HONC 356 - Narratives of Freedom

Unit(s): 4

This course puts in conversation key Enlightenment-era (late 17th-18th Century) texts from political philosophy’s “Social Contract” tradition and key texts from the Black Atlantic and American slave narrative tradition. Learning these two traditions together magnifies the ideas they contain, criticize and defend: domination, natural law, liberty, equality, democracy, political representation, civic fraternity and sorority, individual civil rights, slavery, property, consent, and tolerance. We consider the ways these two traditions present both political treatises and “narratives” about the emergence of free, equal, and enlightened modern “men,” the birth of civil society, and the justification of political power. These treatises and narratives lead us to confront a conceptual conflict behind centuries of racial, class, and gender domination, and understand more deeply the struggle for liberty, equality, political revolution and reform.

Restriction: Course Student Attribute Restricted to Honors College Curric Priority
College of Arts and Sciences