PS101/MU227: Great Ideas in Politics and Music-Political
Science/Music
PS103: Western Political Traditions
PS115/EN115/GS101-Concepts of Freedom from Ancient to Modern
Times
HY200 & PS203, The Search for Islamic Order: Yesterday
and Today
Block I: Professor Tom Cronin, PS 101, What is Politics?
Meets one unit of Social Science divisional credit.
Block II: Dr. Tania Cronin, MU 227, Topics in Music: Music and Society
Meets one unit of humanities divisional credit.
Block I is an introduction to the great ideas and debates of Western political thought from Plato and Thucydides to Machiavelli, John Locke and Martin Luther King. What is power? What is justice? What is leadership? What is democracy? What is politics? Students will read several plays and original texts, view a few films, and discuss and debate competing theories of how people govern and are governed. This is a writing and discussion-intensive seminar. Week 3 of Block I will include 4 days at the Baca Campus (away from the CC campus).
Block II is an introduction to great masterpieces of classical music, from Bach and Beethoven to Steve Reich and Philip Glass. This course does not require any background in music. Students will read and discuss a variety of theories about the political and cultural values expressed in music. How does music reflect the power structures of society? How does music create desire? How are the values of the Enlightenment, or of totalitarianism, or of democracy reflected in music? By the end of the block, students should have a deeper appreciation of selected masterpieces of classical music, as well as the ways in which music and society are connected. This is a writing and listening-intensive course.
Two one-block courses that must be taken together, with two
instructors; separate grades will be assigned for each block.
The course as a whole meets Critical Perspectives: The West in Time (2 units).
An examination of a number of primary questions, different answers
to which have fundamentally but variously shaped political life and values
in the West. For example: what is the origin and justification of political
rule? what determines its extent and limits? what is the relation between
politics and principle? how do we go about accounting for, and defending,
our political and moral principles? in particular, what is the foundation,
if any, for the principle of justice? is it supported by an account of “human
nature?” is there such a nature, and can we determine what it is? Students
are placed in the midst of controversy generated by a variety of competing
perspectives, ranging in time from ancient Greece through the 20th century.
A two-block course taught by one instructor; one grade will be given for the
course as a whole.
Block I & II: Tim Fuller & John Simons, PS115/EN115/GS101, Concepts
of Freedom from Ancient to Modern Times
The course as a whole meets Critical Perspectives: The West in Time (2 units).
This interdisciplinary course explores enduring questions in the Western tradition:
What does it mean to be free? What are the basic ideas of freedom that figure
prominently in the Western tradition? What is freedom for? Is there a rational
use of freedom? Discussion will spring from readings in ancient, medieval,
Renaissance and modern philosophy, politics, religion and literature, and
complementary films. Texts to be chosen from among the following philosophers,
writers, filmmakers: The King James Bible, Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles,
Shakespeare, Locke, Rousseau, Mary Shelley, Dostoevsky, Camus, Alfred Hitchcock,
Ridley Scott, Kazuo Ishiguro.
A two-block, team taught course; one grade will be given for the course as
a whole.
Meets two units of Critical Perspectives: Diverse Cultures and Critiques.
Since September 11, 2001, Americans have discovered that it
is not easy to speak about Muslims in general or the Islamic world as a whole.
Is there an Islamic way of organizing society? What do Islamists mean when
they talk about an Islamic state? Why do some Muslims insist that Islam offers
a program for political action, while others insist that religious belief
has nothing to do with politics? How is it that a single set of revelations
passed to Muhammad in the seventh century lends itself to so many interpretations
and so many purposes?
In the first block, the course examines the historical development of Muslim
society and Islamic orthodoxies. What was the nature of the state Muhammad
established in Medina? How did the subsequent Arab Empires reflect and differ
from that experience? In what context did scholars construct the legal system
of Islam? How did the political order proposed by Shi'ism differ from that
characterized by Sunnism? What was the appeal of mysticism in both the Shi'a
and Sunni communities? To what extent did the Ottoman Empire, which brought
together a significant portion of the Muslim world from 1300 until 1918, represent
a new version of Islamic order?
The second block confronts the questions of order and disorder in the contemporary Muslim Middle East and North Africa, examining the rise of the nation-state; the impact of imperialism, liberalism, and socialism; the blossoming of Islamist movements; the impact of modernism on the position of women in the Muslim world; and the relationship of Islamic doctrine to human rights, democracy, and violence. It will consider the political thought of several prominent Muslim intellectuals, secular, Islamist, and post-Islamist.
A set of linked one-block courses that must be taken together,
with a single instructor; separate grades will be assigned for each block.