The course opens with philosophic texts on consent (four dialogues by Plato, Locke’s Second Treatise, Rousseau’s Social Contract), then continues to revisit the philosophic concept of consent by looking at a sequence of practical contexts: Part I-the relation of consent and the body in marriage, in medicine, and in state citizenship; Part II – the act of consent and dissent in war (beginning with the dissent of Achilles in the Iliad and including readings up to the present); Part III – freedom of movement, freedom of entry and exit in citizenship (including contexts where right of movement has been denied); Part IV – consent as the basis of cultural creation. The nature of individual and collective deliberation is at the center of the course throughout.
Readings include: case law (Plessy v. Ferguson, Pratt v. Davis, Schloendorff v. Society of New York Hospital), constitutional writings (Federalist Papers 4, 7, 8, 23, 25, 27-29, 41; Madison’s Record of Federal Assembly; Ratification Debates ), plays (Euripides’ Hecabe, Sophocles’ Philoctetes, five U.S. suffrage plays), films, novels, and historical narratives (e.g. Thucydides selections, Underground Railroad narratives).
Note:
This course will be jointly-listed with FAS as English 190x.
This course will meet at FAS; location is TBD. There will also be a required discussion section every week; days and times are TBD.
