Thinking With History

This course examines the history of the U.S. Constitution, Supreme Court, and the interpretation of law since the end of the Civil War. Studying landmark court cases in context and as part of the social revolution that unfolded in American institutions and life in the wake of the Fourteenth Amendment (1868), this class examines core doctrines of legal history and interpretation with a focus on how modern institutions change the relation of the individual to the state and economy, to liberty and the institutions of civil society. Though readings consist mostly of original court cases, no previous coursework in law or history is required. Rather, the course takes a handson approach to interpreting legal history, working through important cases and concepts through a process of lectures, mock (in-class) trials, briefings, oral arguments, and social “impact statements.” Students completing the class will be able to translate between important legal doctrines (e.g. federalism, separation of powers, due process rights, equal protection) and corresponding social and political developments such as industrialization, urbanization, feminism, the New Deal, modern forms of war, the Civil Rights movement, and the growth of mass media.

This course examines the history of the U.S. Constitution, Supreme Court, and the interpretation of law since the end of the Civil War. Studying landmark court cases in context and as part of the social revolution that unfolded in American institutions and life in the wake of the Fourteenth Amendment (1868), this class examines core doctrines of legal history and interpretation with a focus on how modern institutions change the relation of the individual to the state and economy, to liberty and the institutions of civil society. Though readings consist mostly of original court cases, no previous coursework in law or history is required. Rather, the course takes a handson approach to interpreting legal history, working through important cases and concepts through a process of lectures, mock (in-class) trials, briefings, oral arguments, and social “impact statements.” Students completing the class will be able to translate between important legal doctrines (e.g. federalism, separation of powers, due process rights, equal protection) and corresponding social and political developments such as industrialization, urbanization, feminism, the New Deal, modern forms of war, the Civil Rights movement, and the growth of mass media.

Writing is at the center and beginning of every serious intellectual endeavor. Born in the ancient world and central to the modern one, writing forms the basis of sacrality and secularism alike, defines the bounds of law, and allows for the crystallization of complex problems into conceptual tools. Since writing well is apposite to extending the range of one’s thinking, no one is ever “complete” in their writing skills any more than they “are done” thinking about the world.  Working on one’s writing is about strengthening the expressive power, conceptual rigor, and clarity of one’s analysis and presentation, and thus it is about improving the mind through the medium of language.

The purpose of the Honors Writing Colloquium is to provide a workshop-like environment for second-year Honors students to hone their writing skills beyond the first-year pedagogy of The Human Event. Participants in the Colloquium will conduct workshops for this year’s Human Event students. We will, beyond this, engage in peer tutorials and receive training in the fine art of helping others refine their writing.  The readings and activities of the writing colloquium serve as an excellent preparation to serving as a Teaching Assistant in the Human Event or in taking upper-level honors classes at ASU.

This course is part one of a two-part introduction to the humanistic and social thought out of which the modern university emerged and to which its traditions of critical and historical inquiry remain indebted. The course covers the period from the beginnings of civilization up through the emergence of Christianity and Islam in the shadow (and then ruins) of the Roman Empire in the “Axial Age.” We will seek to develop our skills as historical interpreters of the “shared world” of the Oikumene, a term covering the ancient Mediterranean and Mesopotamian regions, and we will work to understand the twin legacies of Athens and Jerusalem—of reason and monotheism—on the greater patterns of defining right, power, and conscience. Addressing the rise of the Renaissance and its Humanism, this course also considers the development of Western conceptions of law and religion, citizenship and the state, art and science against the background of changing structures of social, economic, and technological power. Our weekly readings in primary texts will help us cultivate our sensitivity to ideas and modes of expression remote from our own, and they will challenge us to understand the inner logic and historical inheritance alive within our modes of reasoning and analysis.

This course presents part two of the Human Event sequence, which surveyed the Ancient World to Renaissance. Covering the period from the expansion of the Enlightenment worldview to the present day, this course will focus on the political, social and intellectual meanings of modernity. Asking what it means to be a citizen in the modern world, we will explore the series of revolutions—scientific, political, economic, cultural—that have shaken the world in the course of the past three centuries.  Central to our examination will be the changing meanings of citizenship and the nation, legitimate authority and scientific knowledge, creativity and individuality. Our weekly readings in primary texts will help us build our skills as historical interpreters and introduce us to modes of analysis that de-familiarize the everyday and that help make comprehensible that which is unfamiliar, alien or unexamined.

This course examines the political and cultural crisis of European society during the twentieth century. Through engagement with the art, philosophy, literature, and politics of the World Wars and of the totalitarian systems of fascism and communism, the course provides an overview of the struggle for hearts and minds that stood at the center of European politics in the twentieth century, and surveys the central dynamics of cultural critique and resistance, commemoration and self-assertion from the Treaty of Versailles until the end of the Cold War. 

This course is for the second part of The Human Event at the Polytechnic Campus of Barrett ASU. 

Advanced writing colloquium, by invitation only 

Course for Marissa Davis Honors Thesis

The twentieth century was a century of world war.  The incredible destruction of global war shook the faith in both the liberal and the socialist sense of progress, and in the natural ability of human beings to understand the world in which they lived or to discover solidarity with one another.  A new intellectual tradition called existentialism emerged as a new way to pursue meaning in a universe without any fixed meaning. Tinged with all the tumult of a religious crisis, but steadfast in rejecting the idea of God as a foundation for faith, existentialism drew upon European traditions of questioning faith, science, and the self to create a truly new intellectual movement that inspired new work in aesthetics, ethics, psychology and political theory.  Existentialism's counter-movement in many ways was that of Critical Theory.  Emerging from a Marxist tradition, critical theory developed an analysis of fascism, culture, and social inequality that continues to inspire critics today. In this seminar course we will examine existentialism and critical theory both in their context and as an intellectual movement with its own integrity and core questions.