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Academic Catalog 2025-26

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Your search for courses · during 2023-24 · tagged with POSI-PLI2 · returned 15 results

  • HIST 244 The Enlightenment and Its Legacies 6 credits

    The Enlightenment: praised for its role in promoting human rights, condemned for its role in underwriting colonialism; lauded for its cosmopolitanism, despised for its Eurocentrism… how should we understand the cultural and intellectual history of the Enlightenment, and what are its legacies? This course starts by examining essential Enlightenment texts by philosophes such as Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau, and then the second half of the term focuses on unpacking the Enlightenment’s entanglements with modern ideas around topics such as religion, race, sex, gender, colonialism etc.

    • Winter 2022
    • International Studies Writing Requirement
    • EUST transnatl supporting crs FRST Elective HIST Early Mdrn Europe History Atlantic World French Pertinent Course FFST Hist & Art Hist Conc History Modern Philosophic & Legal Inq 2 POSI Elective Non POSC subjct
    • HIST  244.00 Winter 2022

    • Faculty:Susannah Ottaway 🏫 👤
    • Size:25
    • T, THLeighton 202 10:10am-11:55am
  • PHIL 113 The Individual and the Political Community 6 credits

    Are human beings radically individual and atomic by nature, political animals, or something else? However we answer that question, what difference does it make for our understanding of the ways in which larger political communities come into existence and are maintained? In this course we will explore these questions through the work of three foundational political theorists: Plato, Hobbes, and Rousseau.

    • Fall 2017, Winter 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Winter 2021, Fall 2021
    • Humanistic Inquiry International Studies
    • Philosophic & Legal Inq 2
    • PHIL  113.00 Fall 2017

    • Faculty:Allison Murphy 🏫 👤
    • Size:30
    • T, THLeighton 330 3:10pm-4:55pm
    • PHIL  113.00 Winter 2018

    • Faculty:Allison Murphy 🏫 👤
    • Size:30
    • M, WLeighton 304 1:50pm-3:00pm
    • FLeighton 304 2:20pm-3:20pm
    • PHIL  113.00 Fall 2018

    • Faculty:Allison Murphy 🏫 👤
    • Size:30
    • T, THLeighton 304 10:10am-11:55am
    • PHIL  113.00 Spring 2019

    • Faculty:Allison Murphy 🏫 👤
    • Size:30
    • M, WLeighton 402 9:50am-11:00am
    • FLeighton 402 9:40am-10:40am
    • PHIL  113.00 Fall 2019

    • Faculty:Allison Murphy 🏫 👤
    • Size:30
    • M, WLaird 211 12:30pm-1:40pm
    • FLaird 211 1:10pm-2:10pm
    • PHIL  113.00 Spring 2020

    • Faculty:Allison Murphy 🏫 👤
    • Size:30
    • M, WWeitz Center 133 9:50am-11:00am
    • FWeitz Center 133 9:40am-10:40am
    • PHIL  113.00 Fall 2020

    • Faculty:Allison Murphy 🏫 👤
    • Size:30
    • T, THWeitz Center 236 1:45pm-3:30pm
    • PHIL  113.00 Winter 2021

    • Faculty:Allison Murphy 🏫 👤
    • Size:25
    • M, WLanguage & Dining Center 104 8:30am-9:40am
    • FLanguage & Dining Center 104 8:30am-9:30am
    • PHIL  113.00 Fall 2021

    • Faculty:Allison Murphy 🏫 👤
    • Size:25
    • M, WLeighton 304 12:30pm-1:40pm
    • FLeighton 304 1:10pm-2:10pm
  • POSC 250 Ancient Political Philosophy: Plato’s Republic 6 credits

    Cross-listed with POSC 350. In this course we will examine ancient political philosophy through the intensive study of Plato’s Republic, perhaps the greatest work of political philosophy ever written. What is morality? Why should a person behave morally? Wouldn’t it be more satisfying to be a tyrant? What is the best way of life? What would a perfect society look like? What would be its customs and institutions, and who would rule? What would it demand of us, and would that price be worth paying? These are some of the politically (and personally) vital questions addressed by the book.

