Spring 2023  |  POL 3272 Section 001: Colonial Encounters (65514)

Instructor(s)
Class Component:
Lecture
Credits:
3 Credits
Grading Basis:
Student Option
Instructor Consent:
No Special Consent Required
Instruction Mode:
In Person
Class Attributes:
UMNTC Liberal Education Requirement
Times and Locations:
Regular Academic Session
 
01/17/2023 - 05/01/2023
Tue, Thu 11:15AM - 12:30PM
UMTC, West Bank
Blegen Hall 120
Enrollment Status:
Open (47 of 55 seats filled)
Also Offered:
Course Catalog Description:
If politics classically is the exercise of power by rulers over the ruled, how have different communities, traditions, and contexts sought to organize this power and render it just? What are the lessons to be learned from looking to past experiences with political communities ranging in size from the face-to-face polis to the far-flung reaches of empire? How does the 'discovery' of other societies disorient our usual frames of reference for thinking about political community? What different frames might we use? What should we make of problems that seem to exceed the capacity of existing institutions to manage, such as mass violence and total war? The aim of this course is to examine exemplary moments that consider the radical conflict of interpretations that can arise when different cultures come into contact with one another (whether through trade, war, intellectual exchange, or the like), and how these exchanges transform the scale of political community (local, regional, global, universal). Here, we are concerned with large-scale upheaval, processes that are more than simply difficult political problems, but in fact transform the very institutions, relationships, and concepts through which we come to understand what political community is and can be. The substantive focus of the course varies according to instructor, and may include: Colonial Encounters; the Black Atlantic; Revolutionary Moments; Colonialism and the Post-colony.
Class Notes:
http://classinfo.umn.edu/?luxon+POL3272+Spring2023
Class Description:

What Makes Political Community? We will explore different ways to think political community. Many contemporary political challenges are not just thorny problems but transform the very institutions, engagements, and concepts through which we understand what the activity of politics is and might be. Other societies and thinkers have faced drastically new challenges to their politics. So, we propose a course that would explore how political actors make and remake community. Our first unit, Colonial Encounters, studies the contact between Europeans and AmerIndians in the West Indies and North America, to think about the forging of new concepts of "human" and political order. Second, Revolution Reimagined, will analyze the movements of ideas, trades, and people back and forth across the Black Atlantic, with special attention to the Haitian Revolution. Third, Reparative Futures, treats the presence of the past as it thinks about the historical legacies of slavery for Africans and Americans. This course speaks to humanist concerns of how humans forge meanings and communities even from conditions of injustice and inequality.

Who Should Take This Class?:
As a 3xxx course, it should appeal to sophomores, juniors, and seniors.
Grading:
50% Reports/Papers
20% Journal
30% Reflection Papers
Class Format:
50% Lecture; 50% Discussion
Workload:
50 Pages Reading Per Week
15 Pages Writing Per Term
4 Paper(s)
Other Workload: 2 of the papers will be 1-2 page micro-papers; the others will be 4-5 pages each
Textbooks:
https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/65514/1233
Instructor Supplied Information Last Updated:
6 April 2019

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