School of
Arts and
Sciences
COURSE SYLLABUS
Course Number POL 404 |
Course
Title Roots of Political Ideologies |
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Fall Semester |
Spring
Semester X |
Summer
Semester |
Year 2011 |
Name
of Instructor William Miller |
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Meeting
Day, Time, and Room Number Wednesday, 3:30pm, Lee Center
Honors Room |
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Final
Exam Day, Time, and Room Number Thursday, April 28th,
3:00pm |
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Office
Hours, Location, Phone Tuesdays
and Fridays, 11:30 to 12:30pm, Wednesdays, 1:00 to 3:00pm, and by
appointment. Rowley 62 A, (703) 284-1687. Always email me ahead of time. |
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E-mail and Website wmiller@marymount.edu;
millerpolitics.info I do not use blackboard! |
UNIVERSITY
STATEMENTS
Academic Integrity
By accepting this
syllabus, you pledge to uphold the principles of Academic Integrity expressed
by the Marymount University Community. You agree to observe these principles
yourself and to defend them against abuse by others.
Special Needs and
Accommodations
Please advise the
instructor of any special problems or needs at the beginning of the
semester. If you seek accommodation
based on disabilities, you should provide a Faculty Contact Sheet obtained
through Disability Support Services located in Gerard Hall, (703) 284-1615.
Access
to Student Work
Copies of your work
in this course including copies of any submitted papers and your portfolios may
be kept on file for institutional research, assessment and accreditation
purposes. All work used for these purposes will be submitted anonymously.
Student
Copyright Authorization
For the benefit of
current and future students, work in this course may be used for educational
critique, demonstrations, samples, presentations, and verification. Outside of these uses, work shall not be
sold, copied, broadcast, or distributed for profit without student
consent.
University
Policy on Snow Closings
Snow closings are
generally announced on area radio stations. For bulletins concerning Marymount
snow or weather closings, call (703) 526-6888. Unless otherwise advised by
radio announcement or by official bulletins on the number listed above,
students are expected to report for class as near normal time as possible on
days when weather conditions are adverse. Decisions as to snow closing or
delayed opening are not generally made before 5:00 AM of the working day.
Students are expected to attend class if the University is not officially
closed.
1. BROAD
PURPOSE OF COURSE (Include the
catalog description) The course focuses on the ancient and medieval religious
and philosophical roots of the distinctive ideas underlying contemporary
ideologies. In particular, we shall focus on the influence of Gnostic,
chiliastic, hermeticist, and neo-Platonic ideas upon
eighteenth and nineteenth century American political thought and upon several
modern political-religious movements.
2. COURSE OBJECTIVES (For core courses, include writing, critical reasoning, and information literacy as appropriate) Upon successful completion of this course students will be expected to:
1. be able to describe the distinctive features of
political ideologies in contrast to other forms of political thought;
2. demonstrate
familiarity with the related concepts of "millennialism,"
"millenarianism," "gnosticism," “hermeticism,” "orthodoxy," "heresy," and
"utopia;"
3. demonstrate
familiarity with the basic outlines of several past and present
political-religious movements;
4. demonstrate
in writing a detailed knowledge of the tenets, the genesis, and the historical
impact of one particular such movement as a result of the individual student's
research;
5. be able to assess the
nature of the ideological aspects of the movement in light of the concepts and
approaches discussed in the course.
3. TEACHING
METHOD (lecture, laboratory,
audio-visual, clinical experience, discussion, seminar, tutorial)
The class will consist of seminar discussions,
including student presentations. Reading assignments will be approximately 75
to 100 pages per week.
4. GRADING
POLICY (i.e., number of graded
assignments, weight given to each)
The final grade will consist of three components:
·
Mid-term Essay
Exam 20%
·
Final Essay Exam
25%
·
Article Review
(See guidelines on article and book reviews) 10%
·
Book Review (See
guidelines on article and book reviews) 15%
·
Short research
paper (See guidelines on research papers)15%
·
Class
presentations and participation 15%
The class presentations, or seminar
papers, will be commentaries of about three pages (typed) on some aspect of
the readings assigned for that evening's class. One-third to one-half of each
paper summarizes the point to be focused on, and the rest of the paper offers
comments. Those not giving seminar papers will prepare one discussion question
on the assigned readings; the questions will be graded.