    Crosslisted with POSC 350

    • Fall 2019, Winter 2024
    • Humanistic Inquiry
    • Polisci/Ir Elective Philosophic & Legal Inq 2 MARS Supporting
    • POSC  250.00 Fall 2019

    • Faculty:Laurence Cooper 🏫 👤
    • Size:25
    • T, THWillis 114 1:15pm-3:00pm
    • POSC  250.00 Winter 2024

    • Faculty:Laurence Cooper 🏫 👤
    • Size:25
    • T, THHasenstab 109 1:15pm-3:00pm
  • POSC 251 Modern Political Philosophy: Liberalism and Its Critics 6 credits

    Liberalism is the dominant political philosophy of our time. Living in a liberal polity, each of us has been shaped by liberalism. But is liberalism the best political order? Do we even know what liberalism is? What are the strongest arguments in its favor, and what are the deepest criticisms we might level against it? In this course we will examine liberalism’s philosophic roots and engage with some of its most forceful advocates and most profound critics. Our readings will include authors such as Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville, Mill, and Nietzsche.

    • Spring 2018, Winter 2023
    • Humanistic Inquiry International Studies
    • Polisci/Ir Elective Philosophic & Legal Inq 2
    • POSC  251.00 Spring 2018

    • Faculty: Staff
    • Size:20
    • M, WWillis 203 1:50pm-3:00pm
    • FWillis 203 2:20pm-3:20pm
    • Cross-listed with POSC 371

    • POSC  251.00 Winter 2023

    • Faculty:Laurence Cooper 🏫 👤
    • Size:25
    • T, THLaird 205 1:15pm-3:00pm
  • POSC 252 Free Expression: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly 6 credits

    Freedom of expression has never lacked obstacles or opponents, even if its opponents have often claimed to be friends. In recent years, however, both the possibility and the desirability of free expression have been openly contested on moral, political, and philosophic grounds. Is free expression simply good, or does it also impose costs? What is the relation between freedom of expression and freedom of thought or mind? Is freedom of mind even possible? These will be our questions. Readings will be drawn from philosophers ranging from Plato to Nietzsche and from political essayists such as George Orwell and Vaclav Havel.

    • Fall 2021
    • Humanistic Inquiry
    • POSI Elective Philosophic & Legal Inq 2 Polisci/Ir Elective
    • POSC  252.00 Fall 2021

    • Faculty:Laurence Cooper 🏫 👤
    • Size:25
    • T, THWeitz Center 231 1:15pm-3:00pm
  • POSC 254 Freedom, Excellence, Happiness: Aristotle’s Ethics 6 credits

    Cross-listed with POSC 354. What does it mean to be morally excellent? To be politically excellent? To be intellectually and spiritually excellent? Are these things mutually compatible? Do they lie within the reach of everyone? And what is the relation between excellence and pleasure? Between excellence and happiness? Aristotle addresses these questions in intricate and illuminating detail in the Nicomachean Ethics, which we will study in this course. The Ethics is more accessible than some of Aristotle’s other works. But it is also a multifaceted and multi-layered book, and one that reveals more to those who study it with care.

    Cross-listed with POSC 354

    • Winter 2017, Fall 2020, Spring 2024
    • Humanistic Inquiry
    • POSI Elective MARS Supporting Polisci/Ir Elective Philosophic & Legal Inq 2
    • POSC  254.00 Winter 2017

    • Faculty:Laurence Cooper 🏫 👤
    • Size:25
    • T, THWeitz Center 233 1:15pm-3:00pm
    • Crosslisted with POSC 354

    • POSC  254.00 Fall 2020

    • Faculty:Laurence Cooper 🏫 👤
    • Size:25
    • T, THLocation To Be Announced TBA 1:45pm-3:30pm
    • POSC  254.02 Fall 2020

    • Faculty:Laurence Cooper 🏫 👤
    • Size:25
    • T, THLocation To Be Announced TBA 7:00pm-8:45pm
    • POSC  254.00 Spring 2024

    • Faculty:Laurence Cooper 🏫 👤
    • Size:25
    • T, THLaird 205 1:15pm-3:00pm
  • POSC 255 Post-Modern Political Thought 6 credits

    The thought and practice of the modern age have been found irredeemably oppressive, alienating, dehumanizing, and/or exhausted by a number of leading philosophic thinkers in recent years. In this course we will explore the critiques and alternative visions offered by a variety of post-modern thinkers, including Nietzsche (in many ways the first post-modern), Heidegger, Foucault, and Derrida.

