Unit name | The History of Political Thought |
---|---|
Unit code | POLI29004 |
Credit points | 20 |
Level of study | I/5 |
Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
Unit director | Professor. Jonathan Floyd |
Open unit status | Not open |
Pre-requisites |
none |
Co-requisites |
none |
School/department | School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies |
Faculty | Faculty of Social Sciences and Law |
Aims:
The unit aims at introducing students to a wide range of texts in the history, and encouraging the critical assessment of these texts. Through exploring the work of a range of historical authors, spanning a period of over two thousand years, students will experience both difference and similarity in how different eras have seen ideas of the political and understood the relation of the individual to the state and to others. Lectures will provide broad overviews of the work of the author in question, and contextualise their writings with reference to the political contexts of their times. Seminars will focus on particular extracts from the key works of the authors in question, and will encourage students both to analyse significant passages of political writing and to think about the relation of these extracts to the writer's wider projects. The summative essay aims to enable students to engage in a detailed study of a particular text from the political theory canon: reading it in detail and at length, and engaging with the secondary literature.
At the end of the unit a successful student will be able to:
The summative 2,000 word essay with pairwise questions assesses achievement of outcomes 1, 2, and 3.
The seen exam with topic questions assesses achievement of outcomes 1, 2 and 4.
2 x 1hr lecture and 1hr seminar