Fall 2020  |  POL 1201 Section 001: Political Ideas (13666)

Instructor(s)
Class Component:
Lecture
Credits:
3 Credits
Grading Basis:
Student Option
Instructor Consent:
No Special Consent Required
Instruction Mode:
Completely Online
Class Attributes:
UMNTC Liberal Education Requirement
Online Course
Times and Locations:
Regular Academic Session
 
09/08/2020 - 12/16/2020
Tue, Thu 11:15AM - 12:30PM
Off Campus
UMN REMOTE
Enrollment Status:
Open (140 of 149 seats filled)
Also Offered:
Course Catalog Description:
This course serves as an introduction to the study of political theory. Political theory analyzes the meaning and significance of fundamental concepts in politics. Starting from such basic concerns as the nature of politics, humans, power and justice, political theorists explore how these basic starting assumptions organize the norms, practices, and institutions of political and social order. To explore these topics, the field turns to key texts, as well as to political and social events and other media (film, historical documents, etc.). In this introductory course, students will investigate some of the basic texts in political theory, with the goal of learning how to read texts more analytically and to address fundamental questions in political theory. Among the topics that might be the nature of justice and injustice, political obligation and civil disobedience, democracy and other forms of governance. Students who complete this course will understand the deep issues about the nature of politics, will have learned to read and to analyze complex texts. They will also have had the opportunity to reflect upon their own ethical engagement in political life and upon the ways in which historically, political ideas change.
Class Notes:
http://classinfo.umn.edu/?asinha+POL1201+Fall2020 This course is completely online in a synchronous format. The course will meet online at the scheduled times.
Class Description:
What does it mean to be free? What is the proper relationship between the individual and the community? What is power and how should it be limited? How we answer these questions matters for how we think about politics and how we live our lives. This course offers students an introduction to three branches of political thought that have each sought to provide coherent answers to these questions. They are Republicanism, Liberalism, and Socialism, and though they do not exhaust the wide spectrum of political thought, each has appeared and reappeared over the course of Western history as various thinkers have grappled with questions of freedom, duty, and power. In this course we will consider a few of the most important formulations of these three "isms" in the writings of figures such as Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Karl Marx. Each of these thinkers is important not just because each produced excellent works of political theory, but also because their works have come to form part of the vocabulary of modern political discourse, both inside and outside of academic settings, making an understanding of their writings necessary for any understanding of contemporary politics.
Exam Format:
60% Reports/Papers
30% Reflection Papers
10% Class Participation
Class Format:
50% Lecture
40% Discussion
10% Small Group Activities
Workload:
50 Pages Reading Per Week
12-15 Pages Writing Per Term
Textbooks:
https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/13666/1209
Instructor Supplied Information Last Updated:
9 January 2017

ClassInfo Links - Fall 2020 Political Science Classes

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