Firstbridge courses are offered to degree seeking freshmen and registration is done via webform in pre-arrival checklist.
Professor(s)
Notes
Democracy, which means government by, for, and of the people, is an intriguing idea that raises many questions: Who belongs to the people? What is the will of the people? Who can speak in the name of the people? In this course we survey classic and contemporary theories and practices of democracy, ranging from direct democracy in ancient Athens to the modern day Occupy democratic protest in Tahrir Square and Zuccotti Park. The course pursues a comparative approach to political theory and philosophy, which aims at gaining a comparative understanding of African, East Asian, South Asian, Latin American, North American, and European democratic theory and practice.
This course is part of the FirstBridge Digital Democracy – Global Perspectives (FB3). The other course connected to this FirstBridge is Democractic Practices in Digital Ecologies (CM1099CCIFB3), taught by Prof. Fatima Aziz. The Reflective Seminar of this FirstBridge meets every other Wednesday, 13h45-16h40, and is co-taught by Prof. Fatima Aziz, Prof. Julian Culp, and the librarian Michael Stoepel.
Learning Outcomes
- Information Literacy: Students will comprehend how information is produced and valued in order to discover, evaluate, use, and create information and knowledge effectively and ethically. In FirstBridge, students will demonstrate the conversational nature of scholarship, and recognize their potential role and responsibilities as contributors to that conversation. For each discipline taught in FirstBridge, students will identify reference works, journals, databases and/or major works in history, in order to start effective research in the field (FB LO1)
- Life at University: Students will acquire the study skills, time management, and interpersonal skills needed to meet the demands of university-level academic work at a Liberal Arts College individually or as a team. Students will value the multiple meanings of place through experiential learning at AUP and beyond in the Parisian or global context (FB LO2)
- Students will grasp and express key core concepts in democratic theory
- Students will understand and reconstruct scholarly texts in philosophy and political theory
- Students will analyze and evaluate conceptual and normative political arguments
- Students will develop and convincingly argue for one’s own position on how to think of and solve democratic problems in a globalized and digitalized world
- Local and Global Perspectives: Students will enhance their intercultural understanding of languages, cultures, and histories of local societies and the global issues to which these relate (CCI LO1)
- Civic and Ethical Engagement: Students will demonstrate awareness of ethical considerations relating to specific societal problems, values, or practices (historical or contemporary; global or local) and learn to articulate possible solutions to prominent challenges facing societies and institutions today so as to become engaged actors at various levels in our interconnected world (CCI LO4)
Syllabus
Schedule
| Day | Start Time | End Time | Room |
|---|---|---|---|
Tuesday | 13:45 | 15:05 | Q-604 |
Friday | 13:45 | 15:05 | Q-604 |