Global Arc

Modern political thought owes more to ancient Hebraic sources, including the Bible and Talmud, than has been previously acknowledged. Recent studies tell the story of political Hebraism, the early modern attempt to glean moral, legal, and political meaning from Hebraic texts. This is one of the most exciting chapters in the history of political thought being written today. This course will discuss Grotius, Hobbes, Locke, and other major theorists of modern natural law and politics. We will consider how the ancient texts inspired new ideas of the rule of law, republic, and social justice.

The course explores the various forms of interaction between state power to control information flows and film production and distribution in light of normative concerns about free speech. Using concrete cinematic examples, we aim to determine normatively relevant criteria to distinguish between creative, critical, and satirical expressions of art on the one hand, and propagandistic incitement to hatred and violence as well as pornographic incitement for sexual domination and violence, on the other.

Drug addicts are commonly taken to be archetypal examples of people who have lost control over their actions. This course takes the example of addiction as a framework for understanding the ongoing debate between philosophers and psychologists about the meaning of self-control, the limitations of responsibility, and the application of theory to medical and social policy. The readings cover philosophical theory as well as some material from psychology and biology. One three-hour seminar.

Democracy gives people control over their government on a collaborative and inclusive basis, via operational and selectional constraints, thereby reducing the government's dominating power. This set of seminars will focus on why the formula requires control, not participation, and why it gives control to people severally, not to the people as a body; it will explore the operational constraints, such as the rule of law, and the selectional constraints, such as electoral process, on which it seeks to build control; and it will investigate the point of democratic control.

The seminar will look at stories in the law and about the law: court cases that turn on competing versions of a story, and how narrative "conviction" comes about, as well as fictional and non-fiction accounts of mystery, crime, investigation, and detection in literature and film. The course will introduce students to some issues in criminal law and procedure as well as to the analysis of narrative.

As much critical analysis of as many major perspectives of life and death issues in bioethics as can be squeezed into one semester. Issues to be discussed: abortion, duties to handicapped newborns, the scope of the right to refuse care, advance directives, proxy consent, respect for adolescents' life and death decisions, euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, persistent vegetative state, and the definition of death. Three lectures.

This course uncovers the roots of racial injustice in Hollywood; the secret, but cardinal role Woodrow Wilson played in the production and distribution of D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation that led directly to the rebirth of the KKK and increased violence against Afro-Americans; and William Monroe Trotter's fight against the propaganda film. Wilson's policy of segregation was adapted by Hollywood as a self-censoring industry regulation of representation. Black people could only appear on screen as subservient and marginal characters, never as equals, partners or leaders. This code, Wilson's legacy, has become second nature to Hollywood.

An examination of the moral principles governing love and sex. Questions to be addressed include: Do we ever owe it to someone to love him or her? Do we owe different things to those we love? Do we owe it to a loved one to believe better of him than our evidence warrants? What is consent, and why is it morally significant? Is sex between consenting adults always permissible, and if not, why not? Are there good reasons for prohibiting prostitution and pornography? Everyone has opinions about these matters. The aim of the course is to subject those opinions to scrutiny.

We are what we eat--morally as well as molecularly. So how should concerns about animals, workers, the environment, and the local inform our food choices? Can we develop viable foodways for growing populations while respecting ethnic, religious, class, and access differences? The goal of this course is not to prescribe answers to these questions, but to give students the tools required to reflect on them effectively. These tools include a knowledge of the main ethical theories in philosophy, and a grasp of key empirical issues regarding food production, distribution, and disposal. Includes guest lectures, instructor-led small-group sessions.

From "The Battle Of Algiers" to "Do The Right Thing," film has been used as a medium in which to explore social issues and conflict. This course will critically examine a selection of documentary and narrative films in order to compare their different approaches to representing social issues. We will also learn the essential aspects of social issue filmmaking (in both the documentary and narrative forms) and how journalistic research methods inform the process. Classes will include a short video project, script writing workshops, and lectures from guest speakers who work in the industry.