Calendar of Readings: Power and Politics

PHIL 363
Dr. McWhorter
Spring, 2010

[NOTE: This syllabus is incomplete. The final version only exists on Blackboard. If you would like a syllabus and are not enrolled in the course, please email me.]

These texts are required and are available for purchase in the UR bookstore:
January 12: Introduction to the course; no reading assignment.
 
 
 
January 14: Hobbes, Leviathan, X and XIV.
 
 
 
 
 
January 19: Hobbes, Leviathan, XIX-XX.

January 21: Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, pp. 19-45.

January 26: Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, pp. 45-79.

January 28: Locke, The Second Treatise of Government, Preface and Chapters I-VI.

February 2: Locke, The Second Treatise of Government, Chapters VII-XIII.

February 4: Locke, The Second Treatise of Government, Chapters XIV-XIX.

February 9: Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, pp. 1-74 (Chapters I-IV).

February 11: Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, pp. 75-136 (Chapters V-VIII) .

February 16: Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, pp. 137-202 (Chapters IX-XIII).

February 18: Young, "Five Faces of Oppression," in Rethinking Power, edited by Thomas Wartenberg, pp. 174-95.
 
 
 
February 23: Foucault, "The Birth of the Asylum" and "Docile Bodies" from The Foucault Reader, pp. 141-67 and 179-87.
 
 
February 25: Foucault, "The Means of Correct Training" and "Panopticism" from The Foucault Reader, pp. 188-213.

March 2: Foucault, History of Sexuality, Volume 1, pp. 77-102.

March 4: Take-home exam due!
 
 
 
 
 
 
March 9 & 11: NO CLASS - SPRING BREAK
 
 
 
March 16: McWhorter, "Idiocy and the Criminalization of Childhood" and "Race at the Turn of the Twentieth Century" from Racism and Sexual Oppression in Anglo-America, pp. 125-40, and Samuel Gridley Howe, "On the Training and Educating of Idiots," from The American Journal of Insanity (1851), pp. 97-118..
 
March 18: Mental Defectives in Virginia, 3-20.

 

 
 
March 25: Paul Popenoe and Roswell Johnson, "Origin and Growth of the Eugenics Movement," "The Dysgenic Classes," and "Methods of Restriction" from Applied Eugenics, pp. 147-66 and 176-210.
 
March 30: Harry Laughlin, "Model Eugenical Sterilization Law"
April 1: Take-Home Test and Paper Topic Day: On this day, students will turn in their  term paper topics  and their take-home exams. In class each student will have five minutes to describe his/her term paper topic to the group.
 
April 6: Library workshop--class will be conducted by Carol Wittig, Philosophy Research Librarian, and will meet in Boatwright, room xxx. .
April 8: Paul Lombardo, "Three Generations, No Imbeciles"

April 13: Foucault, "Right Over Death and the Power Over Life," in The Foucault Reader, 258-72; working bibliographies are due.
April 15: McWhorter, "Biopower,"
April 20: Michel Foucault, "Truth and Power," in The Foucault Reader, 51-75; term paper outline due.
April 22: Wrap Up.
April 28: Term paper due by 5:00 pm.
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