Topics in Gender and Sexuality Studies (490-0-24)

Topic

Problems in Democratic Theory

Instructors

Jacqueline Stevens
Scott Hall, Rm 304

Meeting Info

Scott Hall 212: Thurs 9:00AM - 11:50AM

Overview of class

The course will review long-standing problems and paradoxes of democratic thought in conversation with contemporary narratives of kleptocracy, exclusions, (mis)representations, rights and sovereign immunities, and unlawful state violence. Cases posing problems to democratic thought will include book bans, abortion and other health care access, institutions of higher education, as well as discrimination and violence based on dynamics of sex, religion, and intergenerational identities, e.g.,., race, nation, and ethnicity. Authors assigned will include Plato, Karl Marx, W.E.B. Du Bois, Robert Dahl, and Hannah Arendt read in conversation with critics such as Joan Didion, Shulamith Firestone, Lisa Duggan, Samuel Moyn, and Lester Spence.