
I expect you to find time (several hours) to do the reading for each
class and to come prepared to discuss it.
Come to class ready to say what you found interesting, what you found
confusing, silly, or just plain wrong, what seemed to you to be the most
important claims made, and what arguments or justifications were offered for
those claims.
20 % of your grade will be earned by
submitting brief (1/2 to 11/2 pages, typed, double-spaced) responses to the
readings for each class. These must be
turned in at the beginning of the class period to be counted. (If you must miss class, send in your
response paper by e-mail.) They can contain questions, objections, observations
and/or reactions to the reading for that class.
I will not grade these (or even return them consistently), but I will
reject any that do not seem to be based on a reasonably conscientious reading of
the assignment for that week. You can
miss one of these and still earn an ‘A’ for this part of the course work, but
missing more will be penalized on the following schedule: 85% completed = A;
70% = B; 60% = C; 50% = D; less than 50% = F.
I will also notice and reward particularly perceptive or thoughtful
response papers.
Class
discussion
Most weeks we will have guided small
group discussion projects. The purpose
of these projects is to open discussion and to focus it on particular issues.
They are also intended to be "mini-labs" in which to practice the
skills of careful reading and evaluation of reasoning. The projects are done in class in
groups of 3-5 and take roughly 20-45 minutes to complete. Each group should keep notes on its
discussion, sign the notes and hand them in at the end of each class
session. Often groups will also report
orally on their discussions.
If you miss a discussion project,
you should get hold of the instructions, write out responses to the questions
on your own, and hand them in as soon as you can. 10% of your grade will be determined by the
number of discussion projects you complete satisfactorily (on the same schedule
as the response papers above.)
10%
of your grade will also be determined by my evaluation of the quality of your
participation in class discussions. Just
showing up and paying attention earns a C for this component; occasionally
making helpful contributions earns a B; regularly making helpful contributions
earns an A. Helpful contributions
include: asking pertinent questions, answering questions asked by the
instructor or by other students, expressing your views about the texts or
topics we are discussing, responding (relevantly and respectfully) to the views
expressed by others.
Take-home
essay exams
Twice during the
course (at about the 6th and 12th weeks) you will be given a take-home essay
exam. The exams will focus on the themes
and readings discussed during the preceding segment of the course. Each exam will involve writing 6-8 pages.
These exams must be word-processed or typewritten. Each will count for 17.5% of your grade.
Position paper
A 7-10 page position paper will be
due at the end of the semester. This
assignment will ask you to develop and defend your own position on the
direction our national politics should take.
Detailed instructions will be handed out later. (25% 0f your grade)
Grading criteria
I try hard to base my evaluation of
your work on your understanding of the reading, the quality of your reasoning
and questioning, and the clarity and effectiveness of your expression of your
thoughts, not on whether I agree with your political ideas and
positions.
Time commitment outside of class
In accordance
with Metropolitan State University guidelines, I've designed this course with
the expectation that students will do 2-3 hours of course-related work outside
of class for every hour spent in class.
In other words, you should expect to spend 6-9 hours a week outside of
class working on this course.
Needed reading and writing skills
Although there
are no prerequisites for this course, it is an upper-division course. This means I assume you have the following
reading and writing skills, and assignments are made with this expectation in
mind:
Attendance
I do not require
attendance per se, but part of your grade is determined by
discussion projects and general class discussion. So, when you are in class, contribute to the
discussion and please be sure your name is on your small group's discussion
report and that the report gets turned in.
When you miss a class, get the instructions for the discussion project,
write out answers on your own and turn them in.
I strongly advise regular attendance (and prompt completion of missed
discussion projects), because the material in this course is relatively difficult
and confusing, and few students are able to do well on the exams and papers
without the explanations and practice provided in class.
All work
submitted for this course must be your own.
Plagiarism is the academic ‘sin’ of presenting someone else’s work as
your own. It is plagiarism if you copy
something verbatim (word for word) from a published source, from the Internet,
or from another student. It is still plagiarism
if you rearrange, paraphrase, condense, or summarize someone else’s work
without making clear to your reader what is your contribution and what is taken
from your source. If the exact wording comes from your source, then use
quotation marks. If the idea comes from
someone else, give him or her credit for it. The way to do this is to cite
your sources. There is a clear and
detailed explanation of various forms of plagiarism and of proper citation
practices at: http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~tales/02-1/plagiarism.html. I will give a grade of ‘F’ to any student
who submits plagiarized work for this course.
