Open to Juniors and Seniors

Since the introduction of moveable type to Europe in 1450, political argument has been the common currency of public debate and democratic citizenship. Many of our most widely read public documents John Milton’s “Areopagitica,” Jonathon’s Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” Thoreau’s “Resistance to Civil Government,” Frederick Douglass’s “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July,” and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” originated not as the widely admired works of literature they have since become, but as works of the moment addressing the great historical, political and cultural questions of their ages: freedom of speech and conscience, civil and human rights, the duties of citizens and the limits of democratic governance, to name but a few. This course traces the rich history of public argument across time (from the 18th to 21st centuries), genre (pamphlets, manifestos, public letters and lectures, Op-Eds, blogs and long form polemic), and media (print and digital). It seeks to introduce students to the classic ideas of conservative, liberal and radical thought, while extending the reach of student’s reading and deepening their understanding of the conventions and rhetoric of public argument. The syllabus will be shaped around heterodox bundles of texts and include work by authors such as: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, James Madison, Karl Marx, Abraham Lincoln, John Stuart Mill, Aldous Huxley, William James, George Orwell, Hannah Arendt, Susan Sontag, Christopher Hitchens, Amos Oz, Martha Nussbaum, Peter Singer, Mark Danner, Michael Massing, George Packer, Mark Lilla, Ta Nehisi Coates, Thomas Chatterton Williams, Zadie Smith, Wesley Yang, Katha Pollitt, Jonathan Chait, John McWhorter, Ross Douthat and Andrew Sullivan, among others. Course may also be taken as HIS410.