    • Winter 2017, Fall 2017, Fall 2019, Winter 2022
    • Humanistic Inquiry
    • CCST Regional CCST Global FRST Elective EUST transnatl supporting crs Polisci/Ir Elective French Pertinent Course FFST Social Sci Conc Philosophic & Legal Inq 2
    • POSC  255.00 Winter 2017

    • Faculty:Mihaela Czobor-Lupp 🏫 👤
    • Size:25
    • M, WWillis 211 1:50pm-3:00pm
    • FWillis 211 2:20pm-3:20pm
    • POSC  255.00 Fall 2017

    • Faculty:Mihaela Czobor-Lupp 🏫 👤
    • Size:25
    • T, THWeitz Center 132 10:10am-11:55am
    • POSC  255.00 Fall 2019

    • Faculty:Mihaela Czobor-Lupp 🏫 👤
    • Size:25
    • T, THCMC 210 10:10am-11:55am
    • POSC  255.00 Winter 2022

    • Faculty:Mihaela Czobor-Lupp 🏫 👤
    • Size:25
    • M, WWeitz Center 233 1:50pm-3:00pm
    • FWeitz Center 233 2:20pm-3:20pm
  • POSC 256 Nietzsche: Beyond Good and Evil 6 credits

    Cross-listed with POSC 350. Nietzsche understood himself to be living at a moment of great endings: the exhaustion of modernity, the self-undermining of rationalism, the self-overcoming of morality–in short, stunningly, the “death of God.” He regarded these endings as an unprecedented disaster for humanity but also as an unprecedented opportunity, and he pointed the way to a new ideal and a new culture that would be life-affirming and life-enhancing. This course will center on close study of Beyond Good and Evil, perhaps Nietzsche’s most beautiful book and probably his most political one. Selections from some of his other books will also be assigned. 

    • Spring 2019, Spring 2022
    • Humanistic Inquiry
    • Polisci/Ir Elective Philosophic & Legal Inq 2
    • POSC  256.00 Spring 2019

    • Faculty:Laurence Cooper 🏫 👤
    • Size:25
    • M, WWillis 203 1:50pm-3:35pm
    • POSC  256.00 Spring 2022

    • Faculty:Laurence Cooper 🏫 👤
    • Size:25
    • T, THWillis 203 1:15pm-3:00pm
  • POSC 258 Politics and Ambition 6 credits

    Cross-listed with POSC 357. Is personal ambition a threat to peace and the public good or is it a prod to nobility and heroism? Does it exemplify the opposition between self and society or does it represent their intersection and mutual support—or both? And what is the nature of political ambition, especially the ambition to rule: what does the would-be ruler really want? We will take up these and related questions by studying several classic works of philosophy and literature. Readings will likely include works by Plato, Xenophon, and Shakespeare as well as American founders, statesmen, and moral leaders. 

    Crosslisted with POSC 357

    • Winter 2019, Spring 2023
    • Humanistic Inquiry
    • Philosophic & Legal Inq 2 Social Thought Polisci/Ir Elective
    • POSC  258.00 Winter 2019

    • Faculty:Laurence Cooper 🏫 👤
    • Size:25
    • T, THWillis 203 1:15pm-3:00pm
    • POSC  258.00 Spring 2023

    • Faculty:Laurence Cooper 🏫 👤
    • Size:25
    • T, THWeitz Center 136 1:15pm-3:00pm
  • POSC 272 Constitutional Law II 6 credits

    Covers American constitutional law and history from Reconstruction to the contemporary era. Extensive attention will be paid to the effort to refound the American constitution following the Civil War as manifest in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments, and to the successive transformations which the Supreme Court worked in the new constitutional order. Political Science 271 is not a prerequisite.

