School of
Arts and
Sciences
COURSE
SYLLABUS
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Course Number POL
405 |
Course Title Political
Ideologies |
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Fall Semester |
Spring
Semester X |
Summer Semester |
Year 2012 |
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Name of Instructor William
Miller |
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Meeting Day, Time, and Room Number Wednesdays,
3:30-6:15pm, Gailhac 2001 |
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Final Exam Day, Time, and Room
Number Wednesday,
May 9th, 3:00pm, Gailhac 2001 |
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Office Hours, Location, Phone Tuesdays
and Fridays my office hours at Ballston will be from 12:15 to 1:15 and 2:30
to 3:30 on the Ballston campus. On Wednesdays I teach POL 405 at 3:30 on the
Main Campus, and my office hours are 3:00 to 3:30pm and after class in Ireton
my office G107; other times by appointment. My Ireton office telephone number
is 703 284 1687, but always email ahead of time! |
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E-mail & Website wmiller@marymount.edu (Email is the
best way to reach me!) All announcements and assignments are posted on my
website, www.millerpolitics.info,
not on Blackboard! |
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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)
This course is a study of ideology as a particular form of
political thought. The course examines the origins of ideology, its
distinguishing characteristics, and various examples of ideology. In
particular, this semester we will examine modern ideologies such as socialism,
communism, fascism, Nazism, and so-called “Islamicism”
as well as other examples of ideological thought.
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, according to several theories of ideology;
2. be familiar with the
related concepts of "total critique," "axiological
critique," "teleological critique," "totalitarianism,"
and "utopia";
3. be familiar with the
basic tenets of several major ideological systems, such as communism, fascism,
and national socialism;
4. have
a detailed knowledge of the tenets, the genesis, and the historical impact of
one particular ideology as a result of the individual student's research;
5. practice
writing comparative and critical analyses of various modern and contemporary
political ideologies.
3. TEACHING METHOD (lecture, laboratory, audio-visual, clinical
experience, discussion, seminar, tutorial)
Lecture and seminar discussion of
primary and secondary texts.
Much discussion will be based upon student presentations.
4. GRADING POLICY (i.e., number of graded
assignments, weight given to each)
The final grade will consist of the following components:
20%=Article/Chapter
Review
20%=Short
research paper
30%=Class
presentations (3 or more, depending on the size of the class)
30%=Final
Essay Exam
The usual scale of 93-100=A, 90-92=A-, 87-89=B+, 83-86=B,
80-82=B-, and so on will be used.
Attendance,
Late Paper, and Make-up Exam policies:
Seminars
require and expect the attendance of all of their members. Each student is
allowed one unexcused absence. Documentable absences for health, legal, or job
related reasons are excused. Students with five absences (one-third of the
semester), excused or unexcused, will receive an “F” for the course. For each
unexcused absence thereafter, the final letter grade for the course will be
decreased by one-third grade (e.g., A to A-, B+ to B, and so on). 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,
not participating in the class discussion, leaving class at the break or after giving
a scheduled presentation without the prior permission of the instructor is
considered an absence.
Class
presentations must be presented or, if you are ill,
nevertheless submitted on time because each class is based on one or two
student presentations. Failure to present or submit any single class
presentation on time will result in a zero for that portion of the Class
Presentation grade. For example, if each student is assigned three
presentations during the course of the semester, and a student fails to present
one of the three, then the students will receive a zero for 1/3 of the Class
Participation grade. 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.
Merely
informing me ahead of time that you will be absent from class does not mean I
excuse the absence, though I appreciate your courtesy. I will not excuse your
absence because you are simply not feeling well or because you choose to do
something worthwhile other than come to class even if you inform me ahead of
time. If you are coughing and sneezing and coming down with a cold or the flu,
and you don't want to spread your virus to your classmates, your fellow
students and I salute you! Staying home may be the right thing to do, but
it is not an excused absence. You all get one unexcused absence to use as you
see fit, and it is your decision to use it to stay home when you don't feel
well or want to attend some other event.