Attendance, Late Paper, and Make-up Exam policies:
Because seminars require and
expect the attendance of all of their members, each student is allowed only one
unexcused absence. For each unexcused absence thereafter, the final grade will
be decreased by one-third grade (e.g., A to A-, B+ to B, and so on). To be
excused, an absence must be explained to and approved by me before it occurs or
documented in writing after it occurs. Note: Coming to class late—even real
late—once or twice is not considered an absence, but if your job or
internship prevents you from regularly coming to class on time, please see me
after the first class. Coming to class without the textbook or leaving class at
the break or after taking an announced quiz or giving a scheduled presentation
without prior permission is considered an absence.
Excessive excused
absences may also be a problem, and you should discuss such situations with me
well before the last month of the semester. This is not a distance learning
class. Any absence prevents you from participating in the class, but if your
job or an illness keeps you away from class for more than a quarter of the
semester, it will significantly affect the class participation component of
your grade and may be a good reason to drop the course and take it another
time. All of us find ourselves in these situations from time to time and have
to deal with them appropriately. You also have an obligation to report this to
a University office (see page 35 of the 2010-2011 University Catalogue).
When in doubt about any of
these policies, please come and talk to me. They have been formulated with our
substantial commuter and working student population in mind and are intended to
be fair to everyone. You should also review the University's policies on
absenteeism on page 35 of the 2010-2011 University Catalogue.
Class presentations must be presented or, if you are ill, submitted on time.
Failure to present or submit any single class presentation on time will result
in the loss (zero) of half the Class Presentation grade. Each class will be
based on one or two student presentations. Failure to show up cripples the
proceedings. So if you feel the sniffles coming on, do not wait until the last
minute to prepare your presentation and thus risk a major reduction in your
final grade for the course.
Late Papers and Make-up
Exams: All presentations and other
papers must be submitted in hard copy form by the due date for full credit! For
each day that a paper or other assignment is late, one full letter grade will
be deducted until the grade is an “F” (50%). Deadlines may be met by submitting
an electronic copy before the deadline as
long as (1) a hard copy is then submitted at the earliest possible time and (2)
the reason you are unable to hand in the hard copy on time is an excused
absence as defined above. If the paper is never handed in, your grade will
be a zero. To get partial (50%)
credit, the review or the research paper may be turned in by the last class of
the semester, no matter how late it is. To get this 50%, the paper must be a
good faith effort, however, not just a piece of junk.
If, because of an excused
absence, you are unable to take the mid-term, you may take it the same day as
the final exam. If your absence is not excused, you will receive a zero for the
mid-term. The same reasoning applies to the final exam.
5. CLASS
SCHEDULE (List topics to be covered
with approximate dates of presentation, subject to change for academic or
meteorological reasons.)
Class One
(1/12): Introduction to the course;
basic concepts; ancient and medieval antecedents.
Class Two (1/19): Genesis, chs. 3, 4 & 6; Daniel, ch. 7-10; Matthew,
chs. 24 & 25; Mark, ch. 13; Luke, ch. 21:
5-36; Acts of the Apostles, ch.1:1-11; 2 Thessalonians, ch 2; 1 & 2 John; Revelation, ch. 20 (or all); Ronald Knox, Enthusiasm, chapter 4, “Donatist and Circumcellian”; Tuveson, Redeemer
Nation, chapter 1, “Apocalyptic and History.”
Class Three (1/26): Medieval
Millenarian and Apocalyptic Movements. Cohn, Pursuit of the Millennium, Introduction
and chapters 1 to 3.
Class Four (2/2): Cohn, chapters 4 to 7.Article Review, Friday, 2/4.
Class Five (2/9): Cohn, chapters 8 to 10.
Class Six (2/16): Cohn, chapters 11 to 13.
Class Seven (2/23): Gnosticism:
Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, chapters 1 & 2; Gerhart
Niemeyer, “Loss of Reality: Gnosticism and Modern Nihilism.”
Class Eight (3/2): Mid-term
Class Nine
(3/16): Hermeticism and Neo-Platonism: Readings by
van den Broek from Gnosis and Hermeticism
from Antiquity to Modern Times, and McKnight from Sacralizing the Secular.
