PSCI 18
Douglass, Davis, Obama: Fugitive Democratic Theory
Last Offered n/a

This course is not offered in the current catalog

Class Details

The political theorist Sheldon S. Wolin has asserted that the American republic is a fugitive democracy, a democracy that is unsustainable due to the coercive norms of political elites and corporate CEOs who rule in advanced industrial capitalist societies. While Wolin’s theory is probing, a much more radical critique and reconstructive conception of American democracy had been developed in the tradition of African-American political thought over two hundred years earlier. This course shall investigate the life and work of the fugitive-turned-ex-slave Frederick Douglass, the imprisoned intellectual and socialist black feminist Angela Y. Davis, and the liberal constitutional lawyer-politician Barack Hussein Obama as three examples of fugitive thinkers seeking to refashion the meaning of democracy in dark times. We will focus our class discussions primarily on Douglass’s middle autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom, Davis’s Angela Davis: An Autobiography, and Obama’s Dreams from My Father. We shall supplement analysis of these autobiographical writings with selections from the authors’ critical public speeches, interviews, and essays. Additionally, the class will integrate the viewing of films and documentaries to complement the written texts. The course shall end with students proposing via an autobiographical video their own vision of what democracy means and what life in a democracy should look like.
The Class: Format: WSP Project
Limit: 15
Grading:
Requirements/Evaluation: class participation, composition of an autobiographical democracy time capsule video, and an 8-page final paper
Prerequisites: None
Materials/Lab Fee: $50 for books

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