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 34 of the 2011-2012 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 34 of the 2011-2012 University
Catalogue.
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”. 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 a an excused absence as defined above. 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.
5. CLASS SCHEDULE (List topics to be covered with approximate
dates of presentation; specific assignment will be listed on the instructor’s
website.)
Week I (1/18): Introduction to the course; basic concepts.
Week II (1/25): Preliminary Essays, Conceptual Tools.
Week III (2/1): Socialism, Communism, Anarchism;
Niemeyer, selected readings
Week IV (2/8): Niemeyer, selected readings
Week V (2/15): Niemeyer, selected readings
Week VI (2/22): Fascism, Marxism, and Totalitarianism:
Gregor, selected readings.
Week VII (2/29): Gregor, selected
readings.
Week VIII (3/14): Chapter
Review Due: Niemeyer and Gregor on Lenin.
Week IX (3/21): Ideology
as Religion: Religion as Ideology: Voegelin,
Cooper, Rapoport.
Week X (3/28): Voegelin, selected
readings.
Week XI (4/4): Voegelin, selected
readings.
Week XII (4/11): Islamicism:
Ibrahim, selected readings.
Week XIII (4/18): Ibrahim, selected readings. Research Paper Due.
Week XIV (4/25): Ibrahim, selected readings.
Week XV (5/2): Conclusions and Final Analyses
FINAL EXAM: The final exam will
only be given at the time and date scheduled in the University Final
Examination Schedule: Wednesday, May 9th, at 3:00pm in Gailhac 2001. Please
make your travel plans accordingly.
6. REQUIRED TEXTS
Raymond Ibrahim, The Al Qaeda Reader
(New York: Broadway Books, 2007) ISBN 9780767922623.
A. James Gregor. Marxism, Fascism, and Totalitarianism:
Chapters in the Intellectual History of Radicalism. (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 2008) ISBN 978-0804760348.
Gerhart Niemeyer, Between Nothingness and Paradise (South Bend: St. Augustine's
Press, 1999). ISBN 978-1890318055.
Eric Voegelin. New Science of Politics (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1952, 1987). ISBN
0226861147.
7. REQUIRED OR SUGGESTED
Essays, Articles, and Book Chapters.
Barry Cooper. "Concepts."
Chapter Two in New Political Religions, or An
Analysis of Modern Terrorism. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press,
2004.
Barry Cooper. "'Jihadists' and the
War on Terrorism." Intercollegiate Review 42 (Spring 2007):
27-36.
A. James Gregor. "The Ideology of Fascism." In Transformation of a Continent: Europe in the Twentieth Century. Ed. Gerhard Weinberg. Minneapolis: Burgess Pub. Co, 1975.
Bruce Hoffman. “’Holy Terror’: The Implications of Terrorism
Motivated by a Religious Imperative.”Studies
in Conflict and Terrorism 18 (1995): 271-284.
Gerhart Niemeyer. "Loss of Reality: Gnosticism and Modern
Nihilism." In Aftersight
and Foresight. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 1988.
Hermann Rauschning. The Revolution of Nihilism. New York: Longmans, Green
& Co., 1939.
Stephen McKnight. Sacralizing the Secular. Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1989.
Kenneth Minogue. “Identification.” Chapter Two in Alien Powers: The Pure Theory of Ideology. 2d ed. Wilmington, DE:
ISI Books, 2008.
David C. Rapoport. “Fear and
Trembling: Terrorism in Three Religious Traditions.” American Political Science Review 78 (1984): 658-677.
Robert Tucker. "The Marxian
Revolutionary Idea." In The Marxian
Revolutionary Idea. New York: W.W. Norton Co., 1969.
Eric Voegelin. "Ersatz
Religion." In Science, Politics and Gnosticism.
Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 1968, 2005. Also in Voegelin, Modernity without Restraint, ed. Manfred Henningsen. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri
Press, 2000.
Journals
(all available in
or through our University Library).
Studies in Conflict
and Terrorism
Terrorism and
Political Violence
Politics, Religion
& Ideology