WRIT 076: POLITICAL SCIENCE (PSCI)
Spring 2022 Courses
WRIT 076 301
TR 1:45 PM - 3:15 PM
Khachaturian
Human Rights in a Capitalist World
Fulfills the Writing Requirement
Formulated and codified after World War II, human rights are today considered a key building block of modern liberal-democratic societies and international politics. Yet the history and genealogy of human rights is complex and ambiguous. This seminar will focus on both the origins and political, legal, and social effects of human rights as they became part of the global postwar order. Starting with Jessica Whyte's The Morals of the Market: Human Rights and the Rise of Neoliberalism (2019), we will examine the links between human rights and increasingly globalized markets, the mobilization of the language of human rights for Cold War rivalries, the place of human rights language in colonial and postcolonial contexts, and the relationship between human rights and social rights and welfare. Along the way, we will consider how human rights remain a major component of neoliberal ideology and policies, well into the present day.
WRIT 076 302
TR 3:30 PM - 5:00 PM
Khachaturian
Human Rights in a Capitalist World
Fulfills the Writing Requirement
Formulated and codified after World War II, human rights are today considered a key building block of modern liberal-democratic societies and international politics. Yet the history and genealogy of human rights is complex and ambiguous. This seminar will focus on both the origins and political, legal, and social effects of human rights as they became part of the global postwar order. Starting with Jessica Whyte's The Morals of the Market: Human Rights and the Rise of Neoliberalism (2019), we will examine the links between human rights and increasingly globalized markets, the mobilization of the language of human rights for Cold War rivalries, the place of human rights language in colonial and postcolonial contexts, and the relationship between human rights and social rights and welfare. Along the way, we will consider how human rights remain a major component of neoliberal ideology and policies, well into the present day.
WRIT 076 303
TR 10:15 AM - 11:45 AM
Khachaturian
Mass Incarceration in America
Fulfills the Writing Requirement
Mass incarceration, punitive policing, and state surveillance increasingly undermine the possibility of a more democratic and egalitarian American society. At the heart of these forces is the carceral state, a network of political and social institutions that underpins the criminal justice system and forges our conceptions of what is lawful and what is criminal. Yet what is the carceral state and why did it arise? How is it connected to capitalism, and how does it produce and reinforce racial, class, and gender identities? What have been its consequences for democratic citizenship, and what kinds of resistance movements have emerged in response? Beginning with Ruth Wilson Gilmore's Golden Gulag: Prisons, Crisis, Surplus, and Opposition in Globalizing California, a classic account of the rise of the carceral complex in recent decades, we will delve into some of the core concepts and theories explaining this fundamental social issue. In doing so, we will explore how mass incarceration extends far beyond the criminal justice system itself, to an intimate connection with questions of political economy, local geographies, and political institutions.
WRIT 076 304
MW 1:45 PM - 3:15 PM
Arzuaga
Mass Manipulation and The Politics of Irrationality
Fulfills the Writing Requirement
The recent surge in populism around the world has greatly renewed interest in the forms and techniques of far-right demagoguery and mass manipulation. First systematically theorized in the 1930s to explain the mass basis of fascist movements, such techniques exploit and reinforce conformity to rigid conventionality, preoccupations with power and strength, contempt for weakness, and lack of introspection. Such characteristics provide the soil in which anti-democratic politics proliferate, which most often appeal neither to reason nor to the rational self-interest of its would-be followers but to the irrationality of strong psychological and emotional needs. What are these needs and to what extent are they socially and economically produced? To what extent is mass manipulation specific to modern political, economic, and social conditions? Is demagoguery inherent to all forms of political agitation or specific to far-right movements? Why are these politics so often accompanied by deep-seated racial prejudice and hatred that are seemingly immune to attempts to rationally dispute or disabuse? We will explore these themes through the text Prophets of Deceit: A Study of the Techniques of the American Agitator by Nobert Guterman & Leo Lowenthal. Originally published in 1949, the monograph nonetheless permits, even demands, application to the current political milieux which it anticipates with an almost clairvoyant prescience.
WRIT 076 305
MW 3:30 PM - 5:00 PM
Arzuaga
Mass Manipulation and The Politics of Irrationality
Fulfills the Writing Requirement
The recent surge in populism around the world has greatly renewed interest in the forms and techniques of far-right demagoguery and mass manipulation. First systematically theorized in the 1930s to explain the mass basis of fascist movements, such techniques exploit and reinforce conformity to rigid conventionality, preoccupations with power and strength, contempt for weakness, and lack of introspection. Such characteristics provide the soil in which anti-democratic politics proliferate, which most often appeal neither to reason nor to the rational self-interest of its would-be followers but to the irrationality of strong psychological and emotional needs. What are these needs and to what extent are they socially and economically produced? To what extent is mass manipulation specific to modern political, economic, and social conditions? Is demagoguery inherent to all forms of political agitation or specific to far-right movements? Why are these politics so often accompanied by deep-seated racial prejudice and hatred that are seemingly immune to attempts to rationally dispute or disabuse? We will explore these themes through the text Prophets of Deceit: A Study of the Techniques of the American Agitator by Nobert Guterman & Leo Lowenthal. Originally published in 1949, the monograph nonetheless permits, even demands, application to the current political milieux which it anticipates with an almost clairvoyant prescience.