    • Winter 2018, Fall 2019, Fall 2021, Spring 2023, Winter 2024
    • Social Inquiry
    • AMST 2 Term Survey AMST Group III Topical Legal Studies Philosophic & Legal Inq 2 Polisci/Ir Elective Amst Democracy Activism Class Amst Race Ethnicity Indigeneit
    • POSC  272.00 Winter 2018

    • Faculty:Kimberly Smith 🏫 👤
    • Size:25
    • M, WWillis 114 11:10am-12:20pm
    • FWillis 114 12:00pm-1:00pm
    • POSC  272.00 Fall 2019

    • Faculty:Kimberly Smith 🏫 👤
    • Size:25
    • M, WWillis 114 11:10am-12:20pm
    • FWillis 114 12:00pm-1:00pm
    • POSC  272.00 Fall 2021

    • Faculty:Kimberly Smith 🏫 👤
    • Size:25
    • M, WWillis 114 11:10am-12:20pm
    • FWillis 114 12:00pm-1:00pm
    • POSC  272.00 Spring 2023

    • Faculty:Steven Poskanzer 🏫 👤
    • Size:25
    • M, WHasenstab 105 11:10am-12:20pm
    • FHasenstab 105 12:00pm-1:00pm
    • POSC  272.00 Winter 2024

    • Faculty:Steven Poskanzer 🏫 👤
    • Size:25
    • M, WHasenstab 105 9:50am-11:00am
    • FHasenstab 105 9:40am-10:40am
  • POSC 276 Imagination in Politics 6 credits

    The course explores the bipolarity of imagination, the fact that imagination can be both a source of freedom and domination in contemporary politics. The main focus of the course is the capacity literature and film have to either increase the autonomous capacity of individuals to engage culture and language in a creative and interactive manner in the construction of their identities, or in a direction that increases their fascination with images and myths and, consequently, the escapist desire to pull these out of the living dialogue with others.

    • Fall 2018, Fall 2020, Fall 2022
    • Humanistic Inquiry International Studies
    • EUST transnatl supporting crs Social Thought GWSS Additional Credits Polisci/Ir Elective Philosophic & Legal Inq 2 GWSS Elective
    • POSC  276.00 Fall 2018

    • Faculty:Mihaela Czobor-Lupp 🏫 👤
    • Size:25
    • T, THWeitz Center 230 10:10am-11:55am
    • POSC  276.00 Fall 2020

    • Faculty:Mihaela Czobor-Lupp 🏫 👤
    • Size:25
    • T, THLocation To Be Announced TBA 10:20am-12:05pm
    • POSC  276.00 Fall 2022

    • Faculty:Mihaela Czobor-Lupp 🏫 👤
    • Size:25
    • T, THWeitz Center 233 10:10am-11:55am
  • POSC 278 Memory and Politics 6 credits

    The ways in which human societies narrate their past can powerfully impact their politics. It can enhance their capacity to be just or it can undermine it. The fashion in which history is told can help societies avoid conflict and it can heal the lingering memory of previous wars. At the same time, historical narratives can escalate violence and deepen socio-cultural and political divisions, inequality, and oppression. In this course we will learn about the various connections between history and politics by reading the works of G. W. F. Hegel, Friedrich Nietzsche, Michel Foucault, Hannah Arendt, and Paul Ricoeur.

    • Winter 2019, Fall 2021
    • Humanistic Inquiry International Studies
    • Social Thought Polisci/Ir Elective Leadership, Peace, Security 2 FFST Social Sci Conc FRST Elective French Pertinent Course
    • POSC  278.00 Winter 2019

    • Faculty:Mihaela Czobor-Lupp 🏫 👤
    • Size:25
    • M, WWeitz Center 233 1:50pm-3:00pm
    • FWeitz Center 233 2:20pm-3:20pm
    • POSC  278.00 Fall 2021

    • Faculty:Mihaela Czobor-Lupp 🏫 👤
    • Size:25
    • T, THAnderson Hall 036 1:15pm-3:00pm
  • POSC 313 Legal Issues in Higher Education 3 credits

    This seminar will explore pressing legal and policy issues facing American colleges and universities. The course will address the ways core academic values (e.g., academic freedom; the creation and maintenance of a community based on shared values) fit or conflict with legal rules and political dynamics that operate beyond the academy. Likely topics include how college admissions are shaped by legal principles, with particular emphasis on debates over affirmative action; on-campus speech; faculty tenure; intellectual property; student rights and student discipline (including discipline for sexual assault); and college and university relations with the outside world.

