Courses

The promises of today’s emerging technologies include longer, healthier lives; safer, faster, and more efficient transportation; and immediate, far-reaching communication mechanisms. Rapid technological innovation often outpaces and challenges established legal regulations, cultural norms, and societal frameworks of communications.

This course will focus on the history of dialogue as a method of creative social communication in ancient Greek and Roman cities. We will study ancient dialogue-forms of different kinds, surveying key moments in poetry, drama, philosophy, from Homer onward, as well as imagined dialogues between moderns and ancients.

This class addresses the meeting points inside of and between a range of resistant performance practices with a focus on artists using performance to address political and social encounters in the contemporary moment.

We will explore conservatism’s triumphs and failures politically, as well as the cultural changes that have helped, hindered, and shaped its rise. In many ways, this class is a study in the transformation of American politics and in American culture over the last sixty-five years. Its focus is on the hows and the whys of the rise of conservatism from the low point of the early 50s to the rise of the Tea Party and Trumpism in the 2000s and 2010s.

This course will explore the life and ethos of Benjamin Franklin. We will study the history of the 18th century, including the American Revolution, the details of Franklin’s life and accomplishments, and six major ethical issues he confronted. Through examining Franklin’s life, we will consider weighty questions in history, citizenship, ethics, and science.

2020 marked what may be a major new chapter in the history of race relations in the United States, with untold numbers of protestors demanding that the country confront abiding race-based injustice. The consequences of this movement are not yet known, but it has forced racism into the public’s consciousness in a way that seems new and potentially transformative.

The aim of this course is to help students deepen their critical and historical understanding of how discourses of race have shaped how Jews have understood their own identity, how they have been understood by others, and how they in turn have understood and related to other groups.

What is the relationship between business and democracy? Do institutions of free enterprise depend on democratic government—and vice versa? Do democratic decision-making structures enhance efficient outcomes? What principles inform shareholder democracy? What is the relationship of business, democracy, and the rule of law? How does the ideal of citizenship apply in the context of business?

The goal of this course is to help students develop concepts, tools, dispositions and skills that will help them engage productively in the ongoing experiment of American democracy. Civil dialogue is an aspiration, a theory and a practice—and one of the most misunderstood terms in contemporary political life.

This course is a basic introduction to certain fundamental topics in political theory. It aims to provide students with concepts and ideas by which to more clearly make sense of political reality. Overall, the course has three goals: (i) to introduce students to alternate approaches to the practice of political theory; (ii) to introduce students to numerous relatively self-contained debates important to contemporary political theorists; and (iii) to address major figures from the history of political thought, with an eye toward explaining what makes them vital to political theorists today.

Are you interested in the science and practice of passion and perseverance? The aims of Grit Lab are two-fold: (1) to equip you with generalizable knowledge about the science of passion and perseverance, and (2) to help you apply these insights to your own life. Enrollment is now closed.