Class Ten (3/23): McKnight, Sacralizing the Secular, 74-159.
Class Eleven (3/30): Millenarianism
in 18th and 19th Century America. John Adams, Dissertation
on Canon and Feudal Law; Richard Price, "The
Evidence for a Future Period of Improvement in the State of Mankind"; Thomas Paine,
Rights of Man: Part Two, chapters 1-3. Other sites for the Adams
essay are the Liberty
Fund Library and the
Teaching American History sites.
Class Twelve (4/6): Wessinger, selected cases.
Class Thirteen
(4/13): Wessinger,
selected cases. Papers Due.
Class Fourteen (4/20): Wessinger, selected cases.
FINAL EXAM: THE FINAL
WILL ONLY BE GIVEN ON THE DATE INDICATED BY THE UNIVERSITY FINAL EXAM SCHEDULE:
THURSDAY, APRIL 28TH AT 3:00PM. MAKE YOUR TRAVEL PLANS
ACCORDINGLY!
6. REQUIRED
TEXTS
Cohn, Norman. The Pursuit
of the Millennium. 2d ed. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1970.
McKnight, Stephen.
Sacralizing the Secular: The Renaissance
Origins of Modernity. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press,
1989.
Voegelin, Eric. Science, Politics, and Gnosticism. Wilmington:
Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 1968, 2005.
Wessinger, Catherine. Millennialism,
Persecution, & Violence: Historical Cases. Syracuse: Suracuse University Press, 2000.
Articles, Essays, Book Chapters for Review Assignment.
Hoffman, Bruce. “’Holy
Terror’: The Implications of Terrorism Motivated by a Religious Imperative.” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 18
(1995): 271-284.
David Rapoport,
“Fear and Trembling: Terrorism in Three Religious Traditions.” American Political Science Review 78
(1984): 658-677.
Voegelin, Eric. “Ersatz Religion,” in Eric Voegelin. Science, Politics, and Gnosticism. Wilmington: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 1968, 2005.
7. RECOMMENDED
OR SUGGESTED READINGS OR AUDIO-VISUAL MATERIALS
Journals.
Studies in
Conflict and Terrorism
Terrorism and
Political Violence
Politics,
Religion & Ideology (formerly Totalitarian Movements and Political
Religions)
Books.
Barkun, Michael. A
Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.
________. Millennialism
and Violence. Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 1996.
________. Religion
and the Racist Right. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1996.
Baylor, Michael, ed.
The Radical Reformation. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge
University Press, 1991.
Baumgartner, Frederic J. Longing for the End: A
History of Millennialism in Western Civilization. New York: St. Martin's
Press, 1999.
Billington, James H. Fire
in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith. New Brunswick:
Transaction, 1980, 1999.
Boyer, Paul S. When Time Shall Be
No More: Prophecy Beliefs in Modern American Culture. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992.
Brown, Harold O.J. Heresies:
Heresy and Orthodoxy in the History of the Church. Peabody, MA:
Hendrickson, 1984, 1988.
Cohn, Norman. Cosmos,
Chaos, and the World to Come. New Haven: Yale University Press,
1994.
Cooper, Barry. New Political Religions, or An Analysis of Modern Terrorism. Columbia, MO: University
of Missouri Press, 2004.
Copenhaver, Brian. Hermetica: The Greek
Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius in a New
English Translation, with Notes and Introduction. New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1995.
Debus, A. & Merkel, I., eds. Hermeticism and the Renaissance: Intellectual History
and the Occult in Early Modern Europe. Washington: Folger Books, 1988.
Eliade, Mircea. The
Sacred and the Profane. New York: Harcourt, 1988.
Ellis, Richard J. The Dark Side of the Left: Illiberal
Egalitarianism in America. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1998.
Fromm, Erich. Marx's Concept of Man: with a
translation of Marx's Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts by T.B.Bottomore. New York: Frederick Ungar,
1961, 1966.
Guitton, Jean. Great Heresies and Church Councils. New York: Harper and
Row, 1963, 1965.
Hofstadter, Richard. The Paranoid Style in
American Politics. New York: Vintage Books, 2008.
Hogan, Richard M. Dissent
from the Creed: Heresies Past and Present. Huntington, IN: Our Sunday
Visitor Publishing, 2001.