    • Winter 2019, Fall 2022, Spring 2024
    • Social Inquiry
    • Polisci/Ir Elective Philosophic & Legal Inq 2 Pub Pol Education Policy
    • POSC  313.00 Winter 2019

    • Faculty:Steven Poskanzer 🏫 👤
    • Size:15
    • T, THLibrary 344 3:10pm-4:55pm
    • 1st 5 weeks

    • POSC  313.00 Fall 2022

    • Faculty:Steven Poskanzer 🏫 👤
    • Size:15
    • M, WHasenstab 109 12:30pm-1:40pm
    • FHasenstab 109 1:10pm-2:10pm
    • POSC  313.00 Spring 2024

    • Faculty:Steven Poskanzer 🏫 👤
    • Size:15
    • T, THHasenstab 109 3:10pm-4:55pm
  • POSC 329 Reinventing Humanism: A Dialogue with Tzvetan Todorov 6 credits

    Humanism is today severely criticized for reducing humanity to Western culture and history and for its aggressive control and destruction of the non-human. Concomitantly, the history of the twentieth century reveals a growing totalitarian and anti-humanistic tendency in (post)modern societies and their politics, to replace individual agency, freedom, and responsibility with systemic solutions. The course explores, through a dialogue with the work of the French thinker, Tzvetan Todorov, how being human could be reinvented today in ways that avoid the moral and political pitfalls of the previous humanistic tradition, without devaluing, in the process, the idea of a shared humanity.

    • Spring 2022
    • Humanistic Inquiry
    • POSI Elective Philosophic & Legal Inq 2 Polisci/Ir Adv Seminar Polisci Advanced Seminar FFST Social Sci Conc French Pertinent Course
    • POSC  329.00 Spring 2022

    • Faculty:Mihaela Czobor-Lupp 🏫 👤
    • Size:15
    • T, THWeitz Center 136 10:10am-11:55am
  • POSC 352 Political Theory of Alexis de Tocqueville* 6 credits

    This course will be devoted to close study of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, which has plausibly been described as the best book ever written about democracy and the best book every written about America. Tocqueville uncovers the myriad ways in which equality, including especially the passion for equality, determines the character and the possibilities of modern humanity. Tocqueville thereby provides a political education that is also an education toward self-knowledge.

    • Winter 2017, Winter 2019, Spring 2021, Fall 2023
    • Humanistic Inquiry Intercultural Domestic Studies Writing Requirement
    • Philosophic & Legal Inq 2 AMST Group III Topical FRST Elective EUST transnatl supporting crs Polisci/Ir Adv Seminar Polisci Advanced Seminar French Pertinent Course FFST Social Sci Conc Polisci/Ir Elective
    • POSC  352.00 Winter 2017

    • Faculty:Barbara Allen 🏫 👤
    • Size:15
    • T, THWeitz Center 231 10:10am-11:55am
    • POSC  352.00 Winter 2019

    • Faculty:Barbara Allen 🏫 👤
    • Size:15
    • T, THWeitz Center 230 10:10am-11:55am
    • POSC  352.00 Spring 2021

    • Faculty:Laurence Cooper 🏫 👤
    • Size:15
    • T, THWeitz Center 233 10:20am-12:05pm
    • POSC  352.00 Fall 2023

    • Faculty:Barbara Allen 🏫 👤
    • Size:15
    • T, THHasenstab 109 10:10am-11:55am

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2025–26 Academic Catalog

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Registrar: Theresa Rodriguez
Email: registrar@carleton.edu
Phone: 507-222-4094
Academic Catalog 2025-26 pages maintained by Maria Reverman
This page was last updated on 10 September 2025
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