Incompletes
I will give incomplete grades only to students who have satisfactorily
completed most of the course work and who are unable to finish on time because
of circumstances beyond their control.
Late work
Response
papers must be turned in at (or before) the beginning of class to receive full
credit. Late response papers will receive half credit. In fairness to
students who turn their position papers in on time, I will subtract one grade
(e.g., B+ to B) for each day that a postion paper is late.
Political Ideas -- Fall
2008 -- Tentative schedule of topics and reading assignments
Part
I |
Development
of the contemporary middle ground |
Note:
D&D = Love, ed., Dogmas and Dreams |
|
Week
1 |
Aug.28 |
Introduction
to the course and to each other |
|
Week 2 |
Sept.4 |
Classical liberalism vs. the old,
authoritarian regime |
Heywood, pp.1-4 and 23-53 (read all of Chapter
1 if you have time); D&D, pp. 17-28 (Locke), pp. 57-66 (Federalist
Papers), 86-108 (Friedman); a bit more from Locke online. |
Week 3 |
Sept.11 |
From classical to modern liberalism |
Heywood, pp.53-63, 230-233, 242-245; D&D,
pp.29-40 (more of Mill if you have time), 67-85 (Green, F. D. Roosevelt),
109-122 (Kramnick), 489-496 (Friedan) More Roosevelt and Tawney online. |
Week 4 |
Sept.18 |
Traditional conservatism |
Heywood, pp.65-86; D&D, pp.129-164 (Oakeshott,
Burke) More Burke online. |
Week 5 |
Sept.25 |
From traditional to modern conservatism |
Heywood, pp.86-98 and pp.241-242; D&D,
pp.165-206 (Kristol, Schlafly, Bloom) Online articles by Bork, Buchanan, And
Robertson |
Part II |
Challenges from left, right and elsewhere |
|
|
Week 6 |
Oct.2 |
Early socialism and the ideas of Karl Marx |
Heywood, pp. 99-126; D&D, pp.213-313
(Fourier, Marx, Engels, Lenin) |
Week 7 |
Oct.9 |
Contemporary
democratic socialism |
Heywood, pp.126-142
and 245-247; D&D, pp.314-345 (Bernstein, Hayden and Flacks) and
497-516 (Hartmann); articles by Hayek, Roemer, and Albert and Hahnel online. |
Week 8 |
Oct.16 |
Anarchism |
Heywood, Chapter 6; D&D, Part 4
(pp.347-399 – Goldman, Thoreau, Kropotkin, Bakunin;) Engels online. |
Week 9 |
Oct.23 |
Fascism |
Heywood, Chapter 7; D&D,
Part 5 (pp.401-470 – Mussolini, Hitler, Macdonald, Moser); online articles
about fascist tendencies in the US (Hartman, Leiter, Lohr) |
Week 10 |
Oct.30 |
Feminism |
Heywood, Chapter 8; D&D, pp.517-568
(Wittig, Lorde, Anzaldua, Mohanty) |
Week 11 |
Nov.6 |
Environmentalism |
Heywood, Chapter 9; D&D, Part 7
(pp.569-639 – Emerson, Carson, Gore, Kelly, Bookchin and Forman, Shiva) |
Week 12 |
Nov.13 |
Nationalism, anti-imperialism,
anti-colonialism |
Heywood, Chapter 5; D&D, pp.647-672
(Mazzini, Anderson, Ohmae) |
Week 13- |
Nov.20 |
Fundamentalism, modernity, globalization |
Heywood, Chapter 10; D&D,
pp.673-737 (Nyang, Said, Huntington, Barber, Dallmayr); articles by Stiglitz,
Freidman, and Beatty (online) |
Week 14 |
Dec.4 |
Multiculturalism |
Heywood, Chapter 11; Bikhu Parekh, “Equality
in a Multicultural Society,” David Kupelian, "Multicultural
Madness," and Amartya Sen, “The Uses and Abuses of Multiculturalism”
(all online) |
Week 15 |
Dec.11 |
Wrap up |
|