Jonas, Hans. The
Gnostic Religion. 3d ed. Boston: Beacon Press, 2001. (On Reserve)
Juergensmeyer, Mark. Terror
in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence. 3d ed. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2003.
Knox, Ronald. Enthusiasm:
A Chapter in the History of Religion : With Special
Reference to the XVII and XVIII Centuries. Notre Dame, IN: University of
Notre Dame Press, 1994.
Lee, Philip J. Against the Protestant Gnostics. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Lovejoy, A.O. The
Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea. New Brunswick:
Transaction Publications, 1936, 1964.
Marx, Karl. Early Writings: The Economic and
Philosophic Manuscripts. Translated T.B.Bottomore.
New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1964.
Marx, Karl, and Frederick Engels. Economic and Philosophic
Manuscripts of 1844 and the Communist Manifesto. Translated
by Martin Milligan. Great Books in Philosophy.
Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1987.
McGinn, Bernard. Apocalypse in the Middle Ages. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992.
________. Apocalyptic
Spirituality. New York: Paulist
Press, 1979.
________. Apocalypticism in the
Western Tradition. Brookfield, Vt.: Variorum, 1994.
________. Encyclopedia
of Apocalypticism. New York: Continuum,
1998.
________. Meister
Eckhart and the Beguine Mystics. New York: Continuum, 1994.
________. Meister Eckhart: Teacher
and Preacher.
________. Meister Eckhart: the
Essential Sermons.
________. Foundations
of Mysticism. New York: Crossroad, 1991.
________. Growth
of Mysticism. New York: Crossroad, 1994.
________. Visions
of the End.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1979. (On Reserve)
McGrath, Alister. Heresy: A History of Defending the Truth.
New York: HarperCollins, 2009.
McKnight, Stephen A., ed. Science,
Pseudo-Science, and Utopianism in Early Modern Thought. Columbia. University of Missouri Press, 1992.
Meyer, Marvin W., trans. Secret Teachings of Jesus:
Four Gnostic Gospels. New York: Random House, 1984.
Minogue, Kenneth. Alien Powers: the Pure Theory of
Ideology. 2d ed. New Brunswick: Transaction Books,
2007; reprint, Wilmington: ISI Books, 2008.
Molnar, Thomas. Utopia: the Perennial Heresy.
New York: Sheed and Ward, 1967; reprint, University
Press of America, 1990.
Mooney, James. The
Ghost Dance Religion and Wounded Knee. New York: Dover, 1973.
Murawiec, Laurent. The Mind of Jihad. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Niemeyer, Gerhart. Aftersight and Foresight: Selected Essays. Lanham,
MD: University Press of America, 1988. (On Reserve)
________. Between Nothingness and
Paradise. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1971;
reprint, South Bend: St. Augustine Press, 1998.
________. Within
and Above Ourselves: Essays in Political Analysis. Wilmington, DE: ISI
Press, 1996.
O'Leary, Stephen D. Arguing the
Apocalypse. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
O'Sullivan, Noel. Fascism.
Modern Ideologies Series. London: J.M. Dent &
Sons, 1983.
Robinson, James McC. Nag Hammadi Library in English. 3d ed. San Francisco:
Harper & Row, 1988.
Rudolph, Kurt. Gnosis: the Nature
and History of Gnosticism. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1983.
Runciman, Steven. The Medieval Manichee. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University
Press, 1947; reprint, 1991. (On Reserve)
Tucker, Robert C. Marxian
Revolutionary Idea. New York: Norton, 1969.
________. Philosophy
and Myth in Karl Marx. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press,
1972.
Tuveson, Ernest Lee. Millennium
and Utopia. Berkeley: University of California, 1949. (On Reserve)
________. Redeemer Nation.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968; reprint, Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, Midway Reprint, 1980.
Van den Broek, Roelof, and Wouter J. Hanegraaff, eds. Gnosis
and Hermeticism: From Antiquity to Modern Times.
Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1997. (On Reserve)
Weber, Eugen. Apocalypses:
Prophesies, Cults, and Millennial Beliefs through the Ages. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1999.
Yates, Frances A. Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964.
________. The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age. London: Routledge, 2001.